He would die.
He knew he would, but at least Ash would live, and Uncle Greg would be saved with him. If the lake spirit who wished to be called Bob kept people every so often, he wouldn’t keep those two. Not Ash, who could lead and organize fellow environmentalists, and who shone bright with potential. And not Greg, who wasn’t only Cooper’s kin, but who would be there for Ash later, mentor him, and help him grieve.
“I’m off, Grandma,” he said, hugging her. “Thank you for everything.” Then he turned to his father. “Dad.” They did one of those upper-body man-hugs, and Nikko patted his shoulder.
“Keep faith, son. Don’t give up. No matter what you do, don’t yield. He wants you alone and without us to draw power from, and he wants you without the back-up of your sword. But keep faith anyway. You’re entrusting yourself to the Great Spirit as you go and present yourself.” Then, to his surprise, his father began to sing an old, almost hypnotic lullaby and as he did so, he picked up a crayon one of the kids had left behind, and wrote in the margins of a coloring book:
As long as Ash is still alive, he’s got your back. And you’re never alone. The earth supports the lake, after all. He didn’t say you can’t draw on all that.
Their eyes met, and Cooper’s disposition brightened. This didn’t have to be a final sacrifice after all. And as long as they all kept humming like Feather had yesterday, their minds would be so occupied, Bob would have a hard time reading Cooper’s thoughts again. The singsong would still Cooper’s mind, keeping his plan secure under the surface.
COOPER HAD LEFT the warmth of human company far behind as he surveyed the icy bay stretch to the darker, deeper lake waters.
He could walk on the ice, yes he could. Yes, he would. The resolve to keep walking was the only thought he allowed into his mind as he kept humming that old lullaby over and over again.
He stepped out, snow crunching under his sturdy boots. This time, his quilted down parka kept the biting wind off his skin. Slowly, carefully, Cooper picked his way across the frozen pebbles of the beach.
The pebbles were earth. They touched sand and soil, which was likewise earth. Those, in turn, touched the strata of mudstone and of the Devonian shale that lay in the deeply buried, slightly tilted rock layers of the lake basin underground. And all those stacked-up strata of age-hardened stone created pressure within the earth, and that pressure created heat, and Cooper could feel that heat.
The sensation was as unexpected as it was welcome.
His earth-sense helped him pick it out and latch onto it and travel even deeper, to the other, central heat source that was the heart of the planet. He had never gone that deep before, but now as he stood at the boundary of frozen pebbles and shoreline ice, his mind discerned the edge of the ancient Canadian shield, a rock formation unchanged since before life as we know it came to being.
Under all that ancient rock, deep within the mantle, the Mohorovicic discontinuity painted a bright, searing boundary in his mind. When he had realized he had an earth talent, he had hit the geology books in his spare time just so he knew what was under his feet. He had read about “the Moho” back then, but had never expected he’d be able to feel it.
Except he sure felt it it now. The feature that took part in shifting the continents had worked hard under the feet of oblivious humans long since before mankind began. Down there, within the depth of the earth, the the searing heat of the first discernible molten magma seeped through the hot – yet still solid – rock, and this heat now warmed his aura as well as the core of his being.
Suddenly, the wind was no longer biting so hard.
“I’m walking, just walking,” he hummed to himself in that singsong old melody, secretly thrilled at the way the swirling sphere of energy in the pit of his belly began to grow and glow. “I’m walking, just walking.”
Cooper didn’t know whether he’d lose that new connection to the heat of the earth as he stepped onto the ice.
He didn’t.
He kept putting one foot before the other, nice and slow, humming his little song, until the swimming hole appeared ten feet ahead.
Cooper didn’t slow down. “I’m walking, just walking.”
He was still walking. Walking on water, and terrified, yes, but also buoyed by the heat he felt. That connection was, inexplicably, still there. “Thank you thank you thank you,” he changed up his chant the slightest bit. “Thank you thank you thank you.”
He stripped his parka and set it down next to Ash’s towel and his paltry pile of clothes.
“Thank you thank you thank you, walking walking walking.”
No thoughts allowed.
No fear allowed.
Just gratitude for that heat, for the grounded feeling he had never felt before.
One item after another, he stripped to nakedness and exposed his flesh to the icy wind. He knew it was icy, but he didn’t seem to mind, and... and the ice under his feet no longer burned him with its frigid crystals.
No, now he burned it, now he was standing in a puddle of water that lapped warm against his toes.
His ankles.
His shins.
“Thank you thank you thank you,” he hummed, still not knowing what would become of him and of Ash, and of Greg, but things seemed out of his hands now.
He took an action by walking out here, and something – someone – had responded to his need. His action was, for the moment, suspended as he stood in the melting ice, chanting his thanks, focused with every erg of his energy on the connection between his own center and the heat within the mantle under his feet.
The ice cracked.
A loud, sharp report of the failed sheet reverberated through his whole body.
The he piked through a smooth-bore hole of his own making, one that he somehow melted, as he plunged into the icy depths below.
[: Thank you thank you thank you. Walking walking walking. :] Cooper’s chant continued in his mind as he closed his mouth against what he thought would be a rush of water – but there was none.
He floated within an insulated bubble of water vapor.
Somewhere deep inside his mind, he took note of it. He acquired the data for a later time, when he would, hopefully, have the privilege to explore the concept further. For now, he just kept up his little singsong chant as he floated in the twilight under the ice, delving deeper into the airless realm of the spirit of Lake Superior.
[: Thank you thank you thank you. Walking walking walking. Bob is surely waiting, Ash my love I’m coming. Thank you thank you thank you - :]
A swift, huge fish with a back covered in protective plates of a primordial animal appeared out of nowhere. [: Stop it! Stop what you’re doing right now. :]
The ice above them split with another crack, which Cooper heard in that echoey, strange way he knew from movies with underwater footage.
He looked up.
Bubbles of hot vapor broke from his personal protective shell and rushed up with alarming speed, hot and active and violent in their attack against the ice sheet that covered the bay.
He looked at the fish that spoke to him. [: Bob the fish is grumpy, bubbles make it jumpy. Thank you thank you thank you, Ash my love I’m coming. :] Talking in rhymes and still making sense was hard, and Cooper had never been a man given to poetry.
Yet now, he was afraid to stop. If he stopped the chant that ran in his mind, his fear of water would take over.
If fear took over, he’d get distracted.
If he got distracted, he’d lose his connection and drown. Freeze. Perish, and with him, Ash would perish as well.
Only too late did Cooper realize that his concentration had already slipped. His catastrophic thinking had stopped the chant in his mind.
The bubble cooled off, and although he could still take shallow little breaths, the water came close to touching him. He felt the immense thermal mass of the lake now and the speed at which it stole the heat that sustained him.
[: That’s more like it, :] Bob said. [:
I said to come alone, and you brought an unwelcome interloper into my realm. SHE helped you! :]
Fear bolted through Cooper now, fear and a cold so gripping, what remained of his breath was ripped away. He had never been in cold water, and the shock of it was debilitating.
And then it happened, the thing he had always dreaded the most.
The fight to hold onto the air in his lungs. The losing battle, the painful sear of icy water in his nose, his ears, his mouth as he thrashed and tried to swim up to the crack in the ice.
[: You shall not escape, you who made the Old One break my ice! :]
[: Help me help me help me, :] Cooper resumed his chant desperately.
Then darkness claimed him.
ASH KNEW HE was in a bad place even though he couldn’t do a thing about it. He was aware of the sword’s spirit world for a while, but that got washed away as though by a swift current, and then he knew that the voice in his head was Bob, and the other voice in his head was Cooper.
[: Don’t come! Stay on the land where you’re safe! :] His mental shout was desperate even to himself. He no longer felt anything. The bone-numbing cold froze his synapses to a point of utter numbness, and he couldn’t read the lake water the way he would’ve read the Allegheny River.
He thought of Old Man Allegheny with nostalgic fondness. He thought of his gratitude every time Ash and his cohorts managed to clean up a pollution source or pull old junk out of the spring flood mud. He sent a quiet mental thanks for the river’s steadfast company. He gave his good-byes.
[: Don’t give up yet. Your hour is not nigh. :] The voice in his head wasn’t Bob, and it sure wasn’t Cooper or Greg. It’s energy had spunk despite its gravelly tone, accented as though its owner had landed part in a historical movie. Who talked like that anyway?
Then Ash heard a chuckle in the same voice, and he knew. [: But you’re not even near me. You belong to a totally different watershed! :] He talked to the Old Man Allegheny as though an old uncle got his new phone apps all messed up.
[: All water is connected somehow. And you and I have talked so often, reaching out to you is easier than finding a pen and a sheet of paper. :]
[: Old Man Allegheny? :] Ash’s heart filled with hope even as he hung here in the water column, motionless and stiff with cold like a lizard.
[: Size does not equate age, :] Allegheny said. [: I’m just a wee lad compared to many others. I’m barely adult in river years! And I’ll see what I can do to help. :]
[: Never mind me. Help Cooper if you can. He can’t swim. :]
Allegheny gave an exasperated sigh. [: I can’t. He’s surrounded by the Old One. She’ll take care of him. But I could challenge Bob to a duel. Should I? Swords or pistols, which do you think would be better? :]
Ash quietly decided that all bodies of water were crazy. One demanded a blood sacrifice and then failed to honor the deal. The other talked as though dueling was as common as flaming someone on FaceBook.
[: I heard that. Just so you know. :] Allegheny put on a fake, injured voice which failed to discuss the glee that something exciting was going on. [: Ash, get ready! Your lover-boy is doing Bob some damage! :]
A loud, resounding crack propagated through the layers of Lake Superior’s depth, informing all its currents and eddies that the bay ice had been broken. Broken, and Bob couldn’t have done a thing to prevent it.
Ash wished he could crane his neck, but his muscles were stiff and uncooperative, and in the end he just rolled his eyes up.
A line of light sifted through the crack in the sheet of ice overhead.
He felt the heat that grew from the direction of the shore, and thought that someone from camp must’ve decided to defy the capricious Bob and come and help them anyway.
Except it wasn’t just someone. The energy discharge was strong and familiar, and it had Cooper Anneveinen written all over it.
Then... nothing.
And a scream of pain. [: Help me help me help me! :]
Ash reached out toward Allegheny. Not an old man, then, but a rowdy young guy. He’d be an avocado-toast eating millenial now, probably.
[: Hey. Some of my best friends and protectors are millenials. :] That fake hurt voice was back again, and so was the laughter. [: What do you need, Healer of Rivers? :]
Ash didn’t answer. He only reached out with his mind, and took what he needed from his steadfast and watery friend.
The influx of energy was like tapping into a node, but whiter and greener at the same time.
The prickles of returning circulation into his limbs were excruciating. [: It’s just pain, :] he whispered to himself, to Greg, and to Allegheny. Then he worked through it, focused on his energy use.
Once again, Ash could move.
CHAPTER 9
JARED
Dread and excitement warred within Jared as he paced up and down the age-darkened planks of the porch. “It’s Cooper. Cooper! And something else, and they’re at it. They’re fighting!”
He stood wide-legged and strong, and closed his eyes. The way the landscape before him kept shifting from an underwater coolness to a hot desert and back again was disorienting. Jared didn’t know what was real anymore. He didn’t know whether “real” existed here within the blade anyway, he only knew that his favorite cousin and best friend was in some kind of trouble, and that Ash – yes, his partner’s name was Ash, of course, how could he ever forget – was out there too, still, yet not quite lifeless.
“You do what you need to do,” Ameru-san said quietly in English. “Don’t mind me.” The he heard her whisper something in Japanese, and he heard an old man answer. Then a younger man, and then another and another but Jared didn’t crack his eyelids out of curiosity.
No, he was resolved to focus on Cooper and his struggle against the force that had intruded all the way into the blade’s spirit world.
Cooper and Ash were fighting it, or fighting something of great power, anyway, and who would he be if he didn’t help? “The enemy of my friend is my enemy,” Jared declared aloud as he released his extra air out and let his mind settle into his center.
And then he saw it, the lines of power that ebbed and flowed like a laser light show at a rock concert. The cold, icy blue fought the searing orange heat. The red of cooling lava – where did that come from? Were they fighting another node? Yet that red glow had no malevolence behind it. Behind her, because whatever produced the warmth that had seemed to thaw the icy depths was decidedly female. And old.
Was the spirit world full of old women?
[: Yes. The young women have not died yet, and those that have had never developed their powers enough to cross the river. :]
Jared didn’t know who said that, only that her accent shifted from the tonalities that were familiar to strange, exotic tongues he had never encountered before, and probably never would. And she was old – so old, she seemed as aged as the pre-Cambrian Canadian Shield deep underground (and how did he know that?).
She laughed. [: I’m even older. But be a good man now and open your eyes. :]
Jared did.
The landscape before him was lush with green rolling hills and copses of trees, one that neatly stopped where the garden of the house began. The climate was temperate, such as the one he knew, although the tree species were not familiar to him. [: My children like apples and olives and figs, :] She said. [: And flowers. :]
Ameru-san gasped next to him. Jared turn to her, then stumbled back in surprise. Behind her stood a throng of people. They were all men, and all but one seemed to be Japanese. Their clothes varied in style and complexity. Some were young, others stooped with age.
But Ameru-san paid them no heed, as though their presence was a natural thing. She stared at the landscape beyond the garden’s boundary. Then she pointed at the tree. “Look, Jared. Its blooming!”
And it was. Their cherry tree, the one which had seemed but a piece of dead wood as a result of Cooper’s take-over, was now covered in blush-pink cloud of green-accent
ed buds that had not yet fully opened.
The house was surrounded by daffodils and clumps of crocus, and a jumble of wild flowers lent color to the tall grass farther away. He’d need to mow.
[: Don’t you dare, :] She said. Then She laughed. [: Silly modern children. You don’t even know to enjoy the flowers while you can. :]
“Where did all these people come from?” Jared said, turning to Ameru-san.
She gave him a pitying look. “We were always here. We all make up the sword’s spirit. But there’s been a power surge from the outside. It seems to have fractured us into who we used to be back when we were the sword’s Wielders.” She didn’t sound entirely happy about that.
Jared didn’t know how they would fit, but he didn’t care. First thing first.
He reached out and tested the connection between him and Cooper.
It was there – except Cooper was drowning.
ASH AND JARED
Ash drew more power from Allegheny, who remained a steady and calm presence in the back of his mind. After a moment’s hesitation, he drew more than just power, too.
He drew knowledge, refreshing in his own mind a little factoid that the spirit of the Allegheny River reminded him he had already sort of known. [: Just do it. Just pretend the fins are there, and give it all a little boost. :]
Ash had seen his young, eighteen-year old cousin do as much in the Vltava River in Prague last fall. He had been the teacher – officially, at least – but she had ended up teaching him as much as he had taught her and the rest of his Czech water-walker kin combined. Those were his mother’s people, and they had welcomed his resurgence with open arms. Some of their knowledge had been lost, true, and he did as they asked, and helped them restore it. By the same token, however, what they had taken for granted was a natural talent to the whole lot of them.
They embraced him even though he spoke no Czech. And thank heavens for underwater telepathy.
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