Page 79 of The Filigree Key

And I would die before I allowed those monsters to hurt him. His was a life worth saving, no matter the cost.

In the face of my conviction, the river had no choice but to obey.

The water below Sawyer’s flailing paws disappeared. The cat dropped onto the squishy riverbed with a surprised, “Oof!” and tensed, wrapping his tail around his oversized paws as the water scuttled away. Exposed mussels squirted tiny jets of water and a cloud of bubbles from their muddy beds and speckled crappies flopped on the muck, gills gasping.

Water sluiced under me and helped me rise to my feet. It coiled up my arms and circled around my ankles as I stepped into the shallows. Jaw set and purpose clear, I thrust my hands towards the cloudless sky.

Rise.

Sawyer’s ears lowered, his amber eyes wide with a mixture of awe and fear as a ringed wall of water shot straight into the air. Behind the barrier, the mallaithe circled furiously, striking out into open air and shrieking in frustration that their prey was no longer in their preferred environment.

But mallaithe could hunt on land so long as their roots had water, an instinct these younglings were beginning to heed. Keeping its roots in the water, the scorched mallaithe emerged beyond the wall and into Sawyer’s haven. Silver lips peeled back to reveal sharp teeth bared in predatory delight.

Protect.

The command was vague, but my intent was not.

The river twisted violently to the left. Between one heartbeat and the next, the brown waters were frothing and spinning under the force of a whirlpool. But instead of funneling down, the river spiraled upwards with the bald circle of riverbed as its center.

The scorched mallaithe released the shrill cry of a train whistle as the power of the water sucked it back into the river. As the whirlpool spun upwards, the water cleared of grit and debris.

It wasn’t enough that physics told me the mallaithe were being pulled away; I had to confirm it with my own eyes.

The cold sunlight of the late-autumn day sparkled against the crystalline water. Trapped within, two juvenile mallaithe swam erratically like confused squid. They probed their confines with sharp jabs of their tentacle roots and found it ever shrinking. The mallaithe thrashed, panicked, and the strain of containing them within the spiraling water grew.

Divide, I ordered.

Two spheres of water, each imprisoning a singular mallaithe, separated from the swirling river. At the same time, a channel between the center of the whirlpool and the beach appeared. This time, the riverbed was dry with no puddles or mud.

Sawyer bolted down the channel, never once looking to the left or right or even behind him where the fae hunting trees screeched. His gaze was locked on me.

Behind him, the river began to close.

Brown water poured over the gasping fish and rehydrated the mussels, but the liquid glass of the clear water that suspended the mallaithe above the surface of the river stayed put. As much as it wanted to rejoin its source, it knew it could not until I released it.

And I wasn’t done with it yet.

With Sawyer cowering between my ankles, I clenched my outstretched hands into fists, and the red heart of my oak tree smoldered.

Steam lifted from the spheres. Not because they were hot, but because the late-autumn air was so much warmer than what the water was becoming.

The struggles of the mallaithe became sluggish, the water of their prisons thicker. Slushier.

Aunt Peony always put the lobsters we were to eat for dinner in the freezer before they went into the boiling pot. “It numbs them, puts them to sleep so they don’t feel any pain,” she’d told me. “If a life is going to be sacrificed so you can keep yours, the least you can do is make its death quick and as painless as possible.”

I had every right to command the water in the mallaithe’s veins to rip them apart from the inside out. I had every right to boil them alive for trying to eat my cat.

And I had every right to be merciful, too.

I couldn’t let these monsters live, but they didn’t need to suffer. I’d had enough suffering for a lifetime and I wasn’t about to inflict it on anyone else.

Enough, I told the blazing heart.

And just like that, the spheres froze. They were flawlessly translucent, suspending the mallaithe in their last moment of life. Root tentacles fanned out like the petals of a lily, slender arms lifted, mouths open in little gasps, eyes wide and disbelief—like young ballerinas stunned mid-leap.

It was beautiful and hideous and made bile jump out of my stomach and burn my throat.

I dropped my hands, and the spheres shattered. The blue veins that had appeared on the magic oak tree’s trunk winked out.