Dragonfield (16 page)

Fanned out about her head, her hair was a fleece of gold, each separate strand distinguishable. Fine gold hairs lay molded on her forearms and like wet down upon her legs. On each of her closed eyelids a drop of river water glistened and reflected back to him his own staring face.

At last Jan reached over and touched her cheek, and at his touch, her eyes opened wide. He nearly drowned in the blue of them.

He lifted the girl up in his arms, never noticing how cold her skin or how the mud stuck nowhere to her body or her shift, and he carried her up onto the bank. She gestured once towards the old river bank and let out a single mewling cry. Then she curled in toward his body, nestling, and seemed to sleep.

Not daring to wake her again, Jan carried her home and put her down by the hearth. He lit the fire, though it was late spring and the house already quite warm. Then he sat by the sleeping girl and stared.

She lay in a curled position for some time. Only the slow pulsing of her back told him that she breathed. Then, as dusk settled about the house, bringing with it a half-light, the girl gave a sudden sigh and stretched. Then she sat up and stared. Her arms went out before her as if she were swimming in the air. Jan wondered for a moment if she were blind.

Then the girl leaped up in one fluid movement and began to sway, to dance upon the hearthstones. Her feet beat swiftly and she turned round and round in dizzying circles. She stopped so suddenly that Jan’s head still spun. He saw that she was now perfectly dry except for one side of her shift; the left hem and skirt were still damp and remained molded against her.

“Turn again,” Jan whispered hoarsely, suddenly afraid.

The girl looked at him and did not move.

When he saw that she did not understand his tongue, Jan walked over to her and led her back to the fire. Her hand was quite cold in his. But she smiled shyly up at him. She was small, only chest high, and Jan himself was not a large man. Her skin, even in the darkening house, was so white it glowed with a fierce light. Jan could see the rivulets of her veins where they ran close to the surface, at her wrists and temples.

He stayed with her by the fire until the heat made him sweat. But though she stood silently, letting the fire warm her first one side and then the other, her skin remained cold, and the left side of her shift would not dry.

Jan knelt down before her and touched the damp hem. He put his cheek against it.

“Huttah!” he cried at last. “I know you now. You are a river maid. A water spirit. I have heard of such. I believed in them when I was a child.”

The water girl smiled steadily down at him and touched his hair with her fingers, twining the strands round and about as if weaving a spell.

Jan felt the touch, cold and hot, burn its way down the back of his head and along his spine. He remembered with dread all the old tales. To hold such a one against her will meant death. To love such a one meant despair.

He shook his head violently and her hand fell away. “How foolish,” Jan thought. “Old wives and children believe such things. I do not love her, beautiful as she is. And as for the other, how am I to know what is her will? If we cannot talk the same tongue, I can only guess her wants.” He rose and went to the cupboard and took out bread and cheese and a bit of salt fish which he put before her.

The water maid ate nothing. Not then or later. She had only a few drops of water before the night settled in.

When the moon rose, the river maid began to pace restlessly about the house. Wall to wall she walked. She went to the window and put her hand against the glass. She stood by the closed door and put her shoulder to the wood, but she would not touch the metal latch.

It was then that Jan was sure of her. “Cold iron will keep her in.” He was determined she would stay at least until the morning.

The river maid cried all the night, a high keening that rose and fell like waves. But in the morning she seemed accommodated to the house and settled quietly to sleep by the fire. Once in a while, she would stretch and stand, the damp left side of her shift clinging to her thigh. In the half-light of the hearth she seemed even more beautiful than before.

Jan left a bowl of fresh water near the fire, with some cress by it, before he went to feed the cows. But he checked the latch on the windows and set a heavy iron bar across the outside of the door.

“I will let you go tonight,” he promised slowly.
“Tonight,”
he said, as if speaking to a child. But she did not know his language and could not hold him to his vow.

By the next morning, he had forgotten making it.

For a year Jan kept her. He grew to like the wavering sounds she made as she cried each night. He loved the way her eyes turned a deep green when he touched her. He was fascinated by the blue veins that meandered at her throat, along the backs of her knees, and laced each small breast. Her mouth was always cold under his.

Fearing the girl might guess the working of window or gate, Jan fashioned iron chains for the glass and an ornate grillwork for the door. In that way, he could open them to let in air and let her look out at the sun and moon and season’s changes. But he did not let her go. And as she never learned to speak with him in his tongue and thereby beg for release, Jan convinced himself that she was content.

Then it was spring again. Down from the mountains came the swollen streams, made big with melted snow. The river maid drank whole glasses of water now, and put on weight. Jan guessed that she carried his child, for her belly grew, she moved slowly and no longer tried to dance. She sat by the window at night with her arms raised and sang strange, wordless tunes, sometimes loud and sometimes soft as a cradle song. Her voice was as steady as the patter of the rain, and underneath Jan fancied he heard a growing strength. His nights became as restless as hers, his sleep full of watery dreams.

The night of the full moon, the rain beat angrily against the glass as if insisting on admission. The river maid put her head to one side, listening. Then she rose and left her window place. She stretched and put her hands to her back, then traced them slowly around her sides to the front. She moved heavily to the hearth and sat. Bracing both hands on the stones behind her, she spread her legs, crooked at the knees.

Jan watched as her belly rolled in great waves under the tight white shift.

She threw her head back, gasped at the air, and then, with a great cry of triumph, expelled the child. It rode a gush of water between her legs and came to rest at Jan’s feet. It was small and fishlike, with a translucent tail. It looked up at him with blue eyes that were covered with a veil of skin. The skin lifted once, twice, then closed again as the child slept.

Jan cried because it was a beast.

At that very moment, the river outside gave a shout of release. With the added waters from the rain and snow, it had the strength to push through the earth dam. In a single wave that gathered force as it rolled, it rushed across the meadow, through the farmyard and barn, and overwhelmed the house. It broke the iron gates and grilles as if they were brittle sticks, washing them away in its flood. Then it settled back into its old course, tumbling over familiar rocks and rounding the curves it had cut in its youth.

When the neighbors came the next day to assess the damage, they found no trace of the house or of Jan.

“Gone,” said one.

“A bad end,” said another.

“Never change a river,” said a third.

They spat through their fingers and made other signs against evil. Then they went home to their own fires and gave it no more thought.

But a year later, in a pocket of the river, in a quiet place said to house a great fish with a translucent tail, an inquisitive boy found a jumble of white bones.

His father and the other men guessed the bones to
be
Jan’s, and they left them to the river instead of burying them.

When the boy asked why, his father said, “Huttah! Hush, boy, and listen.”

The boy listened and heard the river playing merrily over the bones. It was a high, sweet, bubbling song. And anyone with half an ear could hear that the song, though wordless, or at least in a language unknown to men, was full of freedom and a conquering joy.

I
WAS NOT DEAF,
do not think I was deaf

To the music made by his imaging hand.

Flesh unformed for dance can still hear the tune.

I heard that ancient piping breath

Witching the flowers and vines to the land,

Charming the twisted rocks with its tones.

But the twisted rock in my back alone

Remained unmoved. It was grief,

Not hate, that made me withstand

The fairy tunes, the creation planned

By a usurping God. I have mourned

His leaving as a death,

For this poor lump of earth,

Untimely ripped from a witch’s womb,

Had once the apprehensive soul of man.

But now there is only the rock-ridden land,

And with each silent falling leaf,

Another winter comes.

“H
E’S AWFULLY SMALL FOR
a hero,” said the green-smocked technician. He smirked as the door irised closed behind the object of his derision.

“The better to sneak through the corridors of the sea,” answered his companion, a badge-two doctoral candidate. Her voice implied italics.

“Well, Eddystone
is
a kind of hero,” said a third, coming up behind them suddenly and leaning uninvited into the conversation. “He invented the Breather. Why shouldn’t he be the one to try it out? There’s only one Breather, after all.”

“And only one Eddystone,” the woman said, a shade too quickly. “And wouldn’t you know he’d make the Breather too small for anyone but himself.”

“Still, he
is
the one who’s risking his life.”

“Don’t
cousteau
us, Gabe Whitcomb.” The tech was furious. “There aren’t supposed to be any heroes on Hydrospace. We do this together or we don’t do it at all. It’s thinking like that that almost cost us our funding last year.”

Whitcomb had no answer to the charge, parroted as it was from the very releases he wrote for the tele-reports and interlab memos, words he believed in.

The three separated and Whitcomb headed through the door after Eddystone. The other two went down the lift to their own lab section. They were not involved with the Breather test, whose techs wore yellow smocks. Rather, they were working on developing the elusive fluid-damping skin.

“Damned jealous Dampers,” Whitcomb whispered to himself as he stepped through the door. But at the moment of speaking, he knew his anger was useless and, in fact, wrong. The Dampers of the lab
might
indeed be jealous that the Breather project had developed faster and come to fruition first. But it should not matter in as compact a group as Hydrospace IV. What affected one, affected all. That was canon here. That was why hero-worship was anathema to them. All except Tom Eddystone, little Tommy Eddystone, who went his own inimitable way and answered his own siren song. He hadn’t changed, Gabe mused, in the thirty years they had been friends.

Eddystone was ahead of him, in his bathing suit and tank top, moving slowly down the hall. It was easy for Gabe to catch up. Not only were Eddystone’s strides shorter than most, but the recent Breather operation gave him a gingerly gait, as if he had an advanced case of Parkinsons. He walked on the balls of his feet, leaning forward. He carried himself carefully now, compensating for the added weight of the Breather organs.

“Tommy,” Gabe called out breathlessly, pretending he had to hurry and wanted Eddystone to wait. It was part of a built-in tact that made him such an excellent tele-flak. But Eddystone was not fooled. It was just a game they always played.

Eddystone stopped and turned slowly, moving as if he were going through water. Or mud. Gabe wondered at the strain that showed in his eyes. Probably the result of worry, since the doctors all agreed that the time for pain from the operation itself should be past.

“Are you ready for the press conference?” Gabe’s question was
pro forma.
Eddystone was always ready to promote his ideas. He was man who lived comfortably in his head and always invited others to come in for a visit.

A scowl was Eddystone’s answer.

For a moment Gabe wondered if the operation had affected Eddystone’s personality as well. Then he shrugged and cuffed the little man lightly on the shoulder. “Come on, Tom-the-giant-killer,” he said, a name he had invented for Eddystone when they had been in grade school together and Tommy’s tongue had more than once gotten them both out of scrapes.

Eddystone smiled a bit and the triple striations under his collarbones, the most visible reminders of the operation, reddened. Then he opened and shut his mouth several times like a fish out of water, gasping for breath.

“Tommy, are you all right?” Gabe’s concern was evident in every word.

“I’ve just been Down Under is all,” Eddystone in his high, reedy voice.

“And …” Gabe prompted.

Eddystone’s mouth got thin. “And … it’s easier Down Under.” He suddenly looked right up into Gabe’s eyes and reached for his friend’s arms. His grip was stronger than those fine bones would suggest. Eddystone worked out secretly with weights. Only Gabe knew about it. “And it’s becoming harder and harder each time to come back to shore.”

“Harder?” The question hung between them, but Eddystone did not elaborate. He turned away slowly and once more moved gingerly down the hall toward the press room. He did not speak again and Gabe walked equally silent beside him.

Once in the room, Eddystone went right to the front and slumped into the armchair that sat before the charts and screen. He paid no attention to the reporters and Hydrospace aides who clustered around him.

Gabe stopped to shake hands with reporters and camera persons he recognized, and he recognized most of them. That was his job, after all, and he was damned good at it. For the moment he managed to take their attention away from Eddystone, who was breathing heavily. But by the time Gabe had organized everyone into chairs, Eddystone had recovered and was sitting, quietly composed and waiting.