“I know,” Lura said as the procession disappeared into the woods. “She’s shallow and flighty but she’s my mother. I still remember her singing to me when I was a baby.”

“I think she’s doing the best that she can,” I said. As we took our own path into the woods, I hoped the Stewarts could handle her.

Lura and I followed the Undine creek into the woods. Away from the light of the house the woods were dark save for the eerily phosphorescent mist rising from the sodden ground. The rain and the rushing water made it difficult to hear anything. Then the rain slackened to a drizzle. We walked in slushy silence a while longer, the sound of our boots sucking mud the only noise in the forest.

“It’s close to dawn but the birds are still quiet,” Lura commented. “They know something’s wrong.”

A little while later she picked some berries from a bush, popped one in her mouth and handed me one. “Bilberry. Good for night vision.”

I put it in my mouth with some trepidation, but it was delicious – and familiar. I recalled the vision I’d shared with Raspberry of the taste of berries and wondered if Lura had fed them to her sister undines. A bit further on she plucked a red flower from the ground, handed me the flower, and popped the leaves in her mouth. “Red clover leaves are good for my rheumatism, which’ll be acting up after all this rain.” She continued plucking plants from the trees and ground, telling me what they were and what they were good for.

“Where did you learn so much about plants?” I asked.

“My father spent a lot of time in these woods … his mother was a witch. Here, you’d better take this.” She handed me a white-crowned flower and stuck one behind her ear. “Yarrow,” she explained, “provides magical protection.”

Now that it was lighter out I could see into the woods on either side of us. Strange creatures lurked within the white mist rising from the wet ground. Clove footed satyrs, slim boys with antlers branching from their heads, small furry creatures with wide flat tails and long sharp teeth …

“Are those …?”

“Zombie beavers,” Lura said. “They’re coming up with the flood water. We’d better hurry. They’d like nothing better than to eat these eggs – and us.”