I saw a curly-haired man lift a little girl up to stand on the lower railing of a large, flat ferryboat. He braced himself to steady her. A crippled woman limped up next to them as they stared across a wide river. The little girl was babbling nonstop about her lovely new boots and whether there were any biscuits left to eat and if they would have to sleep in the coach once they got across the river and could she possibly hold on at the back of the next coach with the guard if she was very very good. Her parents smiled fondly at her and apologetically at the other passengers crowding on, some of whom winced away from the woman’s scarred face and empty sleeve. The ferry juddered as it cast off from the shore and began tacking across the powerful current. The woman pressed a hand protectively on her rounded belly. Wind whipped up the girl’s long black braid. The ferry bucked as if wrenched by an invisible hand, and some passengers cried out in fear. But with each tilt and dip of the boat, the girl shrieked with excited glee as she leaned trustingly into her father’s arms. She galloped her little carved horse through empty air, and with a bright smile at her mother, she said—

“Cat! Step back!”

Too late. The vast jaws of the predator opened as the ferry tipped, took on water, and sank as quickly as a stone, so fast that no one had a chance to scream. The railing scraped the girl’s hand as she clung to it, then lost hold. A rumble was all the voice the river had as it tore her father away from her. Her mother’s hand gripped hers with such desperate strength, but as her blood welled up from the scrape and dissolved into the water, she faded out of her mother’s grasp.

Delicately the beast closed its mouth over my body. Then I was drowning in a sea of smoke.

30

In the depths of the ice, wreathed in ice, sleeps the Wild Hunt. When it is woken, all tremble in fear.

In the depths of the black abyss, there drift in a watery stupor the Taninim, called also leviathans, and when they wake, their lashing tails smash ships into splinters and drive the sundered hulks under the waves.

In the depths of earth, wreathed in fire, lies coiled in slumber the Mother of All Dragons. Her smoky breath fills the ocean of dreams. She stirs, waking, and the world changes.

So we are told.

But of all the great powers in this world, one thing was certain.

No one could screech as loudly as Bee when she was truly outraged.

“LET. HER. GO!”

Thumps hammered its body, small fists pounding the leviathan’s massive flanks.

“How dare you? After I almost died unearthing a nest, is this how you repay me?”

Then she kicked him.