The Waterstone (27 page)

Tad looked behind him. The walls of the Greller fortress had fallen. Rows of Greller soldiers were sitting on the ground in front of the broken gate, their hands tied behind their backs and their legs stretched straight out in front of them. They looked hot and angry. Between the fortress and the beach, a great fire was blazing, tended by a scattering of Fishers, Hunters, and Diggers — Diggers! — armed with long poles. Grellers, under guard, dragged sledges toward the fire, laden with debris and dead branches.

From the opposite direction came what sounded like a series of thunderous explosions. Tad whirled around. A great bear, attended by a yapping train of foxes, was tearing down the dam. Rocks toppled, crashing alternately into the brimming lake (with volcanic splashes) and into the dried riverbed (with earsplitting bangs). Onlookers along the shore who had ventured too close squealed and retreated. Those who didn’t retreat fast enough became suddenly dripping wet. Nobody seemed to mind.

The bear’s massive shoulders heaved as great chunks of the stone barrier fell. The bear roared in triumph. The water burst through, freed at last, fountaining over the parched rocks, rushing gloriously away southward. The watchers on the shore sent up a chorus of cheers. Fishers, Hunters, and Diggers jumped up and down, yelling, hugging, and pounding one another ecstatically on the back. In the midst of the excited crowd, Tad could see Eelgrass standing on a hummock, waving lanky arms in the air. He was shouting a dismal warning about mudslides and floods.

The cascading water glittered in the sunlight like a leaping school of gold-and-silver fish. Somewhere far away, Tad knew, that foaming water would gentle and slow as it filled the streams and tributaries, bubbled over the little waterfalls, and swirled into the rock pools until finally, gratefully, it poured with a musical trickle into a green pond by an old willow tree. The bear roared again, a gleeful bellow.

It is well, Sagamore?

It is well
, Tad answered.

A pair of excited arms seized him from behind and pulled him into a rib-cracking hug. It was Voice, bruised and battered but glowing with delight. His orange hair looked incandescent.

“You did it, Tad! It’s all thanks to you!”

“And you and Witherwood,” Tad said. “And Blackberry.” Voice gave a sheepish grin. “It’s thanks to so many people.”
Most of all to Pondleweed
, he thought, but he found that a lump rose up in his throat at the memory of his father’s name. “To the Kobold — Beziel — and Treeglyn, and Kral, the hawk. And Ditani and Willem. You haven’t met them yet. Willem is a Digger and he has a bat of his own. . . .”

The words trailed off as Tad remembered.
Willem!
He had left him on the shore, the battle raging around him, a Greller arrow in his shoulder. Had the healers found him? Was he all right? Pulling Voice behind him, he rushed toward the place where he had last seen his friend, lying on the dusty ground with Birdie standing guard. Fishers, Hunters, and Diggers fell back before him.

Will was still there. His head was pillowed on a folded cloak. Birdie and Ditani crouched over him, faces filled with worry, while Pippit lolloped anxiously from one to the other. They leaped up joyfully at the sight of Tad — Pippit went into a frenzy of croaks and leaps — but all soon turned back to the young Digger. Will’s eyes were closed.

“How is he?” Tad asked apprehensively. “Is he all right?”

An elderly Hunter woman knelt at Will’s feet, packing clay jars into a small basket. She had removed the arrow from Will’s shoulder and smeared the wound with a pinkish salve. She looked up as Tad spoke and nodded briskly.

“He will do, your strange friend,” she said. “He loses much lifeblood, but he will recover. Give him food, eh?”

Tad took Will’s hand between his own. The fingers felt limp and cold.

“Will?” Tad said.

Will moved his head weakly and muttered something under his breath.

“Will?” Tad said again.

“Peaberry,” Birdie said suddenly. “That’s it. Peaberry.”

She sprang to her feet and took off at a run, her bare feet pounding the ground. Over Willem’s silent body, Tad and Ditani exchanged puzzled glances.

“Peaberry?” said Ditani. “What is peaberry? Where does she go?”

Birdie was back, panting, her hands filled with aromatic herbs. There were long stems hung with tiny bellshaped blossoms — withered, but still smelling sweet — a scattering of round reddish leaves shaped like mouse ears, and some short stalks hung with fruits that looked like peas. Birdie crushed the fruits in her fingers, making a green paste that she patted gently over Willem’s wound. Then she broke a few leaves and held them under his nose.

“This will make him feel better,” she said. “And the leaves are for making tea too. He should drink it when he’s feeling stronger.”

She sounded calm and confident.
Almost like an older
, Tad thought.
A real healer.
And then the realization burst upon him.
Birdie has the Talent.
Just like Granny Thimbleberry. Or maybe it’s green blood, like Treeglyn said.

Will’s hand felt warmer. His breath came stronger now and more evenly. Birdie crushed more leaves, shaping a poultice that she bound in place with a strip of silkgrass torn from the hem of her tunic.

“It’s for shock and loss of blood,” Birdie said softly. “There’s an old name for this plant — spearleaf. Not because the leaves are shaped like spears, but because warriors once used it for battle wounds.”

Will opened his eyes. The corners of his mouth tightened in a ghost of a smile.

“You’re back!” he said faintly. “Did we win?”

Tad’s eyes met Ditani’s and then Birdie’s.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “We won.”

They were, of course, the talk of the Gathering. The story of the meeting with the Nixie was told and retold, by Tad and Ditani in turns. Their audience, crowded spellbound around the Speaking Rock, gasped, squealed, and cheered in all the right places, and all clustered around Tad and Birdie in long minutes of silent mourning for Pondleweed. Even as he told it, though, Tad could feel bits of the tale slipping away. It wasn’t that things changed, exactly, but that some things just weren’t talked about. People skirted around those somehow, looking uncomfortable, asking instead what the Nixie looked like, or wanting to hear about the Grellers’ catapult or the bear.

Willem, still heavily bandaged but sitting upright now, recounted the events of the battle with the Grellers on the lakeshore. His favorite part was new to Tad: the account of the arrival of the Diggers on their fleet of transport bats, armed with incendiary bombs. Willem could talk almost indefinitely about how the bombs were made and how best to go about dropping them, but he was continually interrupted by shouts from the Hunters, who only wanted to hear about the defeat of the wolf by the hawk.

Birdie’s budding Talent was a source of awe and admiration, and she was peppered with requests for help and advice. She was also followed everywhere by a train of small children begging to hear the tale of how she had tamed the weasel. Blackberry and Voice, both heroes themselves, were made much of by everyone — and though Voice still claimed to have crawly feelings about weasels, Tad had seen him more than once affectionately scratching Blackberry under the chin. Voice was to accompany Tad and Birdie home to the pond —“To help you settle,” he said diffidently — and it was clear to Tad that Blackberry was to come, too, as a permanent member of the family. He hoped that Pippit wouldn’t take it too badly.

Werfel and Grummer — who had both been in the battle — stopped by to offer their congratulations, though the occasion was somewhat marred by Grummer fainting dead away at the sight of Blackberry. He was revived by Voice, and taken away, mumbling disjointedly about ferrets, to be fortified with butternut beer.

The entire Digger Council arrived in state, carried on a fleet of elite transport bats decked out in black leather harnesses trimmed with silver. Fishers and Hunters were nervous around them at first, but the ice was broken by Pegger, who not only had an endless supply of funny stories but could make puppets out of silkgrass handkerchiefs and play the stickpipes (slightly off-key).

Pegger performed at the dance on the final night of the Gathering, at which everyone — young and old, Hunter, Fisher, and Digger — joined in a great revolving circle, clapping their hands over their heads and shouting “Ho-mon-ro!” Everyone agreed that he was a great success.

Nobono and Branica, both ready to pop with pride, would hardly let Ditani out of their sight.

“What a trade we make for her!” Nobono told all who would listen. “She will have the best of everything, my first daughter!”

“My father and mother, they mean well,” Ditani told Tad later. Her dark eyes flashed a challenge. “But me, I find my own boy. When I am ready.”

As the last notes of the music died away, there was a flurry of leave-taking. People began to drift back to their campsites. There were children to put to bed, and packing to be done, and preparations to make for the long journey home. Tad and Birdie, Willem and Ditani lingered behind in the deserted clearing. Tad, who for so long had wanted only to get back home, found that he could hardly bear to say good-bye. All four faces were glum. Pippit, who couldn’t seem to keep still, circled them unhappily, making damp dismal sounds. Tad knew just how he felt.

“I won’t see you in the morning,” Willem said. “We’ll be leaving as soon as the transport bats are ready. They don’t like to fly in sunlight, you know, so we’re going tonight. Besides, a lot of people are in a hurry to get back to Stone Mountain. It’s been fun, they’re saying, but they’ve had enough of sleeping above ground, out in the open air.”

“We go at first light,” Ditani said. “The caravans have been resting long enough. Time to set them rolling, eh?”

“We go at sunrise,” Birdie said. “We’re going to ride Blackberry — Voice and Tad and me and Pippit.”

Nobody spoke for a long depressed minute.

“Things will be different now,” Willem said. “The Diggers are coming to the next Gathering, did you hear? It will truly be a meeting of all the Tribes. We’ll see each other then.”

“And maybe we can see each other in between,” Tad said. “Or we could send messages. We might spend the winter with Witherwood. Voice promised to teach me how to read and write.” He paused, looking from face to face. “But I’m going to miss being the Band of Four.”

“We’ll always be the Band of Four,” Willem said.

Tad lay drowsing in the sun.

From behind him came the busy scraping sounds of Birdie working in her garden. He didn’t know about any green blood, Voice said, but Birdie certainly had green fingers. Just beyond the garden’s stick fence, Blackberry lay sleeping, curled in a furry ball with his tail over his nose. He was making a contented snoring sound. Voice, whistling through his teeth, was working on the frame of a new — and bigger — boat. Pippit was helping by croaking encouragement and stepping on things.

On the surface everything was almost the same as it had always been —
and yet
, Tad thought,
so different.
Now there was the aching hole made by Pondleweed’s absence. Even all the new friends they had made — even Tad’s Gift — couldn’t make up for that, though Witherwood had said that it would get easier with time.
Maybe it’s another of those things that I’ll have to grow into
, Tad thought.

He closed his eyes and let his Mind roam free. His powers were growing now, just as the old turtle had said they would. He could reach farther and farther. He stretched, searching, until he felt the hawk’s presence.

I see you, Shining One
, the hawk’s harsh voice told him.

I see you, Wolf-slayer
, Tad replied.
Is all well?

All is very well
, the hawk answered.

Tad pulled his Mind away, calling a farewell. He had a task to finish. He scrambled to his feet and scampered out onto the half-submerged log that extended into the pond. Frogs, lounging on the lily pads, glugged in greeting, and blue-tailed hoverflies darted before him. He crouched at the end of the log, peering down into the clear sunlight-striped depths. Sun warmed the back of his neck. Far beneath him fish fins flickered.

Tad reached into his leatherleaf pouch and pulled out the white crystal, shimmeringly threaded and veined with silver. The Waterstone. It seemed to glow with a soft inner light, and when he held it to his ear, it made a musical bubbling sound like the rush of little runlets over river rocks. As his fingers tightened around it, the sound grew louder. The stone seemed to pull against his grasp, urging him toward the water.
That’s where it belongs
, Tad thought.
That’s where it’s supposed to be. It wants to go home.
But still he continued to hold it, running his fingers over its gleaming surface. He had lost so much for it, given so much to keep it safe. Regretfully he shook his head. Then he leaned over and dropped the Waterstone into the pond.

The stone spiraled slowly downward, trailing a tail of glittering bubbles. Tad watched it go. It seemed to shine brighter and brighter as it fell, slipping through the water as smoothly as a silver sunbeam. It fell faster and faster. Then it dropped from sight and the light vanished. Tad held his breath. For a moment he felt a sharp pang of loss.