She beckons again.
Closer.
I suck in a breath, shivering, and step again—because what choice do I have? I close my eyes as I move, trying not to think about it, as if shutting out the sensory information of what is visible around me will somehow trick my body into enduringa deeper and deeper plunge into a nearly-freezing lake in the middle of a winter night.
Step, step, step. Closer, closer, closer still.
I open my eyes again. Before me, the Lady shimmers over her gleaming plinth of light, closer still, perhaps twenty feet distant.
And behind me?—
Behind me, far behind me, is the shore. The five of them.
But—
I look down, down at my feet, at the surface of the lake still just lapping up to my ankles. Feel it cool and wet and liquid and yetfirmunderneath my weight.
I am walking on water.
Alarmed,panicked,I look up at the Lady again. But she only beckons me again.
Come here.
And I do. As if it is no trouble at all. I obey like a child: slow, small, tentative-but-even steps across a lake that is fully water, that is rippling as the wind skates across it and splashing from the impact of my feet and still holding me up, somehow, somehow, as I walk. I screw my eyes shut and then force them open again.
What do you want?
Ifeelher words more than hear them, a voice that’s inquisitive as much as imperious. And I’m reminded that this is—this was—on some level, at some point, a girl like me.
A student. A scholar.
When I answer, I speak out loud.
“I want…I want to know…” I falter.Stupid, I think.I didn’t even think to formulate a good question.A gust of wind billows the front of my dress, and I shiver.
What do youwant?
“I want to fix this place.” The words rush out of me. “I want to know what we—I—have to do.” My chin judders—my teeth are chattering. “Can you tell us how?”
The Lady waits. The night air glitters.
I may answer, she replies at last.If you answer a question for me.
I find my voice. “Yes.” I speak into the hollow of the night. “Yes, anything.”
A quest. A riddle. Of course. Of course.You can do this, Gwenna. Come on.. I will myself to flip into gear, to rally whatever vault of knowledge I can sift through, with the fervent hope that now, at last,hopefully, all that reading and study and practice has trained me up enough to be quick-thinking when it counts. To be valiant and clever when the test, at last, arrives.
For a moment, nothing comes. And I dare, I dare to look up at her, at the moon-bright surface of her face, the blank lenses of her eyes, the long hair flowing in the windless ether.
The Lady looks back. At me. Through me.
My question for you is this, she says.Who do you think you are?
The words take me aback.
“I…” I swallow. “What?”
Did you not hear me?Her voice—that soundless voice—reverberates in what feels like the center of my skull.Who do youthinkyouare?
