The Waterstone

by Rebecca Rupp

  Prologue The Magpie’s Treasure

  1 The Voice in the Water

  2 The First Remember

  3 Drying Time

  4 Up the Stream

  5 Hunters

  6 The Black Lake

  7 The Dryad

  8 Treeglyn’s Story

  9 The Stone Circle

  10 The Sagamore

  11 Witherwood

  12 The Old Turtle

  13 The Red Book

  14 Brother Hawk

  15 The Diggers

  16 The High Council

  17 The Faces in the Rocks

  18 The Gathering

  19 The Band of Four

  20 The Parley

  21 The Rallying of the Tribes

  22 The Nixie

  23 The Mind and the Magic

  24 Birdie’s Talent

  25 Return to the Pond

  The young magpie collected things. Her shaggy nest was crammed with treasures, all lovingly sorted into heaps and piles. She had — she counted on her wingtips — a curly yellow ribbon, an orange butterfly’s wing, six striped feathers, a handful of scarlet berries, two silver beads, a pink snail shell, and a glittery gold-flecked stone. It was an outstanding Collection — one of the best in the Flock, the magpie thought privately, though she was too well brought up to say so. Still, even the best Collection was never finished. Collecting was a way of life, and a good magpie was always watchful, searching for new and better additions for the hoard.

  Today she had found a prize.

  She had spotted it far below her — at first just a tempting glitter, a sudden flash in the sunlight, like a fragment of mirror glass. She dived toward it, heart pounding. There it was. A once-in-a-lifetime find. Half hidden in a little hollow littered with dead leaves lay a snow-white crystal the size of a robin’s egg, streaked with shining threads of silver. Its facets captured and reflected the spring sunshine in a dancing dazzle, and from within, it glowed with a mysterious, soft cool light. Unable to believe her luck, the magpie stooped, deftly plucked it up, and rose triumphantly into the air. In her excitement, she barely noticed the approaching foe, until he squawked demandingly in her ear.

  She had seen him before. A scruff-tailed bully from the other side of the forest. Because his own Collection was so paltry — crumbly gray lichens, a pinecone, and a few withered heads of red clover — he often tried to snatch finds from cleverer, more talented birds. Well, today he wasn’t snatching. Not from her. She dodged adroitly, glaring fiercely at the interloper. But he wouldn’t let her alone. He followed her, squawking greedily, deliberately bumping against her, trying to knock her out of the air. His wings buffeted her head. She screamed in fury.

  The crystal was falling. It plummeted downward through the air, dwindling in an instant to a vanishing silver pinprick, and splashed, with dreadful finality, into the blue lake far below. Beneath the surface it fell onward, plunging down through the clear water, gleaming whitely and trailing a long comet’s tail of tiny silver bubbles. Above it, unheard, a horrified male magpie fled, pursued by an enraged female with blood in her eye.

  The crystal slowed in its long descent, drifting gently to the lake bottom. In its wake a shadow fell. Suddenly the quiet water trembled as if something better left sleeping had come awake.

  Tad was beginning to hate the spear.

  It was his first spear, and — when he had woken on the morning of his twelfth Naming Day to find it leaning against the wall beside his bed — he had thought that it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. His father had always pretended that Naming Day presents were brought each year by the Moon Elves, who traveled to Earth on moonbeams and brought gifts to well-behaved girls and boys. But it had been a long time since Tad had believed in the Moon Elves, and besides he would have recognized the handiwork of his father, Pondleweed, anywhere. The spear had a broad chiseled flint point, a polished wooden haft painted in red-and-black stripes, and a leatherleaf handgrip, just the right size for Tad’s hand. There was even a decorative tassel at the end, made of braided silkgrass threaded with brightly colored seeds. No boy, Tad was sure, had ever had a finer weapon or a better Naming Day gift. Just owning it was enough to make him almost burst with pride.

  Of course, it wasn’t the way the spear looked that was the problem. It was the way the thing behaved. No matter what Tad did, the spear simply wouldn’t do what he wanted it to. It acted as though some magicker had put an evil spell on it. It seemed to have a mind of its own, and that mind was mischievous, contrary, and sometimes just plain mean.

  This time his throw should have been perfect. He had taken his stance just as Pondleweed had taught him: one foot forward, knees braced, back straight. He had taken his time, drawing back his arm, rehearsing every move in his head, taking careful aim. The target was a square of birch bark with a great round eye — the Owl’s Eye, Pondleweed called it — painted with red berry juice in the center. A good spearsman, Pondleweed said, could hit that Eye with every throw — and every man of the Fisher Tribe, it went without saying, was an expert with the spear.

  Tad just knew he had it right this time. It felt right. As the spear flew from his hand, he could almost hear the solid thunk of the stone point hitting home and the satisfying hum of the quivering haft. He had even opened his mouth to give a delighted yell of triumph. And then, at the very last minute, everything went sour. The spear wobbled, veered sideways, and dived abruptly out of the air. It bounced once, slithered under the blackberry bushes, scooted across the ground, and splashed heavily into the pond. It floated there for a moment on the water’s surface; then — deliberately, Tad thought — it sank, leaving behind a mocking trail of bubbles. Tad stared after it in dismay.

  The pond erupted in a chorus of croaks from a bevy of startled frogs, followed by a raucous burst of what sounded like loud amphibian laughter. A blue jay, balanced on an overhanging branch, set up a derisive squawk. “Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!” She sounded as if something were squeezing her around the middle. Tad wished it were him.

  He glared at the blue jay furiously. It wasn’t wise to pick a fight with birds, Pondleweed said; even seed-eating birds could be dangerous, with their knife-edged claws and their dagger-long beaks capable of pecking an unwary Fisher right in two. “If it’s near as big as you or bigger,” Pondleweed always said, in that serious voice that he used for things that were important, “chances are it’s not your friend, and even if it’s got no mind to hurt you, it still might. So don’t you go worrying any birds.”

  The blue jay gave a last loud giggle and flew away. Tad clenched his fists and kicked angrily at the ground. “Mudpats!” he muttered under his breath. He looked guiltily over his shoulder, but there seemed to be nobody within earshot. He paused for a moment, trying to think of something even worse to say. “Fish pee! Weasel droppings!”

  The red Owl’s Eye seemed to be looking right at him with an expression of mocking contempt. Tad bent down, picked up a pebble, and threw it at the target as hard as he could. The pebble missed too. It was his seventeenth miss that day. Tad felt mad enough to pop like a milkweed pod. At the same time he felt like bursting into tears.

  “Tad?”

  Tad jumped. It was his little sister, Birdie. Birdie had turned nine on her last Naming Day, in the cold Moon of Bare Trees, and her present, Tad remembered, had been a willow-twig doll. Fisher girls were supposed to cook and sew and grow up to be good wives and mothers. Nobody expected them, Tad reflected bitterly, to perform impossible tricks with hateful mudsucking stone-pointed sticks. Birdie didn’t know how lucky she was.

  He turned and looked toward the sound of Birdie’s voice. At first he saw only shifting shadows of brown and green. “Find the right place and stay still,” Pondleweed always said, “and most things wi
ll pass you by, seeing no more than a bit of twig and leaf.” The trick, of course, was figuring out which place was the right place and then remembering not to wiggle once you were in it. Birdie was better at it than Tad was. She was sitting cross-legged at the foot of a towering clump of dandelions, her small brown face and misty greenish-brown hair dappled with flickering stripes of shade and sun. The bright yellow dandelion blossoms — wide and flat as furry umbrellas — bobbed gently in the breeze high above her head. Her fringed green tunic — belted with braided linenleaf and stitched around the collar with tiny yellow seeds — was just the color of the dandelion stems.

  She probably saw and heard everything, Tad thought. The missed target, the sunken spear, the kicking, the yammering about weasel droppings, that stupid bit with the pebble. He must have looked like a puddleflapping idiot. The pointed tips of his ears turned raspberry with embarrassment. He hated himself. He hated everything. He wished he’d been born a frog.

  He scowled furiously at Birdie.

  “Were you spying on me?” he demanded.

  Birdie scowled right back. Fisher girls weren’t supposed to scowl like that, Tad thought. Fisher girls were supposed to be serene and even-tempered and good at handicrafts. At least that was what Pondleweed said. Birdie was always being scolded about her temper and sent to sit on a rock in the garden until her thoughts were as peaceful as a still pool.

  “I was not spying,” Birdie said in an unpeaceful, offended sort of voice. “I don’t spy.” She pointed to a tangled heap of woven pea vines beside her in the grass. “I was mending the fishtrap net.”

  She bit her lip, studying Tad’s red face.

  “Spear throwing just takes practice,” she said. “You have to be patient. It’s like Father says: ‘Berries don’t ripen overnight.’”

  So she was watching, Tad thought. It was nice of Birdie to try to be comforting. But he just wasn’t in the mood right now to hear himself compared to a green berry. He was sick of being a green berry. He wanted to be brave and powerful and admired, like the heroes and warriors in Pondleweed’s stories. Like Bog the Weaselkiller who wore a collar of gold nuggets and weasel claws and carried a spear made of blood-red agate that never missed a foe. Or like Frostwort the Winterborn who fought the White Fox of Far Mountain with nothing but a slingshot and a magic silver pebble.

  “I’ll be right back,” he told Birdie gruffly. “I have to get my spear.”

  He turned and ran toward the pond, darting out along a half-submerged log at the water’s edge. He hesitated for a moment, judging just where his spear had fallen in. Then, in one swift fluid motion, he dived. The clear green water of the pond closed over his head.

  Tad was as at home in the water as a fish. Like all Fisher children, he had learned to swim even before he had learned to walk, first splashing in the shallows, then paddling in the deeper water with a floatstick to hang on to, and finally gliding smoothly through the deeps, sleek and slippery as a young otter or a slim brown minner. His green-brown hair flattened slickly to his head, and flaps of skin sealed his nostrils shut to keep the water from going up his nose. He kicked expertly, his wide brown feet with their long webbed toes sweeping strongly through the cool water. He turned a somersault and then began to paddle slowly back and forth, his eyes searching the pond bottom for the spear.

  The underwater world gleamed. Ribbons of sunlight wove back and forth across the sandy bottom, tangling themselves together, then untangling themselves and swiftly sliding away again. Silky strands of eelweed brushed Tad’s legs. A fat spotted rock bass — twice as long as Tad himself — poked a curious nose out from a cluster of water lily stems and goggled foolishly up at him. Its big bulging eyes were slightly crossed. It opened and closed its mouth twice, blew a bubble, and slowly withdrew, wiggling backward with a furl of fins and tail. Tad puffed his cheeks and blew a bubble back. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of red and black. It was the spear, resting neatly on a bed of mud and pebbles, looking somehow pleased with itself, as if it had never made a mistake in its life. He scowled at the spear resentfully and began to swim toward it, stretching out a hand to pick it up.

  Then — suddenly — something about the pond felt different. Wrong.

  At first it was only a nervous ripple and a creepy feeling between his shoulder blades. Then a thump of alarm. Tad twisted in the water, looking anxiously about him. Something was wrong. It was as if something malevolent — a watersnake? — had suddenly turned its head and looked directly at him. Watching with angry little eyes. But where was it? No danger was in sight, but the peaceful and familiar pond felt hostile. The stems and leaves of the water plants were frightening forests; the rocks, dark lairs of lurking terrors. His skin prickled, his heart began to pound, and the hair stood up on the back of his neck.

  Watching.

  There were strange toadstools and funguses deep in the forest that sometimes shone at night with an eerie green light, standing out like ghostly fires from their dark surroundings. Glowmolds, Pondleweed called them. Tad, hanging fearfully in the water, felt just like that — like a glowmold, helplessly illuminated, caught in a puddle of light with no place to hide. He felt more and more frightened. Something was watching him. He could feel it. He turned his head desperately from side to side, but nothing was there. Nothing he could see.

  Are you the One?

  The voice, cool and clear as spring water, echoed inside his head. It was an inhuman, somehow empty voice, the sort of voice that the wind or the rain might have if it could speak. It seemed to come from no direction and from all directions at once. At first it reminded Tad of bell music and chimes; then it grew colder and harder until it sounded like breaking icicles or like frozen pebbles dropped on a silver plate.

  Are you the One? Is it you?

  Whoever it was meant him no good, Tad was sure of that. He wanted to run and hide, but there was nowhere to go, no way he could tear himself free. A confusing swirl of images filled his brain, like pictures from half-forgotten dreams: a strange silver-eyed face framed in a cloud of pale green hair; a blue-lit chamber paved with pearls and patterned tiles; then — where? — a blaze of flaming torches and a great stone mountain whose cliffs mysteriously moved and shifted; and over all a thundering tide of dark water through which ran the sound of voices, many voices, singing some high sweet song.

  What’s happening? he thought frantically. Who are you? And the voice, like an icy silver dagger, answered.

  Do you not remember? I am Azabel.

  Tad was gasping and choking, back on dry land again, lying facedown at the edge of the pond. Everything — mouth, nose, eyes, ears, lungs — was full of water. He felt like a sodden sponge. He coughed convulsively. His stomach heaved and he spat out a mouthful of pond water.

  When he rolled over, he saw that Birdie was crouched over him, her face furrowed with concern. She was dripping wet. Her green-brown hair was plastered flat to her head and her tunic was dark with water. There were puddles around her feet.

  “What happened?” Tad croaked.

  “You didn’t come up,” Birdie said. She was breathing in hard gulps as if she had been running. “You didn’t come up and then all the frogs started yelling their warning noises. So I jumped in to see what was wrong and you were just floating there under the water with your eyes wide open.” She sniffed loudly and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “You looked awful. I was scared. I thought you were dead.”

  “There was something in the pond,” Tad said. He sat all the way up. Then he bent over and put his head down on his knees. He felt sick and dizzy. “Did you get my spear?”

  “No,” Birdie said. “I wasn’t thinking about your spear.” She stopped sounding upset and began sounding irritated. “If you found somebody drowning, would you go paddling off to pick things up off the pond bottom? Your stupid spear’s still down there. I’ll go get it in a minute.”

  “No!” Tad said. “Don’t go in there, Birdie!” Even though the late afternoon sun w
as warm, he was shivering. He wrapped his arms tightly around his knees. Birdie looked at him in surprise.

  “There’s something . . . somebody . . . in the water. Something dangerous.” His teeth began to chatter. “Not like a pike or a watersnake. Something else. I could hear it — her — talking.”

  “Underwater?” Birdie said. She looked skeptical. “You can’t talk underwater. The words would all sound like this.” She made a gargling sound deep in her throat. “You couldn’t have heard talking.”

  Behind her a bullfrog gave a disbelieving Glub!

  “Well, I did!” Tad said loudly. “Move over, Birdie. You’re dripping on me.”

  Birdie took a grudging step backward.

  “So what did it say?” she demanded.

  “She told me her name,” Tad said slowly. The cold silver voice echoed in his memory. “She said, ‘I am Azabel.’”

  “‘Azabel,’” Birdie repeated. “Az-a-bel. It’s pretty, Tad. Like a name in one of Father’s fairy tales.”

  Tad shook his head. The sick feeling was coming back. “This was real, Birdie.” And it wasn’t like a fairy tale at all, he thought. He hesitated, trying to explain. “It wasn’t what she said exactly. It was the way she said it. She’s . . .” He gave another shiver. “She’s nothing like us, Birdie. To her, we’re like beetlebugs or something. I could feel her mind inside my head. It felt . . .” He paused, groping for words. “Dark. And old, terribly old. And cold. Like black ice.”

  And there was something else, Tad thought. She said something else. What was it? The Remember hovered annoyingly just out of reach.

  “Tad! Birdie!”

  Pondleweed was running toward them. He was carrying a flat woven basket. He must have been blackberry picking, Tad thought. Sick as he was, he noticed that his father hadn’t found many berries.

  “Has something happened? Are you all right?” Pondleweed dropped the basket and his hand went to the hilt of the stone-bladed knife that he wore strapped to his snakeskin belt. “Has something been here? A heronbird? A watersnake? A fox?”