Tungel lunged up to her breasts, putting more of the frigid water between her and the monsters.
Her abdomen contracted, wringing agony up her throat and bleating from her mouth. The waterfall tumbled on. Panting, Tungel squinted downstream.
Surely the girls would arrive soon to hunt their stones. Perhaps if Mother had survived, she would accompany them. Over the pain and under the steady beat of the falls, she listened, searching for their high-pitched laughter, but all she heard was a rising shriek from the nest of way-drakes.
They continued to pace the mud, clambering out of the woods over their vanguard, boiling the water with their breath. Thirty of them now, or forty—she couldn’t count as her muscles tortured and clutched—eyed her from the strand. But they had not entered the river
