The Waterstone (9 page)

Tad was puzzled. The Fishers lived on the shores of streams and ponds; the Hunters never stayed long in any one place; and the Diggers — at least so everyone said — lived in burrows in the ground. He’d never known that any of the Tribes lived high in the branches of the trees. “Which Tribe do you belong to?” Tad asked.

The green woman shook her head slowly and gave him a pitying look. Tad felt at once that he’d said something irreparably stupid. “My kind came long before the Tribes,” she said. “I am a Dryad.”

“A Dryad?” Birdie repeated blankly.

The green woman’s voice sharpened. “Yes,” she snapped. “A Dryad.
Dry-ad.
A Tree Witch.”

The woman’s name, the children learned, was Treeglyn. She also told them the names of the squirrels, Flick-tail and Scooter, and of her tree, the giant oak, a long complicated word filled with bird whistles and wind sounds. Birdie gaped at her.

“Trees have
names
?” she asked. She sounded as if she didn’t believe it. “Real names?”

“Of course they have real names,” Treeglyn squawked irritably. Her normal speaking voice, Tad thought, sounded like an outraged crow. “What else would a tree have? You can’t just call them all
Tree
, can you, as if one were just the same as another? How would you like it if people just called you
Girl
or
Boy
?”

Birdie shook her head. “I wouldn’t,” she said.

“A tree learns its name on the day it first opens its leaves to the wind,” Treeglyn explained. Her crow voice dropped lower and softened; her words took on a rhythm as if she were reciting a familiar poem. “Forever after when the wind rustles its leaves and branches, the tree repeats its name. The forest is full of the names of trees. Some names are so old that your great-great-grandfather must have heard them spoken. Some are so new that they were heard for the first time just yesterday.”

Birdie’s eyes were round. “Our willow must have a name, Tad,” she whispered.

“The old willow by the northernmost pond?” Treeglyn demanded. “Of course.” She spoke another word in the strange windlike language, a name with quick little lilts in it that reminded Tad of the thin green points of willow leaves. The wind words were oddly familiar somehow, as if he had heard them sometime long ago, perhaps when he was a baby. He felt as if any minute he would begin to understand them.

“Lawillawissowellowellomore.”

“I wish I had a tree name,” Birdie said wistfully.

“You do,” Treeglyn said. “Redbird.
Roossoollaweralliss.
” It sounded like flute notes and whispers. “You have a feel for trees, you do, girl. Now and again the New People are born with a touch of green blood.”

“Roossoo . . .,” said Birdie.

“The old willow,” Treeglyn said at the same time. “Remember to give her my best wishes when you return home again. Is she doing well?”

“I don’t know,” Tad said. All their terrible troubles suddenly returned to him, like a great black flood. He ached to have Pondleweed back again. Pondleweed would have known what to do next, how to make everything right again. “If this is a Drying Time, like my father said —”

“Father said our tree could die,” Birdie said. “He said that the pond could vanish and the whole world turn to dust.”

Pippit gave a dismal croak. Treeglyn was silent for a moment.

“The forest is also drying,” she said finally. “The trees grow brown and the saplings are dying. The squirrels have brought stories, but I have failed to heed them. I have been a fool not to understand.”

“Understand?” Tad asked.

Treeglyn’s face for a moment looked old and tired, and her piercing blue eyes were dim.

Then she said, “The Nixies are awake.”

It was morning. Treeglyn had refused to explain more on the previous night, saying that it was too long a story to begin when they were all so tired. Instead she had made them a bed on the tree-house floor and left them alone in the deepening dusk.

Tad had thought that he would never be able to sleep, perched up in the air as he was with so much
nothing
underneath him, but instead, worn out by fear and grief, he had slept deep and dreamlessly. He would have slept even more if he had not been wakened by Treeglyn, shrieking out the window at the squirrels.

Treeglyn laid down her spoon — they were having acorn porridge for breakfast — and ran her fingers through her bird’s-nest hair, making its tangles stand even more on end.

“So you’ve never heard of the Nixies?” she said.

“We know a little about the Witches,” Tad said tentatively. “In the Very Beginning, before the coming of the Tribes, there were Witches. The Old Folk.”

Every Fisher child was taught how Great Rune had shaped the world, scooping out the ponds and streams with his giant Digging Stick and filling them with water from his starry river in the sky. He had made all the people and animals, too, putting them together from pond mud and then breathing on them with his warm green breath to make them come alive. He had made the Witches first, and then the animals, and finally the Tribes. But the Witches had vanished long ago — though every once in a while, Pondleweed said, if you were very lucky, you might come upon one still, and if you were luckier yet, they might give you a magic gift, like a spider-web tunic that made you invisible or mouse-fur boots that let you cross a whole forest in a single stride. But you should never eat the Witches’ food or enter their houses, because when you came out again, it could be hundreds of years later and all your family and friends would be gone. . . .

Tad looked up guiltily.

“Father used to tell us a story about the Witches,” Birdie was saying. “They lived in the skunk-cabbage patch and gave people wishes.”

Treeglyn glared at her so fiercely that Pippit gave a nervous croak. Tad hastily pretended that his mouth was full of porridge.

“Skunk-cabbage patch indeed,” Treeglyn said huffily.

“It was just a story,” Birdie said.

“Malignant misrepresentation,” Treeglyn snapped. She rapped her porridge spoon sharply on the table. “There were three races of Witches,” she continued, very slowly and deliberately as if speaking, Tad thought, to persons who were very stupid. “The Dryads, the Witches of the Trees. The Kobolds, the Witches of the Mountains. And the Nixies, the Witches of the Waters. Does this sound familiar?”

“I don’t think so,” Tad said uncomfortably. “Father just said Witches.”

Treeglyn sighed. Her shoulders slumped, and her wild hair seemed to wilt.

“No, of course not,” she muttered, almost to herself. “It’s only to be expected. It was so long ago. I forget how old I am.”

“How old are you?” asked Birdie.

Tad nudged her. It was a question Pondleweed said they were never supposed to ask. At least not of olders. But Treeglyn didn’t seem to mind.

“So old,” she said. “I remember the forest that grew here before this one, and the forest before that. I remember the sprouting of the first trees. I was here when the world was young, when the mountains were building, when the singing in the water was joyful and sweet as the song of new birds.”

She gazed out the little window for a moment, looking over the children’s heads. Her eyes sparkled with tears, and the room was suddenly swept with a smell of wet leaves and rain. Then, in her tree voice — a voice as gentle as spring wind in the branches — she began to speak.

“This is how it all began,” Treeglyn said. “Long ago in the Very Beginning, so the story goes, Great Rune, the Sun-and-Rain God, was lonesome, so he decided to make a world. From the pouch he carried on his starry belt, he took a handful of magic Stones. He spread the Stones out on his great green hand and saw that he held the Earthstones. The Earthstones were brown crystals striped with red and black, and from within them came the sound of rumbling earthquakes and crackling flames. When Great Rune threw them in the air, they grew larger and larger and they crashed and smashed and fused themselves together. They formed the round ball of the Earth itself, with all its mountains and valleys and rocks of the ground.”

Birdie slipped off her chair to lie on her stomach on the floor, webbed feet waving in the air, gazing up at Treeglyn. Tad pushed his plate aside and leaned forward, resting his chin on his hands.

“Then,” Treeglyn continued, “Great Rune drew out the Waterstones. These were pure white crystals threaded with veins of silver, and when you held them to your ear, you could hear the sound of running water. When Great Rune threw them in the air, they burst apart in a great spray of white-and-silver fragments and formed all the lakes and rivers, the streams and brooks, the ponds and waterfalls.

“And finally from his pouch, Great Rune took out the Lifestones. These crystals were as green as grass, and from within them came the sound of rustling leaves. Great Rune crumbled the Lifestones to powder in his green hands and scattered the powder all over the new Earth. And everywhere that powder fell, living things were born. The animals came into being, and the plants grew up: the trees and the bushes, the thickets and the grasses, the wildflowers and the climbing vines.

“But there were three Stones left over.”

Treeglyn paused and Tad held his breath. Suddenly he knew somehow that this story was very important.

“What happened to the three?” he whispered.

“Great Rune gave them to the First Peoples,” Treeglyn said. “The Earthstone he gave to the Kobolds, the Gray Men, the Witches of the Mountains, that the rock of the Earth would stand ever firm beneath us. The Lifestone he gave to the Dryads, the Witches of the Trees, that the world would grow green and fruitful. And the Waterstone he gave to the silver-eyed Nixies, that the lakes and streams would fill to brimming and the rains would fall. And the Witches promised that they would guard the Stones faithfully and use them well.”

“And the ponds,” added Birdie anxiously. “The Waterstone would keep the ponds full too.”

“And the ponds,” agreed Treeglyn.

Her voice grew deeper and darker. Tad felt a shadow fall over the story, like the shadow cast by a great fish swimming above him in bright water.

“All was well for many hundreds of sun turns. The trees grew tall under the hands of the Dryads; the animals ate well and prospered. The New People, the people of the three Tribes, appeared and built dwellings and raised families. For a time all flourished and lived together in peace. Then slowly, slowly, over the long centuries the Witches grew old and tired. The Kobolds, one by one, fell into a doze in the depths of their mountains; the Dryads sank into sleep in the hearts of their great trees. Finally only the Nixies remained, and they, left too long to themselves, forgot their promise. They grew greedy. Why, they asked, should they share their water? And they began to use the powers of the Waterstone to capture all the world’s water for themselves. The ponds and streams and rivers emptied; the forests and meadows withered and turned brown; the Earth grew burned and dusty; and the people began to die of thirst.”

Tad sat up straighter.

“So then what happened?” Birdie asked. “Where were you? What did you do? Couldn’t you take the Stone away from them?”

Treeglyn shook her head.

“When a Stone is in its proper place,” she said, “only its proper keepers may touch it. There’s a sort of protection mechanism, to keep the Stones from being stolen. And besides” — a defensive note crept into her voice —“I was asleep. Everything was going so well. It seemed a good time to catch a bit of a nap —”

A chittering of squirrels sounded outside. Treeglyn raised her voice.

“Everybody makes mistakes!”
she shouted.

She turned back to Tad and Birdie.

“Even Witches have their human side,” she said. Her tone of voice indicated that a human side was a great cross to bear. “Which is why Great Rune sent the Sagamore.”

Tad’s heart gave a lurch. “The Sagamore?”

“The Sagamore is a sort of balance wheel,” Treeglyn said. “When things get out of joint, when
some
Witches cease to do their duty” — she gave an outraged sniff —“the Sagamore has the power to set things right. He or she — or it, for that matter — can confiscate the Stones. Take them from the wrongdoers and set them to do their proper work again. And the Witches can’t do a thing about it. They can’t harm him (or her or it). Not directly, anyway.”

“Which is it?” asked Birdie. “What do you mean, ‘him or her or it’? What kind of
it
? Doesn’t it have to be one or the other?”

“It doesn’t,” Treeglyn said sharply. “Because it’s neither. The Sagamore is a Mind. It passes from bearer to bearer, always watching, waiting to be needed. Many have carried it, some knowing, some not.”

She drew a deep breath. “It’s not called out by everyday troubles, you understand. You’re expected to deal with
those
on your own.” She gave the children an accusing look, and Tad tried to look apologetic, even though he didn’t think he’d done anything wrong. “The Sagamore only wakes when the peril is great, when the old powers meet and battle, when” — her voice dropped to a portentous whisper —“when all is nearly lost.”

“You mean the Mind just crawls into your head?” Birdie asked, horrified. “Like a bloodworm? It could be there inside you and you wouldn’t even feel it?”