The Waterstone (2 page)

He turned and looked toward the sound of Birdie’s voice. At first he saw only shifting shadows of brown and green. “Find the right place and stay still,” Pondleweed always said, “and most things will pass you by, seeing no more than a bit of twig and leaf.” The trick, of course, was figuring out which place was the right place and then remembering not to wiggle once you were in it. Birdie was better at it than Tad was. She was sitting cross-legged at the foot of a towering clump of dandelions, her small brown face and misty greenish-brown hair dappled with flickering stripes of shade and sun. The bright yellow dandelion blossoms — wide and flat as furry umbrellas — bobbed gently in the breeze high above her head. Her fringed green tunic — belted with braided linenleaf and stitched around the collar with tiny yellow seeds — was just the color of the dandelion stems.

She probably saw and heard everything
, Tad thought. The missed target, the sunken spear, the kicking, the yammering about weasel droppings, that stupid bit with the pebble. He must have looked like a puddleflapping idiot. The pointed tips of his ears turned raspberry with embarrassment. He hated himself. He hated everything. He wished he’d been born a frog.

He scowled furiously at Birdie.

“Were you spying on me?” he demanded.

Birdie scowled right back.
Fisher girls weren’t supposed to scowl like that
, Tad thought. Fisher girls were supposed to be serene and even-tempered and good at handicrafts. At least that was what Pondleweed said. Birdie was always being scolded about her temper and sent to sit on a rock in the garden until her thoughts were as peaceful as a still pool.

“I was
not
spying,” Birdie said in an unpeaceful, offended sort of voice. “I don’t
spy.
” She pointed to a tangled heap of woven pea vines beside her in the grass. “I was mending the fishtrap net.”

She bit her lip, studying Tad’s red face.

“Spear throwing just takes practice,” she said. “You have to be patient. It’s like Father says: ‘Berries don’t ripen overnight.’”

So she
was
watching
, Tad thought. It was nice of Birdie to try to be comforting. But he just wasn’t in the mood right now to hear himself compared to a green berry. He was sick of being a green berry. He wanted to be brave and powerful and admired, like the heroes and warriors in Pondleweed’s stories. Like Bog the Weaselkiller who wore a collar of gold nuggets and weasel claws and carried a spear made of blood-red agate that never missed a foe. Or like Frostwort the Winterborn who fought the White Fox of Far Mountain with nothing but a slingshot and a magic silver pebble.

“I’ll be right back,” he told Birdie gruffly. “I have to get my spear.”

He turned and ran toward the pond, darting out along a half-submerged log at the water’s edge. He hesitated for a moment, judging just where his spear had fallen in. Then, in one swift fluid motion, he dived. The clear green water of the pond closed over his head.

Tad was as at home in the water as a fish. Like all Fisher children, he had learned to swim even before he had learned to walk, first splashing in the shallows, then paddling in the deeper water with a floatstick to hang on to, and finally gliding smoothly through the deeps, sleek and slippery as a young otter or a slim brown minner. His green-brown hair flattened slickly to his head, and flaps of skin sealed his nostrils shut to keep the water from going up his nose. He kicked expertly, his wide brown feet with their long webbed toes sweeping strongly through the cool water. He turned a somersault and then began to paddle slowly back and forth, his eyes searching the pond bottom for the spear.

The underwater world gleamed. Ribbons of sunlight wove back and forth across the sandy bottom, tangling themselves together, then untangling themselves and swiftly sliding away again. Silky strands of eelweed brushed Tad’s legs. A fat spotted rock bass — twice as long as Tad himself — poked a curious nose out from a cluster of water lily stems and goggled foolishly up at him. Its big bulging eyes were slightly crossed. It opened and closed its mouth twice, blew a bubble, and slowly withdrew, wiggling backward with a furl of fins and tail. Tad puffed his cheeks and blew a bubble back. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of red and black. It was the spear, resting neatly on a bed of mud and pebbles, looking somehow pleased with itself, as if it had never made a mistake in its life. He scowled at the spear resentfully and began to swim toward it, stretching out a hand to pick it up.

Then — suddenly — something about the pond felt different. Wrong.

At first it was only a nervous ripple and a creepy feeling between his shoulder blades. Then a thump of alarm. Tad twisted in the water, looking anxiously about him. Something was
wrong.
It was as if something malevolent — a watersnake? — had suddenly turned its head and looked directly at him. Watching with angry little eyes. But where was it? No danger was in sight, but the peaceful and familiar pond felt hostile. The stems and leaves of the water plants were frightening forests; the rocks, dark lairs of lurking terrors. His skin prickled, his heart began to pound, and the hair stood up on the back of his neck.

Watching.

There were strange toadstools and funguses deep in the forest that sometimes shone at night with an eerie green light, standing out like ghostly fires from their dark surroundings. Glowmolds, Pondleweed called them. Tad, hanging fearfully in the water, felt just like that — like a glowmold, helplessly illuminated, caught in a puddle of light with no place to hide. He felt more and more frightened. Something was watching him. He could feel it. He turned his head desperately from side to side, but nothing was there. Nothing he could see.

Are you the One?

The voice, cool and clear as spring water, echoed inside his head. It was an inhuman, somehow empty voice, the sort of voice that the wind or the rain might have if it could speak. It seemed to come from no direction and from all directions at once. At first it reminded Tad of bell music and chimes; then it grew colder and harder until it sounded like breaking icicles or like frozen pebbles dropped on a silver plate.

Are you the One? Is it you?

Whoever it was meant him no good, Tad was sure of that. He wanted to run and hide, but there was nowhere to go, no way he could tear himself free. A confusing swirl of images filled his brain, like pictures from half-forgotten dreams: a strange silver-eyed face framed in a cloud of pale green hair; a blue-lit chamber paved with pearls and patterned tiles; then —
where?
— a blaze of flaming torches and a great stone mountain whose cliffs mysteriously moved and shifted; and over all a thundering tide of dark water through which ran the sound of voices, many voices, singing some high sweet song.

What’s happening?
he thought frantically.
Who are you?
And the voice, like an icy silver dagger, answered.

Do you not remember? I am Azabel.

Tad was gasping and choking, back on dry land again, lying facedown at the edge of the pond. Everything — mouth, nose, eyes, ears, lungs — was full of water. He felt like a sodden sponge. He coughed convulsively. His stomach heaved and he spat out a mouthful of pond water.

When he rolled over, he saw that Birdie was crouched over him, her face furrowed with concern. She was dripping wet. Her green-brown hair was plastered flat to her head and her tunic was dark with water. There were puddles around her feet.

“What happened?” Tad croaked.

“You didn’t come up,” Birdie said. She was breathing in hard gulps as if she had been running. “You didn’t come up and then all the frogs started yelling their warning noises. So I jumped in to see what was wrong and you were just floating there under the water with your eyes wide open.” She sniffed loudly and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “You looked awful. I was scared. I thought you were dead.”

“There was something in the pond,” Tad said. He sat all the way up. Then he bent over and put his head down on his knees. He felt sick and dizzy. “Did you get my spear?”

“No,”
Birdie said. “I wasn’t thinking about your
spear
.” She stopped sounding upset and began sounding irritated. “If
you
found somebody drowning, would
you
go paddling off to pick things up off the pond bottom? Your stupid spear’s still down there. I’ll go get it in a minute.”

“No!”
Tad said. “Don’t go in there, Birdie!” Even though the late afternoon sun was warm, he was shivering. He wrapped his arms tightly around his knees. Birdie looked at him in surprise.

“There’s something . . . somebody . . . in the water. Something dangerous.” His teeth began to chatter. “Not like a pike or a watersnake. Something else. I could hear it — her — talking.”

“Underwater?” Birdie said. She looked skeptical. “You can’t talk underwater. The words would all sound like this.” She made a gargling sound deep in her throat. “You couldn’t have heard talking.”

Behind her a bullfrog gave a disbelieving
Glub!

“Well, I did!” Tad said loudly. “Move over, Birdie. You’re dripping on me.”

Birdie took a grudging step backward.

“So what did it say?” she demanded.

“She told me her name,” Tad said slowly. The cold silver voice echoed in his memory. “She said, ‘I am Azabel.’”

“‘Azabel,’” Birdie repeated. “Az-a-bel. It’s pretty, Tad. Like a name in one of Father’s fairy tales.”

Tad shook his head. The sick feeling was coming back. “This was real, Birdie.”
And it wasn’t like a fairy tale at all
, he thought. He hesitated, trying to explain. “It wasn’t what she
said
exactly. It was the way she said it. She’s . . .” He gave another shiver. “She’s nothing like us, Birdie. To her, we’re like beetlebugs or something. I could feel her mind inside my head. It felt . . .” He paused, groping for words. “
Dark.
And old, terribly old. And cold. Like black ice.”

And there was something else
, Tad thought.
She said something else. What was it?
The Remember hovered annoyingly just out of reach.

“Tad! Birdie!”

Pondleweed was running toward them. He was carrying a flat woven basket.
He must have been blackberry picking
, Tad thought. Sick as he was, he noticed that his father hadn’t found many berries.

“Has something happened? Are you all right?” Pondleweed dropped the basket and his hand went to the hilt of the stone-bladed knife that he wore strapped to his snakeskin belt. “Has something been here? A heronbird? A watersnake? A fox?”

Tad shook his head. He found to his dismay that his eyes were beginning to sting with tears. Pondleweed knelt down next to him and put an arm around his shoulders.

“What happened, son?”

“I dived after my spear,” Tad said, “and I heard something in the pond.” Falteringly he told his story: the search for the lost spear, the sudden terrifying feeling, the strange mind prying about inside his own, the cold hollow voice.
Azabel.

“When I went to look for him, he was just floating there like a dead fish,” Birdie said. She put her arms out to the sides, lolled her head, puffed out her cheeks, and opened her eyes very wide. She managed to look a lot like the foolish rock bass. Tad glared at her. “So I grabbed him and pulled him to shore and dragged him out.”

“Voices in the water?” Pondleweed ran a worried hand over Tad’s hair. “Are you sure you didn’t bump your head when you dived?”

“Tad was drowning, wasn’t he?” asked Birdie. “If I hadn’t been here, Tad would have drowned, wouldn’t he?”

“Thank Great Rune that you were here watching,” Pondleweed said solemnly.

Birdie raised her right hand and drew a circle in the air in front of her face. That was Great Rune’s sign; Tad had taught it to Birdie himself. He had learned it from their mother, who had died of winterfever when Tad was three and Birdie just a baby. The sign was supposed to keep you safe from danger, though Pondleweed always said it was best to dive in a hidey-hole first and make signs later.

Birdie doesn’t have to sound so puddleflapping pleased with herself
, Tad thought.
What about me? I was the one who was in danger, not Birdie. I was the one Azabel spoke to.

And there was something else, too. She said something else. Something I ought to remember.
Memory flickered, like a trout beneath the lily pads, but then darted away again into darkness.

“Well,” Pondleweed said, “I don’t like the thought of strangers slinking about. You children sit here and dry off. I’m just going to go have a look.” Tad opened his mouth to protest, but Pondleweed shook his head at him reassuringly. “There’s probably nothing there now,” he said. “Look at the frogs — half asleep, the lot of them, the great green lazygullets. They’d all be bellowing if there were an intruder in the pond. But better to take precautions now than to patch up afterward, as my old grandda used to say. Where did you dive in, Tad?”

Tad told him, pointing, and Pondleweed strode briskly out along the broad moss-furred log. He stood silently for a moment, frowning and studying the surface of the water. Then he dived. His body cut the water so cleanly that there was barely a splash. Tad and Birdie, huddled together on the shore, stared at the quivering ripples where he had disappeared. Long minutes passed. Then, in a fountain of spray, he reappeared, swam in two smooth strokes to the log, and climbed out of the water. In one hand, water dripping from its braided grass tassels, he held Tad’s spear.