He walked ahead, beginning to wonder if perhaps there was indeed some sort of magic at work in the Irrylyn. He glanced about once again for some sign of Abernathy, but the dog was missing. Slowly he lowered himself neck-deep into the water, feeling its warmth soak through him, giving himself over to the sensation. He was several dozen yards from shore by now, the slope from the water’s edge a gradual one that receded no more than several inches every ten feet or so. He swam into the dark, stretching his body out, breathing at regular intervals. When he came up for air, he saw a second inlet curve back from his own and swam toward it. It was tiny, barely a hundred feet across, and he swam past it toward a third. He switched from the crawl to a soundless breaststroke, head lifted toward his destination. Moonlight flooded the water with streamers of color, and the mist snaked past in shadowy screens of gray. Ben closed his eyes and swam.
The third inlet was smaller still, barely two dozen yards wide. Rushes screened the shoreline, and cedars and willows canopied above the waters, throwing dark shadows toward the lake. Ben dove beneath the water and swam silently into the cove, pulling his way toward the shallows.
He surfaced a dozen yards from the shoreline — and a woman was directly in front of him. She stood not ten feet away, a little more than ankle-deep in the lake’s waters, as naked as he. She made no attempt to turn away or to cover herself. She was like a frightened animal caught in the light, frozen in that split second of hesitation before it would be gone.
Ben Holiday stared, seeing momentarily in his mind someone he had thought forever lost. Water ran down into his eyes and he blinked it away.
“Annie?” he whispered in disbelief.
Then the shadows and the mist shifted where they fell across her, and he saw that she was not Annie — that she was someone else.
And perhaps something else as well.
Her skin was pale green, smooth and flawless and almost silvery as the waters of the Irrylyn shimmered against it. Her hair was green as well, deep forest green, the tresses tumbling to her waist, braided with flowers and ribbons. But her hair grew in narrow lines along the backs other forearms as well and along the backs of her calves, silken manes that stirred gently with the whisper of the night wind over the lake.
“Who are you?” she asked softly.
He could not bring himself to answer. He was seeing her clearly now, finding her exquisite beyond anything he would have imagined possible. She was an artist’s flawless rendering of a fairy queen brought suddenly to life. She was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen.
She came forward a step in the moonlight. Her face was so youthful that it made her seem hardly more than a girl. But her body…
“Who are you?” she repeated.
“Ben.” He could barely make himself answer, and it never occurred to him to answer any other way.
“I am Willow,” she told him. “I belong to you now.”
He was stunned anew. She came toward him, her body swaying with the movement, and now it was he who had become the frightened animal poised to flee.
“Ben.” Her voice assumed a sweet, lilting cadence as she spoke to him. “I am a sylph, the child of a sprite become human and a wood nymph stayed wild. I was conceived on the midyear’s passing in the heat of the eight moons full, and my fates were woven in the vines and flowers of the gardens in which my parents lay. Twice each year, the fates decreed, I was to steal to the Irrylyn in darkness and bathe in her waters. To the man who saw me thus, and to no other, would I belong.”
Ben shook his head quickly, his mouth working. “But that’s craz… that’s not right! I don’t even know you! You don’t know me!”
She slowed before him, close enough now that she might reach out and touch him. He wanted her to do that. The need for that touch burned through him. He fought against it with everything he could muster, feeling trapped in the emotions that rushed through him.