Go through to your dwelling, sister spirit. A voice that was mine but also not mine spoke beneath the water. Do not linger in the river. There is peace on the other side. I took the spirit’s clawed hand and pressed it against my chest, against the wounds I’d received a hundred years ago, and I watched in amazement as those clawed hands transformed back into the hands of a human woman’s. You will be with him on the other side of the river, sister spirit. I know this, for I have crossed this river many times over. The voice that was me but was not me continued. Do not let your sorrow drown you anymore. Do not let the cold water freeze your heart from feeling. Cross the river, sister spirit, and emerge from the other side into the glory of your dwelling.

The wraith breathed out a sigh in the water as she transformed back into a woman and then shrank until she was a silvery wisp floating high and away from the torrents of the icy water.

I had a moment of pure peace fill me when I closed my eyes and smiled before realizing I was still in the frigid rapids and needed to cross to the other side myself. I came up to the top again and took a gulp of air, grabbing at the rope. Soren rushed forward from where he was pacing and grabbed the hook of my tunic and pulled me until I was on the muddy bank of the river, then the brown, dry grass of the other side.

Coughing and spluttering, he thumped on my back hard with one fist as water exited my lungs and was expelled onto the grass below me. I continued to gulp at the air like a beached fish in between choked vomits of water, until I could take a deep breath again, and with trembling muscles, I collapsed into his arms.

We lay there, a desperately breathing mess, as the world beneath us slowly began to warm us again. Steam rose from the ground where our bodies lay, and I had no energy to think anything of it other than huh, neat. Soren and I buried ourselves in each other until our heaving chests slowed, and we began to come back to the world. Weakly raising my head, I saw Rose and Seppo in a similar embrace while Diaval sat off to the side, rolling her eyes at all of us. But for someone who scoffed at personal relationships, she had sounded particularly worried when I jumped in after Soren.

“That thing tried to kill me,” Soren breathed. “It almost did. I couldn’t—the water—the ice—it was like nothing I’d ever imagined. What did you do to it, Janneke?”