Daina stared at the dark peat-ink stain spreading across the parchment, then at the impenetrable grey beyond the conservatory glass. The fleeting image of the child-like figure had unsettled her more than she cared to admit. Her cartographer’s mind, trained to observe and record, refused to dismiss it as mere optical illusion. There was no wind to swirl the fog so precisely, no stray light to bend into such a delicate, mournful shape. She picked up her quill again, her gaze tracing the estate's perimeter on the nascent map. The conservatory jutted out at an odd angle, leaning south-east, a warped appendage to the manor’s imposing bulk. From its windows, she could see a faint disruption in the fog, a slightly deeper shadow that suggested an old, overgrown path. It wasn't on any of the estate's antiquated, hand-drawn plans she’d been given – the ones Hedeon had dismissed as 'outdated as a summer’s bloom.' “Outdated, or deliberately forgotten?” she murmured, sketching a dotted line where the path might be. It led further into the Murmurwood, towards a section of the fen that, even on the most ancient maps, was marked only as ‘The Gloomweald.’ The child-like flicker had been in that direction, she was certain. Driven by a resolve that bordered on recklessness, Daina slipped out later that afternoon. The fog had thickened, swallowing the sun whole, leaving the world a study in bruised greys and sickly greens. The air was heavy, tasting of damp earth and something acrid, like old copper. Her boots sank slightly into the soft, root-tangled ground as she followed her nascent map, the sketched line guiding her toward that subtle shift in the mist. The path, barely more than a deer trail, narrowed until she was pushing through skeletal reeds that rasped against her wool cloak. The Murmurwood pressed in, its boughs dripping with lichen, its silence profound save for the distant, sloshing sighs of the mire itself. After a quarter-hour of determined trekking, the reeds thinned, giving way to a small, unnaturally still expanse of water. It was less a pond, more a tear in the earth, its surface a flawless, obsidian mirror reflecting the choked sky. And at its edge, half-submerged, lay a decrepit boat shed. Its timbers were rotted, its roof sagged like a broken spine, but it was unmistakably a structure. A faint prickle ran along the nape of her neck. No one had mentioned a lake, or an anchorage. Daina stepped onto the rickety, algae-slicked planks of what remained of a small dock. The wood groaned under her weight. The air here was colder, clinging to her like a shroud. A single, rusted hinge held the shed's warped door askew, leaning open toward the interior. Inside, the light was even dimmer, filtered through grimy windows webbed with ancient dust. A single, overturned wooden skiff lay rotting on the damp earth floor, its paint long since peeled away. Fishing nets, brittle and frayed, hung from the rafters like skeletal draperies. Her gaze swept the cluttered, decaying space, searching for anything anomalous. In a corner, tucked beneath a broken oar and half-buried in a drift of desiccated leaves, she saw it: a small, leather-bound volume. Its cover was water-stained and warped, the leather cracked like old skin. Curiosity overriding caution, Daina knelt, pushing aside the leaves. She picked up the book. It was heavy, sodden, its pages swollen and fused together in places. The inscription on the inside cover, though faded, was still legible: *Eleonora Voronin*. Stellan’s mother. Daina’s fingers trembled slightly as she carefully coaxed open a few pages. Many were illegible, the ink bled into formless blurs. But on one, a series of delicate, precise sketches. White bellflowers, their heads bowed, rendered with an almost scientific accuracy, yet imbued with a melancholic artistry. Beneath them, a frantic scrawl, barely holding to the page: *…they forget. They forget the song of forgetting. He won’t listen. He won’t…* Her gaze froze on the ink. The white bellflowers. The very ones Hedeon had warned her never to pick. As she leaned closer, trying to decipher more of the faded script, a sudden, sharp crack echoed through the shelter. The floorboards beneath her feet groaned, not from her weight, but from something *else*. A serpentine shadow snaked from between the gaps in the planks, thick and dark as a viper. Thorny, glistening vines erupted from the earth, not slowly, but with violent, deliberate speed. “What in the—!” Daina gasped, scrambling back. The vines moved with uncanny intelligence, lashing out, their thorns catching her cloak, then digging into her ankles. A searing pain shot up her legs. She struggled, trying to pull free, but the vines tightened, their barbs tearing at her flesh, dragging her inexorably towards the black, still water. A cold dread, sharper than any thorn, gripped her. This was not a plant. This was the Murmurwood itself, alive and malevolent. It wanted her. It wanted to pull her into its dark embrace. Her fingers scrabbled for purchase on the rotting wood, but the pull was too strong. She cried out, a raw, strangled sound, as the leading tendrils brushed the hem of her skirt into the frigid, oily water. The mire whispered, a cacophony of sibilant, hungry sounds that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Her lungs burned. She was going to drown, right here, in this forgotten tomb. Then, a thunderous crash from the doorway. A dark blur of motion. Stellan. He was there, a silhouette against the dim light, his scarred face a mask of primal fury. In his hand, a heavy hand-axe, its blade glinting. He moved with a terrifying speed, a whirlwind of controlled violence. *Thwack! Crack!* The axe descended, a brutal, rhythmic symphony of destruction. Splintered wood and severed vines flew through the air as he hacked and cleaved, the force of his blows shaking the rotting floor. The vines shrieked, a sound like tearing fabric and rustling leaves, recoiling from the onslaught. Daina felt the pressure release from her ankles, though the stinging pain remained. Stellan didn’t stop until every tendril within striking distance lay mangled and twitching on the floorboards. His chest heaved, his breaths ragged, his eyes blazing with an intensity that made her shrink back. “Are you insane?!” His voice, when it came, was a guttural roar, raw with an emotion she couldn’t quite name – anger, certainly, but something else, something deeper and more dangerous. “I told you! I warned you about this accursed mire! Do you have a death wish, woman?!” Daina could only stare, ribs aching against her sharp, shallow breaths. Terror of the fen shifted, cold and immediate, toward him. He was a beast, untamed, magnificent in his rage. He took a step closer, his shadow falling over her, making her flinch. His hand, still gripping the axe, trembled with the residual force of his attack. “You think this is a game?” he snarled, his voice dropping, though no less menacing. “A map-maker’s exercise in logic?” He snatched the waterlogged journal from her slackened grip, his calloused knuckles brushing her skin like iron. He thrust it back into her hands, the soggy weight unfamiliar, almost alien. His voice was a harsh whisper now, cutting through the eerie silence left by the retreating vines. “You want answers? *Read this.* And stay away from the water.”

What the Water Gives