Before the Tide Read online

  Chapter 22: Parents and Children

  Helga wasn’t the only one trying to figure Colby out. Salazar’s curiosity was of a different character though. Colby seemed like a mass of contradictions: strong but mild-mannered, magical, but content to hide his gifts, the son of an extremely powerful druidess, but feeling no honor for it. Whatever else Cleodna might be, there was no denying her greatness. Salazar himself was the son of a powerful witch, and it troubled him to see Colby turn away from all he had been given.

  Colby had been fascinated by Madella. He expressed no desire to touch or interact with her, but his eyes focused on her whenever she was in view. Salazar had seen many reactions to the snake: fear, wariness, delight, but never anything quite like the way Colby watched her.

  More than anything though, it was the power radiating from Colby that drew Salazar. Salazar was irresistibly attracted by power. He had sensed it in each of his companions, in Cleodna, in her son, and in himself. He knew he had a great destiny, and he was drawn by others who possessed a similar force. The thing was that he couldn’t put his finger on the source of Colby’s power. Salazar hadn’t seen Colby do magic, and somehow didn’t think that the force Colby emanated was related to spell-casting. It was something else, something in the man himself.

  When he and Godric returned to Colby’s cottage, it was to find it empty. Where ever Colby had stormed off to, it wasn’t to his home. On the pretext of getting some fresh air after so much time indoors breathing smoke, Salazar left the cottage, and looked carefully around him. The night was dark, but, looking up the side of a hill, he saw occasional flickers of light, such as might come from a torch born in a hand. Not knowing exactly what he intended, Salazar went toward the irregular glimmers through the trees.

  Colby couldn’t have been very far ahead of him, but Salazar thought the man must be running, for Salazar didn’t catch up with him as he climbed the hill. Salazar was quickly winded by the ascent, but the unsteady light retreated rapidly before him. It didn’t quite look like torch light either; it was more like sudden sparks and tiny tongues of flame. Finally, he reached the top, to see Colby standing, head thrown back, scanning the sky in all directions. Salazar hung back, watching him. If Colby was waiting for a visit from an angry dragon, Salazar was happy to keep well in the shadows.

  But time passed and nothing at all happened. Finally, Colby sank down onto a fallen log, resting his elbows on his knees. Despite his powerful frame, he looked like a dejected man. Salazar realized that Colby did not, after all, carry a torch.

  Colby lifted his head wearily, and called out, “Come and wait with me. There’s no point lurking around in the trees like that.” His voice bore no hostility, so Salazar left the tree he’d been sheltering under, and walked out onto the bare hill top. He paced idly about a bit, before coming to sit beside Colby.

  “You are waiting for the dragon?”

  “I’m waiting for the dragon.”

  “How will you fight it?”

  “Fight it? I will not fight it. Is that what you think? Well, it’s what Hollis thinks. Maybe it’s even what she hopes.”

  Salazar didn’t understand this at all, but waited, not even knowing what questions to ask.

  “Where are your parents?” Colby asked finally, as though craving a distraction from his own thoughts. “Do they yet live?”

  “My mother is dead, and my father, well I know not where he is, nor care either. My mother, like yours, was a powerful witch. She was the Vala for our village, the wise woman, the magic woman. My father was a dealer in dragon eggs who travelled, and didn’t stay long with my mother. He came from the east I think.”

  “We have a lot in common then,” Colby remarked.

  “Perhaps, but my mother was neither so famous nor so long-lived as yours.” Colby made a sound in his throat that Salazar couldn’t interpret. Curiosity finally getting the better of him, Salazar asked, “If you’re not here to defend the village against the black dragon, what is your intention?”

  “The village doesn’t need protection from the dragon. Oh he’s coming, but not to harm the village. He’s coming for me. He will have taken some time to hunt for himself and stretch his wings, but he’ll be here. He’ll know I’m waiting for him, and he will come soon.”

  “But you won’t fight him? Why does he seek you?”

  “He’s not coming to kill me; he’s coming to rescue me.”

  Salazar was completely at sea. “Rescue you from what?”

  “What indeed?” Colby sounded bitter. Then he sighed a deep and tormented sigh. “He thinks he’ll save me from an ignominious life among muggles, from my inane existence in the muggle world.” That sounded like a fine idea to Salazar, but Colby clearly didn’t think so. “The dragon would take me away with him, away from here, out of Cleodna’s reach.”

  “Did you somehow manage to befriend it when you lived in your mother’s house?”

  “You might say so. I wanted so much to let him go, but I couldn’t. You can’t imagine what it’s like to be Cleodna’s son. Well, maybe you can. You’ve met her, and your own mother sounds like a formidable woman too.”

  Salazar could imagine. He had felt the force of Cleodna’s personality, and remembered how it had been to grow up as the son of the most powerful person in his world. He wasn’t one to question someone about the morality of their choices, and if Colby said he hadn’t felt free to liberate the dragon, Salazar believed him. “Does the dragon think you a prisoner here?”

  “No, not the way you mean it, but he can’t understand why I would stay. He thinks that it’s some bewitchment of my mother’s that keeps me here. He can’t understand that …” Colby’s voice trailed off.

  “Is it Hollis and the children that keep you here then?” Pragmatic to the core, Salazar had calculated the calendar and noted the twins’ colouring, just as Rowena had.

  “Partly. I want to keep them safe, to keep them all safe. This dragon means them no harm, but he’s not the only creature with reason to hold a grudge against my mother, and who might be tempted to take their grudge out on anyone who seems to give her obedience. I can’t stop her preying on these people, but I can do my best to help them.”

  Salazar gazed at him with profound confusion. Such a sense of obligation was completely baffling to him, and he didn’t even try to understand it, moving on instead to what really interested him. “The black dragon, you know we flew it away from her house. I released it, and we flew it, him, north. She followed in her dragon form. They fought, and he bested her. She went back to her home, and he flew off.” Warming to Colby, Salazar described for him the havoc they had reeked in Cleodna’s courtyard on their departure.

  By the time he had finished, Colby had thrown his head back and emitted a hearty, booming laugh that seemed to shake the last remaining leaves from the surrounding trees. “Merlin’s beard but I’d have loved to see that!” He exclaimed. “She must have been furious! You’re a brave man young Salazar!”

  “I don’t like to see such noble beasts captive for anyone’s amusement.”

  “Nor I. The black was the prize of her collection. She will not soon forgive you for its release.”

  Salazar shrugged. “Our errand is to the north; we’re unlikely to meet again.”

  Colby sighed. “Oh to be indifferent to her. What is your errand?”

  Salazar liked Colby, so as they waited, Salazar told of Odo, and the battle, and their oath to carry him home. It transpired that Colby knew of Odo. Odo’s mother had spent time as an apprentice to Cleodna. Colby had met Odo, and knew of his strange gifts. “I’m not surprised to hear the manner of his death. He was a lost man. I’m glad he found his purpose.”

  Salazar thought that Odo had taken remarkable power and thrown it away, but he didn’t argue.

  “A potion for luck is it? That healer friend of yours is an uncommon witch. It’s no wonder my mother sought to keep all of you with her.”

  “Yes, Helga looks soft and mild
, but she’s as stubborn as anyone I’ve ever met, and she has remarkable gifts with animals and plants. She helped me most in keeping the dragon calm enough to let us ride him. When he comes, will he simply take you?”

  “I will have to try and make him understand that I can’t go.”

  “Make him understand? How?”

  “I hear him in my mind, and he can hear me.”

  Salazar was impressed. “I was stretched to the end of my limit merely to keep him from stomping all over us. You must have powerful magic indeed!”

  It was Colby’s turn to shrug. “Magic? Well I suppose you could call it that. You know who my mother is, but have you not guessed my father?”

  Of a sudden, Salazar was aware of the warmth radiating from Colby, as though the man was fevered, or had a tiny forge inside him. Salazar thought to wonder what had lighted Colby’s way up the hill, since he’d had no torch. Salazar’s eyebrows rose, and he shifted slowly away from the other man. “You’re not …?”

  Colby turned his head to one side, and with no warning, puffed out a breath of flame which lit the hilltop in a brief, eerie glow.

  “You’re a …! You’re not a …?”

  “No, and no. I’m not, but not quite a man either. The black dragon is coming because he wants to save me from my own captivity, because he cares for me, feels responsible for me, as I feel responsible for them.” He gestured down the hill toward the village. “He will expect me to go, but I can’t go.”

  Salazar was still puzzled, but he wasn’t one to try and save people from themselves. Instead, he indulged his curiosity by asking questions about Colby’s powers. He’d barely scratched the surface however, before there was a flickering light in the sky to the east, then, thrilling in the silence, the slow, steady flap of enormous wings.

  “Go back into the trees for a time,” Colby said. “I don’t think he’ll be hungry, but you never know. There’s no point having a stranger around; you might wind up as supper before I could stop it.”

  More than willing to protect his own skin, Salazar melted into the trees, and watched as the scaly black form glided overhead, and landed with remarkable grace. Salazar felt a chill of awe run down his back. He had subdued this noble beast and ridden it, and still, he felt that, till now, he hadn’t truly appreciated its agility and raw power.

  Colby approached it slowly, but with no trace of fear. He went to stand on one side of the beast’s head, upwind from its flaming breath. He reached out both hands, placing them on the dragon’s neck. The dragon’s long body curled ever so subtly toward the man who stood silent, with his eyes closed. Salazar closed his own eyes in an attempt to follow the silent conversation. He got a sense of some of the emotions; urgency, anger, protectiveness, guilt, frustration, but he couldn’t read any direct meaning from the exchange. Anxious not to offend two such formidable beings by any intrusion, he withdrew his awareness from the exchange, and simply stood watching.

  Some minutes later, he became aware of sounds behind him. Someone, someone none too subtle or fleet of foot, was making a loud and ungraceful progress up the hill. It was Helga. She arrived at his side puffing with the exertion. She came up beside him, and stood peering through the trees at the astonishing sight of Colby, his eyes closed, caressing the terrifying black dragon, as the beast curled its body protectively. Helga gasped, and raised a hand to her mouth. She was awed, but not as shocked as Salazar had been. He explained things to her, as she stood, her eyes fixed on Colby.

  “I wondered,” she breathed. “I couldn’t see what he put in Aidan’s potion, but it was something red, and it cured him almost immediately. Dragon’s blood is powerfully magical. I thought Colby was reaching up his sleeve for an herb, but he must have cut himself on purpose. And you say he won’t go? Oh the poor man; the poor, poor man. What a destiny: giving his whole life trying to make up for all his mother has done. It’s a task that will never be completed. He won’t marry Hollis; you know that? He’ll protect her and the twins, but he won’t marry her.”

  After some time, Colby opened his eyes, and drew away from the dragon. The black lay, apparently resting at its ease. Colby walked slowly toward where Helga and Salazar stood. In the flickering light from the flaming breath, he looked sad.

  “I have persuaded him,” he gestured to the recumbent dragon, “to take your party from here, to a place where they will be safe. Go collect them and bring them here. It will be better if you depart unseen.”

  Helga reached out a hand and placed it on Colby’s arm. As an unmarried woman, this was a bold thing to do to a relative stranger, but she was moved by his expression, and by the fate he had chosen for himself. “Colby,” she said warmly, “won’t you come with us? You can’t spend your life …” He stepped back from her and looked away. His skin had sent a powerful warmth through her hand, and she felt chilled when he moved from her side.

  “Go,” he said simply, and Salazar took her arm to help her down the hill.

  Colby remained with the dragon as Helga and Salazar waked the others and explained things to them. They gathered together their belongings, and climbed the hill, wafting Odo’s invisible basket before them. Considering that they were about to ride a dragon once more, the mood was remarkably somber.

  Drawn irresistibly to him, Helga made one last plea to Colby. “Let us take the twins. They could so easily be discovered for what they really are. It isn’t right for you to choose for them in this way, making them hide what they are.”

  Beside her, Rowena twitched uncomfortably. She could make out Godric’s face in the flickering light, and saw his grumpy expression. She gave a bitter inward laugh. It was all right for Godric to be irritated at the prospect of two small children, but Rowena knew perfectly well who would bear the brunt of caring for them, and it wasn’t Godric or Salazar. She hadn’t liked seeing little Edgar chastised for using magic either, but it didn’t make her eager for more children to herd.

  Colby shook his head. “I will watch over them. I wouldn’t try to take them from Hollis, and she won’t leave. They will be fine: now go.”

  Helga’s eyes rested on him. She felt a desperate need to save him from this life he had chosen. She still felt a strong attraction to him, and didn’t want to leave him here. Hollis, she thought, Hollis will care for him, love him, as much as he’ll let her. Unable to stop herself, she reached out and took his hand. It was astonishingly warm and strong. She felt the strength, and thought of his gentleness. She stared wordlessly into his eyes, trying to communicate, she didn’t know what. She wanted to save him, to heal him, and felt the bitter frustration she associated with an ailment she couldn’t cure. Regretfully, she let go his warm hand, and turned away.

  Their ride this time was both more and less thrilling than the first. The first time they’d been so shocked that it had been a bit difficult to truly enjoy the experience, though the utter improbability had been its own unique thrill. This time, they were less frightened, and better able to fully take it in.

  The night was cloudy, and none of them had a very clear sense of their direction. Still, the soaring, swooping sensation was absolutely absorbing. The enormous wings beat powerfully on either side, seizing the air as the fins of a great fish seize the water. The dragon’s breath offered brief glimpses of the ground below, the impenetrable darkness of woods, and the occasional gleam of flame on water. They had been able to position themselves more carefully this time, and each of them felt their hearts lift in wordless exhilaration as they left the ground behind. They spoke hardly at all. They each felt better able to really take in what they were doing, and wanted to fix the memory of it in their minds.

  Some indeterminate time later, when exhilaration had begun to give way to bone-deep chill, they felt the dragon begin to descend. Unable to let it alone, Salazar had been trying to make contact with the dragon’s mind, but with little success. All he could sense was regret, and purpose. Their flight wasn’t random. The black knew where it was going, even if they did
not.

  In the illumination of its breath, they caught a brief glimpse of the land rising to meet them. They had crossed over the surface of a lake, and were descending toward what looked, in the dodgy light, like the face of a sheer cliff. The dragon continued to descend, and several voices cried out in alarm. It looked as though the dragon was flying head-first into a solid wall of rock. At the last second however, it alighted in a tiny spot of clear ground between the base of the cliff and the water’s edge.

  It was a nervous business climbing down with so little clear space, and Godric wished they could have landed on top of the cliff. The top was covered in trees and underbrush however, and so, with no little trepidation, they pressed themselves flat against the cliff face as the dragon drank deeply from the lake, then shot into the air in an impressive leap.

  Exhausted, they made camp where they were. In the morning, they saw that only one path lay open to them. The ground to their right was mostly cliffs. Where the land lay lower, it was dense with trees. To their left was the lake, and their only course was to make their way along its edge, which would fortunately take them north, and so, they began walking. Rowena and Salazar could assure them of their general direction of travel, but their knowledge of astronomy wasn’t equal to telling exactly where the dragon had taken them, or how far. Though they didn’t speak of it, none of them liked the lost feeling this caused.

  The ground was rocky and uneven. It was hard going, and Helga often thought longingly of their lost horses, and eventually, even of dragon-flight. The country through which they travelled was beautiful, but lonely. They encountered no one, and a feeling of isolation began to grow stealthily in Helga’s mind. Her legs were tired, her feet sore, and she began to think longingly of her cozy life in Sussex. She tried to tell herself firmly that those days were over, but she grieved for lost friends and lost comforts as she massaged salve into her aching arches.

  She felt most sharply the loss of Egbert. He had never been welcomed in Cleodna’s courtyard, but had ranged contentedly outside her village. Helga often went in search of him, and they romped together as they had done at home. Her hasty departure on the dragon’s back had left no time or opportunity for farewells, and anyway, how could she explain. No: Egbert, like all the rest of her previous life, was lost in time and distance.

  They continued northward along the lakeside for many days. The slow pace and unchanging terrain began to prey on all their nerves. In mid-morning of a misty day, they came to a fast-flowing river that emptied into the lake. They spent several hours making their arduous way up-stream, to where it looked as though there might be a ford. Just after midday they came in sight of a place that looked safe to cross. Dispirited and exhausted, Helga argued in favour of stopping for the day. Willing for a rest, they all agreed.

  It was the wrong time of day for fishing, so Godric wandered off to hunt. Rowena corralled the boys around the Metamorph Magi for study, and Helga sat with Salazar, trying to learn to speak to Madella. Salazar maintained that this was a pointless pass-time. He said the ability was innate not learned, but she persisted anyway. The snake had initially alarmed her, but Salazar’s flawless rapport with it had eased her discomfort.

  Emmeline had offered to wash their clothes. Things had got quite muddy and well-used on the trail, and it was work she was used to. She felt restless, unwilling to sit with the younger boys as they studied. Sometimes she liked being with them, playing, or chasing one another. At other times she was impatient with them, feeling herself too old for childrens’ games. Now, the thought of sitting with them and puzzling over obscure words in complicated spells didn’t appeal to her. Helga offered to help her with the laundry, but Emmeline told her to rest, she would take care of it.

  Using Helga’s magical green satchel, she gathered up all the laundry and headed for the river. The truth was, she had come to value solitude now and then. Her previous life had offered none. Solitude was a luxury of the wealthy and well-born, and she’d rarely thought to desire it, but her life now was wildly different, and many things had become possible.

  She made her way down to the water’s edge, looking around with a practiced eye for a flat, dry place to kneel, and for smaller flat stones to use for scrubbing. She had a brief longing for the company of the other laundry women she used to share this work with. There would be cheerful chatter, and the familiarity of it, but things had become overshadowed by the uncertainty of life without a father.

  A woman alone with a small daughter was vulnerable, and life without a man to protect them had been uncertain and unsafe. Emmeline had taught herself not to think about some of it. Her mother had found limited protection with the knight Gervais, and that had helped. Eventually, his eye had begun to stray toward Emmeline. When Emmeline’s mother died of fever during the crossing to England, Emmeline had done what was necessary to maintain her livelihood. Finding Gervais dead on the field had thrown her life once more into confusion, and then Salazar had found her.

  She had never imagined living with others who could do the things she and her mother could do. Deathly afraid of discovery and persecution, Emmeline’s mother had flatly refused to use magic, or to let Emmeline do so. Emmeline had often thought that magic must offer some way out of their uncertain, vulnerable existence, but, young and inexperienced, she’d been unable to see exactly what that way might be. Now, picking her way down the bank toward the river, she felt once more the sense of freedom that had come to her since she’d joined other witches and wizards. They didn’t know her past, the things she had done to survive, they only knew she was a witch, and that was enough.

  Helga’s satchel held many things, and it was hard to find all the laundry. She had to tug Helga’s magical tent out and lay it aside before she could fish out what she was looking for.

  As she laid out clothes, her ears were full of the sound of rushing water. Her memory supplied a pleasant undertone of the laughter of girls and women who used to share the work, but she didn’t really miss them. That life was a million miles away. She was a witch, living with other magic folk. She was safe, as she’d never been safe since her father had been alive, and maybe not even then. This was a new country, where no one knew her, accept these folk she travelled with, and they didn’t judge her either for her magic, or her past. She began to sing as she worked. She didn’t think much of her singing voice, and rarely sang around people, but the rush of the water gave her privacy.

  The last item to be washed was one of her own skirts. She was swirling it for a last rinse in the flowing water. She thought at first that it had gotten caught on a rock below the surface, and tugged lightly to free it. When it didn’t come free, she pulled harder, but still it didn’t come. Wondering whether a fish had got hold of it, she braced herself and pulled harder. There was a definite answering tug. Smiling and thinking of Godric and his love for fishing, she jerked harder, but to no avail. She sighed. If she pulled too hard, she risked ripping the fabric. She edged a little closer to the water, trying to secure herself to pull harder, or wait for the fish to get bored.

  She peered out into the river, trying to catch a glimpse of the determined fish. At first she saw nothing, then, she saw something she couldn’t believe. It vanished so quickly that she doubted her senses, but it emerged into sight once more. Out where the bottom of the river dropped off, was something that looked partly like a woman, and partly like a snake. It was green, with an old woman’s face, creased, lined, and grinning with malice. It was surrounded by a wild tangle of green hair. The body was long, sinuous and writhing like a huge worm. It had skeletal arms, and its long, bony fingers clutched Emmeline’s skirt, flaunting it mockingly at her.

  Perhaps the sensible thing would have been to simply let go of the skirt and give it up to the river, but Emmeline was so shocked that instead, her hands tightened on the fabric. For some reason she had no time to analyze, it had become vital to keep the skirt, to rest it from this hideous water creature. She gathered as much of the material
as she could into her fists, and knelt up to pull. This made her perch on the river bank less secure, and with a wicked laugh of triumph, the snake/woman gave a mighty heave, and Emmeline was pulled into the rushing water.

  Her mouth was open in a scream of rage and fear, and instantly filled with water. The cold of the water was overwhelming. She couldn’t breathe. Then began a struggle the like of which she had never imagined. Reality became compressed. Nothing existed outside this icy water, and her fight with this malicious adversary. Despite the murk, she was able to see the creature’s face clearly. The face was wrinkled like an old woman’s, but the eyes were ageless. Emmeline had sometimes seen her own reflection in still water, and it seemed to her that the eyes in the aged face were her own eyes. They mocked her struggles, laughing at her.

  Impossibly, the creature’s voice filled her ears. There was a cruel, disparaging laugh. “Would you fight me little girl?” It rasped. “Fight me then, or are you too weak?” Emmeline pulled frantically on the fabric. It was suddenly the most important thing she would ever do, to retrieve the garment from this terrifying enemy. “Cold, aren’t you?” The old voice asked mockingly. “Hard to breathe too. Just let go little girl. Give in, that’s what you always do isn’t it? Be safe and do as I say. Let go, and you can return to the land, crawl away and try to forget me and what I took from you.”

  Emmeline was filled with fury and desperation. She pulled and pulled, but the creature only continued to mock her, pulling back, and filling Emmeline’s mind with her cackling laughter. The bottom was beginning to slip from under her feet, and soon she would be pulled out into the river. Once that happened, she knew she’d be lost, carried away like driftwood in the rushing water, as though she’d never existed, gone, like something with no meaning, something of no value.

  She resisted with her mind and body. She remembered Aidan fighting the little water demon in Cleodna’s pond. Emmeline had no wand, and she couldn’t remember the word Aidan had spoken. Nevertheless, she suddenly knew there was a way to fight. Physical strength had never been a weapon worth wielding against those who’d threatened her safety, but she was a witch, and had power none of those who had threatened her in the past could ever have. She imagined what Aidan had done, and as forcefully as she could, imagined sparks flying from her fingertips. Although she couldn’t remember the words of the spell, she expelled the last remnant of air from her lungs in trying to say, “Leave me alone!” She couldn’t let go, and she wouldn’t let go. The last of her air was no good to her unless it could free her.

  The creature let go of the fabric, and Emmeline felt the tension vanish. She had a last glimpse of the lined old face. She had expected to see anger or disappointment, but instead, the face was still creased with laughter, less mocking now.

  Emmeline struggled to the surface. The water was murky once more, heavy and cold. It tugged at her as she scrabbled onto shore, dragging the sodden skirt behind her. She lay in a crumpled heap on the bank, coughing up water and trying to catch her breath. When she had, she expelled it again in long, gasping, dry sobs.

  When she was able to pull herself together enough to sit up, she began gathering up the clothes to put back into Helga’s green satchel. She must take them back to their camp for hanging. She had taken items out of the satchel haphazardly, and was dismayed to discover that Helga’s magical tent was gone. It had been pulled into the water during her struggle. She cursed herself for her carelessness. Why hadn’t she left it at the camp where it belonged? Soaking, bedraggled, exhausted, traumatized, and dreading having to tell Helga about the loss of her cozy magical tent, Emmeline began to slink back to the camp.

  To her relief, it was Salazar she came upon first. He was roaming around for firewood, and saw her before she reached the others. He was about to laugh at her appearance, but then he saw her face. “What has happened?” He asked kindly.

  Had it been anyone else, she would have been tongue-tied. Godric and Rowena rather intimidated her, and she simply couldn’t face Helga. Salazar however was someone she understood, and who understood her. He had a mixture of practicality and insight that made her able to talk to him. She told him stumblingly what had happened in the water. He was proud of her for having triumphed. He knew that, like Godric and Rowena, using magic didn’t come naturally to her, and it pleased him to see a young person coming into their own right of magical power.

  “I lost Helga’s tent,” she added, choosing to focus first on the most practical distress. “I must have kicked it off the bank in the struggle. What can I do?”

  “That tent was a complex piece of magic. I don’t think there’s anything you can do. She won’t be pleased; that’s a woman who likes her comfort.”

  “I know. Will you tell her for me?”

  Salazar broke into his rich, infectious belly laugh. “Oh no my girl, That’s for you to do! Then I’d duck if I were you, she’s not in a very good humor these days.”

  “What was it?” She asked, shivering, “that thing that I fought?”

  “A water demon,” He replied simply.

  “But why … why did its eyes look like me? Why did it seem to know things … things about me?”

  “Many people dismiss demons as simple things, pure evil, and of no value or meaning. They’re not though. Those who like to look only at the light, often fail to recognize the importance of things that dwell outside the light. They exist, and we can’t always ignore them. Sometimes they have things to teach us. Do you understand?”

  If it had been Helga or Rowena, Emmeline might have lied or avoided answering, but because it was Salazar, she said simply, “No.”

  “Battling with a demon can sometimes be like … like the things we see in dreams. You said the demon looked like you in the eyes, knew things about you. You should think on that. Only you can discover what that really means.”

  Before she could express her continued confusion, Helga came into sight with Godric, who was headed down to fish. Helga exclaimed in dismay when she saw Emmeline, and before asking any questions, used her wand to dry Emmeline with a blast of warmth. The relief was profound, and made Emmeline feel even worse about having lost Helga’s magical tent.

  Helga accompanied her back to their camp, while Godric and Salazar went down to the river. Haltingly, Emmeline described what had happened. They all listened eagerly, Helga quashing Aidan and Cadogan, who kept interrupting with excited questions. Helga was solicitous. She brewed a calming potion, which made Emmeline feel even more guilty.

  In desperation, she burst out with the news that Helga’s tent was by now at the bottom of the lake. Helga was at the fire, her back to Emmeline, ladling potion into a cup. She froze, and said nothing for a whole minute. Then, summoning all she had of the healer’s detachment, she brought the cup to Emmeline and handed it to her saying merely, “Drink.” It took all of her self-control not to fling the contents over Emmeline’s head. She turned quickly, and strode away.

  Helga blundered down toward the river, needing to put some distance between herself and every other person in the world. In the half darkness, she nearly ran into Godric. He didn’t have any fish with him however. He took her arm firmly. “Come with me,” he said commandingly. Not knowing what else to do, she went.

  They walked through the trees, circling part way around the camp. At the edge, Godric had made a heap of needles and leaves, containing them within some large branches laid on the ground. “It won’t be as soft as your feather bed,” he told her kindly, “but softer than the hard ground. You know it was an accident, Emmeline didn’t mean to deprive you of your night’s rest.”

  Helga let out a sigh of mingled exasperation and exhaustion. “I’m just so very tired, and sick of being on foot, and my feet hurt, and I miss Egbert and …” She could hear the plaintive tone of her voice, but couldn’t do anything about it, so she simply stopped talking.

  “I know,” he said gently. “You just want things to be as they were, your friends, your home, Odo. Y
ou’re stronger than you know.” He put his arms consolingly around her, and she leaned gratefully against him.

  “Why are you always doing this?” She asked, sounding like a forlorn child.

  “Because you’re so funny,” he replied simply. It wasn’t an answer, but it was enough.