The Waterstone

by Rebecca Rupp

  Good fortune, Sagamore, Witherwood spoke in Tad’s mind.

  “Take good care of Blackberry!” Birdie shouted.

  At the sound of his name, the weasel pricked up his ears. Then he kicked up his hind legs delightedly and butted Voice in the stomach. Voice’s lips formed the word Oof, and he sat down without meaning to, heavily.

  There was a rustle of unfurling feathers, then a violent buffet of wind struck them as the hawk leaped into the air. Tad felt as if the bottom had dropped abruptly out of his stomach. The ground fell dizzily away. The children, peering over the hawk’s shoulders, could see Witherwood and Voice waving beneath them, faces upturned to watch them go.

  The wavers on the ground grew smaller and smaller. Soon they were only brown dots at the edge of a clearing the size of a dinner plate. Then they were gone altogether, lost in a great sweep of browns and faded greens. Tad caught his breath. He had dreamed all his life of the world beyond the pond, but he had never dreamed of anything as immense — as magnificent — as this. The world was far vaster than he had ever or could ever have imagined. From the air, the land spread out endlessly in all directions, rising and falling, fading bluely into distant horizons, farther than his eyes could see. He had never in his life felt so small and insignificant. He clutched the hawk’s feathers tighter and felt Birdie’s hands behind him, gripping his shoulders.

  The world below was dry. Tad could see it, even at this great height. What should have been rich summer greens were sickly pale. The forest was striped and splotched with brown and yellow and ashy gray. Some trees thrust naked branches out of the forest canopy: skeletal, leafless, dead. Far away, in the distant east, an ominous column of smoke was rising. Tad remembered what the Dryad had said about forest fires.

  The bird climbed higher and higher, wings beating strongly in a powerful rhythm. Then the hawk’s flight leveled. Now he sped smoothly through the air, sometimes gliding, wings outstretched, like a paddler before a carrying current of water. Wind whipped through the children’s hair. The red-brown feathers brushing their arms and legs were beautifully soft and smelled sweetly of dried grass and pine needles. Tad had never seen the sky so close, so brilliantly blue. He felt as if he could reach up and touch it and that if he did, it would be as smooth and cool as the inside of a shell or the surface of a rain-washed stone.

  The hawk flung itself onto a rising updraft of air and soared. He let out a long keening cry. Tad realized that the bird was singing — or rather chanting — a battle song to the drumbeat rhythm of the wind.

  I am the Harrier.

  I am the Hunter.

  Cloud-rider, Wind-rider,

  Lord of Air.

  I am the Death-dealer.

  I am the Blood-breaker.

  Storm-rider, Rain-rider,

  Lord of Air.

  There was a lot more like that, all rather boastful, and somewhat monotonous after a while. The repetitive beat was soothing. Bah-bah-bah, bah-bah-bah, Lord of Air. Tad’s eyelids drooped, and he began to feel sleepy. He must have even dozed a bit, for he jerked awake suddenly to find that the chant had ended. A long chain of mountains now lay before them in the distance. One loomed taller than the rest, its lofty peak silvered with unmelted snow.

  “Stone Mountain,” the hawk said.

  The mountain for which the hawk was heading was shaped like a swimming fish. It had a high humped back with a sheer rocky ridge running along the very top of it like a dorsal fin; then it trailed sinuously away to the south, curving gracefully like a fish’s powerful tail. A bare white outcropping on the mountainside marked the fish’s eye, and a pair of ragged hillocks looked a bit like tail fins.

  “We could call it Fisher Mountain,” Tad said over his shoulder. He had to shout to be heard over the rushing of the wind. “Maybe it’s a good omen, Birdie.”

  Birdie shouted something back, but the wind whisked away her words.

  The hawk was preparing to land. He slowed and began to lose altitude, braking dexterously with twists and tilts of its broad flight feathers. Gradually, as the children watched, objects on the ground came into focus. Shapes of trees emerged from the blurred sameness beneath them; then the outlines of branches and leaves. They dropped lower, moving in long lazy circles, down and down. Finally, with a sharp upward flip of his tail, the bird settled to the ground. His talons made a scraping sound on the rock-strewn surface.

  “There.” The hawk gestured with his beak, pointing out the direction. “That way can be found the Burrowers. They may be able to lead you to what you seek.”

  Tad and Birdie, clinging to feathers, slid cautiously down from the bird’s back. It felt strange to be standing on solid ground again after the swift flight through the upper air. Pippit sprang incautiously after them, changed his mind in midair, gave a panic-stricken squawk, and landed with a thud next to Tad’s feet.

  “I will stay here at the edge of the trees and wait for you,” the hawk said. “The Burrowers are no friends of the Families, and I have no wish to face their flying arrows. I will be here when you return. You have only to climb the path and circle behind the boulders, and you will reach the door to their dens.”

  The hawk shook his wings fussily and began to preen, smoothing and rearranging his feathers one by one with his beak.

  “We’ll be as quick as we can,” Tad said.

  The bird paused in his grooming. “A safe wind beneath you, Sagamore,” he said. He motioned with his head toward Birdie. “Have a care for the young hawk.”

  The path was narrow and dusty, and rough with gravel, and once the children left the shelter of the trees, the stones were uncomfortably hot under their bare feet. Tad, glancing back over his shoulder, saw the hawk staring after them, motionless and almost invisible in the dappled sunlight at the edge of the forest. The bird nodded once, encouragingly, and blinked one amber eye. Then Tad, Birdie, and Pippit rounded an immense granite boulder, and Tad lost sight of him.

  The path wove in and out through a field of huge stones that looked as if they had been dropped by giant children playing a giant game of pebblehop. There were so many turns and twists and backtrackings that Tad lost all sense of direction. It felt as if they were going around in circles. He was hot. And his feet were beginning to hurt. Then Pippit suddenly stopped dead in the middle of the path and began to croak unhappily.

  “He’s tired,” Birdie said to Tad.

  She prodded the frog with her toes. “We can’t stop now, Pippit.”

  But Pippit refused to budge. He hunkered down stubbornly, blinking rapidly, and making agitated little wheezing noises.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Tad.

  “He won’t go,” Birdie said. “Come on, Pippit. Move.“

  Pippit hunched his head into his shoulders and pretended to be a rock.

  “There’s something wrong,” Birdie said. “There’s something he doesn’t like up ahead.”

  Pippit whimpered.

  “We have to go on,” Tad said.

  “It’s all right, Pippit,” Birdie said. “You’ve warned us. ‘The most dangerous snake is the one you don’t know is there.’ That’s what Father says, Pippit. If you’re expecting danger, then you’re prepared.”

  Pippit gave a long series of croaks, clearly indicating that if you were expecting danger, you ought to be going in the opposite direction.

  They edged nervously forward, Birdie keeping watch to the right, Tad to the left. Pippit dragged between them, tugging at their tunics and making doomful sounds.

  Birdie said doubtfully, “I don’t see anyth —”

  Before she finished her sentence, Pippit gave a terrified squawk and leaped violently backward, knocking both children off their feet. Just where they had been standing, a heavy bundle of rope thudded down onto the path. The bundle quivered, jerked, gave a hiccuping little heave, and then — with a gigantic tug — gathered itself into a bag, turned upside down, and shot up into the air. Tad and Birdie stood staring after it.

  “It’s a net,” Ta
d said after a moment. “Like our fishing nets back home, only bigger.”

  “It’s a trap,” Birdie said. “If it weren’t for Pippit, we’d have been caught in it.”

  Pippit made satisfied noises, indicating that he had done his job well and been proved right, while Tad and Birdie had behaved foolishly and been proved wrong.

  “Look!” Tad said. “It’s doing something. The net’s moving all by itself. Look — it’s running along a line, on a little wheel. Let’s follow it.”

  They scampered along the ground beneath the net bag, which was zipping busily through the branches overhead. Then the net stopped abruptly with a jerk, released itself from the line, and dropped heavily onto a long wooden platform.

  The platform was much higher than the tops of the children’s heads. A thick strip of oiled cloth ran across the top of it and then around the bottom in a long unbroken loop. The cloth, Tad realized, was moving somehow, dragging the limp net along with it.

  Whump!

  The whole platform shook.

  Whump!

  “What’s that?” said Birdie.

  Tad stood on tiptoe and pointed.

  “It’s a club,” he said. “Birdie, it’s an enormous club! It’s connected up over that platform somehow. This must be how the Diggers hunt. They must catch things in those nets, and then the club falls down on top of them and . . .”

  “Squashes them,” said Birdie, looking horrified.

  Whump!

  “That could have been us,” Birdie said again in a small voice. “I don’t think I like the Diggers much.”

  “We’ve come all this way,” Tad said. “We can’t stop now. Besides, we need their help.”

  Birdie nodded reluctantly. “Let’s get away from here,” she said. “Come on, Pippit. No, not that way. That’s back the way we came. This way.”

  Pippit gave a distressed-sounding croak, clearly saying that backward was by far the best way to go.

  They had been walking steadily for some time — Pippit grumbling unhappily behind them — when they heard, far up ahead, a babble of voices. Tad hushed Pippit, and they moved forward cautiously, their feet silent on the stony ground. As they drew nearer, the voices grew louder and more distinct, and the babble resolved itself into the sound of two people bickering.

  “I tell you, I saw it,” the first voice — a high excited tenor with a tendency to squeak — said.

  The second answered in a suspicious growl. “And you saw the ferrets, too, not seven days ago, all lined up in the moonlight, you said, with their little eyes a-gleaming, and what did we find when we got out here?”

  An unhappy mutter from the squeaker.

  “I’ll tell you what we found,” the growly voice continued relentlessly. “Stones, nothing but stones, and all that hauling for no reason.” There was a ringing clatter, followed by a protesting grating noise. “Ferrets!” the growly voice said in disgust.

  “Anyone can make a mistake,” the squeaker said defensively.

  “And anyone does,” the growler retorted. “Over and over and over again. And always on the days when I’m on duty. Pick another day, why don’t you, and share your mistakes with another watchman?”

  “It was right overhead, I tell you!” It was the first voice, shriller. “You’d have to be blind to miss it, big as it was, and nasty-looking, too, with its big hooky beak and little yellow eyes. . . .”

  Birdie nudged Tad violently in the ribs. “It’s the hawk,” she whispered. “He’s talking about our hawk. He must have seen us. But the other one doesn’t believe him.”

  They edged forward cautiously and peered around the edge of a jagged granite ledge.

  “What’s that?” whispered Birdie, staring. “What are they doing?”

  There was a wide archway cut in the stone of the mountainside before them. The archway could be closed off with a pair of heavy wooden doors, but now the doors were swung wide open to the afternoon sun. Just outside the doors, a pair of figures, their backs toward the children, struggled awkwardly with a complicated-looking device on metal-rimmed wooden wheels. The taller of the two suddenly stopped whatever he had been doing, straightened, and turned. He was a Digger. His face and body were covered in short reddish-brown fur, and his eyes were as round and dark as a pair of polished black beads. He wore a tight leather cap on his head, and a leather apron with a row of pockets across the front.

  “It’s gone now, anyway,” the tall Digger said crossly. He was the squeaker. “By the time a chap can get any attention —” He stopped suddenly as he caught sight of Tad and Birdie. “Who’s there?” The squeak, startled, became piercing. “Who are you?”

  “That’s quite enough for one day, Grummer,” the growler said testily, straightening up in turn and clutching the small of his back. “We’ve all had quite enough of your confusions and commotions and false alarms —” He stopped in midsentence as Grummer tugged insistently at his arm. Then he, too, turned to look toward the children. His eyes widened and his mouth fell open.

  “What did I tell you?” the squeaker said smugly.

  “Fishers, as I live and breathe,” the shorter Digger said. “And young ones, if I’m not mistaken. Come out, then, the both of you. We won’t hurt you. Unless mayhap Grummer here falls on you by tripping over his own big feet. Where do you two come from? And what brings you to Stone Mountain?”

  Tad and Birdie hesitantly moved out from behind the sheltering ledge and came forward.

  “I’m Tadpole. Tad,” Tad said. “And this is my sister, Birdie. We come from the northernmost of the Ponds.”

  “A goodly distance,” said the shorter Digger drily. His name, he told the children, was Werfel, though Tad and Birdie would always think of him as the Growler. He was the day’s watchman, charged with guarding the gate and keeping alert for strangers and enemies.

  “We take it in turns,” he told the children, “since it’s a dull job most days, and none of us likes to be taken from our proper work. There’s not much that comes to Stone Mountain, for all that Grummer here sees ferrets behind every rock and tree. We’re well protected, mind, and the word gets around.”

  Grummer looked so downcast that Birdie felt sorry for him. “Well, ‘you can’t hide too often from the Owl,’” she said. “That’s what our father always says. It means it’s safer to hide even if the Owl isn’t there than to not hide and find out that the Owl is.“

  “There’s them that will wish they’d listened to me someday, when their bones are munched by a hungry ferret,” Grummer said darkly.

  Tad was peering curiously at the workings of the contraption on wheels. Now that he had a chance to study it more closely, he saw that it resembled an immense bow laid on its side. The bow could be raised or lowered with a crank and its heavy string could be pulled back by means of a hook and a winch. The bow was partially drawn now and loaded with a huge metal-pointed arrow that was longer than Tad himself. Werfel gave the device an affectionate pat on the wheel.

  “What is it?” Tad asked.

  “It’s a ballista,” Werfel said. “A mechanical crossbow. A very powerful weapon, this is. Properly set up, it can take a hunting bird out of the air — down before it knows what hit it, and a good thing too.”

  He squinted up measuringly at the empty sky. Tad and Birdie exchanged worried glances.

  “But not,” Werfel continued, with a telling look at Grummer, “not something to be hauled out at a moment’s notice, heavy as it is, because someone sees a falling leaf and thinks that it’s a dangerous flying menace.”

  As he spoke, he was tugging at the winch and loosening ropes and pulleys. The taut bowstring slowly relaxed. Werfel released the poised arrow.

  “Next time,” he advised the disgruntled Grummer, “next time you start seeing birds, you just come out here by yourself and throw rocks. Now make yourself useful and help me roll this thing back inside.” He turned to Tad and Birdie. “And you two better come along with us. All strangers must report to the High Council, the rules say,
and Furgo’ll be wanting to know all about who you are and what’s your business. Bring your frog.”

  He set his shoulder to a brace above a metal-rimmed wheel. “Come on, Grummer, shove! Put some effort into it! Don’t mess about over there like a flitty-headed butterfly!”

  The stone passage leading into the mountain was cool and dim, illuminated with lamps set at intervals high up in the walls. The lamps burned with a strange bright blue flame that made a hissing noise. As they walked past, their shadows swelled and shrank eerily in the blue light, first dwindling down to almost nothing, then shooting up very dark and tall against the rock walls.

  Werfel and Grummer, trundling the crossbow, rumbled along in front, still bickering. Scraps of phrases, alternately tenor and bass, drifted backward.

  “. . . nonexistent birds . . .”

  “. . . proper attention to duty . . .”

  Tad, trailing behind with Birdie, felt increasingly apprehensive. Werfel and Grummer seemed nice enough, but the Diggers were strange, Voice had said. What if we wanted to get out of here, Tad thought, would they let us go? He glanced up at the rough ceiling of the passage and suddenly thought of the entire mountain of rock over his head.

  On the right, hollowed out of the solid rock, there was a small room, evidently a sitting room for the current watchman. A long metal tube stuck out of the wall next to the door. Werfel put his mouth near the end of the tube and began to speak into it. Then he shifted position, bringing the tube close to one ear. A message seemed to have been delivered and received.

  “Right,” Werfel said importantly. “Now, you younglings come with me, and we’ll go find Furgo. The High Council is expecting you. You can go back to the gate and keep watch, Grummer. Just try not to spot any more of them stony ferrets or phantom birds.”

  Grummer, muttering sullenly, began to trudge back up the passage in the direction of the gate.

  Tad and Birdie hurried after Werfel. They rounded a corner, passed through another stone archway — and stopped dead in astonishment. They were in an enormous cave, a cave so huge that its ceiling was lost in shadow. It seemed that the entire center of the mountain was hollow. Lining the rock walls on either side were rows of stone houses, buildings piled upon buildings, with flights of narrow stone stairs leading to their upper stories. Tad and Birdie had never seen so many dwellings clustered together.