Glow of the Fireflies by Lindsey Duga

Author:Lindsey Duga [Duga, Lindsey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Entangled Publishing, LLC
Published: 2019-10-01T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

The shadows within the water spun around us like sleek eels, and I worried, for a brief moment, if they actually were eels. If they were electric, I shuddered to think what would happen if they shocked me. Judging from the effect of the poison ivy, a spirit eel’s mystical energy could stop my heart in one second flat.

Still holding onto Alder, I tried twisting around in the water, feet first, thrusting my other hand out holding the shell to stop our wild momentum. But then a furry body shoved my wrist.

Jerking my head to the side, I caught a glimpse of a small brown fluffy face with black eyes and algae whiskers.

An…otter?

Another one pushed against Alder’s side, guiding us into the mouth of the river. As the current slowed around us, I realized that the otters were doing that, too.

They were helping us.

In calmer waters, I kicked up and gasped as oxygen filled my burning lungs. Thankfully, we had traveled far enough downstream to safely get to shore. I focused on guiding Alder’s limp body back up the bank, ignoring the playful otters that jumped and moved about, pulling on Alder’s shirt and nudging my legs, as we crawled up the bank. I knew they were speaking, but I couldn’t understand their tittering. It was too fast and too jumbled to decipher anything.

Especially when all I wanted to do was lay my head on my arms and sleep for two years.

Carefully placing the shell on the grass within reach, I maneuvered Alder onto his back, keeping his calves in the river, and watched as blue mana from the river seeped into his skin.

I dipped my toe in and the mana brushed against me, but as I suspected, the energy didn’t merge with mine as it did him. If I wanted more mana, and I was pretty sure I did if it would allow me to help open these gates, I would have to get it directly from Alder.

Which would be difficult considering he seemed to cut it off from me each time he touched me. I hadn’t felt his skin or the senses of the Smokies inside me unless he allowed me to. It was…frustrating.

“Turtle and pebbles, play, play,” an otter squeaked hopping over my legs. So their tittering had been English after all, and not their own little otter language. They had to be more than just sprites then. It was then I noticed its fur and whiskers were covered in algae and its tail was a cattail, as in the water plant.

The other two otters joined in, singing and squeaking in jumbles that hardly made any sense.

“River bank, river bank, wet.”

“Wet, wet, wet.”

“Minnows and pebbles. Minnows.”

“Run and jump. Sun and dragonflies.”

“Human, human, human,” another sang, rubbing his algae whiskers up and down my arm.

“New, new, lord, new,” the third one trilled.

It took me a moment to put their meaning together. “Human” and “new.”

“New human?” I asked the river spirits. “Is there an old one?”

Could that be…Mom?

I

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