I don’t know how far or long we ran. The nearly full moon hung low in the western sky when we came to a stop at last beside a rushing stream that reflected the first blush of dawn in its rippled water. Duncan dipped his head to the water first and then, when he lifted his head, water dripping in moonlit pearls from his velvety antlers, I lowered my head and drank. The water was icy and tasted like winter. Of bitter bark and deep snows and hunger. It seemed to fill my veins with an icy sadness, but I would have drunk longer if Duncan hadn’t huffed and stamped the ground. I looked up, but whatever danger he sensed was invisible to me. I was losing a bit of my deerness as I grew tired, but I was still deer enough that when Duncan leapt across the stream I leapt after him.

Only something in the water reached up to stop me, something cold and wet that snagged my hoof and pulled me down to my knees into the fast moving water. I cried out in a voice that was neither fully deer nor fully human. A face rose out of the water level with my own. I was looking into wide moss-green eyes as cold and dispassionate as river stones … and then long cold arms wrapped around my neck and pulled me under the water.

Lorelei. She’d followed me through the door and lain in wait to drown me. I kicked out against her but my hooves only scrabbled along the creek bottom. Lorelei rode my back forcing my head under the water. The limbs that had felt so graceful on land were now clumsy. And I was tired. I had run for miles. Still I bucked and struggled. As I did, I felt myself changing. I was turning back into my human form.

If only I could change into a fish, I thought. As quick as the thought flitted through my brain I felt myself contracting. My legs and arms hewed to my sides, my skin flaked into scales. I took a breath and drew in oxygen rich water. I was slipping out of Lorelei’s grasp …