Not a whisper.
A melody.
Soft. Lulling. It curled around the edges of my senses like a lover’s sigh, like the hush of a mother to her child.
My limbs stiffened in the water, cold dread creeping beneath my skin. Something was here. Something in the depths.
I turned my head, movements slow, careful. The shore wasn’t far now. If I swam now—if I didn’t make a sound—
The water stilled.
No. Not still.
Something was beneath me.
The lake—dark and rippling, once shifting withwaves—was suddenly too smooth. Not a ripple, not a breath of disturbance. Like glass. Like waiting.
Something drifted beneath the surface.
At first, it was just a shimmer, a distortion in the water. A trick of light. When I peered through the murk, the shape became clear.
A face.
Pale as bone, its edges blurred by the dark water.
And it was gone.
Whatever was in this water had scared the Unbidden.
I swam to the shore, as silently as I could.
Suddenly—a movement.
Something touched my thigh. Something colder than the frigid water.
Through the murk, something pale drifted to my right. My heart skipped a beat. At first, it was just a shimmer, a distortion in the water, but as the gloom in the depths shifted, she emerged.
A woman, floating weightlessly, her body moving with the current as if cradled by unseen hands. Her hair spread around her in dark tendrils. Her gown clung to her form, its fabric pulled tight over the soft swell of her stomach.
She had been with child.
The realization slammed into me, a sharp, gut-wrenching horror.
The Lady in the Lake.
She opened her eyes.
Two endless pits of blackness, vast and hungry.
A scream strangled in my throat. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t.
Her arms stretched forward, fingers splayed, reaching—not to attack, but to cradle something unseen.
Her hands cupped the space before her as if holding a child that was no longer there.
A sob broke from her throat, warping through the water into something impossibly distorted, a sound that didn’t belong in this world.
My limbs finally obeyed, and I kicked toward the shore.
