114
Lucy
The water was cold around me as I continued to sink. Fear gripped me. I had never learned to swim. I thrashed desperately, trying to go up toward the surface, but a current caught me up and spun me around. The light flashed once, twice, then went dark as if someone had simply turned it off. I felt a presence nearby, but I couldn’t see anything. I could barely feel the weight of the water as I flailed, trying to escape as the current carried me. The darkness lightened, revealing a hard wooden pole. I clung to it, holding on despite the pull of the current on me.
My hands slipped and burned as I was ripped away and whirled around underwater. My lungs burned as I tried to fight the current. I couldn’t breathe. If I breathed in, I was going to drown. I had to get to the surface. I tried to grab onto something nearby, but my fingers slipped off the surfaces as I was carried further away from the pier and further down into the water.
Suddenly, I went still in the water, and I felt something wrap around my leg. I twisted, trying to see it, but there was nothing but dark water. It gripped tight, digging into my leg. I barely held back the cry of pain as I bent down trying to get it off, but there was nothing to grab. My leg glowed in long thick stripes.
Light flashed above me. I felt something rush past me.
For a moment, I thought I saw a figure, almost invisible in the water, but then it was gone and I was being yanked around again. My heart started to pound in my chest. The salt burned my eyes. My whole body felt on fire as the need to breathe became too much to bear. My heart thudded in my chest as I realized I was going to drown, but I couldn’t keep holding my breath.
Someone help me.
I don’t want to die.
I opened my mouth,, and instead of water, fresh air rushed into my lungs. I sucked in another desperate breath, trying to push through the water even as the force continued to drag me down. Another bolt of light cut through the water past me. A flash of light returned and before it made it far a bolt of darkness cut through the water. The figure I thought I saw flash in the water. It was a person. They jerked as the illusion faded and thrashed.
Another figure started to approach me, slowly. Their face was familiar. My eyes widened as I realized it was the woman who had painted my face. My heart was pounding in my ears as she swam toward the still struggling figure. Half of her body had changed into a long, gliding tail like mermaid from fairytales. She smiled at me and pointed up as she circled the person who was still thrashing in the water.
I looked up as David swam toward me. His eyes glowed with a brilliant purple light. In the hand with the ring was a glowing staff that started to vanish or dissolve in the water as he drew closer to me. His coven ring glinted on his hand with the same light as he got closer. His eyes locked onto mine as he drew closer.
I looked up at him, breathing deeply in the bubble around my head. The force around my leg vanished. He said nothing for a long time. I noticed his neck had changed, dark stripes were on either side of his neck and there was a soft glowing pattern across his chest.
Was this really the David I knew? When he reached me, he sent a soft wave of light over me. It felt warm and comforting. Then, he frowned and wrapped his arm around my waist. I wrapped my arms around him as he kicked toward the surface. He paused to look back to where the woman had been, but she was gone. My leg started to ache. This close, I could feel the warmth of his body fighting back the chill of the water, and the softly glowing patterns were fading.
The black lines on his neck vanished. Then, I heard David gasp for breath and the worried murmuring of people from the pier as we broke the surface. I shuddered. My heart was still hammering as he stroked towards the pier. Someone came running toward us with towels and a medical kit. David lifted me out of the water before climbing out after me.
“Shh,” he hushed, wrapping his arms around me. “It’s okay. Look at me, Lucy.”
I couldn’t focus. My eyes kept darting around. I sucked in air, but it didn’t feel like enough. David’s face went in and out of focus like I was going to pass out. I felt the warmth of his hands on my face.
“Look at me and follow my breathing,” he whispered. “In, Lucy. Breath in.”
I sucked it in, trying to hold it, but I could.
“Out. Slower. Good, you’re doing great.”
I couldn’t say how long it was before my lungs weren’t burning and David’s face was completely in focus. I stared at him, dazed in the silence around us, finding it out.
“Music?”
He smiled and pulled me into his arms. “They’ll turn it back on as soon as everyone’s sure you’re okay. The medic is going to take a look at your leg, okay?”
I turned my head and looked. I was bleeding. I didn’t remember getting injured, but the marks looked like claw marks, like a wolf’s.
David kept my head pressed to his chest as the medic cleaned my leg and applied antis-septic. He murmured in my ear and stroked my hair as I trembled. The anti-septic stung, but the slow sway he’d started seemed to be keeping me calm, and slowly, everything went away.
When I opened my eyes again, I was standing in that clearing again. The Moon Goddess was seated in the same place, but the sky was made of fuzzy moving pictures.
Her expression was vicious this time. “I told you; you’d regret it.”
I swallowed thickly as she stood. “And if you think for a moment that it won’t get much worse, you’re wrong.”
Lucy!
I gasped, turning as the wind started to pick up around us. I heard a wolf howling in the distance. The woman growled and started to retreat.
“Heed me, Lucy. You cannot escape the fate I have laid out for you. No matter what.”
“An-And just like I told you, I don’t want it. Choose someone else.”
She smirked. “There is no one else. Certain parties made certain of that.”
She scoffed and stepped down as two white wolves came from within the forest. “But all of that in good time. For now, you should be working your way back to your proper place.”
“I’m not going back there,” I said. “You can’t make me.”
Her eyes narrowed. “We’ll see about that.”
My jaw trembled as I heard something. Rushing footsteps rushed towards me. The two white wolves were on edge, growling. I turned around and gasped at the giant black wolf prowling out of the brush. It didn’t growl as it walked past me and put itself between me and the two white wolves.
Be safe, Lucy. My heart raced at the sound of my mother’s voice on the wind. Live well.
The woman sneered and looked around. “You wretched thing! Always interfering!”
I frowned and looked at her as she glared. “I will have my way. You can’t stop me!”
Who was she talking about? She turned to look at me. Her eyes widened slightly in shock before narrowing.
“You will do as I will, Lucy,” she said. “You have no choice.”
She vanished along with the two white wolves. The moon started to set in the sky, and the scent of the forest started to turn salty like the sea. The large wolf nodded toward a new path out of the clearing and walked down the path ahead of me. I followed him. The sound of the ocean grew louder. I felt the crisp wind in my hair as the wolf came to a stop at the edge of the water and sat down, staring out into the distance.
I walked to sit beside him and looked at the wolf.
“Who are you?”
The wolf tilted his head. His eyes started to glow with a soft purple light. I couldn’t say why, but the gaze felt kind and warm.
Loving even.
Then, the sunset began to fade as the night seemed to come. He stood and turned back toward the oncoming darkness. The moon’s glow glinted in the sky like a flashing jewel, like the jeweled necklace around the woman’s neck. I heard someone cry out.
“You’ll never succeed!” It was a man’s voice. “Mark me witch!”
Then, everything went spiraling away into the darkness.
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