Water Logic (39 page)

“It’s so far away it isn’t there at all.”

“Huh!” He continued to peer in the fog, though.

Karis had said the Sainnites were Shaftali. Perhaps she had not been talking of their status at all. Perhaps Karis, too, would only see that Damon was, or should be, a flower farmer. Perhaps the truth Seth longed for was a truth Karis had already told all of them. But what could be done with this understanding? How could it be made into a plan?

“Do you want to go to Sainna?” Seth asked.

“I have heard that the entire land is a garden,” said Damon. “I have heard it is always in bloom. To see that—what an adventure, eh?”

“An adventure? A sea voyage?” Seth shuddered.

“Then I come back home, with many flower seeds!”

“That would be a fine dowry!”

Seth had to explain what a dowry was, and then Damon replied in wonderment, “You think my farmer wants me for a lifetime? She wants a child of me?”

“Of course she does. Even without flower seeds from Sainna.”

Damon seemed too amazed to respond.

They had been trailing Jareth for several days. Although the assassin
had previously lived for many weeks in the Barrens, he was an incompetent traveler—not only did he frequently wander into dead ends or stretches of rough ground and dense brush, but he had only once found drinking water. Twice, Damon and Seth had come upon cold camps, where Jareth had collected abundant firewood but had not managed to light it. Damon declared that they were tracking an imbecile.

“Or a city man,” Seth had replied. “He knows how to lay a fire—just not a fire in the open, with damp wood. And he doesn’t seem to be carrying dry tinder.”

“Because imbeciles think that tinderboxes grow in the woods!”

Seth, preoccupied with deciding what to do, what to think, which way to go, and how long they could travel before dark, had hardly noticed the jest. Then it jumped her, and she had burst out laughing.

When the chase began, Jareth had been nearly a day and a night ahead of them, but they gained ground quickly. Once Seth realized he was inept, she could use her own aptitudes to take shortcuts past Jareth’s wrong turns, for, like most earth bloods, Seth was never lost. By now, they had made three camps to his four, and when the landscape prevented them from seeing far ahead, they had begun to walk with caution, lest they encounter him as he doubled back on his trail, having gotten himself lost or tangled up again.

“What is our plan when we find him?” Damon had asked.

“Our plan?” Seth grinned. “I’ll demand he give back my family’s belongings.”

“And I will punch him.” Damon slapped his fist into his palm.

“I’d like to do that, too. But Emil just wants to know where Jareth is going, so it would be better not to find him at all—just to follow him.”

“To Han? We’ll be hungry.”

“Not as hungry as him.”

Damon, whose fascination with the ocean had caused him to eat slowly, finally reached for the water skin, to sling it over his shoulder. “Let us chase our lost man,” he said.

They continued along the broken twigs and crushed seedlings that marked the donkey’s trail. The fog burned off, and they shed their outer shirts.

“Maybe Jareth’s company camps nearby,” suggested Damon.

“I doubt it. No one is supposed to hunt here or even cut wood. We’re in protected lands.”

“Protected by what?”

“Just by tradition, and now by the G’deon.”

“Then no one will try to hide from her here.” Damon glanced skyward. “There is no raven guard.”

Every time Seth thought of what Jareth had done to Karis when he killed the raven, her skin crawled. Awful though the night of assassinations had been, this felt worse—deliberate, intimate—and not merely wrong, but depraved.

“What’s wrong?” asked Damon.

“Nothing. Be quiet and listen.”

A squirrel rustled in a dry thicket. A bird called, waited, and called again. Seth could even hear the ocean, though it was calm today. Her feet felt the earth’s shape, and how it pushed into sea, and the sea into earth, in an unending test of strength.

Damon said, “No sound of people. Jareth is here, lost. And we are here, not lost. Nobody else.”

Seth found the mark of the donkey’s hoof. “Look, he’s figured out he’s lost and has finally turned west. Maybe he’s trying to get to Han.”

Their westward journey took them into a drier landscape where the sunny, wide spaces between the trees were choked with twiggy bushes. Even though the donkey had trampled a path, they had to fight their way through, until the trees disappeared entirely and they entered a place where broken boulders lay in crazy, disarrayed piles. Seth disliked the place. It felt unstable, as if the peninsula were not properly attached to its foundation, as if the whole thing might break loose here and sink into the sea.

The boulders had herded the stolen donkey along only one possible route, and by early afternoon Seth and Damon once again walked through lush woodland. “We’re near the sea,” said Seth in surprise, for she felt a vast water ahead of her—even though the coastline should have been at their backs.

“Which way are we walking, eh?” Grinning, Damon held out his arms and spun in a circle, like a confused weather vane. “South! East! West!”

“We’re walking west—but the ocean must have wrapped around the land.” Seth scratched a picture in the dirt to show him how it was possible to walk away from the ocean while also walking towards it. She straightened up, but Damon continued to puzzle over her map. She said, “You see, we have to go far enough west to—”

Something crashed out of nowhere and bowled her over. She found herself on her back in a thicket. Once she had been knocked flat by a cow, and it had been like this: a great surprise, almost funny. She tried to get up, but the springy branches gripped the heavy pack and would not let go.

She heard bodies smash through undergrowth. A thud, a grunt. The slap of fist to flesh. A cry of pain or rage. More crashing, fleeing.

Her pounding heart urged
hurry, hurry!
But she carefully worked one arm and then the other out of the pack strap, then broke the twigs that held her by the hair, and finally got to her feet and listened.

She heard a distant yell that might have been a malediction. Then, “Ha!”—Damon, victorious. She ran towards the sounds. The dense growth grabbed at her. She sloshed through the mucky remains of a vernal pond. She leapt over a fallen log. She charged at a confusion of rocks. She sensed the gulf yawning beyond, halted so suddenly she lost her balance, and fell forward. Gasping for breath, horrified, she stared down at shattered boulders and deep water. One more step, or two, and she would have flung herself right over the cliff.

Nearby, two men snarled at each other. They struggled, flat on the ground, Damon on top. Jareth’s right hand held a knife, and Damon’s left hand kept the sharp edge away. Blood dripped from Damon’s nose onto Jareth’s face. Damon raised his right hand to pummel Jareth but smacked his fist into the ground instead. Jareth snapped at Damon’s throat. The donkey, a few paces away, brayed in panic and yanked desperately at its tether.

Seth leapt at them and slammed her booted heel down onto Jareth’s elbow. He bellowed and dropped the knife. She snatched it up and flung it away. Sunlight flashed on the blade, but its edge was dark with blood.

Seth jerked her knife from its sheath, crying, “Damon, hold him!”

The men flailed at each other. Damon didn’t seem aware of her at all. His blows were going awry. His fist slammed into earth, and then it slammed into rock. Seth heard a dreadful, choking groan that twisted into her ears like a screw.

The assassin pushed Damon towards her, an ungainly, sprawling obstacle, with scarlet rivers flowing down his grimacing face. His eyes had rolled back. His limbs began to spasm. Seth’s mind protested stupidly that what she saw was not what she saw.

She noticed, distantly, that Jareth had struggled to his feet and was taking a couple of staggering steps towards the donkey. Seth ran to the donkey and slashed the tether. “Run!” she shrieked.

But Jareth had gotten hold of the halter. The donkey reared. The stolen box, tied to his harness, jounced heavily. Jareth flung a leg over the donkey’s back. Seth pushed him off. The donkey twisted between them, trying desperately to get away. He reared, and Seth went sprawling. Jareth scrambled to the beast’s back and wrapped one foot in the harness. The donkey tried to buck and lost his balance. He stumbled backwards.

Jareth’s eye widened. He was looking over the edge of the cliff. He yanked desperately, trying to free his foot.

“Trust the donkey!” Seth cried. But Jareth tried to fling himself off, with his foot still entangled. The poor, scrambling beast, hopelessly unbalanced, uttered a wild bray. “Imbecile!” Seth screamed. But by then she was screaming at no one, neither donkey nor man, and the awful thud and splash of their landing was already in her ears, awaiting her notice.

Seth stared at the empty space where man and donkey had been. To continue yelling seemed foolish, so she fell silent. She wobbled to Damon—to save him, to fix him. But he had no breath, no heartbeat; his body was vacated. Jareth’s poison had killed him, and now no one could fix him.

The shadows grew long and the sea birds ceased their lonely calling. Seth roused herself to walk dully along the trail the men had smashed through the woodland. She found Damon’s pack, with one of its straps torn from the seam, and found her own, still caught in the thorns. She dragged them carelessly back to the cliff’s edge and used the last of the water to wash the blood from Damon’s face. His body had become cold and rigid. He should be learning to grow flowers. He should be fathering a child for Seth to dote on. This ending was all wrong.

As the sun set, a solitary woodland bird began calling for company but received no answer. The water at the bottom of the cliff lapped and sighed. Distant waves boomed. A voice called.

Seth was roused by a dull new dread. Had Jareth survived the fall? Must she defend herself from him, or help him, or let him die?

She dragged herself to the cliff’s edge. She saw why the water made so little noise here: before her lay a sheltered harbor. Its gently rippling surface burned to the west with the reflected light of the sunset. To the east the water lay in darkness. But in front of her, lights scooted across the water’s surface. Oars splashed. A voice began singing, then a second and a third, each one singing a different song, but without discord.

These could be Jareth’s fellow assassins, coming to meet him here by prearrangement. Seth peered down and spotted a dim human form lying among the boulders, half in water. His arm waved. She drew back from the cliff’s edge, but she couldn’t think of what to do.

When she peered over again, half a dozen empty boats bobbed in a cluster, lanterns burning, all tethered to one that still had an occupant. The other people climbed easily across the boulders. One paused, silhouetted against the bobbing lantern light, naked, or nearly so.

The people found the donkey and gathered around him. Seth heard the murmur of their voices, somber now. Poor donkey! How frightened he had been! She wiped fresh tears with her sodden shirtsleeve. One of the people called out and pointed at Jareth. As they converged on him, his arm continued to wave. Seth realized the movement came from the motion of the water. He was dead, then.

The one rower brought over the cluster of boats. The five people lifted Jareth’s stiff body.

Seth cried, “Beware! There is poison!”

They all looked up and observed her solemnly. The rower began to step casually from one boat to the next, removing short ladders and a ball of twine, tossing these to the people on the rocks. They lashed these ladders into one, which they tilted to rest against the cliff. Seth could not imagine trusting herself to this rickety contraption, but a woman climbed up it briskly.

Her quick glance took in Damon’s body, the two packs, and Seth. She called something to her fellows. Her words sounded like water.

The sunset had faded, and all colors had faded with it, but the woman’s hair seemed to be a glossy black. It was tied back in a tail, in which were woven strings of small seashells. A skirt wrapped her hips, falling to the knee. She wore nothing else, not even shoes. She gestured gracefully and spoke to Seth.

Seth said, “Damon was my friend. He died protecting me. This is all wrong.”

The woman said something quietly. Seth pointed over the cliff’s edge and made an expression of revulsion. “Jareth was an evil man.”

The woman grunted. Then she squatted down and used her hands to illustrate people, who walked each on two fingers across the dirt. They encountered each other, and began to bang together violently. Seth flinched. One fell, and then the other collapsed. Seth cried out.

She wept as the woman summoned some of her companions up the ladder. She wept as they wrapped Damon’s body in a sling of fishnet and lowered him with ropes. She wept as they put him into a boat. But when the kind woman indicated that Seth also should climb down the ladder, Seth refused.

The woman spoke, gestured, implored. Finally, Seth made her hand into a person and walked it across the ground. Then she clasped a handful of dirt and pressed it to her cheek. “Earth blood,” she said, “No boats—never! Not even for Damon!”

The woman pointed at herself, and made her hand walk on the ground also.

“Yes,” Seth said. “If you don’t mind. I don’t know what to do.”