was freezing cold. Even a seasoned wild-swimmer wouldn’t brave such temperatures.
Derry squinted at Aurelia in the distance. She was drenched and knackered, but she looked triumphant, as though she’d accomplished something.
“I saved it,” she shouted at Derry, her teeth chattering. “I saved it.”
Out in the water, Aurelia saw the herd cross to the other side. She was glad she’d managed to save the little calf that had been struggling in the water, but now that she was alone, the shore seemed tremendously far away. And the water had darkened. It appeared oily, and when she lifted her hand a trace of something remained. She thought of the quality of the dark out here. The water seemed like a liquid dark.
Some twenty feet away Aurelia could make out a figure treading water as she was. She felt a sweep of relief. It was a woman, her head slightly bowed, her hair damp, and her arms held by her sides beneath the water. Using the last of her strength Aurelia curved one arm through the water, then another.
“Help me,” she said weakly to the woman when she was close enough, but when she looked up her breath caught in her throat and her blood froze.
The figure was neither female nor male, neither human nor animal. It was . . . a creature, or perhaps a monster, its hideous gray face dotted with horrifying black holes, and its eyes were bulbous and completely black, save a yellow light that glowed, small as a pinhead, right in the center of each pupil. Instead of hair, the head was draped with matted water weeds, the mouth open in a snarl, black fangs bared as though to bite her.
Aurelia opened her own mouth to scream, but the creature plunged under the water, and Aurelia’s breath lodged in her throat. For one eternal, terrifying second, she scanned the air bubbles that dotted the surface.
Something grasped her ankle. A sharp, tight hold. Aurelia opened her mouth to shriek, but just then it pulled her under, easily as a feather.
Beneath the surface, Aurelia kicked and thrashed like something possessed. Her body was being held under by a tremendous force around her ankle that she couldn’t fight off. Just when the shock of the plunge lifted, the fear that she might never see her girls’ faces again ripped through her like a bolt of lightning. The terrible pressure around her ankle stood between her and holding Gaia in bed when she woke from a nightmare, telling her it was all right, Mumma was here and she had nothing to be afraid of. It stood between her and Coco, her soft, gorgeous girl who lit up every time she saw Aurelia, who was beginning to laugh these days, a sound that lifted Aurelia’s mood a little higher every time. And when the burn of her lungs told her with harrowing certainty that she was never going to see her girls again, never going to witness their ascent to being women, that she would not be putting them to bed tonight or kissing their soft faces, the coldness of the water modulated to a strange but blissful warmth. She figured she’d broken the surface, that she was already home. That she’d been in the grip of a nightmare and, at long last, had woken up.
On the far side of the bank, curiosity drove Derry to slip off her trainers and swim toward the spot where she’d seen Aurelia treading water. Where had she gone? One minute she was there and the next . . . vanished. A fog rolled eerily across the water, and she shivered, sensing something sinister. It was the same feeling she had sometimes when she went for a run. Like inhaling contaminated air. She had felt herself change out here in Norway. She had had terrifying dreams about killing everyone in the house. She had woken up sometimes not in bed but at the kitchen table, a pen in one hand, a red journal in the other. She had never sleepwalked before—only at Granhus. And she was writing things in her sleep. Vile things that emerged from that same darkness that made her glad at the thought of Aurelia dying.
And she didn’t seem capable of making it stop.
When she’d spotted Aurelia in the water, a thought had bubbled up in her mind that she should go and help. She was a strong swimmer, much stronger than Aurelia. But another force had gripped her and held her to the