At last she could run no more. Lily fell to her knees, breathing in whooping sobs as though there were not enough clean air with which to take in a single inhalation. Even as Anest reached her side she drew breath, and from her very soul uttered a cry of heartbroken anguish. No words could ever have conveyed such a sound; that of a child who clutches uselessly at the lifeless, ruined form of her own mother, and those of her siblings.

Lily knew then, as Anest and no ordinary mortal could, that the Earth Mother herself, the very life and soul of the Marshes of Morag, was dead.

"My Mother . . . my sisters," she wept. "My home . . . my life . . . what has been done to you?"

Kneeling beside her, feeling her pain as though it were his own, though he could not begin to understand the implications of it, the sight of the ruined marsh about him, as far as the eye could see, was enough to fill his heart with sick dread. "My wife," he said to bring her back into the moment, away from what her eyes beheld and closer to himself, and what little support he could offer her. "What has happened here?"

Lily turned her tearstreaked face in his direction, her eyes wide, staring and unseeing, as though she were driven to madness by something that could not be bourne. "They are gone . . . they are gone . . . the watersprites . . . they are taken!




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