And by Ray suddenly flipping us over in the water.
I did not understand why, but it had been deliberate. He’d headed straight for some rocks beside a mighty swirl of white water, then pushed off of them, throwing his strength and body weight into the roll. As a result, instead of landing in the calmer waters near the shore, where we had been heading a moment ago, we went straight into the heart—
Of a raging vortex.
Water closed over my head, bubbling madly in every direction, and cutting off what little vision I’d had. Even worse, the high sides of the raft, which had once helped to support me, now served as a cage. My legs were useless and my arms couldn’t seem to push past the thicket-like canopy, which was making our vessel seem less like a raft suddenly and more like a wooden coffin.
I thrashed uselessly, before finally managing to throw off the camouflaged top, but it didn’t help much. I continued to be sucked down a twisting, churning, water-filled passage, while the raging currents tried to decide whether they wanted to beat me to death or drown me. And I still couldn’t see!
The water was murkier than I’d expected and swirling madly all around me, leaving me so disorientated that I had no idea which way was up. I forced myself to release some air, intending to follow the bubbles to the surface, but they didn’t go anywhere. They stayed clustered around my face, as if they were confused, too.
But a moment later I abruptly hit air again, although it was less like surfacing and more like being vomited up by some great sea creature. It felt like my body partly left the water, then smacked back down again, but I couldn’t tell for sure. I was too busy gasping and coughing and retching, my starved lungs struggling to drag in breath after breath. I did not think I was doing too well.
“Dorina!”
I heard Ray’s voice, but couldn’t answer.
“Dorina!”
“I’m okay,” I finally managed to croak, although in truth, I wasn’t sure about that. Spots danced in front of my eyes and the world had gone dark. Or perhaps it had already been that way, I thought, finally blinking enough water out of my eyes that I could see.
Only what I saw didn’t make sense.
And then I realized what I was looking at, and it still didn’t.
“A cave?” I gasped, staring dizzily down at a seemingly never-ending drop. One that I was suspended over by nothing more than the water churning around me. The raft, which had floated a little way off, looked like a twiggy chandelier hung over the vast, echoing space. Even stranger, a waterfall flowed up some nearby rocks, spraying like a fountain into the air.
Even having been in a similar situation recently, I found it . . . mind altering.
“The underside of the river!” Ray corrected, his voice loud to compensate for the sound of the falls. He must have been thrown clear of the raft at some point, and had ended up a few dozen yards away. He spotted me and started to swim over.
“Why . . . did you bring us . . . here?” I gasped. “And how? Wood is . . . buoyant.”
“Yeah, well, I had some help!”
His voice echoed strangely, as did my own. It did not improve my dizziness any. “What kind of . . . help?”
“The legends about Nimue’s powers, the ones that talk about the river. She’s said to have made escape hatches for her people, in case they got surrounded—”
“That was an escape hatch?” I did not bother to keep the incredulity out of my voice.
He grinned from a little way off, having snagged what was left of the raft, which he started towing over. “It’s all relative! Her people travel across water the way we do land. Some say they can even walk on it—”
That claim would have sounded absurd to me a mere day ago, but that was before I had been to Faerie.
“—for them, what we just slid down would probably be a piece of cake.”
“A what?”
He shook his head. “I forgot; you don’t do slang. I just meant—” he broke off, and his eyes blew wide. “Get back on the raft!”
I looked for the threat that his reaction had told me was close, but did not see anything. Until he pointed at something in the water. I saw glimmering emerald depths with a crashing