Ah, the lake. At this hour its surface steamed black-silver. Green glowed on the hils. Green painted the southern coves like a skin of algae. She noticed smoke above Zimmerstorm, though she was too young to wonder if it signified the remains of a town burned in reprisal. She couldn’t see the mansard roofs of Mockbeggar Hal, and she didn’t think to look for them.

The dragons were gone. The ice was gone. The ruins of one ship drifted like a broken island. Two of the ships were yoked and listing. The fourth ship was gone, maybe sunk entirely, or paddled to port somewhere out of sight.

She was sorry for the ships but sorrier for the dragons. She bet no one had asked them if they was interested in swimming boats around. She had helped to ice them in—somehow she knew that. She didn’t know the word ashamed, or even the notion, but she felt punky and wished it hadn’t happened. Lady Glinda was in trouble and there weren’t no other way; but stil.

The bits of timber on water looked like broken letters.

This reminded her of the word man. Cherrystone. Once he had found a book with big letters—whether it was for children or for blindish adults she didn’t know—and he had sat it on his knee facing her. She hunched on the floor. He’d taken out his littlish silvery dagger and had used it as a pointer. What’s that? The E. What’s that? The I? No, the other one. The L. Right? Right. And this? The, um, the one like an E.

The F! E-L-F? Can you spel it so far?

She could, but for some reason she’d shaken her head. She hadn’t wanted this to go too fast.

Now she saw a big stick and went to pick it up so she could scrape letters into the pine needles. How to spel sorry? The stick wiggled off and she chased it. She knew it had become a snake, but maybe it would hold stil and be a stick for her. Maybe it could spel better than she could. “Wait.”

It hustled away, but slower, she thought; it was considering her plea. Then it paused and turned its needle head. It was alover green except where it wanted to be brown. Its eye—she could only see one—

was a tight shiny opaque black lentil.

She said, “Did you wriggle up from the water this morning? Do you know what happened down there? Is those dragons friends of yours? Is any of them okay?” The snake lowered its head, perhaps in mourning.

“One of ’em flied away. Did you see that part?”

The snake didn’t move, but Rain thought it maybe looked a little interested.

“Oh, it did. I en’t got any notion where it flied itself off to. Out beyond the shores over that way.”