Between the Water and the Woods

by Simone Snaith

  Dada had traded with a traveler for the History book before she was born, and to this day it was his favorite. It had been a library book in the capital, once, and there were several names scrawled inside the first page. First names, but no surnames—a custom of capital folk, Dada said.

  Dale sobered up and got to his feet. He went meekly to the divan and sat down.

  “Any news today, Dada?” Emeline asked, following him. Dale had sat down on her sewing and she yanked it out from under him.

  Dada blew out a cloud of smoke that smelled of sage and bay leaf. “Just more gossip about the king choosing an heir. They say he can barely walk now, the poor man.”

  “What happens if he dies before he chooses one?” Dale asked.

  “He’s got that brother that ran off to the Outer Lands, they say. Lord Irwind. I suppose they’d have to go find him.”

  The Outer Lands were beyond the borders of the kingdom. People said they were barren, uncivilized, but speaking fairly, nothing was really known of them. Emeline had always wondered what he’d found there, if he was still alive.

  “Why did he do that?” Dale wondered.

  “I don’t know. He was supposedly some kind of genius.” Their father shrugged and held out his hands. “I wager he had a reason, although there’s always been talk he was cast out. Maybe he had a fight with the king—I’ve heard Olvinde has more than a streak of stubbornness in him. That’s how he keeps the Theurgists at bay, with all their drama about dark magic.”

  “Ma’am Hendel still believes the Theurgists,” Dale ventured.

  “All the old folks do,” Dada said, puffing. “But the Sapients have convinced four kings now that all magic’s a trick of the eye, or a natural phenomenon. Most of the time, I’m inclined to agree.” He paused. “You know, son, there used to be one council, years and years ago, before it split into the Sapients and Theurgists. Things would be a lot more peaceful if it was that way again.”

  “But what about the woods, Dada? Why are people so afraid of them?” Dale asked. Emeline gave him a look.

  Dada pulled his pipe out of his mouth. “You stay out of the woods,” he said flatly. “Even without monsters, there’re animals in there that would eat a little boy. Doesn’t matter if they’re magic or not.”

  “Yes, sir,” Dale said, and pulled his legs up underneath him.

  The Ithin can’t be natural, Emeline thought, pulling her thread. If they were, then why would they fear water? Didn’t everything natural need water to live?

  People certainly did. There was even a saying in the village that everyone used: “Bless water.” Equane had been built around three natural streams, and the waters ran in green canals beside the packed dirt roads. The people lived off of the crops they grew and the fish in the streams, which had been diverted to create the moat running around the fifty-odd buildings of town. They were brightly painted cottages made of cob, mostly—a sturdy mix of sand and mud—with slate roofs and shutters. Deep red was the most popular color, and when the sun shone on the red walls and the green water of the canals, Emeline thought her village was truly beautiful.

  The moat had been created as a barrier against the woods, where wild beasts or bandits could lurk…or the Dark Creatures of legend.

  Don’t go into the woods, child. Stay on this side of the water.

  * * *

  At bedtime, Emeline climbed the ladder up into the loft where her little room was. It was a snug triangle with the slate roof slanting down around it.

  Dale slept on the divan in the sitting room below, where his snores sometimes woke her out of dreams. On bad nights, she got up and yelled at him from the top of the ladder until he rolled over. Dada slept in the cottage’s one true bedroom, the one he and Mama had shared. There was also a washroom with a pump that drew up water from deep in the ground.

  One day, Dale would grow too tall for the divan, and then Emeline would probably have to trade with him, as much as she would hate to lose her room. The loft had one window that let the stars shine in at night, and she had strung dried water lilies all around it. There were more of them floating in a bowl on a shelf.

  The lilies’ fragile beauty thrilled her. She loved all water plants, so much so that sometimes their nearness tugged on her senses, distracting her. If she gazed at lilies long enough, colorful patterns were conjured up in her mind, dancing like light on a mirror. No one else she knew seemed to regard them much at all.

  She thought maybe Mama had felt that kind of love for the wind and the sky. The memories of her mother had begun to fade over the years, but she struggled to keep them close. Mama had died when Emeline was seven, from a bad fever that had been too quick and fierce to treat. Dada had drifted around like a ghost for a whole year afterward. Emeline remembered her pretty face and the way she had always been in motion around the house, humming. She had taken her children outdoors as much as possible, her eyes always watching the clouds.

  What does that one look like, Little Plum? Like a fish? And look, that one’s a flower!

  The sweet memory faded as Emeline stared at the flowers in her room. Without warning, the sight of them brought her back to the woods—to the lily pad she’d thrown at the thing in the trees. The languid thing in the cloak…

  With a shiver, Emeline unbuckled her bodice, pulled her dress over her head, and scrambled into her round bed, drawing the covers up to her chin. It was best to forget about it.

  was walking to the schoolhouse to collect Dale when Sessa and two of her friends were suddenly upon her, circling on their bicycles.

  “Emeline!” Sessa exclaimed. “Is it true? Did you go into the woods?”

  Emeline took a step back, startled, and Sessa hopped gracefully off her bicycle. Her auburn hair was done up in a knot, and her dress was expertly embroidered with flowers and fish. The tip of her nose turned up in a very pretty way. The other two girls were dressed similarly, and Emeline noticed unhappily that neither of them were stretching the buckles on their bodices.

  “Who told you that?” Emeline demanded. She kept walking, and they followed her, pushing their bicycles.

  “We heard from Daney Fish, and he heard from Ma’am Arden, and she said that little Janin told his mama,” Sessa told her in a rush.

  “And Olinn told his mama, and she told my auntie,” one of her friends declared.

  Emeline sighed and looked over their heads toward the schoolhouse up ahead. It was a low, round building, the same deep red as the dress she was wearing. She could see a cluster of villagers gathering there, much larger than the usual group who came to collect their children. That was an ominous sight. Maybe the whole of Equane knew.

  “I didn’t go in the woods,” Emeline muttered.

  “But you saw something in them?” Sessa insisted. “A Dark Creature?”

  “I saw something,” she said carefully. “But I can’t be sure what it was.”

  “Olinn said you threw water at it! How were you so brave?” one of the girls asked admiringly. Emeline shrugged, embarrassed, and Sessa harrumphed as if she resented the compliment.

  “That was stupid,” she said. “You probably made it angry! You should’ve just run away.”

  “What if it comes after us now?” gasped the third girl.

  “Don’t be silly, we have the moat!” Emeline exclaimed, shouldering past them and hurrying toward the school. She could see the crowd ahead moving inward, and she had a feeling she knew exactly who was in the middle—she could hear Aladane’s voice as she reached them.

  “There was blood on its claws!” he was saying. “Red blood! I saw it!” People gasped in horror, and she caught several wide-eyed stares as she jostled forward.

  “Look, it’s Emeline! She was there!” someone said.

  She broke into the middle of the crowd in time to hear Dale protesting, “I didn’t see any claws…” With some relief, she saw that Teacher R
ylin was standing behind him and Aladane, her large hands placed protectively on their shoulders.

  “You were too distracted!” Aladane said hastily. “I saw its claws from the water! Big ones!” He was enjoying himself, his chest puffed out.

  “You did not, you little liar!” Emeline cried, deflating him.

  “Em, I didn’t tell,” Dale told her.

  She pulled him close to her and gave Teacher Rylin a grateful look; the teacher nodded and folded her arms. She was a tall, solemn woman who had decided in her youth to make it her place to teach all the children to read and do sums. Few of the adults in Equane knew how to read—Dada was a strong exception—so they sent along their children to learn, if they could spare them. Emeline had always liked her.

  “Is it true, child?” an old woman asked, peering at Emeline.

  “They say you threw water at something! What did you see?” a farmer called out.

  “It had a hood, the boy said!”

  “I don’t know what I saw—” Emeline said stubbornly.

  “Was it the Ithin?” someone demanded.

  “I think it was,” Dale murmured.

  “A Dark Creature!” boomed a frightened voice. “I knew the Theurgists were right!”

  Someone else shouted, “The king must be told! We should have a meeting!”

  Emeline stepped back, her arms around Dale as she stared at the crowd. The villagers never got this worked up about something. Usually the only excitement was the latest gossip, or maybe an injury. This was strange. Frightening.

  “Dark Creature sightings must be reported! It’s the law!”

  “Let’s call a meeting!”

  Aladane’s father, Mister Gingern, suddenly pushed his way forward and grabbed his son’s shoulder with one meaty hand. He glared defiantly at the crowd, his apron covered in fish guts, and the cries died down.

  “All right, call your meeting then!” he yelled at them. “But stop standing around and stirring everybody up! Making a scene over children’s stories! Come on, boy.”

  “But Dada, it’s true!” Aladane cried as he was dragged away.

  Emeline pushed Dale ahead of her as the villagers stepped back, still chattering and whispering with one another, and the two of them wove their way through the loosening crowd.

  “It’s absolute madness now,” Emeline hissed at Dale.

  “I didn’t tell, Em. It’s not my fault—”

  “It is your fault! You went across the moat!”

  They hurried home to the cottage. Dada was rinsing lettuce leaves in a bucket of water, the rest of dinner laid out on the table: grilled fish, a loaf of bread, and turnips, onions, and carrots from the fields. He looked up at them cheerfully, ready to ask how school was, but his smile hung in the air at the sight of their faces.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “There’s going to be a meeting,” Emeline told him.

  * * *

  The meeting bell rang shortly after they finished eating, a distant but determined clangor from the hall at the center of the village.

  Emeline remembered the last time she had heard it. A child had gone missing four years earlier, one of the Kayler brood; that was how long it had been since the villagers had needed a meeting. The poor little girl had never been found. There was talk of Dark Creatures then.

  Dada had not spoken a word when she told him what Dale had done. He had just turned pale and gone very still, and her brother had hung his head. They sat there that way for a long time before Dada finally got to his feet. He stepped over to Emeline and laid his hand on the top of her head, a silent thank-you. Then he turned and went back to making dinner without a glance at his son. Emeline knew her brother felt the sting of it. There was no further punishment needed.

  Now they followed Dada through the door as the bell rang, filing out into the cool, clear evening air. Dada had dressed up in his black flat cap and a nice gray coat that buckled at the waist. Emeline remembered him wearing them on Mama’s birthday when she was little; they had borrowed horses and gone riding while a neighbor minded her and Dale.

  She shivered nervously as they joined the other families making their way to the meeting hall, wrapped tight in Mama’s hooded red cloak. Nearly ankle-length, Mama had said it was for traveling, but Emeline never traveled and so had taken to wearing it often. Even now, its cloth held Mama’s familiar scent of basil, ginger, and clove pinks.

  Was it true that the king must be told about this? How? Would they send him a letter?

  Once a month, a post wagon came to the village gates with letters from faraway relatives, and packages of glass and metal ordered from the catalogs it carried. This was also how they paid the meager taxes they owed to the king, each household wrapping up a small portion of goods and handing them off to the driver. He often had news from the capital, and sometimes he carried formal notices announcing new laws that had been passed. But as far as she knew, no one in Equane wrote letters to the king himself. The village was so insignificant, she was not even sure the post would deliver it.

  A tall boy stood atop the meeting hall’s domed roof, pulling the rope that rang the great bell. Emeline covered her ears as the clanging blasted over their heads.

  A steady stream of people was crowding in through the double doors of the hall. It was a big building with a raised ceiling that caused voices to echo, which seemed to give them more importance. The cob walls had been painted white and built with rows of windows, to ensure that the villagers couldn’t be ambushed while they were all amassed in one place. Ambushed by what, she’d never been sure.

  Someone waved at Emeline; it was Endrina, the baker’s daughter, her best friend in the village. She waved back as Dada hurried her through the aisles to a seat.

  Next to Emeline, Dale gazed around with wide eyes at the buzzing, murmuring people. Most people had dressed up for the meeting, which meant there were more hats, cowls, buckles, and bead-and-flower chaplets than Emeline had seen in ages. She rarely saw so many villagers together, except maybe at the market.

  “You think they’re going to make me speak?” Dale asked Emeline in a whisper. She shrugged, but she’d been wondering the same thing. The bell finally ceased overhead.

  Old Mister Henley had the honor of leading the meetings, but he was likely to pass it down to his grown son, Alvine, soon, considering how old and weak of voice he was now. It took several long moments before the villagers realized he was calling out for them to quiet down. Then they hushed each other and settled in their seats expectantly.

  “…Thank you all for coming!” Old Henley wheezed. Emeline craned her neck for a sight of him as the voices died down around her. Bent-backed and white-haired, he was standing precariously on a chair at the front of the hall, wearing an ancient pair of spectacles and holding a flattened brown hat in his veiny hands. The wall behind him was covered in a giant tapestry that had been woven in the early days of Equane: It was a map of the entire kingdom, like the ones in the History. Large, elaborate fish-oil lamps graced the wall on either side of it, and the embroidered land and water seemed to shift in their flickering light. The capital was marked with a red star in the center of the northwest, Equane with a tiny blue star down in the southeastern corner.

  Old Henley was not a man to waste words. “Unless you’ve been under a rock today, then I suppose you’ve heard the news that a Dark Creature may have been sighted by two children,” he announced. “Now, there’s no cause for alarm since we are still protected by our moat. As I understand it, this took place on the wrong side of the water, where no one should have been anyway.”

  Emeline saw Dada glance across her at Dale, who cringed.

  “But we haven’t had a sighting on record since the moat was built, so it bears some looking into.” Mister Henley straightened up as much as he could and peered out over the crowd. “Where are the two witnesses?”

&nbs
p; All the heads in the hall turned toward Emeline and Dale. Dada stood and stepped aside to let her and Dale walk out from their row. Emeline straightened up, breathed deep, and squared her shoulders. She took her brother’s hand and led the way past the ranks of staring eyes, all the way up to the front of the hall where Mister Henley stood waiting. He climbed down stiffly from his chair and nodded at them.

  “Tell us what happened, heart,” he told her kindly.

  She faced the crowd with her hands in her dress pockets, feeling very awkward, and looked for somewhere to fix her eyes. In the middle of the front row sat Mister Fish, which was unfair of him as one of the tallest men in the village. He was square-jawed and broad-shouldered, with kind, blunt features and curly brown hair, and his two nearly grown sons sat next to him, looking just like younger Mister Fishes. One of them winked at her. She colored, suddenly finding her voice.

  “The boys were playing Lash Knights near the moat behind the mill. You know, they pull vines out of the water and use them as whips? Anyway, they put a slate plank across the water, just to show off, and then Dale ran across it.” Her voice turned sharp, despite herself. Sounds of shock and disapproval sprang up from the crowd; when she glanced down at her brother, his mouth had collapsed into a pitiful frown. She put her arm around him, softening.

  “They stir each other up, him and Ala—some of the others.” There was no reason to get Aladane in further trouble. “I ran after him and was pulling him back, but then we heard something in the woods.” Silence fell around the room. Her heart beat faster, hot in her chest. “And then I looked…It was hard to see what it was….”

  “It was moving,” Dale spoke up.

  “Like an animal?” Old Henley asked.

  “Well, its head was about this high,” Emeline said, raising her arm high above her own head.

  “Standing like a man?”

  “Yes, but not moving like one.” She bit her lip. “And…it did look like it wore a hood.”