Others as much as it loves you, something that remembers a time when you all were as one. And so the song the water offered up to your mother was one of the ancient songs, the songs of safety, the songs Chantresses used for crossing the wall between the worlds.”
So that was how my mother had ended up here.
“The song cracked the wall just enough to let her through,” Melisande went on. “But it wouldn’t allow anyone but a Chantress in, and it wouldn’t allow anyone out. The Mothers were still trapped. They took your mother prisoner, of course, and they didn’t let her go. Yet as long as she had her stone, they couldn’t force her to sing. And so matters stood until you came along—you and your reckless taste for Wild Magic. Little by little, your songs widened the crack your mother had made. The Mothers still couldn’t get out, but finally it became wide enough that I could join them on the other side.”
My stupidity, indeed. It was a mistake I hadn’t even known I was making.
Melisande’s voice sank low, becoming again for a moment distressingly like Nat’s. “I told you already: I have my own magic, a magic that was old before Chantresses ever existed. Like all my kind, I have gone down to the water every month and offered myself to the Mothers. For centuries your wall has stood in the way, but last month I slipped through.” The voice was swollen with pride. “It was Pressina herself who greeted me. She needed my help. We made a pact, and she started to teach me magic—and once I was master of illusion, I took your mother’s stone.”
She was moving closer. Fearful of making even the smallest stir, I held my breath.
“And how do you think I did it, Chantress?” She laughed. “Why, by turning myself into you. The Mothers couldn’t do it; there’s always something a little off when they try to look human, even in these realms. But I could make myself look and sound exactly like you.”
Just as she’d made herself look and sound exactly like Nat.
“I went to your mother and told her I’d sung myself here by mistake,” Melisande said. “I sobbed because I had no way to protect myself from Pressina, and she gave me her stone then and there. She hung it around my neck with her own fair hands. Anything to protect her daughter! And then we had her, Pressina and I.”
I went cold. So that was how they had broken my mother. It was her love for me that had betrayed her. A love she’d kept alive through so many long years.
Was that love still locked away somewhere inside her? Somewhere in pockets where Pressina couldn’t reach? Or was that love something that Pressina and Melisande had taken from her too?
“Once the stone was gone, Pressina took full possession of your mother,” Melisande said triumphantly. “She was Pressina’s voice from that moment on—the Chantress voice that we needed to undo the old Chantresses’ work. But we didn’t stop there. Once the wall between the worlds was restored to its old state, Pressina had your mother sing new holes in it, so that the Mothers could pass at will. Under the guise of mermaids and sea monsters, they started to attack your world. And then Pressina taught your mother the songs that make the waters rise, and the song that calls up a great wave and sends it crashing into the land.
“Those songs come at a price, of course. Do you know what it is, Chantress?” Melisande’s voice rose, taunting me. “Those who sing them waste away. Even now your mother is withering. She won’t last long enough to flood the whole world and make our victory complete. That’s why we went after you. The Mothers must stay in the water—their power fades quickly on land—so Pressina sent me to lure you down here. You gave us more trouble than we expected, but now we’ve got you.”
Oh, no, you don’t, I thought.
I shifted ever so slightly, trying to see if she’d left the entrance unguarded. Under my feet, pebbles at the base of the pillar crackled.
A tiny sound, but Melisande heard it.
“Ah, there you are.” Her steps quickened, coming my way.
I had no magic to fight her. All I had were my wits—but that would have to do. Knowing it didn’t matter how much sound I made now, I scraped up a handful of pebbles and sand. I