by Jeff Wheeler
“We don’t have time for that now!” Yancy ran down to the water.
“Ivy,” Yancy called, her tight voice quavering. “Collect your things.”
Dripping, Ivy ran into the cottage. Yancy called, “Bring your cloak!”
Yancy and Julian gathered food, blankets, and magical supplies. They packed together. In the hollow space at the stern of the boat, they wedged a pot that held Yancy’s old friend, a talking bass, who was in touch with the lake’s spirit and could sometimes offer arcane predictions. Yancy wrapped oilskins around her stitched ledgers of charts and observations. To the prow, Julian tethered the water-dragon kite whose tail fluttered with all the colors of the lake. Julian and Ivy had built the dragon recently on her seventh birthday, and Yancy had imbued it with the magic of the lake. Hung with charms, a lantern firing its belly, the box kite watched with anxious, excited eyes and uttered an inquisitive warble.
As Yancy and Julian shoved the boat down the well-worn groove through sand and stones, the cottage door slammed and Ivy bounded down, black hair swaying above skinny shoulders. Her paint set peeped from her waterproof carryall.
Yancy and Ivy settled in the boat. Under the clouded sky, dark waves rushed higher with silvery rims. Julian stood in the shallows, holding the bow.
“Get in,” Yancy told him tersely. “You can’t do any good here. Come row while Ivy and I cast spells.”
Julian shoved the boat hard. “Get on with it! Be quick!”
They shot past the dock. Yancy slowed them with the oars. “Julian!”
He turned his back and strode up the hill toward Damien.
“Julian!” she shouted. He didn’t flinch, but Ivy did, looking from one to the other. Yancy swallowed her sick feeling, clenched the oars, and rowed.
Wind stirred the silver-capped waves. Yancy rowed past vineyards, great houses perched on overlooks, small farms, and a series of narrow cottages. She pulled hard against wind and currents, skimming past an old creek mouth where Ivy loved to play.
“Where are we going, Mistress?”
“We need to see the lake dragon. When you were small, I used to bring you with me to consult our genius loci.”
The girl frowned. “Is there a whirlpool? And—a cliff?”
“That’s the bluff. It’s dangerous. The dragon has to let you pass.”
“I had a toy boat,” Ivy muttered.
“Yes. The dragon liked your boat. The next time we came, you kept demanding it back. I didn’t want to risk offending her, so I stopped coming for a while.” She’d had her hands full with life and Ivy. She’d still spoken with the dragon via ducks and singing fish, but she hadn’t wanted to leave the girl alone, or miss Julian’s rare visits. Her heart sank as she wondered how much her neglect had cost the lake.
“You owe me a boat,” Ivy joked.
Yancy tried to smile. “You’re old enough now, Ivy. I want you to be on good terms with the dragon. Pay attention and remember what I do.” A great weight pressed her heart: too little time. Would there be sanctuary with the dragon? Could she bear to cost Julian his life?
Up ahead, waves frothed around the spit, battling. As they neared the bluff, the boat tossed dangerously. The girl cried out. Yancy braced herself. “Be still and do what I say.”
“Yes, Mistress.” The girl’s voice shook, but her chin jutted with determination.
Bluff Point rose mountainous from the water, its densely wooded sides carved by a waterfall. At its base, a cove lay hidden by willow trees.
Yancy checked the kite, straightening struts, smoothing tail feathers, and polishing the scales stitched into shining wings. She tossed it up on the breath of a spell. The little dragon streamed out above, blues and greens and yellows and a flash of red, the only bright colors in the armor-plated sky.
The ruffled water absorbed speckling rain. Yancy raised her wands in signal patterns, drawing messages in water and air. She chanted and dropped stones in patterns over the side: striped red and silver; small knobs yellow as toffee; flat stones shaped like fish or cats, on whose gray slate she wrote messages to Keulocka. She sang and Ivy added her sweet, pure voice. As they drifted into the whirlpool’s outer orbit, Yancy scattered fish bones on the water and sealed her message with a kingfisher’s wing.
“Enter! Enter!” the bass burbled from her vat.
From the center of the whirlpool, a spout rose, bulging like blown glass. Huge eyes glowed like sun caught in the lake. Living fish formed neck scales, hopping up and down the watery ridge like flying fish. The lake dragon towered over the shore, the trees, the hills.
The dragon box soared, fluting a happy greeting. Then Yancy warbled through the kite’s broad, flapping lips, offering words of honor.
All stormy blues and translucent greens, the lake dragon bowed her wave-frilled head. Her burning eyes rotated above the boat.
Yancy said, “Great Keulocka, may I introduce my apprentice, Ivy?”
The dragon bobbed. “You have my blessing, little lake maid.”
“Please guard her with your life, Keulocka. She will honor you when I am gone.”
“My life and hers shall intertwine, and never the tail shall end.” The lake dragon flipped her tail, and a great wave rolled across the lake.
Imitating Yancy, Ivy stood up and offered her arms to the dragon. “Hold your breath,” Yancy warned.
Lowering, the spout churned fitfully, fish and water dropping in great gouts, while more siphoned up the center. Then Keulocka engulfed them. Ivy, cheeks bulging, stared at Yancy in wonder and terror as their rocking boat rose in a whirlwind of water. Yancy felt her soul lifting as the boat bobbed inside the dragon, riding up into the sky.
Water clear as glass encased them, flowing constantly. Ivy’s face turned blue. Yancy opened her mouth and the water poured in. Her “Yes!” resounded in watery echoes through every particle of the enveloping dragon.
The dragon set the boat down gently. Ivy plopped on the seat, gasping. Even while she coughed her breath back, wonder filled her eyes.
Yancy warned Keulocka about the prince. The dragon rumbled, then coiled down, sinking into the lake while the rain sang. The spout lashed erratically and settled lower, its column skewing like a pot gone awry on the wheel. With a flip, the dragon dived into the deeps.
Yancy took the oars. The rain poured down in sheets. Thunder crashed as they entered the cove. Beyond the willow curtain, the banks rose above their heads. When they reached an area where large boulders filled the inlet, they climbed out.
The dragon box perched on the prow, keeping an eye out while Yancy carried Ivy’s things into the cave, arranging clothes and food on dry shelves and unfolding the moss bed. When Ivy began to unload the spells, Yancy said sharply, “Leave those be.”
Ivy’s small body tensed. “Is Julian my father?”
Yancy said gruffly, “He brought you to me. Today he was ordered to take you away.”
“But he loves you!”
“He has to answer to his brother, the prince. That’s why I brought you here, to keep you safe.”
“Who am I? Please tell me, Mistress.”
Yancy said at last, “You’re the princess. The only one.”
The girl stared at her with wide, frightened eyes. “Won’t Julian get hurt—if he doesn’t do what the prince says?”
Yancy couldn’t answer her. She felt Ivy watching unhappily as she laid out the girl’s things, setting up the table with supper and Ivy’s paint set.
“We have to go back and rescue him!”
“No, child.”
Ivy darted back to the boat, snatched up her own spells, and ran into the cave. “He belongs with us! If you won’t help, I’ll do it myself!”
Yancy looked at her with pity. “You misunderstand me, child. Are you brave? Are you strong? Then wait for me here. Now that you’re safe with the lake dragon, I can go back for Julian.”
The girl gripped Yancy’s hands. “Please, Mistress, don’t go without me! Don’t go!”
“Don�
��t worry, child,” Yancy murmured, holding her. “Don’t worry, child.” She felt ill.
She knew two things: guarded by the lake dragon, Ivy was safer there than anywhere.
And she could not let Julian die.
* * *
The beach was trampled, the lawn torn. Yancy found a clean-lopped branch under the crab apple, a multitude of hoof and boot prints in the mud, but no Julian. She pounded her nearest neighbor’s door, but only got a glimpse of Lumie’s frightened face through the curtains.
Yancy ran to the lake, pushing the boat and jumping in. She rowed furiously through the rain, pausing to bail only when the water threatened the bass’s pot.
Rain ran down her hair into her eyes. Her arms shook with effort. She should never have left him. Of course Louis-Rey had come in force. His order to Julian had been about torment, not results. He might even have let her escape so he could watch where she took Ivy.
Yancy rowed toward the college, a hodgepodge of red brick and white marble, columns and bell towers, gables and arches, all bordered by lampposts of perpetual fire. Ahead, the water grew thick and black. Yancy wrinkled her nose at the smell of rotten fish and sewage.
The dragon box skipped from one gust to another, snapping and leaping. A nasty tailwind ripped out a mallard pinion. The kite chirped a warning: Keulocka’s angry. Take shelter, Mistress!
In her pot, the bass chanted in her deep, mournful voice, “The way is closed. No room for you. Turn back.”
They neared the bluff. White bobbed on the waves. As she sculled closer, Yancy found a mass of dead fish, their bellies flashing and disappearing, so thick they covered the water.
The bass groaned and knocked the steel sides of the pan. “Beware. Beware! Rising from the deeps, beware!” the fish called morosely.
The deeps rumbled. Darkness moved below, as though some large creature passed. Yancy rattled stones and chanted, then dropped them to either side, calling the dragon. The stones sank in a haze of bubbles that popped as though the lake were rising to a boil.
The boat pitched and yawed. “Waterspout!” the bass howled, then fell silent. The talking fish had gone belly up.
Water punched up in a foam-flecked spiral. The boat rocked. The dragon box shivered down its cord.
A midnight head lifted from the waves. The eyes held whirlpools—the cold, murky heart of every drowning, every flood. This was not Keulocka—and yet Keulocka had been suffocating for a long while. This behemoth glittered with dead fish and slime. From the snout protruded one skeletal arm. The monster roared with the stench of rotten eggs and bloated bodies.
“Parley!” Yancy fluted through the dragon box, guiding it with fingers not hooked to any string. It wove a shield with nimbleness and strength, dodging freezing spray in a bold blur of blues and reds, yellows and greens, frilling and snapping in the wind like a flag. Its paper eyes were lively as could be.
The monster boomed, “Murder! Trespass!” Lightning struck the water. The dragon box danced a defense, drawing it away.
“Where is Keulocka?” Yancy cried. The dragon box keened for its friend. Rage burst in her. Louis-Rey had done this. Louis-Rey had violated the laws of nature, kin, and kind.
Yancy cast out braided lakeweed skeins with words that made them glow. They cut the dark water into tiny, manageable segments, into which Yancy dripped purifying spells like medicine, bottled from the lake at its clearest, when she could see the bottom from the shore. She scattered feathers like peace and set walnut shells floating like tiny boats; offered green jelly and darning-needle wings to awaken life; sang songs to cleanse water and calm waves. With a rowan wand, she traced messages to Keulocka, reminders of sunsets and evening swims, of boat expeditions with Ivy and bird-watching walks with Ysabeau.
In a small bucket bobbed a tiny model of her boat, a cork whose sympathetic magic helped keep the craft afloat. Ivy’s toy, the one Keulocka admired, had actually been one of Yancy’s spells, given over to the child who loved it. Would Keulocka remember? Yancy plucked out the boat and set it on the lake.
The waves overturned the little craft at once.
Sleet speared through the rents in the dragon box, striking Yancy with poisoned cold. Patches of her skin felt dead. She strove to row from the maelstrom, but the oars wrenched until one splintered with a terrible crack. The dragon box streamed backward, then faltered, one strut dangling like a broken wing.
The boat circled faster, riding the edge of the whirlpool. Yancy clung to the dragon kite. She could feel its fright even as it pumped for purchase with those fragile wings. I’ll save you, Mistress! Amid the sleet, the kite dived in and pecked the monster with its flapping beak.
The whirlwind moaned. The waterspout slammed the boat with a terrible crack. As the vessel splintered, Yancy dived beneath the waves. Distorted by water, she heard her dragon box screaming in agony as the dark water ripped it to shreds.
Down. Yancy spiraled through darkness to cold silt. She let herself drift, releasing her breath a bubble at a time. High above, they popped, freeing whispered charms.
The deep seemed endless. The water tasted as bitter as a swamp. Her body drifted with the current, tangling in thick, scratching weeds. Faintly, she heard Ivy’s voice, calling for help. She struggled—choked—fought to discover up. Spots flashed before her eyes—Ivy’s face, bound up with the dragon and Louis-Rey.
Yancy broke the surface, splashing against a sky as watery as the lake. An eerie, greenish light soaked through the clouds. Yancy muttered a spell to make a starry raft, collecting the water’s reflected light to cling to. But so much magic had been drained that she sank right through the mushy, dead water.
At last she surfaced, coughing, in the little pool at the mouth of the cove. She dragged herself up the creek toward the cave. In the dark, she fumbled for the shore. “Ivy? Bring a light, would you?”
A flash of lightning illuminated the silent tableau: armed men standing back along the wall, with Julian in chains, Louis-Rey grinning down at her, and between them, Ivy.
Yancy shouted and staggered back. She slipped on the moss-slick boulders and splashed down into the shallow creek.
“Lights,” Louis-Rey called. Flints scraped steel. Torches blazed.
Ivy stood imprisoned in a fountain. It spiraled around her like a hoop, sparkling as though a flame chased inside. Her bangs and straight black hair blew outward. The spinning column cast speckles of blue, green, and rose over her fisher’s high-water pants, sandals, and short tunic. Her chest rose and fell slowly. At her feet lay a scattering of pebbles, torn lakeweed, and shattered feathers, as though she’d tried to fight.
Feeling sick, Yancy realized what had happened to Keulocka. The true heart of the lake had guarded Ivy faithfully, and still coiled around her protectively, compressed somehow into this tiny shape. As for the maelstrom, the lake had always held dark magics as well as light; Louis-Rey had already shifted the balance. Cut off from the lake, Keulocka had been unable to control the wild darkness that rose in her stead.
Yancy struggled to get her feet under her. Louis-Rey drew his sword. He beckoned to the men along the wall. Those not holding torches aimed bows; the other two brought Julian.
Scraped and bruised, clothes torn, Julian struggled in their arms. Ivy seemed unaware, shielded in her tiny water dragon like a suit of armor.
“How did you get here, Louis-Rey?” Yancy felt the creek bed with her toes, seeking something she could use. At least she stood in water.
Julian gasped out, “We rode back around the lake and walked down the tunnels from the college. He said you’d be detained.”
Yancy remembered the hole at the back of the cave. She’d never explored very far. The tunnels wound and twisted into blind alleys and corridors that narrowed to sudden drops. Only fables said they connected all Keulocka’s hills. “I thought that was a rumor.”
Lightning flashed. Louis-Rey’s sword slid toward his brother’s throat. “That’s why we keep these things a secret, Julian.” He produced a
beautiful smile. “But what does it matter? The child and the witch are mine now. You’ll be a dead man soon—unless they give me what I want. Apparently, you’re the perfect bait.”
Yancy said scornfully, “Julian? Your faithful hound? You don’t need chains to bind him to your will.” Cupping her hand at her side, she caught the water from her sleeve.
Louis-Rey laughed. “How true. If you swear to serve me, I’ll put him back on the leash.”
“And the girl? What do you want with a daughter, Louis-Rey? She’s just a witch-child, no use to you. She has no idea how to be a princess.” Yancy let a pebble roll out of her cuff. It crossed the tiny puddle in her palm and tumbled to a stop at the tip of her cupped fingers.
“I have no other heirs.”
“You might adopt. Kings have.” She brushed water from sodden hair, plucking out a bit of lakeweed.
Louis-Rey sounded cordial. “Ah, but Keulocka passes through the blood.”
Was that it? The secret she and Ysabeau had waited years to learn? Too simple. Yet it explained why Ivy had taken to the magic like a wizard born. Louis-Rey was good at secrets. He’d always made such a point of acting through others, surrounding himself with wizards whom he paid in riches and access to the lake’s magic. The same thing that helped him drain the lake would have given him some access to the dragon’s powers, bled off the edges, siphoned from beneath. His natural depredations had only made things worse. It explained why Keulocka would protect Ivy, but not strike Louis-Rey. But only the lake maid and her apprentice could command the heart of the dragon’s power.
Yancy calculated. There were ten armed guards in the cove. But where were his pocket magicians? Maybe attacking one of their own was too much even for them. Yancy gambled, “Where are your pet wizards, Louis-Rey? Have they finally seen the light and gone to report you to the Wizards Bureau?”
By his face, she’d struck a nerve. Julian saw it too. “So that explains it. Did I forget to tell you? I got the report this morning. They headed up into the hills. Last seen, they were on the high road toward Sunocka. You finally spooked them, Louis-Rey. Your mercenaries are cowards. I’d imagine they had no interest in standing against the lake maid—or kidnapping a child apprentice.”
