“We should help her. Get her out of there.” Quentin tried to get closer, but he slipped on a frozen rock and went in up to his knee. He scrambled back onto the bank, his foot burning with cold. The woman didn’t move. “We need rope. Get the rope, there’s rope in one of the packs.”

The water didn’t even look deep enough to submerge her that far, and Quentin actually wondered, horribly, if they were looking at a body that had been severed at the waist and then dumped in the water. Rope, what was he thinking? He was a damn magician. He dropped the pack he was rifling through and began a simple kinetic spell to lift her out.

He felt the premonitory warmth of a developing spell in his fingertips, felt the weight and tug of the body in his mind. It felt good to do magic again, to know that he could still focus despite everything. As soon as he started he realized that the Circumstances were scrambled here—different stars, different seas, different everything. Thank God it was a simple spell. The grammar was a shambles—Alice corrected him in a clipped voice as he worked. Gradually the woman rose up dripping out of the water. She was whole, thank God, and naked—her body was slim, her breasts slight and girlish. Her nails and nipples were pale purple. She looked frozen, but she shuddered as the magic took hold. Her eyes focused and came awake. She frowned and raised one hand, somehow halting the spell before he was finished, with her toes still trailing in the freezing water.

“I am a naiad. I cannot leave the stream.” By her voice she could have been in junior high. Her eyes met Quentin’s.

“Your magic is clumsy,” she added.

It was electrifying. Quentin saw now that she wasn’t human, her fingers and toes were webbed. To his left he heard a shuffling noise. It was Penny. He was getting down on his knees on the snowy bank.

“We humbly apologize,” he said, head bowed. “We most humbly seek your pardon.”

“Jesus Christ!” Josh stage-whispered. “Dork!”

The hovering nymph shifted her attention. Stream water rilled down her bare skin. She tilted her head girlishly.

“You admire my beauty, human?” she asked Penny. “I am cold. Would you warm me with your burning skin?”

“Please,” Penny went on, blushing furiously. “If you have a quest to bestow upon us, we would gladly undertake it. We would gladly—”

Mercifully Janet cut him off.

“We’re visitors from Earth,” she said firmly. “Is there a city around here that you could direct us to? Maybe Castle Whitespire?”

“—we would gladly undertake to do your bidding,” Penny finished.

“Do you serve the rams?” Alice asked.

“I serve no false gods, human girl. Or goddesses. I serve the river, and the river serves me.”

“Are there other humans here?” Anaïs said. “Like us?”