by Shea Berkley
Leaves crackled beneath the thundering of our feet, and the air grew cooler under the shade of the forest. Our pack divided, each on a mission given to us by Gordie and Tait. As the lad and I were setting a trap to catch a rabbit, she lifted her dirty face to mine and frowned. “Do you ever get scared?”
“Of what?”
“You know. Her.” The word was whispered with all the solemnity of a church vow.
My hands stilled, and I looked around to see if anyone else were close.
Her hand slipped to my arm. “Don’t worry. No one’s here.”
I shifted away from the lad, irritated by the question. Why did she want to know? She was always funny like that. Wanting to know what I felt. How I saw things as if the world through my eyes was any different than the one through hers. I covered a long section of string with dirt and leaves aware she hadn’t stopped staring. She wouldn’t until I answered her.
“No.” I muttered.
She sighed. “You are very brave. I think I would be.” She then grabbed a sliver of string and attached a limp piece of lettuce to it before tying the string to a stick.
I swallowed, my mind clicking on an idea that had stewed in my brain for a long time. “Don’t tell anyone, but –”
Her attention was immediate. “I won’t. You know you can trust me.”
“I don’t think it’s true.”
“What?” Shock played upon her face. “Your parent’s lied?”
It was the one thing I couldn’t understand. My parents never lied. They were good and honest…
I vehemently shook my head. “I don’t think so, but it doesn’t seem real. Have you ever seen the nix? Has anyone?”
“Tiller has.” Tait said as he pushed through the brush. I popped to my feet, and the lad threw me a look of apology as the rest of the boys filed in behind him.
Cyril glanced around nervously. “You shouldn’t talk about that.”
Gordie shook his head. “You’re an idiot, Tait. Everyone knows old man Tiller’s crazy. I bet if I told him I seen a fox do a jig, he’d say he’d seen one, too.”
“My father says Ryne’s father is a nutter.” Everyone turned to stare at Douglas. The boy’s gaze bounced around the group. “Well he did.”
I could feel my ears burn with anger, but before I could act, the lad jumped forward and pushed Douglas. “You’re father is the nutter.” A light scuffle between the two ensued before Gordie and I broke it up.
The lad struggled to be free in my hands. “Let me go,” she growled.
“It doesn’t matter,” I whispered in her ear.
The lad whipped her face toward mine, her lips a tight line. “It should.”
Her dark look told me it was too late. Her temper had ignited. She jerked free, and her attention quickly flew to where Tait inspected the construction of our trap. “Don’t you dare touch anything, you toad.”
Tait tossed back an unconcerned look. “Nice trap.” He ran his finger along the stick that held the lure. His eyes suddenly brightened. “That’s it. We could build a boat and see for ourselves if the tale is true.”
The lad stepped forward, right in the middle of the trap, stomping it apart amid the boys yells to get off. “Are you mad?” she screamed into Tait’s face. “We’ll not use Ryne as bait.”
Tait’s gaze whipped to Gordie’s. “I hadn’t thought of that. You know, I think it could work. How fast can we build a boat?”
The lad head-butted Tait, and the two fell to the ground. The boys burst out laughing at the sight of the tiny lad whooping on the bigger boy. My jaw tightened, and I shot an accusing glance at the group. I shouldn’t care what they said, but the teasing had grown, and it was beginning to wear on me. As the fight continued, I slipped away and headed home.
My mother glanced up from her sewing, a questioning look on her face, when I burst through the front door. I put my head down and ran for my room where I threw myself onto the bed and glared out the window. A moment later, I saw the lad break free of the tree line and saw Gordie follow. He caught up with her and pulled her away.
Good thing. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to hear another word about the nix.
The creak of the door sounded and the bed sagged as my mother sat next to me. Her cool fingers slipped through my hair. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
She sighed. “The weight of your nothing is very definitely something.”
I flipped onto my back and propped myself up on my elbows. “Did father lie?”
“I don’t understand—”
“About the nix. Did he lie?”
She worried at her bottom lip for a brief second. “Your father never lies.”
“Then you really believe I’ll die?”
“No.” Horror at what I said blossomed on her face. “I will not let you die. So long as you stay away from the—”
“They’re laughing at me. They think we’re crazy…as crazy as old man Tiller.”
Her hand stilled, and she pulled it away. “I’m sorry.”
Her voice had grown muted, sad and ineffective at chasing away the hurt.
I rolled back onto my stomach and glared out the window, tucking my pillow beneath my chin. “I just want it to stop.”
“I know.” She put her hand on my back and I flinched, willing her away. A moment later, she left. Nothing would ever change. My parents still believed. The curse still lingered. And in everyone’s eyes, I was still doomed.
“You’re an idiot.”
The tiny voice came from outside my window. I got up and dangled my torso over the sill, and there sat the lad—an excellent escape artist—leaning against my house, her dirty hands resting on her boney knees.
“What do you mean?”
She didn’t look up, but stared out toward the forest. “Why don’t you fight back?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll tell you why. You believe the curse.”
My heart suddenly began to hammer in my chest. “I do not.”
She cocked her head and glanced up at me. “Then show them you don’t.”
“How?”
A mischievous smile rippled against her mouth. “We’ll find a way.” The lad jumped to her feet and faced me. “Come on. Gordie dared Tait to swim out into the lake. For all his talk, he nearly pissed himself. I say he don’t got the guts.” Her fingers gripped the stone sill and she leaned forward, her face suddenly serious. “Truth, Ryne. None of them do.”
“Really?” I climbed out of the widow and dropped to the ground. We stared at each other for a moment, and then I offered a truce. “We need to fix that snare.”
The lad nodded. “Did you see me hit Tait? I think I cracked his big ugly nose.” I congratulated her on the accomplishment as we took off toward the forest.
Oh, the carefree years of youth. They swept me along until one day, I was fourteen, the lad thirteen, and we were sitting in a tree waiting for someone to come down the path so we could spit on their heads. It was one of the less obnoxious games we played. All our mates had grown up and were forced to work for their fathers until they could be apprenticed to tradesmen in other villages. Just the lad and I were left to amuse ourselves. I turned to her and leaned close for a whisper. “There’s someone com—”
The words froze on my lips.
Somehow, a ray of sunlight had found its way into our hiding spot and managed to pour all its warmth on the lad. It was as if she were receiving a heavenly blessing. Her hair, a common brown just moments ago, shown the color of wet tree bark and smelled of sunshine and lavender. I pulled back as if I’d been stung.
“What did you do?” I accused in no uncertain terms.
“Shhh,” she scolded, “someone’s coming.”
Her face glowed peaches and cream and her golden flecked cheeks had grown flushed with anticipation.
“Your face. Your hair,” I insisted, confused at this sudden change in her. “You smell.”
She gathered a large section of
hair in her hand–the strands gleamed softly in the light–and held it beneath her delicate nose. “You’re daft. I don’t smell anything.”
“I tell you, you smell.”
Heavy, uneven footsteps sounded. The interloper, old man Tiller, glanced up at us, and quickly moved down the path at an awkward trot that had his bum leg scraping the dust into a roiling cloud. Being lame, he had been lucky enough to have been a prior victim of our youthful escapades, but as I gaped witlessly at Gordie’s sister, he took his chance to get away unscathed. I didn’t care. I was solely focused on the stranger beside me.
From her, a familiar swirl of anger lashed out. “Now you’ve gone and chased our first victim away.” She turned an accusing eye on me. “What is wrong with you?”
Sitting there, staring into her cobalt eyes, it was then I noticed how large and heavily lashed they were, and how they tilted up at the outer corners mysteriously.
My gaping mouth must have amused her for her anger vanished as quickly as it had come, and she threw me a mischievous grin, nudging me in the arm. “You did that apurpose, didn’t you? You’ve grown soft. You know, he expects it to happen. Now what will he have to talk about over his ale but his crazy tales of nymphs and gnomes and tiny faeries?”
I heard nary a word of what she said. My gaze had dropped to her moving lips–rosy and lush and kissable sweet.
I suddenly couldn’t breathe. Images of our lips touching invaded my mind. I dug my fingertips into the rough bark beneath me and launched off the limb, scrambling down the tree as fast as I could. Only when I reached the ground did I feel safe enough to look up.
My friend had gone.
In a flash of a moment, the lad had disappeared to be replaced by a…a…girl. The prettiest girl I’d ever seen.
The mysterious creature cocked her head and openly stared back. “What is wrong with you, Ryne? Have I grown long ears and buck teeth?”
Worse. She had grown up. But how could that be? I was still a lad, and a full year older than her. It couldn’t be.
The light was bad. That was all. Were those not the same clothes she wore yesterday?
“Come down here, Nari.”
She blinked, a look of shock on her face. “What did you say?”
“Come down.”
She scampered down the tree trunk nearly as quickly and skillfully as I. When her feet touched the ground, she turned to me. Nope. The lad was gone. I backed up, unsure of the creature before me.
“You called me Nari.”
The condemnation in her gaze caught me off guard and I bristled back, “It’s your name, isn’t it?”
“You never call me that.”
“You took a bath.”
She crinkled up her nose and pushed her long hair out of her face. “I’ve taken one ever since I was eleven.”
The muted light coming through the trees highlighted her as if she were a precious jewel. When had her hair grown so long and beautiful? “You smell, I say, and I don’t like it.”
It was a lie. I liked it all too well, and it terrified me.
Confusion crossed her features. With a great deal of irritation, she planted her fists on her hips. Like a hound on the scent of fresh blood, she narrowed her eyes. “How so?”
“Like flowers. Like a girl.”
I might as well have slapped her in the face. She grew deathly pale and her kissable lips quivered ever so slightly. I couldn’t have shocked her more.
I wanted to protect her. I wanted to hold her. I wanted to never let her go. And in wanting her, I felt the blood seep from my own face as I grew lightheaded. I felt sick in the pit of my belly. What was happening to me? I pointed a shaky finger at her. “You stay away from me, you hear? Just stay away.”
I couldn’t look at her anymore. In the face of my fear, I turned and ran.
4
My feet took me toward home. Always a refuge, but now, once I saw the small cottage, I knew I could not go inside. There would be questions. Too many, and most I did not want to answer. Instead, I turned deeper into the woods that skirted my home. The tang of pine, the mustiness of wet earth and rotting leaves and the sweet spice of honeysuckle greeted me. After an hour of pushing through the dense foliage, I wandered closer to the lake and stumbled onto an amazing sight.
I stood rooted to the spot as the alarm, which had been instilled in me since I was born, reared forward. A watery oasis—deep, indigo pool, high, frothing waterfall—unfolded before me, yet I could not move for fear my feet would take me straight to the water, and to my death.
How could I not have known of this place? I allowed my gaze to roam the site, noting how the trees hugged the shore, curtaining the waterfall from anyone passing by on the lake. With the thick foliage surrounding it, I could see how it had remained untouched. If my friends had known about this place, they would have forced me here long ago in hopes they could break me of my fear.
I let out a shaky breath, releasing the tension I held tightly inside. I’d always been drawn to water, but at that moment, a sudden enchantment fell over me and I fell in love. Voicing its own language, the rumble of water lured me closer, calling me.
The appearance of falling water was an anomaly I couldn’t figure out. There was no river nearby, and to suddenly see water pouring from the earth in such violent, rushing splendor perplexed me. It took me no time at all to climb the slate cliffs. On closer inspection, it appeared as if a deep spring forced the water to the surface and over the edge of the escarpment. Legend had it that our lake, and its siblings close by, were made by an ancient creature so massive, that when it ran, its footprint formed yawning pits as it pushed the landscape into tall cliffs and yawning pits. The earth, under such violent force, opened the wells of the deep and water sprang forth, filling the pits.
If one believed Tait—and one would have to be a complete dolt to believe everything he said—a man could dive deep under the water and find jewel encrusted caves that stretched halfway around the world.
After our group had heard this latest twist to the old legend—for Tait loved to tell tall tales, especially when we waited for our next victim to walk by—Gordie shook his head. “That’s the biggest lie you’ve said yet.”
“It’s the truth,” Tait swore from his side of the trap we’d set. “They say that’s why Ryne’s father was out on the lake. Stealing the nix’s treasure. Everyone knows they are as poor as poor can be.”
The group grew still at the mention of the nix. For all their talk, they feared the curse. Leave it to Douglas to dare a curse. Hidden in the brush next to Tait and Cyril, he glanced over at me from across the lane. “So why does she want ol’ Ryne, then?”
“He’s right helpful, that’s why.” The lad clamped me on the shoulder as she spoke out in my defense. She turned to me, her dirt smudged face showing its worry. “Maybe she wants you to polish her jewels?”
I didn’t like it when the topic turned to my family. Our lack of fortune was hardly news. And talk of the nix only embarrassed me. Stuck fast between Gordie and his little sister, I could only shrug and pray I could convince them to drop the subject. “Wealth is measured by experience, not coin,” I said, repeating my father’s litany. “And there is no nix. It’s just a silly story, one to keep me safe from drowning.” And one, that over the years, I’d learned to hate.
“Then you won’t mind going for a swim after this, eh Ryne?”
I glared over at Tait. “Only if you go, too.” I didn’t wait to hear his reply. “I’ve got to go.” I pushed off the ground amid the lad’s hisses to leave me be and headed back home, my heart triple beating with just the thought of wading in the lake.
Yet now, as I stood atop the escarpment and looked through the break in the trees to the lake, I noticed how its surface sparkled crystal blue and green and deep purple. I could almost imagine a cave with shimmering jewels that colored the water so prettily. Why had I ever been scared?
I dropped my gaze to this hidden place, a pool attached to the lake, yet hidde
n and all my own. Scattered among the massive trees with limbs so large that many drooped to the ground from sheer weight, lay huge ferns, their width big enough to cradle a grown man and soft-spined brush sprinkled with purple and blue flowers. Springy moss seemed to cover nearly every rock and tree, cushioning my steps as I explored.
I quickly climbed down, feeling more at home than I had anywhere else, and threw myself onto the moss covered ground—not too close to the pool—and listened to the music of the waterfall. As I sank into the rhythm of the forest, the creatures I’d chased away with my unexpected arrival crawled back, accepting this lump of being that only lay quietly by the pooling water. If the lad could see me now, she would beg me to leave, insisting it was unwise to tempt fate.
I frowned. There was no lad. The mischievous tag-a-long I knew as my best friend was no more. Deep down, I knew the lad was gone for good.
How had it happened? What was I to do?
The water pounded the last question into my head, but offered no easy solution. I gently kneaded the soft moss with my fingertips as I eased my left arm under my head and stared through the thick canopy of leaves. I frowned, thinking of what had happened and realizing with a fair degree of alarm that I was alone, the last merry man of our forest.
Anger welled up within me. How dare she turn into a girl.
Nari was a girl.
A real girl.
A pretty girl.
A very pretty girl.
Unsettled by the trail of my thoughts, I flopped onto my side, scaring the creatures into hiding again. I gave little thought to those I disturbed, and gazed at the water bouncing off the stones until the churning mass tumbled into the pool. What to do?...What to do?…What to do? the gurgle and plunge repeated over and over again.
I listened to the question for a long time, until my limbs grew heavy and my eyes slowly closed against the creeping mist rolling in. Sleep greeted me with a painful truth.
The lad had always been a girl. I’d created an illusion to suit my needs, just as my parents had created a nix to keep me from the water. In my dream Nari turned into a beautiful water nymph, and we swam around the lake until I grew tired and began to drown. As I pleaded for her help, she only smiled and circled me and laughed as water filled my lungs.
