Outside the garden, the cold breeze was strong. It carried particles of hail on it that stung the bare faces of the mining troupe, who huddled deeper into their uniforms against the cold. Here, they saw the cavern was covered with frost and the layer of moss, lichen and fungus was frozen and kept preserved, as on the last day of its life.

The six of them came to a chamber in the cave. Here, the wintery air blew so hard that they had to shield their eyes against snow that blasted out and lay in drifts ankle deep. A blue-white glow lit it from within.

Aisling slipped and reached for support. Her hand sunk deep into snow. She grasped an object, and pulled it out.

‘What’s this?’ Aisling barely had time to say aloud. The blizzard dropped and the air cleared. On a rush of cold wind, a horrifying, dark shape leapt across the chamber, straight at Aisling.

With quick reflexes, Aisling jerked her pickaxe up in front of her, and the metal head rang with an impact as the dark shape collided.

What met Aisling’s eyes was a hideous apparition of a woman. Her skin was grey and morbid as someone who had perished in freezing cold, and she was wrapped in a ragged shroud. Her lips were pulled back and her teeth bared in a death-mask of frozen hate, and her madly staring eyes were yellow, with slit pupils, like those of a cat. Aisling recoiled, mute and wide-eyed with horror.

Henry lunged in and swung his stave at the apparition. Without turning his way, the apparition grabbed the stave with one hand and held it tight. Henry struggled to pull it back, it was stuck fast.

‘That’s mine,’ the spectre hissed at Aisling.

Aisling drew back and let go of the pickaxe, which, although she had pulled with all her strength, was held rigid in the shrouded woman’s clutch. She saw that the object she held was a statuette. It had a head, paws, ears, and tail that were so precise and delicate in form that it seemed lifelike.

‘My baby,’ the ghoulish woman growled and dropped the pickaxe. She flung Henry’s stave across the chamber. Hunkering down, the woman made a slow advance on Aisling without breaking her stare.

There was a crackling noise and the head of the statuette turned to face Aisling. It flailed its paws and squirmed from side to side, as slow as if it floundered in tar. A dark shape moved within, that Aisling could now see was the body of a frozen kitten.

In Aisling’s grip, the statuette was so finely crafted that it looked very fragile. The apparition paused. Her withered, white hands were outstretched not towards Aisling, but the kitten.

‘Get back. I’ll break it,’ Aisling threatened, and clutched the little thing around the neck.

‘No, don’t harm my baby!’ The apparition gave a mournful wail.

‘Aisling, come this way, towards my voice. We’ll back out and then put it down, gently,’ Henry called in as soft a voice he could whilst still being heard.

‘Back off, or I’ll snap it,’ Aisling snarled at the creature, and took faltering steps backwards towards Henry.

The apparition shrank down to a crouch and circled around to one side. Her purple tongue flicked out to lick her upper lip and she emitted a low growl.

‘Look, there’s more kittens,’ Irene whispered and pointed to a host of other statuettes in the snow. They were arranged in a congregation around the edge of a chamber and looked on at the scene. Together, the rest of the group edged towards an exit from the chamber.

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Aisling reached the others as the grey shrouded woman grew increasingly agitated, and paced from side to side. Together, the miners turned and ran for the exit, and Henry stooped to grab his stave along the way. Aisling still clutched the kitten under her arm.

The woman pursued them, close behind, but when they left the swirling blizzard she pursued them no further and stopped at the edge of where the snow drifts lay. The woman gave a chilling, heart-rending wail behind them.

‘For God’s sake Aisling, why did you go and do that? And why did you bring it with you?’ Irene scolded, gasping for breath.

‘I’m not bloody well going back!’ Aisling exclaimed.

‘This doesn’t get any easier, does it?’ Percy remarked. ‘Now we have more problems to deal with.’

Navigating by the distant beam of magic light, they set off in the direction of the chapel. The route they took was along a fissure in the rock. At one point, many centuries ago, it may have been the bed of an underground river. Now there was only loose gravel beneath their feet.

‘What are we supposed to do? Neither of those wretched hell spawn can be reasoned with and we’re stuck in the middle!’ Zachary bemoaned his fate.

‘I don’t know!’ Henry shouted and jabbed his stave at the ground.

‘We’ve still got the flooding problem as well. And Dale. We left him unattended back at the chapel,’ Irene said.

Henry growled and quickened his pace, setting off ahead of them.

‘Hey, I was only thinking aloud!’ Irene called. ‘Why does he get mad at us all the time? Lord preserve us.’

Back at the chapel, they were met with the sight of Dale looking wild-eyed and frenzied.

He stood up on the ledge where the rock pool was. His jacket was off, and his shirt was open and damp with perspiration. He was in the process of heaving stones on to a rough mess of a dam at the chapel door while water continued to seep through.

‘I’ll build it up, you’ll see! It’ll take more than this to get past me and my dam. Just you watch, I’ll show you how it’s done,’ Dale raved as he threw another rock down to the loose, wet pile.

The others climbed up to have a look, but none of them wanted to get too close to their increasingly unhinged colleague.

‘The pool’s much bigger than it was before,’ Percy whispered, trying not to provoke Dale. Indeed, the dark waters had grown in size, from when it was a simple rock pool fed by a trickling beck, to the size of a pond.

‘Look how many fish there are! They’re all wriggling on the surface and jumping in the water. The whole pond is full of them, and weeds and silt too. Ugh, it’s disgusting,’ Flora whispered back.

‘Dale, knock it off. This is a complete mess. It’s not working,’ Henry called.

‘No I shan’t! This is how it’s done,’ Dale exclaimed. ‘There’s a good stone,’ he remarked and waded into the pool’s shallows.

‘Careful, Dale,’ Zachary called.

The others watched as, waist deep in the water, Dale stooped to pick up a rock. He yelped as he stumbled and made a sudden plunge beneath the surface. A few smirks among the others gave way to concern when he didn’t come back up.

Strands of plant life and murk made it hard to see, but faint lights shimmered and swirled above as though they were moonlit clouds. All around Dale was the dark of night. It was cold. Everything seemed motionless, and weightless, as though time had stopped.

Something was holding on to his ankle. There was a dim light below, and a dark shape that rose up to meet him. It had a human head, arms, and upper body, but something else moved behind it, writhing and swishing from side to side.

Dale realised that he was underwater. The figure that moved towards him was swimming. It had no legs, but a long, serpentine tail. A flurry of bubbles escaped his mouth as he thrashed his arms but he was held fast by the thick rope of weed that anchored him to the pond’s bed.

The figure glided up to Dale. Its face was pointed and angular; one could almost have said it was beautiful, but there was something eerily inhuman about its bulbous, dark eyes and pointed teeth. A row of gills ran along each side of its neck. Dale mutely goggled at the monster he saw before him. Its hair floated around its unblinking, ghastly face like pond weed.

‘Listen to me, boy.’ A voice appeared in Dale’s head without the monster seeming to move its mouth. ‘I, among all fae, was chosen as the embodiment of this river. On the surface, man has dammed my rivers, polluted my waters and fished my creatures to naught. I sought to take my gift of life away from the surface so I sunk its waters down here. My passage was frozen shut by some evildoing witch so I sunk this new channel.

‘What you’re going to do for me is undam my waters and let me flow. You shall not hold me back, dirty my waters or eat of the many beings that live within me. Now go!’

As he was about to pass out, Dale found himself propelled to the surface. He burst above the water and sprawled into the shallows. There he gasped and floundered, thrashing and stumbling, until he made it to dry rock where he coughed and spat, and muddy weeds trickled and spilled all around him.