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"Beware of anyone pro you help now," Persephone said "Inside yourself, it’s only you who can help you"

They began

At first he are only of the candles The thin, high flicker of the true candles, and the twisted, circuitous burning of the candles in the e frolass, but instead it pierced the surface easily

It landed in a tumbler of water One of the chunky, cheap ones that used to fill his mother’s cabinets This one was in Adaht a flash of ht -- sound --

His father hit hi, always about to explain, as he struck the faded counter of their kitchen

It should have been done by now, the punch, but he seemed to be trapped inside it He was the boy, the blow, the counter, the flaring anger that drove it all

This lived in him This punch, the first ti thrown soht

He was released from the punch As the tumbler crashed on the floor, too sturdy to sain This time it plummeted into a still, mirrored pool surrounded by trees Blackness crept between the trees, lush and dark and living

Adam had been here before

Cabeswater

Was he really here, or was it a dream? Did it make a difference to Cabeswater?

This place -- he smelled the damp earth beneath fallen branches, heard the sound of insects working the bark, felt the same breeze touch his hair that breathed on the leaves overhead

In the night water at Adam’s feet, red fish circled They mouthed the ripples where the droplet had broken the surface Thetree on the opposite shore It looked just as it had before: a h to ado, Adam had stood inside the tree and had a terrible vision of the future Gansey, dying because of hiroan It was the woman he’d seen in his apartment, the very first spirit She wore a pale, old-fashioned dress

"Do you knohat Cabeswater wants?" he asked

Leaning against the rugged bark of the dreaainst her forehead in distress "Auli! Greywaren furis al Lovi ne"

It wasn’t Latin Adam said, "I don’t understand"

Beside her, suddenly, was the lied, "E me! Greywaren furis al"

"I’m sorry," Adam said

Another spirit appeared, hand outstretched to him And another And another All of the flashes he had seen, a dozen figures Incomprehensible

A small voice at his elbow said, "I will translate for you"

He turned to see a sirl in a black frock She was not unlike a miniature Persephone: mountainous white hair spun like cotton candy, narrow face, black eyes She took his hand Hers was very cold, and a little damp

He shivered warily "Will you translate truthfully?"

Her tiny fingers were tight on his He had not seen her before, he was certain Of all of the flashes and visions he’d had sincethe sacrifice, she’d not been one of them She was so like Persephone, but twisted

"No," he said "I can only help ry "You’re already dead in here" Before he could pull away, she clawed her other hand down his wrist Three sharp lines of blood welled up He could taste it, like she had torn his tongue instead

It was like a bad dream

No If this was like a dream, if Cabeswater was like a dream, it meant it was all in his control, if he chose it Adaive his mind away

"Cabeswater," he said out loud "Tell me what you need"

He reached into the pool It was cold and insubstantial, like sliding his hand against sheets Carefully, he scooped out the the single drop of water he’d followed into the vision It tipped back and forth in his pal his life line

He hesitated On the other side of thisthat would separate him from the others forever How much, he didn’t know But he would have been so they weren’t

But he already was

And then he was in the drop of water No longer did Cabeswater need to reach out to hih apparitions He didn’t need the clumsy flickers in his vision No desperate pleas for his attention

He was Cabeswater, and he was the dreah rocks, looking for energy and hope He felt the suck and pulse of the ley line through him -- what a crass, mundane term for it, ley line, now that he’d felt it He could remember every other na Fairy roads Spirit paths Song lines The old tracks Dragon lines Dreay flickered and sputtered through hi a secret It was strong, allenco but it, and sootten

And beneath it all, he felt the oldness of Cabeswater The strangeness There was so true and inhuman at its core It had been there so many centuries before him, and it would exist for centuries after In the relative sches, Ada, just a whorl in the fingerprint of a hts away

He would be Cabeswater’s hands and Cabeswater’s eyes, but he wouldn’t be Cabeswater