“He is not my father,” she said. “He stole me. Killed my parents. We must be away!” Her voice grew desperate, frightened. She threw frightful looks all about them, her eyes, hair, never still. Her face twisted into a pitiable spasm of despair. “He will not let me eat! He…he…I am so hungry!” She was almost sobbing. “He…uses me.”

Padric’s chill body went cold. So cold he stopped shivering. He wanted to kill the woodsman before. Out of rage. He wanted to hurt him now. Slow and grievous.

“Please. Can we go to your sister now?” she pleaded. “He will know I am gone.”

Padric shushed her gently. “It will be alright, Maeve. You are safe. Come. We will go.”

She nodded feebly, holding out her hand to help him from the pool.

“Padric, get away from her!” Rosheen’s voice snapped through the darkness.

The strange glow of blue fire settled around them as Rosheen glided down from the treetops. She hovered above them, the Faery-fire dancing in her hand, the other outstretched. “Walk to me,” she told Padric.

“Don’t let her take me,” Maeve whispered.

“Enough of your mummery, gruagach-bitch.” Rosheen said. “I know you. Padric…to me.”

Padric looked from Rosheen to the girl. His childhood friend’s once cheery face was etched in shimmering light, cast in a baleful mask that never left the quavering, frightened form of skinny little Maeve, cowering behind the trees.

“Rosh…,” he started.

“She is no little girl, Padric. She is gruagach. And I name her. Be off, skinchanger! There is no child here for you!”

Maeve hid her face behind her arm and wept loudly, quaking with fear. Padric turned back to Rosheen, confused and angry, ready to force her to end this torment. He took a step toward her and froze. The girl’s sobs had changed; quicker, higher, rasping. She was laughing. Her voice came out from behind her arm in a reedy creak.

“Wretched piskie. This for your mortal pet!”

Maeve’s head snapped up and Padric recoiled at the wrinkled, sallow, slack-skinned face of an old woman. She lunged at him, wide eyes full of yellow hatred. In a blink she was on him, hands grabbing for his neck, knocking him backward. The water rushed in around his head, the sudden, numbing cold stealing the breath from him. He was under and she clung to him, squeezing his throat, white hair floating in a dreadful cloud around her, the surface of the water, so far above, lit by blue fire.

Too damn fast! The gruagach had Padric under the water before Rosheen could react. The water churned as they struggled, Padric’s feet kicking up from beneath in a panic, but his head did not surface. The crone had him tight. Rosheen was barely a match for a skinchanger on land and they were stronger in the water. Rosheen seethed, cursing the cruelty of gruagach and the stupidity of humans.