They stared at each other for a moment, and then Brinley grinned. “More rocks?”
Tabitha nodded fervently, handing her the sharp writing stone.
They split up and walked around the lake on opposite sides, stopping whenever they found a rock flat enough to write on. Brinley had thrown in eleven rocks by the time she met up with Tabitha on the opposite side from where they had started.
“What now?” Tabitha asked.
“We wait, I guess,” Brinley said, and they sat down together on the shore. Tabitha took her shoes off and dipped her feet in the water. After a few minutes, she scowled.
“I don’t think it worked,” she said. “He wouldn’t ignore you, would he?”
“Maybe he didn’t get the message,” Brinley said.
“Or maybe he’s not in there.” Tabitha sighed. “Maybe this is the wrong lake after all.” She yawned. “I’m very tired. I think I’m going to lie down for a while.”
Brinley nodded, starting to yawn herself now. They found a place with soft grass and shade on the shore of the lake and laid down, and before they knew it they were out.
Brinley was surprised at how much time had passed when she awoke. She was even more surprised by Tabitha’s excitement. The other girl was babbling about something that Brinley couldn’t quite follow, pointing to the shore.
“Slow down, Tabitha,” she said. “What happened?”
Tabitha was on her feet now. “There were these huge eyes!” she said, making her hands into circles and holding them in front of her own eyes to illustrate. “They were right there, staring at us!” She pointed to the water near the shore where several ripples were still dissipating.
“That’s what Hugo said he saw,” Brinley said, getting to her feet.
“Do you think it was Unda?” Tabitha asked, a worried look crossing her face.
“Who else could it be?” Brinley said, excited. She searched around, found another flat stone, and wrote on it:
Hello, Unda, I am the new Magemother. We are your friends. We need you to come out so that we can speak with you. Please don’t be afraid.
She tossed it into the water and was pleased to see that it landed right on the spot that the ripples had come from.
Nothing happened.
“Maybe I should write one too,” Tabitha said, and she began scratching away on another stone. When she was done she threw it at the same spot in the water. Before it landed, an arm shot into the air and caught it with a slimy hand. The arm looked like it could have been made of seaweed, all brown and green and twisted. Brinley gasped and Tabitha waved and shouted, “Hi, Unda! Oh, good catch!”
For a split second, the arm froze, as if the person it belonged to was listening. Then it whipped around and hurled the stone back at them.
“Ack!” Brinley cried, sidestepping to dodge the stone.
Tabitha shook her finger at the lake. “Now, Unda. That’s not nice at all! Please don’t throw rocks at us.” Then her hands shot to her mouth. “Oh my! We threw rocks at you, didn’t we?”
Brinley patted her on the shoulder to calm her. “Tabitha, I don’t think that was Unda.”
Tabitha looked confused for a moment, then wrapped her arms around herself protectively and mumbled, “Oh my,” several times.
“Don’t worry,” Brinley assured her. “Whoever it is, I don’t think they mean us any real harm.”
“But they threw a rock at us,” Tabitha said. “And we threw rocks at it! Never throw rocks at strangers!” She slapped herself on the forehead. “Why do I always forget that?”
Brinley hid a grin. She bent and picked up another rock. On this one she wrote:
I am the Magemother. I am looking for the Mage of Water. Who are you?
This time, instead of tossing it, she bent down and skipped the stone across the surface of the lake. It skipped five times and then sunk, and a moment later the water thrashed where the stone stopped, as if a fish had jumped—or an underwater hand had snatched it suddenly.
A moment later, the arm appeared again and another rock sailed towards them.
“Watch out,” Brinley said, ducking. But Tabitha reached out and made a move to catch it. It hit her hand but slipped through her fingers and fell to the ground. When Brinley looked at it, she could see why—it was covered with green and brown slime, as if it had been sitting on the bottom of the lake for a long time. It didn’t look like there was any writing on it, however. She reached out to pick it up and dropped it abruptly, for the moment she touched it an image flashed across her mind. She saw a city beneath the lake, with teal towers and long stone halls covered in green-gray moss, and in front of the city she saw a crowd of people with short, lithe bodies.
“What is it?” Tabitha asked, watching Brinley’s expression.
“Tabitha, last night Cassis taught me about the memory of stones. He taught me that they can hold thoughts.”
“Oh,” Tabitha said, looking confused. “That’s interesting…”
Brinley shook her head. “I think that the creature from the lake did that with this stone. I touched it and I saw…something. Lake people that live under the water.”
Tabitha picked up the stone. “I don’t see anything. Can you send the lake person something like he sent you?”
Brinley nodded, and Tabitha handed it to her. “I think so.”
She held the stone and reached out to it with her mind, feeling for the space inside. Cassis had said that there was a whole world in there if you looked closely enough, but she could only sense a small space, just large enough to hold a thought. She placed in it an image of Unda from the memory of her vision with her mother on Calypsis. Then she threw the stone into the lake. A moment later it came flying back out to land at their feet. Brinley picked it up and winced as the sound of a thousand voices reverberated through her mind. It took a moment for her to realize that the voices, high pitched and angry, were all shouting the same word: No.
Brinley told Tabitha what she had learned, and they agreed that “no” was quite a confusing answer. Tabitha summed the problem up.
“Does that mean that they don’t know where Unda is, or that they do know, but don’t want to help us?”
“I don’t know,” Brinley said.
“Ask them.”
Brinley scratched on the stone, Do you know where Unda is? She threw it into the lake.
It was several minutes before anything happened. Then the same stone came back out. Brinley picked it up and saw in her mind a tall, round, underwater cell with bars of black metal. A faint light glowed at the center of it, and she could make out a scrunched figure curled on the floor. The cell itself was surrounded by a vast darkness that made her shiver even in the sunlight.
“Oh no,” she whispered. She told Tabitha what she had seen.
Tabitha gasped. “They have him prisoner? But why?” She looked suddenly angry. “What did he ever do to them?”
“I don’t know,” Brinley said, and started scratching another message on the rock. “I’m asking them to release him.”
When she had finished, she tossed it back in the water, and it came back almost immediately. Brinley caught it this time, and the chorus of voices shouted inside her head again: NO!
“But why?” Tabitha said. “You’re the Magemother. They have to do what you say, don’t they?”
Brinley laughed bitterly. “Apparently not. I’m going to ask Belterras if he knows who these people are.” She retreated a few steps from the water’s edge. “Don’t go in there,” she called to Tabitha, who was crouched on the shore, about to jump. She froze and then flopped to the ground instead.
Brinley called Belterras and told him what had happened.
Merfolk…he said, sounding surprised.
Merfolk? Brinley asked. You mean like mermaids?
Yes and no. The merfolk inhabit the deeper parts of Aberdeen’s oceans, and are very seldom encountered, except by sailors. I cannot think of how a group might have come to live in a freshwater lake. They have
Unda, you say? Then you should be careful. The merfolk are a magical species. You will not find them unless they want to be found. Even I could not force them to do anything.
Then what should I do? Brinley asked. I have to get Unda back. Should I have Tabitha search the lake for him?
No! Belterras said. She should not enter it. No one should enter it until we have an agreement with the merfolk. If you jumped in, I think it likely that you too would become a prisoner. The merfolk are a strange people. We should be able to reason with them, but we need to understand what they want first. Let me think on it for a bit.
Can you meet me tonight? Brinley asked. We can discuss the merfolk, and then maybe you can come and talk to them yourself.
I can try, he said, but I doubt that it will do any good. The merfolk are creatures of the sea. You really need Unda for something like this. Hardly a helpful suggestion, I know…
In the end he agreed to meet her and she sent him an image of the hill where Maggie’s house was. When she finished speaking with him, she returned to the beach, where Tabitha was waiting impatiently.
“Can I go in now?” she asked. “Maybe I can make them understand if I just go down there and talk to them.”
Brinley shook her head firmly. “No. It’s too dangerous. Belterras agrees. They might take you prisoner too. We need to find out what they want first.” She scratched that exact question on a rock and threw it into the water. It came back quickly, containing the same image that she had seen before, of Unda in his cell, deep under the water.
“You already have what you want,” Brinley whispered. “But why? Why do you want that?”
Tabitha took the still-wet rock from Brinley and wrote Why? on the other side before throwing it in.
It came back a moment later. This time the arm that threw it rose out of the water only a few feet from them, making Brinley jump in surprise. Tabitha caught it and handed it to Brinley, who saw a picture of the ocean in her mind when she did.
“The ocean?” Tabitha said when Brinley told her. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” Brinley said. “Maybe Belterras will.” She scratched another question on a rock, asking what the ocean had to do with it, and they waited for a response. When none came after ten minutes, Tabitha said that she was hungry and wandered off in search of berries. Brinley stayed by the lake just in case.
Half an hour later, Tabitha returned with several handfuls of blackberries, and they ate them while tossing more stones into the lake. Each stone bore the same question on its face: What do you mean? But nothing came back.
Long after they had finished the berries, when the sun was beginning to set over the forest, they were still waiting for an answer.
“Brinley,” Tabitha said, “are we going to stay up all night working on Maggie’s house again, or are we going to sleep like normal people?”
Brinley smiled, removing the wooden button from her pocket and fingering it. “What do you think?”
***
When night had came, they alighted in the little clearing where Maggie’s house stood and found Belterras waiting for them.
“What is this place?” he asked. “Did you find out anything more?”
Tabitha skipped to his side and he embraced her while Brinley told him what they had learned.
“The ocean…” he murmured. “The obvious interpretation is that they want to get back to the ocean. They are ocean creatures, after all. It cannot be easy for them to live in a freshwater lake. In fact, I would not have thought it possible.”
Brinley wondered why she had not thought of that. It was so simple. “But then why did they leave it in the first place?” she asked.
“I cannot guess,” Belterras said. “Unless the answer has something to do with Unda. If he took them from the ocean, then that would certainly give them cause to hate him.”
“But he’s much more powerful than they are, isn’t he?” asked Tabitha. “Why would he let them keep him as a prisoner?”
“I do not know that either,” Belterras said. “It is true that when a mage comes into his power there is nothing in his own kingdom more powerful than he, but Unda was very young when he was lost. Perhaps he had not yet discovered the extent of his powers.” He trailed off, and Brinley remained quiet so that he could think. “If I were you,” he said finally, “I would offer to return them to the ocean in exchange for releasing Unda. He is the only one who could actually do it, but they don’t need to know that, and if the ocean is what they really want, then that may be your only bargaining tool. I’m afraid that is my only idea.”
“It’s a good one,” Brinley said gratefully. “We’ll try it in the morning.”
Belterras nodded. “But what is this place?” he asked, turning to look at the empty stone house. “Does someone live here?”
Brinley felt her mood lighten. “No one yet,” she said. “I am building it for a friend. Cassis helped with the foundation. I was hoping that you would help with the garden.”
Belterras smiled. “Gardens are not my specialty. How about an aviary?”
“A what?” Brinley said, but Tabitha looked excited at his words.
“A house for birds,” Belterras explained, rubbing his hands together, and Tabitha said, “I’ve already got things ready for birdhouses!”
Belterras smiled in approval and had them sit in a circle. He showed Brinley how to build a birdhouse quickly out of bark and grass and twigs, and Tabitha told her all about what kind of birds liked what kinds of houses, and soon they had seven lovely birdhouses. Tabitha disappeared into the woods to hunt for poles while Brinley and Belterras built more houses, and sometime later she returned with several long branches and began to strip the bark off of them with a sharp knife.
When Tabitha was done, they fastened the houses to the poles and planted them in the ground so that she could see them from the kitchen window. Together, they stepped back to survey their work. Brinley couldn’t help feeling disappointed. The ten handcrafted birdhouses were slightly crooked and misshapen, and they looked very unimpressive in the half light, empty and colorless.
“Don’t worry,” Belterras said, catching the look on her face. “We’re not done yet. Birds just need a little inspiration, you see. They do the rest.”
He took them inside the house so that they looked out on the yard through the empty kitchen window. “What now?” Tabitha asked.
“Now we call the birds,” said Belterras.
“Will you teach me?” Brinley asked, and Belterras smiled kindly.
“I will teach you, but have patience with yourself if you do not learn right away. Few ever do, though they try for a lifetime.”
Belterras began to sing then, a tune that felt familiar to Brinley, though she knew that she had never heard it before. It was a birdsong, and like all birdsong, it was both new and old at the same time. He sang with the voice of a man in the language of birds, and the birds came. Robins and finches and jays, three of each to three of the birdhouses. A large hawk came next and claimed two of the birdhouses at once. It flew away and returned with large sticks that it set carefully on top of the two houses, spanning them for the foundation of its nest.
Tabitha began to sing to them, and her voice mingled pleasantly with Belterras’s. Brinley wondered if they had practiced this before. A cardinal came down out of the trees as if it had been watching, waiting to be called, and claimed the sixth house. He brought a small family with him, and together they decorated the house with berries and filled it with leaves and wound a strand of live green vines down the pole and buried the root of it in the ground.
“Now you try,” Tabitha said, pausing in her song to urge Brinley along.
“How?” she said. “I don’t know how to sing like that.”
“Perfect!” Belterras said. “Neither do the birds, but they still do it.”
“Open your mouth,” Tabitha said. “Pretend you’re a bird.”
Brinley did so, feeling very foolish, and to her surprise,
a tune sprung out of her that complemented the song that the other two were weaving. She smiled and then realized she did not know what to sing next, and shut her mouth quickly. Before she did, a magpie flitted down from the night sky and claimed the seventh birdhouse. Brinley grinned, wondering if it had been her song that had called the magpie. She did not try to sing again, and neither Belterras nor Tabitha asked her to. They just sang together until there was a family of birds in each house, and then they stopped.
“Thank you,” Brinley said. “She will love it. I know she will. And thank you for teaching me.” She blushed. “Maybe someday you can teach me to change shape into a bird, like my mother.”
“I have no doubt,” Belterras said seriously. “You sang the birdsong on your first try. That is not common. You called the magpie.”
Brinley felt her heart warm slightly. She had done something right. Finally! She looked out at the birds and watched as they all rose from their houses at the same time and flew into the early morning sky. She wondered where they were going, what they would build, and then imagined the look on Maggie’s face when she saw it. She was doing something right. Maggie’s house, at least, would turn out well. She turned around to find Belterras whispering fervently to Tabitha, who had her head down, eyes downcast. She looked very much like a child being scolded, and Brinley turned back around, not wanting to watch. She wondered what Belterras could be saying to her.
“I must go now,” Belterras said from behind her, and when she turned back around Tabitha looked normal again. “I still have much work to do tonight. They’re harvesting early in Gappa this week because of the weather, and it has been a dismal harvest thus far. Duke Kendrin is beside himself with nervousness, so I said I’d look in and see if there was anything I could do.”
“Good luck,” Brinley said. “We should be getting back to the lake, too.” She yawned. “But I think I’m going to need to sleep when we get there.”
Magemother: The Complete Series (A Fantasy Adventure Book Series for Kids of All Ages) Page 46
