Song of the Sword (5 page)

But he’d never done drugs. And neither dreams nor hallucinations left you soaking wet, muddy, or stinking. Which left only one other possibility:

It had really happened. Impossibly, incredibly, in defiance
of everything he knew about science
and
history, he and Ar
iane had seen – had spoken to – the Lady of the Lake.

He turned to Ariane. “We need to talk.” He looked down at himself. “And change.” He sniffed. “And shower.”

“I can’t go home looking like this,” Ariane said.

Wally checked his watch, which somewhat to his surprise still worked. Unlike his malfunctioning and now-lost smartphone. “We can go to my house. There won’t be anyone there. My sister always leaves early to meet up with her friends before school. You can change into some of her clothes while we wash yours. You’re about the same size.”

Ariane blinked. “You have a sister?”

“Yeah. You’ve met her.” His mouth twitched into a half-smile. “Her name’s Flish – uh, Felicia. She’s a friend of Shania’s.”

Ariane’s eyes widened. “
She’s
your sister?”

“Yeah.” He shrugged. “Sorry. You can’t choose your family.”

Her smile surprised him. “You’re inviting me to go into Felicia’s bedroom and borrow her clothes?”

He felt a sudden pang of trepidation. “Uh, yeah, I guess...”

Her smile widened. “Wouldn’t pass up that chance for the world.” The smile vanished. “But what about school?”

“Aren’t you suspended?”

“For you, not me.”

He glanced down at himself. “I can’t go like this anyway.” He looked up again, grinning. “And fortunately, I have the perfect excuse.” He held up his right wrist. “Fencing injury. I have a note and everything. I’m in excruciating pain. Couldn’t possibly sit through classes.”

“You’re not even wearing the bandage you had on in the office yesterday,” Ariane pointed out.

“Well, true, but they can’t see that over the phone.” He shrugged. “Anyway, it’s at home. I’ll put it on for Monday.”

Ariane smiled again. Wally decided he liked her smile. “If I’m going home with you,” she said, “shouldn’t you at least tell me your name?”

“Wally,” he said. “Wally Knight.”

“Well, Wally Knight, lead on.”

~ • ~

Dripping and making squelching noises with every step, Ariane followed the unexpected Wally as he wheeled his bicycle west along the bike path. The mist had lifted from the lake, and the morning sun sparkled on the water. A few joggers and dog-walkers gave the dripping duo puzzled looks, but Wally just smiled at them and kept moving.

They took the pedestrian underpass under the north end of the busy Albert Street bridge, then walked a half-block before turning left into a cul-de-sac whose street-sign labeled it Harrington Mews. Wally kept a wary eye out for neighbours as they made their way up the front walk of his much-grander-than-hers house – complete with stone lions flanking the steps – then, once they were through the big red door, showed Ariane to the upstairs bathroom. He waited outside while she stripped, then took away the soaked and stinking clothes she carefully passed out through the door before heading for the second bathroom in the basement.

Ariane hesitated before stepping into the shower, remembering the strange hallucination that had gripped her that morning.
Don’t be silly
, she chided herself.
You can’t go the rest of your life without taking a shower
. Besides, a mere hallucination seemed almost homey compared to what had happened since.

She got in and turned on the water. Nothing strange happened, and she leaned against the tiles with relief as the hot water sluicing through her hair and down her back washed away the brown residue from Wascana Lake. She stayed there a long time, unwilling to leave her steamy sanctuary and face what she had just experienced.

Part of her wanted to believe it had been a dream. But dreams faded quickly, whereas everything that had happened in the lake was seared in her memory, clear and indelible, right down to the strange phrase she had heard in her mind when the Lady looked deep into her eyes.

Gadewch y dyfroedd byw ynoch, a chi o fewn y dyfroedd. Y
p
ˆ
wer yn eiddo i chi
. She didn’t recognize the language, much less speak it, but somehow she knew its meaning:
Let the waters live within you, and you within the waters. The power be yours.

You have the power to defeat him, if you will grasp it
, the Lady had said first. “Him” being Merlin. Apparently they were supposed to keep Merlin from getting the shards of Arthur’s famous sword Excalibur, remaking it, and using it to take over the world.

Yeah, right
, she thought.
And anyway, how am I supposed to “grasp” this supposed power? How am I even supposed to know if I want it? Mom didn’t.

She remembered her mother coming back to the house, soaked to the skin, changed beyond recognition. If her mother had seen the Lady that night, Ariane could understand why she had seemed so shaken, not in her right mind. But that didn’t explain why she had denied Ariane was her daughter, or that she even had a daughter – or why she had run away.

Why did she abandon me?

Ariane sighed. Showering wasn’t getting her anything but wet.

She turned off the water and stepped onto the pink fuzzy bathmat – the Knights’ bathroom was a bit frilly and
froufrou
for her taste – and only then realized there wasn’t a towel to be seen.

“Gee, thanks, Wally,” she muttered as she knelt, opening the cabinets under the sink. She found toilet paper, bottles of Mr. Clean, a scrub brush, and several old bath toys, but no towels. “How am I supposed to dry myself off – just wish the water away?”

And then she gasped and jerked backward, losing her footing and falling onto her bare bottom with a floor-shaking thump.

Her
bone-dry
bottom. Like every other square centimetre of her – she raised a hand, jerked it back again –
even my hair!
– her backside was no longer wet.

Wally knocked on the door. “Are you all right in there? Did you fall?”

“I’m...I’m fine...I just...”
Just what?
“...slipped.”

“Okay.” Wally sounded dubious. “Are you almost done?”

“Yeah, I’m done. But there aren’t any towels.”

“Oh, sorry! I’ll get you one. Just a second.”

Ariane heard his footsteps move down the hall, and she looked around her while waiting. The water from her body hadn’t vanished: instead, it had formed a ring-shaped puddle on the floor where she had been standing. It had...fled, as if she really had wished it from her body.

This day is getting weirder and weirder.

“I’ve got a towel,” Wally said from the other side of the door. In the reverse of the dance they’d performed earlier when she’d handed him her clothes, Ariane scooted over to the door, positioned herself carefully out of Wally’s line of sight, and eased it open. Wally’s hand appeared, holding out a dark green towel. She took it, closed the door, then wrapped the towel around her as best she could. Although it was on the smallish side, at least it covered the embarrassing bits. Her hair looked like she’d stuck her finger in a light socket – not surprising, since she hadn’t had a chance to comb it while it was wet.

Using one hand to hold her precarious covering in place, she opened the door with the other and sailed out into the hallway, past Wally. Unlike her, he was at least half-dressed, wearing jeans but no shirt or socks. The ribs stood out on his skinny chest. He blushed waist to crown when he saw her, then after that first glance looked up…down…sideways…anywhere but right at her. “Where’s your sister’s room?” she said.

“It’s...uh...” Wally made a slight gagging sound, as though he found it hard to form words. “Down the hall. Last door. On the right.”

“Thank you.” Using her free hand to hold the back of the towel as low as possible, Ariane walked down the hall with all the dignity she could muster. Once inside Felicia’s room, she let the towel fall away.

The bathroom’s frilly décor must have represented Felicia’s mother’s taste, not Felicia’s. Cool functionality was her style: dark blue carpet, purple bedding, white walls, and, for decoration, a poster of a tattooed and pierced all-girl band Ariane had never heard of. The dresser and desk were utterly bare, everything tucked out of sight.

“A neat freak,” Ariane muttered. “Who would have guessed?” She began digging in Felicia’s dresser drawers and closet for clothes. She didn’t worry about keeping things tidy. By the time she was done, Felicia’s room looked a lot less like a
House & Home
photo spread and a lot more like a going-out-of-business sale at Teen Fashions R Us. Ariane couldn’t bring herself to wear any of Felicia’s underwear, but she donned a plain white cotton top, a heavy wool sweater, a pair of jeans that probably looked like they were sprayed on when Felicia wore them but were comfortably loose on her, white gym socks, and an expensive-looking pair of runners, only one size too big.

She surveyed the mess she’d made, smiled, then went out into the hall and gently closed the door behind her.

Wally wasn’t in sight. Ariane descended to the living room and plopped herself on the overstuffed white-leather couch to wait for him, trying not to think about everything that had happened, but unable to stop. It was impossible. Things like that just didn’t happen. She must have been hallucinating – another peculiar vision.

But if she had been, then Wally had been hallucinating right along with her. Because here she was, in his house – in
Felicia’s
house – wearing Felicia’s clothes, while her own were...

She frowned. Where were hers, anyway?

She got up and went into the kitchen, decorated in stark black and white. As obsessively neat as the rest of the house, it made the comfortable clutter of Aunt Phyllis’s kitchen look like a rummage sale in mid-rummage. A door at the far end led into a utility room, where she could see an open washing machine. A quick look confirmed that both her and Wally’s clothes were in there, and when she glanced around, she saw her leather jacket hanging, dripping, from a hook by the door.

She wrinkled her nose as she picked at its sodden sleeve. Soaking wet and stinking, it was something
else
she definitely wouldn’t have hallucinated. So somehow, some impossible how, the Lady of the Lake – or someone who
called
herself the Lady of the Lake, at least – had opened up a chamber of water in Wascana Lake, had spoken to them...

...and expected
them
to reassemble Excalibur before Merlin – Merlin, of all people! – could do so.

She snorted. The Lady of the Lake was all wet in more ways than one if she thought her mumbo-jumbo was going to get Ariane to undertake a wild-goose chase like that.
Mom refused the power. So will I.

But she thought uneasily of the way the water had fled her body in the bathroom. That seemed to imply she had some of the Lady’s power already. Had she
already
accepted
it? Some of it, at least? Did that mean she really wanted it –
without even knowing what it was?

The thought made her uncomfortable. Ironically, she also felt terribly thirsty. She returned to the kitchen, found a glass in the cupboard above the sink, and turned on the tap, letting it run for a few seconds to get cold. Absentmindedly, she stuck her fingers into the flow of the water to test the temperature.

Rushing and gurgling down the drain and through the trap, and into the sewer pipe, flowing out toward the street to the main sewer line to the –

She gasped and jerked her hand out of the water, and the vision – no, the
sensation
– vanished. For a horrifying instant she had felt as if she were about to pour down the drain with the flowing liquid, dissolving into it as it rushed to lake, river, and sea. She stared at her dripping hand. It trembled. The trembling spread to her arm, to her knees, and then to her whole body. She groped for one of the tall, black stools that ringed the granite-topped island in the middle of the kitchen, and hauled herself onto it before she could collapse where she stood.

~ • ~

Wally tried to act cool when Ariane came out of the shower wearing only a towel...an act made more difficult by the fact that he hadn’t been able to find a shirt downstairs. He knew he was blushing, and knew there was no way to hide it. Worse, he also knew he looked like a twelve-year-old even though he’d been fourteen for a month, and he hated it. He was owed an adolescent growth spurt, damn it!

Still, even if he couldn’t do anything about his scrawny body, he could at least try to be a gentleman and not stare at Ariane’s not-scrawny one. He could also try hard not to hope that her towel slipped off before she made it to Felicia’s room.

He almost succeeded.

As the closing door hid her from sight, he glanced into the bathroom, and frowned at the floor. “What the...?” He bent over and looked at a strange, ring-shaped puddle. The tiling was bone-dry in the centre. He couldn’t imagine how it could have formed.