Chapter 2

2

T hat had been two whole days ago and now here I was, floating in the small bay by the fallen willow tree where Erik liked to sit and drink his coffee in the mornings.

I was waiting and waiting.

It already felt as if ten hundred winters had dragged by.

I would know. I’d lived through at least as many.

In all my thousands of years, though, I’d never experienced a winter as I had experienced the one with Erik that lay behind me.

It was the very first time I’d been awake for the season, rather than sleeping it away down at the bottom of my lake.

Instead, I’d tended to my waters during the day, and every night I had returned to Erik’s cabin through crackling frost and deep, frozen snow. I’d slept in his arms. I’d woken in them, too, wrapped up tight with my head resting on a warm and solid chest, hearing his strong heartbeat and surrounded by his lovely scent.

The ice and snow had since receded from my lake, and from the fields and meadows all around Laskeld. It still lingered in the misty distance as a light dusting of white over the slopes of the smooth and greening hills. Beyond, the soaring mountains were thick with it, standing stark against the blue sky of day and glowing pale at night. The mountain peaks would keep their white caps even during summer, but down here in the valley, winter had truly passed.

Daffodils had already bloomed and faded in a slow, bright tide of yellow. Bluebells now hazed the meadow and the fringes of the forest, and I watched for the arrival of the sand martins who built their nests in the high banks of my lake to the east. I looked forward to walking with my Erik through the quiet meadows on cool misty mornings, or on long sunlit evenings as the swallows skimmed the long grass around our ankles, clacking their little beaks and snapping up insects to feed their young.

Most of all, I looked forward to teaching Erik how to swim.

He’d made excuses whenever I suggested it last summer, and by the time he agreed to join me in my lake, it was far too cold.

He’d waded into the water as far as his hips, jaw clenched tight and teeth chattering, and he’d been so utterly miserable and blue about it all that I’d released him from his promise and chased him straight back up onto the shore.

I suspected that he’d put me off for so long because he was afraid.

Imagine being afraid of water!

As if I would permit it to harm him in any way!

I did not laugh at him for his nonsense, though. I didn’t want him to be afraid. I resolved to be patient with him, to coax him in as soon as it was warm enough. I’d teach him to love my lake almost as much as he loved me.

Almost as much.

But that lay a few weeks into the future.

Today, even though the willows that clustered along the bank of the bay were fully in leaf and the air was mild, the water held the chill of winter close.

I floated on the calm surface, watching the morning sun sparkle through the leaves and cast dapples of light and shadow over my body. A gentle breeze hissed through the long grass beneath the willows and rushed small puffs of clouds through the sky.

Erik would be home soon. I felt it.

I felt him .

I’d never expected to feel a connection to a human. To the land, yes. To my lake, of course.

But never to a human.

It was, I’d decided, because my Erik was truly extraordinary, for all he complained he was plain and old and worn out.

I didn’t understand him when he said such things. I couldn’t see how he was plain. I adored his earth-brown eyes and his silver-threaded dark hair, his face with its rough stubble and its large nose, and the strong lines etched around his eyes and his lovely mouth.

I loved the way he smiled whenever he saw me.

Oh, I missed him. So fiercely.

Sometimes, I wondered what I’d do if he never came back.

If he decided that his city or his pet Lars was more dear to him than I was.

If he went back to visit, and simply stayed there.

Perhaps he’d send his friend Henrik Berglund who lived in Laskeld to come out to my lake and find me. I am sorry, naiad , Henrik Berglund would say. Erik has found better things to do with his mortal life. You didn’t think you could hold his interest once he’d grown used to fucking you, did you?

In my heart, I knew that Erik wouldn’t do such a thing, not ever.

Not ever.

It didn’t matter. Fear was never rational, and my mind showed me terrible images of Erik living and laughing in Hallevalt, wearing fine clothes, riding about in carriages, and allowing hungry young men to seduce him and wind him in their arms, and keep him.

I tried not to think of it.

Every time I did, my breath grew short and a horrible, jealous anger rose in me. It was alien and unsettling. I’d known many emotions in all my long years, but anger like this was new.

It was territorial and furious.

Seething.

If Erik stayed in his city, I decided, I’d just have to go to him and drag him home.

Even though my lake wouldn’t want to let me leave, and would hurt me badly if I tried again.

I’d done it once before. Just once.

A mere handful of centuries after I’d fought the nix and made the lake mine, I’d been dying of loneliness. I’d missed my siblings. I’d missed their faces, their happy shouts, and the warm jostle of their bodies as we all ran and tussled and swam together. I’d missed my mother, who taught us all she knew before she’d sent us out to find our own territories. I’d missed her island, with its endless warm sands, deep glittering rock pools, and shady grey-green olive groves.

The absence of a life I’d once loved and had never wanted to leave was like an open wound. However much it had hurt, it was nothing compared to the agony that had felled me as I’d tried to pass the boundaries of my claim.

Fire scorched along every nerve.

Teeth bit deep into every bone.

My ears were filled with shrieking howls—my own cries, though I didn’t realise it at the time.

The waters I thrashed in were hot and red—it was my blood, though I hadn’t realised that, either.

I’d never tried again.

But for Erik, I would.

And I knew exactly how I’d do it.

It was simple: if I couldn’t leave my territory, I’d expand it. I’d claim every last waterway, from here to the city.

I would claim them one after the other—every river, brook, and stream. Every lake, pond, and puddle. Whether it was a foaming, rushing rapid or the finest filament of water connecting one body to the next, I’d claim them all, over and over and over, as I made my way through the land until I found the Great River that wound through Hallevalt.

Erik had mentioned this river many times.

He’d told me that when it froze in the depths of winter, the city folk held a Frost Fair on the solid ice. They swept the snow clear and set up painted wooden booths selling trinkets, roast chestnuts, hot cakes, and meat pies. They filled metal baskets with fire to huddle around, and heated pokers to plunge into wooden mugs of spiced wine. They played music, and strapped blades to their boots and skated around, dancing with each other or holding races with prizes.

It all sounded quite mad.

The rest of the year, the river was a clogged, sickly thing, polluted with litter and fouled with human effluent, sluggish and crammed from bank to bank with boats transporting goods and people.

Some of those boats had once belonged to Erik, who’d been a rich merchant in his former life.

He told me that the river ran through Hallevalt and out to the open sea, and the place where it did was crowded with docks and warehouses, like the ones I’d seen in the larger towns that clustered on the southern shores of my lake.

Would I have to fight many guardians, I pondered, as I claimed my way to this great and monstrous river?

I thought perhaps not.

The time of creatures such as myself, those of us closer to gods than to men, was ending. In another century or five, we’d all be gone from this world.

I hadn’t seen another water spirit since that far-off day that I’d fought the nix. I’d chased a curious little dryad away from Erik’s cabin a few times recently, and thousands of years ago I’d heard rumours of an Undying One haunting the barrows at the foot of the distant mountains, a creature who walked the world as a man and had a reputation for war and for hunger. Other than them—one of whom I’d never even seen—and the shifter pack who’d passed by and left traces when I was sleeping one winter, I’d lived alone among humans.

No. I wouldn’t have to fight. Even if we weren’t all passing through the veil, who of my kind would willingly go near a city filled with humans?

For my Erik, I would. I’d claim every single drop of water that connected the distance between us.

I knew that the house he’d once lived in and had given to his young cousin, Geir, lay not far from the river. He’d be there, and easy to find—I knew the pulse in his veins as intimately as I knew the smallest current in my lake.

I'd find him, and I’d take him in passionate triumph upon the marble floors of the hall, and then, when he was dazed and mindless with pleasure, I’d carry him down to the river and bring him back home with me where he belonged.

Yes.

I could do it.

I would do it.

That vast a territory would be a terrible burden of care and weigh heavily on my shoulders, but I was old .

I was powerful.

I could bear that burden.

For Erik, I would bear it willingly.

I’d become the Naiad of Hallevalt as well as the Naiad of Laskeld, and he’d never again be so far away from me.

I’d brave anything for our love. I’d claim the world to reach him. I would?—

“Sayan.”

At the sound of Erik’s voice, I jerked in shock, folding at the waist and inadvertently plunging below the surface.

I braced my feet on the lakebed and surged up to the surface, sun-bright water sheeting over my head and shoulders.

Erik sat on the fallen willow, watching me with amusement clear on his face.