Silver Secrets

Chapter 12: Mel

Early in the morning, even before Rowan is awake, I take myself off to the river that feeds the mill. It's wide, but Rowan thought it would be slow-moving and shallow enough to wash in, and that's something I desperately need.

When I'm hidden enough by the trees, I start to peel off my clothes and leave them folded up next to my towel, leaving my necklace on. Maybe I'll try to wash my clothes later, too.

I wrinkle my nose at the stench that hits me when I raise my arms to take off my undershirt. The water is so cold it almost stings, but I can't get in fast enough. Over the past week I've only been able to splash some water about behind the tent, so something resembling a bath is a relief, even if it does turn my lips blue. Something cold brushes my foot, and I cringe away. At least a bath wouldn't have pondweed or fish or whatever that was.

I pull my hair out of its braid and sink down so the water laps at my shoulders, letting my hair fan out behind me. I rub my wet hands over my scalp, wishing I had some soap or something.

The cold thing slides across my leg again. Before I can move away, there's another one on my other ankle, and I barely have time to scream before I'm dragged under the water.

I try to get back to the surface, but the cold things—hands—are all over me, searching, until they find my shoulders and pin them to the silty bed of the river. Their grip is as tight as a vice, and my frantic scrambling at them makes no difference, as if they are made of stone. A bubble escapes my mouth and I watch with dazed horror as the last of my air rushes towards the light.

It never makes it. Something above me blocks it. It comes into focus even as my eyes sting from water or no air I don't know. My head fuzzes.

Can't see a lot. Skin white like rotten milk. Veins black. Needle teeth, rows and rows and rows. Eyes empty like a shark.

Thing presses me down. Sand and silt against my back, rocks cutting.

My vision is black and spotty. I've been here before, on my back, knife above me, but now there's teeth instead. Coming towards me. No air.

I close my eyes, and it takes the last of my strength to find the thing's faint, fishy thought-buzz, and latch onto it.

My head twinges.

The hands let go.

I gasp and gasp and gasp, chest-deep in the water, and my brain tingles as I can finally breathe again. There's something else, half-in half-out, a big furry brown thing with golden eyes and gleaming teeth. That's not the thing in the water. On the bank opposite the beast is a girl, pale and thin and naked with a mass of green—no, black—hair. I think she might be dead, but then she moans and rolls onto her side, glaring over her bloodied shoulder at the beast. Her lips lift in a silent snarl. Her teeth are normal.

The beast growls back at her, and that is when I realise that the hulking thing is Rowan, and that he just threw whatever that thing was off me like she's a rag doll. I helped, though. Somehow, I made it let me go.

While the girl is still occupied with Rowan, I wade over to the bank and pull myself out of the water, wincing at the stabbing pain in my shoulders. A thin trickle of blood snakes over my skin from where her claw pierced me, but I ignore it. I heal quickly; I always have done. There's nothing I can do to help Rowan, but I never take my eyes off the girl while I hastily dry and dress.

Eventually she shifts into a crouch. A growl rips from Rowan's throat and I feel it rumble deep in my chest, but the girl only slips into the water, as smooth as a snake.

Something changes in the woods, something that I hadn't noticed was even wrong. The air is suddenly a little drier, and when I cautiously dip my hand in the water, it's not even that cold.

"Rowan?" I call over to the wolf-beast, still standing knee-deep in the water. I thought he would just look like a normal wolf, but I was wrong. He stands on two legs, not four, and when he turns to look at me I can see that his eyes are as human as they've ever been. The wolf takes a step towards me, but I have no fear that he'll attack, which might be stupid considering what I just went through. But Rowan wouldn't hurt me as a human, so why would he as a wolf?

As I sit there and watch, the wolf before me begins to change. For a moment it seems like Rowan is barely even real. Parts of him flicker between man and beast as he falls in on himself. Thin wisps of steam rise from him. The sound that comes from him is half moan, half growl. Eventually only Rowan is left. He's shaking and sweating and steaming slightly, clothes crumpled and dishevelled and hair falling loose past his shoulders, but all right. He stands and braces himself against a tree, but holds his hand up to stop me when I run over to him.

"Don't come too close," he says as he hastily unbuttons his jerkin with trembling fingers, his breathing laboured. "Too...too hot. Could you get me a drink, please?"

I run and grab my canteen from my pack. By the time I return he seems more normal, but he gulps the water down gratefully all the same.

"Thanks," he says, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. "We need to get out of here. Now."

"What was that thing?" I eye the surface of the river suspiciously, looking for any strange ripples or bubbles. "Will she come back?"

"I don't know, but now she knows where we are. We have to leave." He grimaces. "Elementals. Security nightmare, especially the air ones."

Something Perdiscio said once, a long time ago, drifts into my mind. "They travel within their element." A chill ripples across my skin. He was desperate to study an elemental, but they were always too secretive. "So she can appear wherever there's water?"

Rowan shakes his head. "Thankfully, no. She can only move within the same body of water, if she's powerful enough."

I see the meaning behind Rowan's words, even though he doesn't say it outright. The elemental girl disappeared—she went back somewhere, to a town or a camp or something.

Somewhere on the banks of this river, there is someone who wants us dead.