The Waterstone

by Rebecca Rupp

  Stubborn as a snapping turtle, Tad thought.

  “I wish,” he said, “I wish the book had told us what happened next.”

  “I don’t see that it matters all that much,” Birdie said, scratching Blackberry’s ears. “How do you know that things will happen the same way twice? ‘Every day is new and different.’ That’s what Father always says.”

  Tad couldn’t help himself. He made a rude snorting sound. New and different! I’ve had enough new and different, Tad thought crossly to himself, to last a lifetime.

  “She’s right,” Voice said, turning toward him. “No one ever knows what’s going to happen next. The last Sagamore — he didn’t know how things were going to turn out, even though he must have had Remembers, too, just like you do. This Sagamore thing is more like a tool — the same tool for everyone who has it, maybe, but each has to use it in his own way.”

  Suddenly a huge dark shadow swept across the bright clearing. Alarmed, they all looked up. It was a hawk, just skimming the highest branches of the treetops. It was hunting, rapidly flying in ever-tightening circles, spiraling closer and closer to the ground. Around it passed, and the shadow swept over them again. Pippit bleated in alarm. The hackles rose along the back of the weasel’s long neck, and he began to growl deep in his throat. Again the shadow passed, blocking out the sun.

  “Can it see us?” Birdie asked tremulously.

  “Yes,” said Tad shortly.

  From the time they had barely learned to paddle, all Fisher children were taught to beware of hunting birds. There was a prayer about hunting birds that Pondleweed had taught them when they were little, but Tad could only remember the first two lines:

  From owl by night and hawk by day,

  Great Rune deliver us.

  He wished he could remember more of it.

  “Don’t move,” Voice said urgently. “We could never get away from it, anyway. And it may not bother with us if we don’t move.”

  Witherwood remained leaning against the sun-warmed wall, his eye closed and his hands resting gently in his lap, seemingly unaware.

  Or perhaps nothing matters to him anymore, Tad thought. Perhaps death doesn’t frighten those who have already seen it once.

  A shocking thought struck him. I have seen death, too, he realized suddenly. And not just once — not just Father — but many times. How many Sagamores? They died, whoever they were, all that time ago. I died. But what happened? Father says that when we die we go to live in Great Rune’s garden at the end of the rainbow. But I can’t remember. Maybe some things we’re not supposed to remember. . . .

  Birdie crouched closer to the ground and gave a little whimper. Blackberry buried his face in his paws. Pippit tried to hide behind Tad. He felt cold, clammy, and nervous against Tad’s back.

  The hawk’s shadow swept over them again, growing larger and darker, plunging lower. Wind whistled past their ears. With an earthshaking thud, the hawk landed in the middle of Witherwood’s clearing.

  The bird was enormous. It towered hugely above the frozen group in the grass. Then it folded its vast wings across its back, cocked its head fiercely, and stared at them with one hot amber-colored eye.

  Why doesn’t it just grab one of us? Tad wondered. Why is it just standing there, watching us?

  The hawk’s head swiveled as it scanned the silent circle, resting at last on Tad. It opened its beak and let out a long, low, hoarse cry. There were words in the cry that Tad could understand.

  The hawk’s voice was like wind in high mountains. It was a strange wild voice with an edge of cruelty to it, an uncompromising voice full of valor and pride. No one having such a voice would ever give up or give in, no matter what. It was, Tad thought, a warrior’s voice.

  “I know you, Sagamore,” the great bird said.

  Tad opened his mouth but no sound came. Shakily he got to his feet. His knees felt as wobbly as crab-apple jelly. He had never been this close to a hunting bird before. The hawk loomed over him, terrifyingly huge.

  “H-how . . . ?” He tried again. “How do you know me? I don’t understand.”

  “By your marking,” the bird said.

  “Marking?” Tad repeated blankly. What marking? He was sure he didn’t have any special marking. He was just ordinary. Not like Witherwood with his terrible scar, or like Voice with all that red hair.

  “Each Family has its own marking. It is how we tell one from another,” the bird said. “The goshawks by their striped faces; the marsh hawks by their gray wings; the rufous hawks by their red shoulders.” He bent forward slightly and flared his fiery tail. “The red-tails as you see.” His amber eye, unblinking, regarded Tad.

  “You are marked,” the bird said, “by your shine.”

  Tad held a hand out in front of his face and looked at it, puzzled. He looked down at his bare webbed feet. Shine? He couldn’t see so much as a glimmer. All he saw was brown skin — somewhat grubby — and a dusty brown tunic that was now much the worse for wear.

  The bird blinked rapidly and cocked his head at a different angle. “There is a glittering rim around you, right at the edges,” he said helpfully. “It’s quite plain.” The hawk gestured with his beak toward Witherwood, still seemingly dozing on his sunlit bench. “The Old One can see it too.”

  Witherwood turned his head, and he and the hawk studied each other solemnly for a long moment. An understanding seemed to pass between them. Witherwood made a gesture with his hands, the first fingers linking tightly together.

  “Brother,” said Voice. He sounded as if something large were caught in his throat. “That means ‘brother.’”

  The bird’s eye gleamed brighter for an instant, then clouded with sorrow.

  “I am Kral of the Red-tails,” the hawk said. “I have come to seek your aid. The times are ill and the Families are fearful. The winds beneath our wings are dry and thick with dust. My mate has been taken by the black water. My nestlings are weak with thirst.”

  “It’s what my father calls a Drying Time,” Tad said. “We think that it’s caused by the Nixies, the Water Witches. They have a magic token called the Waterstone that they’re using to capture all the water.”

  The bird nodded. His feathers glowed in the sunlight, gold-brown tinged with red, the color of leaves on bright afternoons in the Moon of First Frosts. Tad had never realized that a hawk was so beautiful.

  “There is an old tale among the Families,” the hawk said. “It tells that in time of great trouble a groundling will appear called the Sagamore, the Shining One. I had thought this was a story for nestlings. But then, beside the black lake, I saw your shine.”

  “So it was you who killed the snake,” Tad said.

  “It was an evil creature,” the hawk said. “It was bitter with poison.” He made a gesture of wiping his beak, as if to rid himself of a bad taste. “Pthah!” he said with disgust. “You saved our lives,” Tad said.

  The bird shook his head dismissively.

  “I saw your shine,” the hawk said. “I have come to speed your quest.”

  “But why?” Tad swallowed nervously. “Since the Very Beginning, the hawks have always been our enemies.”

  He suddenly remembered, with awful clarity, Pondleweed’s tale about Great-aunt Thistleseed, who was snatched by a hawk one autumn day while gathering beechnuts. Nothing was left behind but a half-filled basket and one mouseleather boot. Nobody had liked Great-aunt Thistleseed much — she had a wart on her nose the size of a blueberry, and a nasty temper — but that, as Pondleweed was always quick to add, was hardly the point. Even if you carped and complained and generally behaved like a ferret with a sore paw, you didn’t deserve to get eaten in one gulp by a monstrous murdering bird the size of a house.

  The hawk blinked his amber eye. When he spoke again, he sounded regretful. “It is a harsh world, little brother,” he said, “and one must eat. To us, who live in the air, one groundling has always been much like another, whether it runs on two legs or four. But one can listen and learn, Shining
One, and the old ways can change.”

  “What is it talking about?” Birdie, still crouching on the grass, sounded small and frightened. Tad realized that she and Voice could only understand one side of the conversation. If that. Had he, too, been speaking in that strange harsh language of the hunting birds?

  “His name is Kral,” he said. “He says he wants to help us. That he came looking for me. ‘To speed my quest,’ he said.”

  “To tear your head off, more like,” said Voice. He shot a suspicious glance at the hawk. The bird had pulled himself majestically erect and was seemingly absorbed in something interesting in the far distance. He appeared to be paying no attention to the little group on the ground.

  Giving us a chance to talk things over, Tad thought.

  “It might not be able to help itself,” Voice continued. “It’s the hunting instinct, you know. They see something that’s small like a mouse and runs like a mouse, and they eat it. I’m not saying there’s ill will there, nothing like that. No feelings are involved. It’s just the way they’re made.” He gave a little shiver. “Predators,” he said.

  “‘The heron will never be friends with the frog,’” Birdie said. She glanced nervously out of the corners of her eyes at the silent hawk, without turning her head. “That’s what Father always says.”

  “And quite right too,” said Voice. “Food is food. You may make conversation with it and appreciate its finer qualities, but sooner or later, when one feels nibbly —”

  Pippit squawked.

  “He saved our lives at the black lake,” Tad said stubbornly.

  He took a deep breath. Sometimes, he reflected, you just have to trust in what you feel. And no matter what Voice and Birdie said, this felt right. He felt sure somehow that the hawk was an ally. A friend. And hadn’t Witherwood said “brother”?

  Tad glanced toward Witherwood, but the old man was leaning back against the wall again, silently shut in upon himself, his eye closed. Then Witherwood’s hands moved.

  “He speaks to you, Tad,” Voice said. “He tells you to listen with your Mind.”

  Listen with my Mind? How? Tad squinched his eyes shut, trying to concentrate. How could he listen with his mind? And then, as it had happened in the stone circle, something — stretched — inside him and he could hear. Though it wasn’t hearing exactly — and not quite seeing or touching, either, but a strange combination of the three. Maybe it’s my Third Eye, Tad thought. That’s what Pondleweed always said when he knew all about something that the children thought he couldn’t possibly have discovered. “I saw you two with my Third Eye,” Pondleweed would say.

  This Third Eye, though, not only saw, it saw beyond. Tad looked at Birdie and saw not just Birdie’s small greenish-brown face and dandelion-cotton hair but the Birdie beyond Birdie, a warm essence that spoke in a thought language all its own. The real Birdie. He could see — or hear or feel — what Birdie was feeling and thinking. On the surface, she was afraid, but deeper down, there was a hard core to Birdie like the heartwood of a tree, fiercely protective of the people she loved, determinedly courageous, indestructibly loyal and loving. Tad felt a surge of love for his little sister. Quicker than thought, his Eye flicked away. It passed over Pippit, a small moist green mind filled with thoughts about swimming and buzzflies; and over Blackberry, a velvety half-wild mind filled with a passionate devotion to the small female who had saved him from the dark ones. The Eye was growing more skillful now. Tad shifted it deliberately toward Witherwood and encountered something different: a tawny golden glow with a dark center. He reached toward it curiously, and it spoke.

  Most will never know that you can see them, Witherwood’s Mind said. It is a Talent of the Old Folk. The Witches spoke mind to mind among themselves and could touch the minds of others. That, too, is your Talent, Sagamore. It is what lets you know the languages of the forest; now the tongue of the hunting birds, but soon — soon — the tongues of all creatures, from the smallest to the greatest, that of the lowliest creepers to that of the Wild Wulvs, and even of the Mogs, which your people call the bears.

  Tad took a deep breath.

  Can the hawk be trusted? he asked the old man silently. Will he truly do as he says?

  Look and see, Witherwood answered in the same way.

  Tad moved his Eye, searching for the hawk’s mind. There. A strange ripple of being. It felt, as he drew closer, like blue wind. Clean and clear, threaded with a black vein of sorrow — a mate, lost — but no deceit there, no falsehood. Honest and honorable, Tad thought.

  He had his answer.

  He moved closer to the great bird, reached up, and laid his hand on the tip of the longest wing feather.

  “Could you take us to Stone Mountain?” he asked.

  “In three hours, as the hawk soars,” the harsh voice answered. “If you can cling to my back, little brother, I shall take you to the Burrowers and bring you safely home again.”

  “He can take us to the mountains,” Tad explained to the others. He found it hard to remember they could not understand the hawk’s words. “To the Burrowers, he said.”

  “The Burrowers . . .,” Voice said. “He must mean the Diggers. They’ve built whole towns there, underground, in huge rooms whittled out of rock.” He paused, looking worried.

  “Diggers are strange,” Voice said.

  Birdie came to stand beside Tad.

  “If you’re going to the Mountains,” she said in a determined voice, “I’m going with you.”

  She was wearing her snapping-turtle look. Tad’s heart sank. He couldn’t let Birdie go along. Who knows what he might find at Stone Mountain? It might be dangerous. If anything happened to Birdie, he would never forgive himself.

  “No, you’re not,” he said. “You stay here, Birdie, where it’s safe. And take care of Blackberry and Pippit.”

  Birdie ignored him.

  “Voice can look after Blackberry,” she said.

  “No, I can’t,” said Voice. “Weasels give me crawly feelings.”

  “And Pippit can stay with them,” Birdie continued.

  Pippit gave a horrified squawk that seemed to say that weasels gave him crawly feelings too.

  Birdie stuck out her lower lip and looked more obstinate than ever.

  “You’ll all be fine,” she said loudly. “The Sagamore before, the one in Witherwood’s book — he didn’t go to the Mountains alone. He took friends with him. You wouldn’t want Tad to go all by himself, would you?”

  “Yes,” said Tad.

  “No, of course not,” said Voice at the same time.

  The hawk broke in, its harsh voice tinged with amusement. “This shouting one is your mate?”

  Tad shook his head vigorously. “She’s my sister,” he said. “My younger sister, Birdie. She’s only nine. She wants to go with us.”

  “Your nest-mate,” the hawk said. He nodded approvingly. “A female as valiant as the males. It is a trait much prized among the Families.” His voice dropped and saddened. “Such was my mate, Kakaara, Lady of the High Air, Wind of my Heart.” The hawk fell silent for a moment. Then he stretched his neck and flexed his broad wings. Banded feathers rippled. “I can easily carry two,” he said. “Or three or four. You groundlings are as small as the veriest mice.”

  It was an unfortunate comparison. Tad decided not to repeat it.

  “All right,” he said ungraciously to Birdie. “He says he can take both of us. But if you go, you can’t change your mind in the middle, you know. You’ll have to go all the way. We’re not going to turn around halfway there to bring you back.”

  “As if I’d want you to,” Birdie snapped, glaring.

  The hawk gave a hoarse caw that might have been a chuckle.

  “Truly a young hawk,” he said.

  Hastily, preparations were made for the journey. Voice assembled a picnic-packet of food, wrapped in a fresh green leaf and pinned with bent thorns. Birdie explained (several times) to Blackberry that she would be back soon and that Voice would look after
him in her absence. She made Voice scratch Blackberry behind the ears and persuaded the weasel to roll over on his back so that Voice could tickle his stomach. Blackberry soon became entranced with his new friend and developed a tendency to frisk and to poke Voice playfully in the stomach with his nose.

  “Nice weasel,” Voice said unenthusiastically. He was trying to maneuver a bench between himself and Birdie’s pet. “Good Blackberry.”

  Pippit, however, refused to be left behind. He croaked piteously, clinging first to Birdie and then to Tad, and then flinging himself flat in the dry grass and kicking, a picture of froggish misery.

  “We might as well take him,” Birdie said. “Besides, we might need a watchfrog. Remember how he warned us about the Grellers.”

  Pippit stopped kicking and sat up, rolling his eyes hopefully.

  “I suppose you’re right,” Tad said in an exasperated voice. He turned on the suddenly revived Pippit. “But you behave yourself, Pippit. Don’t go wandering off. And don’t hop on people all the time.”

  Pippit subsided into the grass, blinking rapidly, clearly trying to look like the model of a well-behaved frog.

  They scrambled onto the hawk’s back, with the help of a twig ladder thoughtfully produced by Voice, and perched, one behind the other, on the bird’s broad shoulders, settling themselves between his folded wings.

  Even now, Tad thought with a churning feeling in his stomach, they seemed awfully high above the ground. Sitting there, they were as high as Witherwood’s stone chimney.

  The hawk roused, flexing his wings. Beneath their bare legs, Tad and Birdie could feel the shifting ripple of powerful muscles.

  “We fly, Sagamore,” the great bird said.

  “He’s going, Birdie,” Tad said over his shoulder. “Hang on. And hang on to Pippit.”

  He raised a hand in farewell to Voice and Witherwood. They were standing close together in the cottage dooryard, Witherwood leaning on his wooden crutch. As Tad watched, Witherwood’s hands moved, spelling out a message. “Farewell!” Voice called up to them. “My master wishes you safe journey!