Water (34 page)

you kept it. But you’re going to lose it, now, after all, if you’re not careful. What are you
waiting

for? Lara can learn to do the books—I’ll tell Dane to suggest it, they’ll both think it’s a great

idea—I’ll teach her. We’ll eat like hell, maybe, but there’s only a year left for me and two for

Jeff, and the rest of ’em are on their own. Who knows? Maybe Mum will get out of bed. Hetta.

My lovely sister. Go. I’ll visit you, wherever you end up.”

Hetta stood trembling. In her mind’s eye she saw Zasharan, sand, trees, bells, horses, tree-framed

faces, the Eye, the pool. For a moment they were more real to her than the garden she stood in or

the bruising grip on her wrist. She realised this—realised it and lost it again as she recognised the

landscape of her
real
life—with a pain so great, she could not bear it.

She burst into tears.

She was only vaguely aware of Ruth putting an arm round her shoulders and leading her back

behind the storm-broken sunflower screen and sitting her down at the pool’s edge, vaguely aware

of Ruth rocking her as she had many times rocked Ruth, years ago, when their mother had first

taken to her bed and their father shouted all the time. She came slowly to herself again with her

head on Ruth’s breast, and Ruth’s free hand trailing drops of cold water from the pond against

her face.

She sat up slowly. Ruth waited. She began to tell Ruth everything, from the first dream. She

stumbled first over saying Fortunatar’s name:
Queen Fortunatar of the Clear Seeing.
And she

paused before she explained what had happened in the library the day before. “It’s all
imaginary.

It’s not only not real, it’s not even history—it’s just legends. I might as well be dreaming of King

Arthur and Robin Hood and Puck of Pook’s Hill and Middle Earth. If—if you’re right that a little

of my soul lives there, then—then it’s an imaginary soul too.”
Nothing,
whispered her mind.

Nothing but here, now, this.
She looked at the walls around the garden; even from this, the

garden’s farthest point, she could hear the electric buzz of woodworking tools, and the wind,

from the wrong direction today, brought them the smell of hot oil from Benny’s Fish and Chips.

Ruth was silent a long time, but she held on to one of her sister’s hands, and Hetta, exhausted

from the effort of weeping and explaining, made no attempt to draw away. She would have to go

indoors soon, and start supper. First she had to pull the fleece back over her exposed cabbages;

there was going to be a frost tonight. Soon she had to do it. Not just yet.

Ruth said at last: “Well, they thought for hundreds of years that bumblebees couldn’t fly, and the

bumblebees went on flying while they argued about it, and then they finally figured it out. It

never made any difference to the bumblebees. And I met Melanie’s great-uncle once and he was

no fool, and Melanie and I are friends because she’s not really a space case, it’s just that if she

pretends to be one, she can tell her uncle’s stories. Haven’t you ever thought that legends have a

lot of
truth
in them? History is just organised around facts. Facts aren’t the whole story or the

bumblebees would have had to stop flying till the scientists figured out how they could.”

Hetta said wearily, “That’s a little too poetical for me. Legends and poetry don’t change the fact

that I have to go get supper now.”

Ruth said, “Wait. Wait. I’m still thinking. I’ll help you with supper.” Her head was bowed, and

the hand that wasn’t holding Hetta’s was still trailing in the pool, and she flicked up water drops

as if her thoughts were stinging her. “You know, I think there’s a newt trying to get your

attention. One of these big red fellows.”

“Yes, I’ve met him before,” said Hetta, trying to sound light-hearted, trying to go with Ruth’s

sudden change of subject, trying to accept that there was nothing to be done about Damarian

dream-legends, and that this was her life.

“Not very newt-like behaviour,” Ruth said. “Look.” There was a newt swimming, back and

forth, as it—he or she—had swum before. “Watch,” said Ruth. She dabbled her fingers near the

newt and it ducked round them and continued its tiny laps, back and forth, in front of the place

where Hetta sat. Ruth dabbled again, and it ducked again, and came straight back to Hetta. “Put

your
hand in the water,” said Ruth.

Hetta was still in that half trance mood of having told her secret, and so she put her hand into the

water without protest. The newt swam to her and crept up on the back of her hand.

She raised her hand out of the pond, slowly, as she had done once before; the newt clung on. She

stared into the small golden eyes, and watched the vertical pupil dilate as it looked back at her.

“Maybe Queen Fortunatar of the Clear Seeing is trying to send you a message,” said Ruth.

Hetta dreamed again that night. She came through the door she had first entered by, when

Zasharan had saved her from the storm. She came in alone, the sand swirling around her, and

closed the door against the wind with her own strength. She felt well and alert and clear-headed.

She dropped the scarf she had wrapped around her face, and set off, as if she knew the way,

striding briskly down the corridors, the sand sliding away under her soft-booted feet, and then up

a series of low-stairs, where the sand grated between her soles and the stair-stone. The same dim

light shone as it had shone the night that Zasharan had guided her, but she often put her hand

against the wall for reassurance, for the shadows seemed to fall more thickly than they had done

when she was with him. She was not aware of why she chose one way rather than another, but

she made every choice at every turning without hesitation.

She came to the spiral stair, and climbed it. When she put her hand to the door of the Eye’s

chamber, it opened.

Zasharan was standing on the far side of the pool. Hetta raised her hands and pushed her hair

back from her face, suddenly needing to do something homely and familiar, suddenly feeling that

nothing but her own body
was
familiar. She let her palms rest against her cheekbones briefly.

The sleeves of the strange, pale, loose garment she was wearing fell back from her forearms;

there was a shift beneath it, and loose trousers beneath that, and the soft boots with their long

laces wrapped the trousers around her calves. Her right ankle throbbed.

Zasharan made no move to approach her. From the far side of the pool of the Eye, he said, “I

thought you would not return. It has been a sennight since you disappeared. If there had not been

the hollow in the sand beside the pool where you had lain, I might have believed I had dreamed

you. I went back to the little room by the lowest door where I first brought you, and the dressings

cabinet still lay open, and the needle lay beside it with the end of the thread I had used on your

ankle, and one bandage was missing; and I could see where your blood had fallen in the sand, for

no one goes there but me, and I had not swept nor put things to rights. I—when you first came,

I—I thought I knew why you were here. I thought—I thought I had read the signs—not only in

the sand, but in your face. I was glad. But you do not wish to come here, do you? That is what I

missed, when I searched the records. That is why your story is different. Sandstorms are

treacherous; I knew that; I just did not see what it meant here. It is only the blood you shed here

that brings you back, the blood you shed by the treachery of the sand. That is all. I must let you

go. I am glad you have come back once more, to let me say good-bye, and to apologise for trying

to hold you against your will.”

There were tears under Hetta’s palms. She smeared them away and dropped her hands. “I—I

dream
you.” She meant to say
I only dream you, you are just a dream.

Zasharan smiled; it was a painful smile. “Of course. How else could we meet? You have told me

of
Roanshire,
in a land I do not know. I should have realised ... when you never invited me to

come to you in your dreams ...”

T only
dream you! You are just a dream!
”
Hetta put her hands to her face again, and clawed at

her hair. “I looked up Queen Fortunatar in the library! She is a
legend!
She is not real! Even if

she were real, she would have been real hundreds of years ago! We have airports now, and cars,

and electric lights and television and computers!”

Zasharan stepped forward abruptly, to the very edge of the pool. “Queen Fortunatar is in your

library?” he said. “You have read about her—you sought to read about her in your waking

Roanshire?”

“Yes, yes,” said Hetta impatiently. “But—”

“Why?”

“Why? Why did I?—because I
wanted
her to be real, of course! Because I want you to be real!

You do not want to waste your dreaming on my life—you do not want to visit me there!—

although I wish Ruth could meet you—oh, this is
absurd!
I am
dreaming,
and Queen Fortunatar

is a
myth,
a fairy-tale—she is not real.”

“Everything that is, is real,” murmured Zasharan, as if his mind were on something else. Then he

walked round the pool and held his hand out towards her. “Am I real? Take my hand.”

Hetta stared at him and his outstretched hand. This was only a dream; she had touched him,

dreaming, many times on her visits here; he had half-carried her out of the sandstorm, he had

dressed her ankle, he had held a cup for her to drink from, he had led her to this room.

She raised her hand, but curled it up against her own body.

What if, when she reached out to him, her hand went through his, as if he were a ghost? As if he

were only imaginary, like a legend in a book?

Like a dream upon waking?

She held out her hand, but at the last moment she closed her eyes. Her fingers, groping, felt

nothing, where his hand should be. She felt dizzy, and sick, and there was a lumpy mattress

against her back, and sheets twisted uncomfortably round her body, and a fish-and-chips-andwood-shavings smell in her nostrils.

And then it was as if his hand
bloomed
inside of hers; as if she had held a tiny, imperceptible

kernel which the heat of her hand had brought suddenly to blossoming; and her feet in their boots

were standing on sand-scattered stone, and she opened her eyes with a gasp, and Zasharan drew

her to him and he let go her hand only to put both arms round her.

He said gently, “You must find your own way to come. The way is there. I do not know where; I

do not know your world, your time, with the cars and the electricithar. If you wish to come, you

must find the way. I will wait for you here.”

She turned her head as it lay against his shoulder, and stared at the water of the pool at their feet.

Somewhere deep within it, she thought a golden eye glittered up at her.

She woke feeling strangely calm. It was just before dawn. The first birds were trying out the

occasional chirp, and the chimneys across the street were black against the greying sky. She

climbed out of bed and put her dressing gown on and crept down the first flight of stairs, careful

of the creaking boards, to Ruth’s room. Ruth woke easily; a hand on her shoulder was enough.

She put her lips to Ruth’s ear. “Will you come with me?”

They made their way noiselessly downstairs, past the shop, into the back room and the garden

door. There they paused briefly, baffled, for that door could not be opened silently. Hetta stood

with her hand on the bolt, and for a moment she thought she saw Zasharan standing beside her,

his hand over her hand. He was looking at her, but then looked up, over her shoulder, at Ruth;

then he looked back at Hetta, and smiled.
I thank you,
he said: she did not hear him, but she saw

his lips move.
My honour is yours,
she said, formally. Then she pulled the bolt and opened the

door, and it made no sound. “Whew!” Ruth sighed.

When they reached the pool at the end of the garden, Hetta pulled Ruth into a fierce hug and said

softly, “I wanted to say good-bye. I wanted someone here when I—left. I wanted to thank you.

I—I don’t think I will see you again.”

“You are going to go live in a legend,” said Ruth. “I—I’ll remember the bumblebees. I—make

up a legend about me, will you?”

Hetta nodded. She knelt by the pool. Its surface was still opaque in the grey dawn light, but when

she put her hand to the surface of the water, the newt crept up immediately into her cupped palm.

As she knelt, an edge of her dressing gown slipped forward—“You’re bleeding!” said Ruth.

Hetta looked down. The scar on her ankle had opened, and a little fresh blood ran down her leg.

The first drop was poised to fall ....

She jerked upright to her knees and thrust her foot out over the pool. The blood fell into the—

water: one drop, two, three. The newt was still clinging to her hand. “Ruth—”

“Go,” said Ruth harshly. “Go
now.
”

Hetta slipped forward, into the water, and it closed over her head.

It was a long journey, through water, through sand, through storms and darkness. She often lost

track of where she was, . who she was, where she was going and why; and then she felt a small

skipping sensation against the palm of one hand, or the weight of a small clawed thing hanging