Water Song (13 page)

Keeping close to the estate, she went around until she was across from the pond and the well. Then, head down, she hurried to the far side of the well and crouched as low as she could. The rain was coming down so hard that she could barely see to the pond. She'd need to go closer to look for Kid. If Jack hadn't gotten to him already, maybe she could pull him out. Was there even a chance that she wasn't too late? Probably not, but she had to try.

Staying low, she scrambled to the pond to the spot where they'd pushed Kid in. Raindrops spattered the pond's surface, making it impossible for her to see below. It was hopeless!

Looking up at the gray estate looming before her in the rain, she was overtaken with a horror of it. The place had become a prison and she couldn't stand to go back. She'd gone back only for Jack the last time she'd tried to escape. This time, she didn't know if he'd even be there if she returned.

Still crouching low, she hurried along the pond, heading for the trees. This time she was determined to head for Dunkirk and find her father's friend.

Once she had climbed over the first rock wall and reached the forest, the spring leaves dispersed the worst of the downpour somewhat, though the tapping of the rain on their surfaces was nearly deafening.At least she could see the way ahead.

Emma had moved several yards into the forest when she heard something that made her stop.

It was a low moan--a decidedly human sound.

Following its direction, she became aware of a male figure sprawled on top of a mossy boulder about another yard away. He rolled slightly, as if he'd been unconscious and was groggily struggling toward wakefulness.

Cautiously, she crept toward him. At first, she wondered if it was Jack, but quickly ascertained as she grew nearer that this person possessed a smaller frame than his.

"Kid!" she cried with a gasp when she was close enough to see him clearly.

Turning his head toward her, he forced a smile. "Hello. What are you doing here?"

"What am
I
... ?" she sputtered, climbing onto the rock. "What are you doing here? I saw them shoot
you
and kick you into the pond."

"Then it's true," he said. "I've been lying here wondering what's real and what I only dreamed."

"How did you get out of the pond?" Emma asked, taking off her slicker and draping it over him. The boy shivered, completely soaked, his shirt plastered to his wet body by blood as well as rain.

"It might sound crazy," he replied, his voice thin and weak, "but as I was sinking down, I swear I saw a giant frog swim up from the bottom of the pond and grab me. It might have been a dream. That's all I remember, until right now. I don't know how I got here."

"It's not crazy," she told him. "I saw a creature like that in the well one time."

"What do you think it is?"

"I don't know. It was dark. I couldn't really see it." He moaned in pain, making her look down at him sharply. "Where did they shoot you?"

He attempted a bitter smile but succeeded only in twitching his pale lips. "They got me in the other side, my good side." Slowly he pushed away his jacket and touched the most blood-soaked area of his shirt.

Emma swallowed hard and forced her nerves to stay steady as she gingerly lifted his shirt, tugging gently in the places where the bloody wetness had made it adhere to his skin. "Oh my God!" she gasped when she saw the wound.

"That bad, is it?" Kid asked.

"No, it's not that! It appears that it
was
bad, but it's been tended to," she told him. A pile of leaves was pressed into a plaster of mud over the wound in Kid's side. Gazing at the dripping leaves around her, she realized she didn't see this sort of leaf anywhere. Carefully lifting the leaves, she inspected the mud. She cried out, recoiling as a worm crawled from the mound. As she caught her breath she saw that it was sprinkled with fine threads.
No, not threads,
she thought.
It's hair!

"It's Jack," she told Kid. "He did this."

"Are you saying Jack's the giant frog?" Kid asked.

"I don't know," Emma admitted. "It's crazy. I don't know."

"We will take very good care of him," the farmer assured Emma, speaking French. He handed her a cup of tea as she sat covered by a blanket, finally starting to feel warm again.

Emma had walked for nearly three miles in the rain before she came to this farmhouse to ask for help. The Belgian farmer and his wife immediately sent their two sons to find Kid and bring him back. Once there, they had washed him and changed him into dry clothing. "Shall I wash away this mud patch?" the wife had asked.

"No," Emma had said. "I think you should leave it. The person who put it there knows about healing. He helped heal him once before."

"Very well," the wife had agreed.

Kid now lay sleeping in a soft bed. "When the flooding stops on the road, we will try to find an 
Allied regiment and get him to an army hospital," the farmer continued.

"Is that possible?" she asked hopefully.

The man shook his hand back and forth. "Yes and no," he replied. "We are on the front line of the fighting here. The Allies are to the left of us, the Germans and Austrians on the right. Some days the Allies gain ground, other days they are pushed back. Some days it's only a matter of miles, even yards."

"What side are we on now?" she asked.

"You're in luck. Yesterday the Germans held this road. Today the Allies took it from them. But it could change again tomorrow. Both sides are determined to hold this area. The Allies will do whatever it takes to keep the enemy from gaining the ports at Dunkirk and Calais."

"If they control those, they can easily attack England," Emma said softly as the possibility of her country being invaded washed over her.

"I'm sure that is what they intend," the farmer agreed. "The Allies are planning a major effort to push them back even farther, but no one knows when it will come."

"Listen, you must get word to someone in charge that the Germans are at the estate up on The Ridge. They sent three soldiers up to find out. All three were captured. The soldier you are tending is one of them. They need to know that the Germans can easily see them coming from up there if they advance across the open fields. They have over a hundred sol
diers there right now and are well stocked with munitions and food."

"We will tell them when we get your friend to a hospital," the farmer agreed. "But the road will soon be washed out. I can't say when that will be, but as soon as it is possible, one of the boys and I will go."

The wife came out of the bedroom with dry clothing and a towel for Emma. "Thanks, but there's no sense in changing," she declined, getting up from her chair. "I must return."

"Why go back?" the woman asked.

She'd had no intention of going back, but as she had been speaking to the farmer, the possible repercussions of her disappearance had occurred to her. "The Germans won't miss Kid because they think he's dead," she explained. "But Colonel Schiller might send someone to come after me. He won't want me telling the Allies how well fortified they are up on The Ridge. I don't want them to track me down and find Kid--or all of you. I have to go back."

"You are a brave patriot," the wife commended her.

"I just want to have a home to return to," Emma said, brushing aside the compliment as she put her slicker back on. "I'd like to say good-bye to my friend, if you don't mind."

She went to the bedroom where Kid was sleeping. His eyes opened as soon as she entered, however. Smiling softly at him, she sat at the edge of the bed. "They're going to take you to the hospital when they can, so you'll be better soon."

"You're not coming?"

"No. I don't want them out here looking for me."

He nodded, apparently understanding. "Tell Jack I'll never forget what he did for me--even if he is a big magic frog. I told you he was the best. You're right to be in love with him."

"But I'm not in love with him."

"Sure you are," he insisted quietly.

"How could I love a frog?" she said, trying to make a joke of it.

"You could do worse," he maintained as he nodded off to sleep again. Stroking his hair fondly, she padded softly from the room and prepared to leave.

Emma was glad of the riding lessons she'd taken at the Hampshire School when she was offered the use of one of the farm's horses, a gray mare named Poppy. "There's a trail through the forest about a mile down the road," one of the sons told her as he led the horse out of the barn. "It cuts through the forest in about two miles before turning around again. You can get off there and it will be only a short walk to the other side of the trees. Give her rump a slap when you dismount and she'll follow the path the rest of the way home on her own. I'll come out to fetch her in an hour or so. Poppy's a good horse, sure-footed in the mud, and nothing spooks her."

"I'm so grateful to you and your family," Emma said as she put her boot in the stirrup and pulled 
herself into the saddle. "Thank you."

Poppy was as easy to ride as the boy had said and didn't seem to mind the rain. The trip was so much easier than it had been on foot. Soon she saw the bend in the road and pulled to a halt and dismounted. "Go home, Poppy," she commanded, slapping the horse's rump.

She stood a moment and watched the horse gallop down the rain-soaked path. Then, gazing around, she wondered if Jack was still out in the forest.

It was good weather for a frog.

The farmer's son had been right: It didn't take her long from there to make her way back to the estate. As she emerged from the trees, she noticed one wet guard stationed on the roof of the estate. The rain had let up a bit and was not as good a cover as it had been when she left. Not knowing how to avoid him, she grabbed a handful of early poppies with fat orange buds not yet in full bloom. Draping them in her arms, she snapped a few branches of budding yellow forsythia from a nearby bush to add to her bouquet and then walked out in plain sight, continuing to pick wildflowers and even waving up to the guard. She hoped he would assume the colonel had given her leave to go out to pick flowers in the rain.

The guard waved back and didn't seem alarmed by her presence. She forced herself to stoop for flowers along the way and not betray the urgency she felt to rush to her room to check for Jack. She needed to 
know that he was there and safe. And she had so many questions to ask him.

Inside the servants' doorway, she returned the soaking black slicker to the rack and hurried up the stairs. Peeking down the hall, she saw a young soldier, probably no more than her own age, maybe younger, standing guard in front of her door.

Deciding that the direct approach was once again her only recourse, she strode confidently forward, thrusting the flowers toward the guard. "Here are the flowers I was sent to get," she said haughtily in German. "Tell Colonel Schiller I am not his servant and from now on he can send someone else to collect flowers if he wishes to have them."

The guard stared at her, flabbergasted, as he clutched the flowers. "I thought you were within the room all this time!" he blurted.

"I should have been, on a day like this," she replied angrily. "No. I was sent out right after breakfast and have been in the pouring rain all this time. Tell the colonel that if I fall ill with pneumonia, it is he whom I will hold responsible. Now if you will please stand aside, I need to change these wet clothes."

The soldier, abashed and confused, obediently moved to let her into the room. Once inside, she sighed with relief. "Jack?" she called softly, moving forward. "Jack?"

She crept slowly toward the back of the room. Maybe it was the dismal gray light suffusing the 
room, but a sudden uneasiness struck her. It seemed eerily quiet, the only sound being the ceaseless drone of steady rain.

Hovering near the open bathroom door, she turned in a half circle, and then gasped sharply as a hand wrapped her wrist in its grip.

"Shh!" Jack hissed. "Follow me." He pulled her into the bathroom closet. "Where were you?" he asked in a sharp whisper. "I was worried!"

"
You
were worried?" she whispered back irately. "You disappeared first!"

"I got Kid," he told her as he began taking items off the closet shelves and tossing them aside.

She wasn't sure what he was doing, but she helped him just the same. "I know you did," she replied.

His brows shot up in surprise. "You know?"

She nodded.

"He's okay," they both spoke at once. "I know," they said at the same time, their voices overlapping

He shot her a disgruntled, perplexed look. "Let's talk about it later. Are you okay?"

"Yes. You?"

"Fine," he answered as he finished pulling down the closet's shelving and swung open a panel behind it. It led out to a passage with floors and walls of wooden planks. "Hurry," he urged her. "But be quiet."

The passage led them to a spot above the second floor library. She could tell because spaces in the loose planking enabled her to see down into the room through a crack in the ceiling, probably a spot 
where the reverberations from the bombings had caused the plaster to come loose as it had in the bedroom. The words of Colonel Schiller speaking to some other officers she had never seen before floated up through the opening.