Laszlo asked Rémy if he had any other alternative to offer. The water mage shook his head and clasped Laz’s upper arms. “My Gosia has suffered long enough. This is what I propose.”
The moment Rémy finished laying out his plan, Laszlo, Alderose, Maritza, Alabastair, and I came to a consensus and went to work. I drew from the seemingly endless selection of threads Tía had stitched into my clothes and began to create a braid. My aunt handed another set of threads to Alderose before commanding her own. “All you have to do is relax your hands,” she said. “Let the threads do the work.” The threads sped through my waterlogged fingers and twisted themselves into rope far faster than anything I could have made on my own.
Laszlo stripped out of his tuxedo shirt then redonned the vest. He grinned at me, strapped a set of knife sheaths around his biceps, and tested the releases on the ones strapped to his thighs. He tucked his long, white braid under the back of his vest and announced his readiness, and the next step.
“Alderose, Clementine, we’re going down as a team.”
My sister and I nodded in agreement. We stood, giving us room to coil our ropes. I neared the end of mine and asked, “Bas, where should we secure these?”
“Over here. Make a loop around this rock and tie it in place. Mari will make sure the knot is unbreakable.”
“It’d be really great if she could make it so the rope can’t be cut either.” Alderose pulled her creation through her fingers.
“My sweet sobrinas, I have spelled that and more into these fibers. I also have a gift from your uncle.” My aunt lifted her chin and unlatched a set of collars that had been invisible up until the moment she touched them. “Malvyn imbued these with a containment spell. However, you can wear them with impunity.” She handed one each to me, Laz, and my sister. “Use them well, if you must use them at all.”
I hadn’t paid attention to Rémy’s preparations. While we were making ropes and learning about restraining collars, strips of cloud-like material had consumed the entire length of the mage’s coat except for the collar and the arms.
“Stay back until the vortex has arrived and accepted my offering,” he said. “Wait at the edge. Once I am over the quarry, I will begin to pull the water away from the sides and move it up.”
“Rémy, how long do we have?” I asked. The mage pulsed with power as he called upon magical and natural forces.
“Once I have completed the preparations, you will have thirty minutes. Or less.”
“Ready when you are.”
Tropical storms and hurricanes took days to build, mixing and blending the differing temperatures of ocean water and air currents. The air swirling around Rémy went from a steady breeze to a category three in under a minute, lifting the mage off his feet. He stepped forward, walking above the water until he placed himself in the middle of the roughly circular quarry. The swirling hurricane traveled with him.
He spun to face us, yelled, “Go!” and swooped his arms out and up. The movement took him higher. Water began to pull away from the walls of the quarry and follow the mage’s upward trajectory.
Vertigo and fear of heights had no place on a rescue mission, as I immediately discovered. Side by side with Alderose and Laszlo, we took hold of our ropes and lowered ourselves into the emptying basin as Rémy lifted more and more water into the air and away from the slanted walls.
The rising sun abetted our progress. I went back and forth, giving thanks to the optimism inherent in every dawning day while looking over my shoulder, certain our mission was doomed. I shouted to Laz when the truck came into view.
“And there’s the cage.” He stopped at a newly exposed ledge and found foot- and handholds.
Alabastair was the designated conduit between Rémy and those of us inside the quarry. I let him know the mage could stop withdrawing the water and go into a holding pattern. We’d agreed to swim to the cages and assess the next stage from there.
I loosened the rope, found footholds of my own, and waited for Alderose to signal she was ready. When she did, we popped the light sticks, jumped in, and swam toward the cage. What Laz and I hadn’t seen earlier were the other cages stacked underneath. I tucked the glowing stick down my front, grabbed the nearest bars, and pulled myself lower.
Pissed I hadn’t cleared my lungs and taken a moment to get centered before I leapt, I waved to Alderose, pointed upward, and pushed off from the uppermost cage.
“Bas!”
The necromancer waved at me when I surfaced and yelled his name.
“Tell Rémy to lift more water.”
He gestured that he couldn’t hear and cupped his ear. Treading water, I twirled my arm over and over until he nodded and transferred the message. More and more of the quarry’s contents disappeared into Rémy’s mage-made, inverted waterspout.
My sister popped up behind me, gasping for breath, followed quickly by Laszlo. “I see at least three cages below this one,” she said, “but I didn’t see any signs of the fae or where they took Gosia.”
“Let’s keep looking.”
“Give me a sec to catch my breath, then I’ll follow you.”
Too impatient to wait, too eager to reunite Gosia with her daughter, I blew a kiss to my sister and took a deep breath. I could lower myself while Rémy pulled up more water and debris, and expend less energy by holding on to the bars.
Going hand over hand, I counted five enclosures, each about four feet high, before