The Wisewoman (Waterspell 3)

by Deborah J. Lightfoot

  Sunlight shafted down, a ray somehow finding its way through the thick, umbrella-shaped crown to illuminate a narrow fork in the tree. Carin pressed the wooden bead snugly into the fork, with its flattened face, the part she’d filed down, touching the tree.

  Then she slid to the ground and sat with her back against the trunk. Her eyes were dry. Carin had cried so many tears for the woodsprite already, had hated herself so deeply for abandoning the creature on its homeworld, now she could feel nothing but numbness. And numbness gradually gave way to despair as she looked across the sunny expanse of grass to the house where she had once lived with her parents.

  The house overlooked the teal-blue bay. The bedroom that had been Carin’s in childhood was right on the water. Every night of her girlhood, she had gone to sleep lulled by the whispers of waves rolling ashore, the ocean lapping at the coral sands.

  “What else?” Carin muttered. “What else can I remember?”

  Her brain felt sore, pounded by the onslaught of images the crystal pyramid had shed into her eyes. But those images, in particular the ones from Earth, had unlocked some deep, hidden place in Carin’s mind. For the first time in years, she was remembering her past.

  She could picture her parents: her mother, the wildlife photographer; her dad, the painter who had spent many hours with his easel set up on the grass here, painting the ocean, the flower-flecked landscape, the majestic wall of rock that sheltered the bay. Carin remembered the three of them exploring the beach, collecting shells and any detritus that caught their fancy.

  On one outing they’d found a pile of uniformly sized driftwood knobs, the wood so naturally smoothed, rounded into beads by winds, waves, and sand, that it had required only a little additional shaping. They’d made it a family project: sanding and varnishing the beads to bring out the wood’s natural beauty; holing and stringing them on leather laces to make three identical necklaces.

  Carin had loved wearing her beads. But then she’d spotted the crystal dolphin at a flea market, had begged to have it. And after that, the dolphin was her favorite. She hardly ever took it off.

  Sitting in the shade now, with her back to the tree, Carin was getting chilled. Though the air was warm, she was soaked to the skin. Her clothes would dry quicker if she’d move out into the sunlight that beat down where the shade of the umbrella tree couldn’t reach.

  But Carin did not move. She only pressed her back more firmly against the tree’s trunk, keeping vigil.

  And gradually, as the afternoon wore on, sunlight began slanting under the tree’s canopy, falling on Carin, warming her, drying her clothes … soothing her to sleep …

  The tree poked her in the back. “Carin! Dear girl!”

  “Wha—?”

  Though groggily aware that someone had called her name, Carin couldn’t seem to rouse … the sun was so warm … she was languid and leaden, comfortably baking in the tropical heat …

  “Carin!” piped a reedy voice. “Do wake up so that I may properly thank you.”

  Now the voice registered.

  “Sprite!” Carin shrieked and bounded to her feet. She whirled to face the tree, seeking the speaker. In the bark, she spotted it: a mouth, below quivery slits that resembled fluttering eyelids.

  The mouth shrilled at her. “I knew I could rely on you, my friend. I knew you would save me. What a wonderful tree you have brought me to!” The woodsprite sparked high in the canopy, then rapidly down to flicker again in Carin’s face.

  “Oh!”

  She could say no more. She could only hug the tree, squeezing so tightly that the sprite, with a soft whistling gasp, flitted upward again, out of her reach.

  Then the creature descended near enough to chirp something in her ear. But Carin had burst into tears and was sobbing so loudly, she didn’t hear what it said. She only heard herself howling. Relief, guilt, grief, and happiness erupted from her at the top of her voice.

  “Don’t cry!” the woodsprite begged after what, Carin supposed, the creature considered a decent interval. It shouted to make itself heard: “Your tears touch me deeply, my friend, but I must implore you—”

  “I know … I know,” Carin interrupted, gasping for breath as she wiped her face. “Salt water. Bad for the roots.”

  “Quite!”

  “But I think you’ll have to get used to it.” Carin pointed at the ocean. “There’s salt everywhere here—even in the air.”

  “So I was noticing. I can taste it in this tree. Where are we?”

  “My homeworld,” Carin said. “You told me long ago that this was where I needed to be. Well, we’re here.”

  “Your homeworld! Why, Carin, I have never seen a more beautiful place! Such regal timber.” The sprite sparked to the top of the umbrella tree, whistled its admiration, then flitted back to her. “I can never thank you enough, dear girl, for bringing me to such a paradise.”

  “But what made you jump into that little lump of wood I had in my pocket?” Carin demanded. “Beggar all, sprite! You had a whole forest of oaks to choose from, there in Ruain. Why not flee through those trees? Why squash yourself into a dried-up knob of wood?” Carin stretched to pull the bead from the fork she’d wedged it into.

  “I had no choice,” the sprite said, its voice sounding thinner now, and strained. “The oaks of Ruain would not allow me to reenter them after I … after I …”

  “After you speared Lanse through the gut?” Carin finished for it.

  The sprite flickered in the tree trunk, signaling its agitation.

  “It all happened so fast!” the creature shrilled. “I had been following the boy. I followed him the length and breadth of the woodland that rises beyond the manor walls. I expected him to lead me to you and the magician, eventually. And then, almost together, the boy and I heard you coming—the clip-clop of horses’ hooves, the grating of a vehicle’s wheels on the hard surface of the road. And the next thing I knew, the boy had secreted himself in the deepest shade alongside the road, and from the cover of the trees he shot at you! I had to stop him—quickly.”

  You might just as reasonably have sided with him and helped to kill me, Carin thought. After what I did to you, sprite? Are you not even going to mention how I betrayed you?

  “I didn’t think it through, Carin,” the woodsprite was saying. “I simply snapped a limb off the nearest oak and rode it through him.”

  “You rode it?” The thought made Carin queasy. “You were in the spear when it went through Lanse’s body?”

  The creature whimpered. “Horrible,” it muttered. “Simply horrible. Hot, wet, fleshy—like those fleshy trees on that first world we visited after we left the golden grove in the mountains. Do you remember that place, Carin?”

  “Of course I do.” She wasn’t sure which place the woodsprite meant—the world of meaty trees and sheeplike rocks, or the mountain eyrie of the necromancer—but she vividly remembered both.

  “But what happened after you, uh, rode the spear through Lanse?” Carin asked. “Is that when you jumped into my pocket?”

  “I had to,” the creature squeaked. “I could not bear to remain in the spear I had made. The blood—” From the woodsprite came a sound like retching. “But when I attempted to retreat into the trees, none would have me. It was as if the wood of the oaks had petrified. I could not penetrate it.

  “And I heard a voice,” the sprite added, “or seemed to hear it. It reminded me of the powerful voice that I heard echoing from the mountains above the grove of golden trees. Do you also remember that, Carin?”

  She nodded.

  “Yes, I think I know what you’re talking about. A man’s voice—not Theil Verek’s, but …” She trailed off, hearing again in memory the deep, stern voice that had echoed in the mountains above Morann’s altar of necromancy. And Morann—wild eyed, spinning on the surface of her enchanted pool, desperately seeking the speaker—had shouted: “Legary! How … ?”

  How, indeed, had a long-dead wizard come to be in those mountains? Did the ghos
t of Theil’s grandfather haunt the world of Ladrehdin? Or was Lord Legary more than a ghost? Perhaps wysards didn’t die, at least not with the same finality with which mortals met their end. Maybe those of the Power had a way of living on, joined through death to the natural forces that had empowered them in life.

  Carin shook off her speculations and refocused on the sprite.

  “That voice you heard,” she murmured, “when you tried to jump to safety in the trees … what did it say to you?”

  “I cannot repeat the words exactly,” the sprite piped, almost a-squeak with anxiety, “but the gist of it was that I, having spilled the blood of a man of Ruain, would nevermore find sanctuary in the wood of Ruain. ‘Begone!’ cried the voice. ‘Leave this land!’”

  “So …” Carin was working it out. “So you hid in my pocket because this”—she tossed the wooden bead a short way into the air and caught it—“this is not Ruainian wood. I picked it up on the east coast of Ladrehdin many miles south of the province of Ruain.”

  “That explains why it felt unfamiliar to me,” the spite piped. “I had thought perhaps you still carried the spindle in which I traveled with you from the grove of the golden-hued trees. Though I did not find that particular refuge in your pocket, I was greatly relieved, nonetheless, to discover a knob of wood that did not rebuff me.”

  No, Carin thought, I got rid of your traveling spindle just as quick as I could, sprite. It was too painful, holding it in my hand and remembering what I had done to you.

  She couldn’t stand it any longer. She had to confess and beg forgiveness.

  “I’m so sorry!” she cried, and almost burst into tears again.

  The woodsprite flickered in the umbrella tree.

  “What, Carin?” The creature sounded confused. “For what can you possibly feel the need to apologize? I sought your help as I fled the scene of my bloody crime, and you did not refuse me. You took me in, you carried me to safety—you have brought me to this splendid land!”

  The sprite sparked to the very top of the tree, hung there a moment as if it couldn’t get enough of the view, then flickered down to Carin’s eye level.

  “But think back, sprite!” she wailed. “On Angwid. I left you there to die!”

  “Ssss.” The woodsprite made a hissing sound, its way of expressing disgust. “Angwid! I beg you, dear girl, never again mention that place to me. It is a wasteland of weeds. A world of pond scum. Faugh!”

  The sprite flared up noticeably, then dimmed and added, “You were perfectly correct to leave when you did. A moment later, and the weeds would have strangled you. If I was too slow to leap within my spindle and accompany you, then whose fault was that? Mine alone. As soon as I realized that I had missed the boat—so to speak—I dived into one of those sleek, graceful arrows that you had been forced to abandon in that place. And in the waters of my native world I felt a spreading strength—a force upon which I could draw to make those arrows carry me where I wished to go. I made the wood take me to the grove whence it came.”

  A spreading strength in the water? Dissolved ink from a wysard’s pen, I’m guessing, Carin thought ruefully, remembering her loss of Legary’s writing on the sprite’s world.

  She nodded. “Theil and I figured that was how you managed to return to Ruain. Oh, sprite! Every day after I escaped—er, after I traveled on without you, I was sorry for what I’d done. I’m so happy to have you back!”

  Carin hugged the tree again. This time, the sprite stayed within the circle of her arms. She could feel it sparking against her skin.

  “But tell me something.” Carin loosened her grip and stood back. “When you were in that stringy vine and protecting me from the weeds, I almost couldn’t tell the difference between them and you. I’ve come to realize, though, that you must be very different, deep down, from those weeds. Aren’t you?”

  The woodsprite sparked hotly.

  “My dear friend!” It sounded appalled, as though it couldn’t believe she had asked such a question. “Of course I am not a weed. How could you confuse me with those soft, yielding, flabby stems?”

  By magic, Carin thought. Magic that misled me.

  She’d looked through a charm, a braided hair circlet that had revealed the woodsprite to be nothing more than a clump of strangleweed. Carin had trusted the “revelation” because the circlet had accurately shown her Lanse as her intended executioner. And through the ring of magic, Carin had seen Theil’s shadow cling to him like a second skin: a glimpse into his dual nature as the offspring of a necromancer and a son of House Verek.

  What had gone wrong with the charm’s interpretation of the woodsprite’s nature? Carin remembered other magic that had failed to see inside the sprite: The wizards’ well in Ruain had not been able to make out what the sprite was, either. The sprite’s mind was “too alien, too outlandish,” Verek had surmised. “The way your mind works,” he had told the creature, “the way it weaves its thoughts is so strange, the waters of the wysards cannot join with it, cannot penetrate your thoughts.”

  In a way, Carin realized, in the sprite’s case her circlet of magic had outperformed the well of the wysards. If it hadn’t shown her what the creature was, it had at least revealed a glimpse of what the woodsprite feared.

  The sprite was flickering at her, demanding her attention.

  “Sorry,” Carin said. “My thoughts are everywhere. No—you’re right, of course. You’ve got the strength of an oak. I must have been mad to think you could be devil’s-guts. On our way back to Ruain, Theil and I saw huge swaths of the strangleweed dead beside the road. Like you told me that time”—she was careful not to mention Angwid, where the conversation had taken place—“weeds die in a season, while oaks endure.”

  Recalling that vine-choked world and what the woodsprite had said about the weed strangling the trees that had once grown there, Carin had a sudden, sobering thought.

  “Is it possible, sprite,” she murmured, “that you are the last of your kind?”

  “Very possible,” the creature piped with what was, Carin suspected, feigned bravado. “Indeed, I am convinced that all like me were murdered by the weed that overran and ravaged my homeworld. If that sorceress of the West had not snatched me from my native land and brought me to those forested mountains where she had her stronghold, then I would have died alongside my kith and kin, I am certain.”

  Carin stared at the woodsprite as another grim thought unfolded inside her.

  “It’s also possible,” she muttered, “that I am the last of my kind. There was a sickness here … Many died, and others are missing.” She pointed at the empty beach house. “I don’t know whether anyone survives anywhere in my native world.”

  “Shall I go and look?”

  “What? How do you mean?”

  The sprite flittered high up the umbrella tree, then dropped again to Carin’s level so quickly that its sparking blurred into a continuous streak of light.

  “The trees grow thickly here,” the creature said when it came to rest in front of her. “I can easily leap my way to the highest point of land—at least as high as that cliff on the back side of the bay. And I will enjoy exploring inland. Perhaps I will find, if not your people, then a grove well away from salty sea-spray.”

  Carin nodded. “Do it, sprite. And while you’re off exploring, I’ll go in”—again she indicated the small, sun-weathered cottage on the beach—“and open a can of something for supper. I’m hungry.”

  “Then eat and rest, my friend, and I will return with what news I may.”

  Carin watched the woodsprite spark away through the dense forest that sloped uphill from the bay. Then, pocketing her bead of Ladrehdinian wood, she turned for the house.

  The cottage was just as she and Theil had left it. Before they’d made the jump back to Ladrehdin, they had tightly shut the doors and windows to keep out the weather and the rampant wildlife. Even so, when Carin shoved open the kitchen door—it was sticking, its wood having swelled in the moist air—a mouse sc
urried across the tiled floor.

  In the pantry she found a can of chicken noodle soup, and from a drawer took a manual can opener and a spoon. The can opener had intrigued Verek. After Carin showed him how to use it, he had removed the lids from four or five cans before Carin stopped him with a reminder that other travelers, or those returning from distant travels, might, in the future, need that food to live on.

  Carin’s parents had left the pantry full to bursting with all manner of canned goods. Theil, during his time alone here, had lived on fish and crabs from the bay, varying his diet with fruit that he picked from the orchard behind the house: bananas, guavas, avocados, papayas. After Carin joined him, though, and showed him the canned goods and how to open them, he had briefly enjoyed sampling the exotic foods of Carin’s native world: canned cheese soup, ravioli, beans, and the pork-in-a-can called “Spam.”

  But then: “Everything tastes alike,” Theil had complained. “Salty.”

  “So let’s go home,” Carin had urged him for the umpteenth time, “and eat fresh bread and butter for a week.” Those, she knew, were the items he most craved.

  Carin had been all for returning to Ladrehdin the moment she’d crossed here and found Verek at the living-room fireplace, stirring his oyster-stew supper. But Theil had wanted to linger awhile. He’d been keen to have Carin read to him from the mate to the “puzzle-book,” the companion volume titled Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. He’d almost talked her into rereading Through the Looking-Glass, too. But there, Carin had drawn the line.

  “You’ve heard that one twice already,” she’d protested. “You can’t learn anything more from it. Let’s go home!”

  Finally she’d prevailed. After a last look around the place, and a last walk through the banana groves to snack on ripened fruit, they had walked along the golden beach to a rocky point that jutted a short way into the ocean. There, with Verek wearing his crystal dolphin on its chain round his neck, and Carin holding her amulet loose in her hand, they had stepped together into the void, Carin fully expecting them to hit Ruain’s glacially cold wysards’ well hand-in-hand.