Water Witch (11 page)

She gathered her own treasures and headed
over to where he once again bent and straightened. When he caught sight of her,
he smiled widely.

"We're in luck," he said.

"We are." She showed him her
armload. He looked at it with something akin to tolerance. Not the delight
she'd expected. She felt oddly deflated.

"You don't like roast frog legs?"

He shrugged. "In a pinch, maybe."

"And you've done better?"

He grinned again. "Best, not
better." He indicated a hollowed gourd filled with writhing fat yellow
worms.

The water filling her mouth had nothing to
do with hunger. "You're greening me."

He shook his head. "They taste like
roast boar and fowl both at the same time."

"You eat them?" She thought if he
offered her a wriggling pit of pus, she'd have to end him. "Raw?"

"You can have yours raw, I like mine
roasted. Get some of those cattails leaves." He pointed to the crop of
tall leaves to her right at the marshy edge.

She trudged over and started pulling on
them.

"No, no; not like that." He made
a sweeping motion. "Cut them."

Cut them. Well, easy enough if you had a
blade to hand, which she didn't. Rather than prolong the discussion, she simply
tried to tear them across at the widest end. He clucked at her disapprovingly
and came close enough to put his hand on hers. "Like this," he said,
and guided her hand to twist as she peeled, and soon, she had the knack. He
didn't move away from her, though, even when she got good at it. She could feel
him close, hear his breathing. She wanted to turn and step into him. What she
did was brandish a bunch of limp fronds at him.

"Good girl," he said, beaming. He
touched her fingers when he reached for them and then she was in his arms. She
hadn't meant to, just sort of stepped and there he was, his hands, full of
leaves, holding onto her back, pressing her even closer. He smelled of earth
and old smoke. His mouth tasted of berries and she found herself wondering what
he would taste like after honeyed peaches.

He broke away with reluctance. "Too
bad you have but the one skin to keep us warm. Maybe we can find a way to share
it."

She knew she'd like nothing better.
 
"I'm not sure three would fit."
She laughed and made to throw the leaves she still had in her hand onto the
pile. "Oh no," she said. "Your worms are trying to wriggle
away."

He spit out a few words she didn't
understand and then was bobbing about, hunched over, weaving this way and that
as he tried to catch them.

In the end, they both worked their way back
to the clearing to set about preparing the meal. When Ferret saw the grubs, she
exclaimed with such glee, Alaysha thought it must have been a silent conspiracy
to trick her all along.

"You don't eat those," she said
to the girl.

The girl shrugged much as Number Nineteen
had. "Of course not."

"Then what's all the excitement
for?"

"You've never heard of the magics of
the Meroshi?"

Alaysha watched the youth standing beside
her. He seemed pretty ignorant too.

"What is it?"

The girl reached for the bowl and set it
down next to a prepared fire pit. "Meroshi was our people's shaman before
I was born. He was said to be able to see at night and become invisible."

Alaysha set the cattail fronds next to the
bowl and noticed a pile of berries and nuts as well. "And? I can see at
night. What's so special?"

"He would know his enemies in the dark
and it was all because of this worm."

Alaysha looked down at the wriggling mess.
"It has special powers?"

The girl nodded.

"It's said to be the only thing that
could overtake Meroshi during his most vulnerable hour."

Number Nineteen was growing interested
finally. He'd already shifted foot to foot, and now was squatting next to the
pile of yellow grubs, his fingers in the middle of the mess, flicking them
apart, inspecting them one at a time.

"We've eaten them in my tribe for
decades."

The girl shot him a look of disbelief.
"And you've not yet learned of their powers?"

He lifted one shoulder offhandedly.
"They taste amazing roasted over a smoky flame. I'd say that's a pretty
good power."

The girl gave him a wary glance. "You
eat them?"

He nodded.

"Well. No wonder you've not witnessed
its magics. Meroshi came from a long line of powerful shamans. He could call
flame from the sky, make winds howl, and the earth shake."

"Oh." He snorted. "My tribe
can do the same."

Alaysha stole a look at him. Was he lying?
The girl slapped his hand away from the worms and he chuckled. "So what
was this Meroshi's best power if I have shamans who can do the same?"

"Do your shamans have the power to
become invisible?"

He scoffed. "In the dark, we are all
invisible."

The girl shrugged and sat down next to the
fire pit, adding dead leaves to the top. She went silent and absorbed in
preparing for a rousing blaze. The tension grew unbearable. Alaysha could tell
the girl wanted to be pressed for the remainder of the story, and as equally,
Nineteen didn't want to ask. She let them alone, trying to quell her own
curiosity by digging for her tinder bundle and setting the fire, but after a
few long moments, the curiosity got the best of her.

"Tell us more."

The girl reached for a grub and pinched it
between her fingers. The skin of it broke and let loose an oozing mass of white
innards. Not yellow as expected, or even green. Just plain white worm meat.

"It was known by our people that the
only way to defeat Meroshi was to come at him just before dawn, when it was the
darkest and when he was at his most vulnerable."

The girl scraped the carcass on the grass.
"This grub would allow the assassin extra sight, far better than any
warrior's vision." She looked pointedly at Nineteen. "Mash these down
-- five or six of them -- and paint three stripes of their fluid beneath each
eye and you are granted special sight."

"That's ridiculous."

The girl grinned. "Go right ahead and
eat them, but save us some just in case we need them." She reached for
Alaysha's tinder bundle and added moss to it, blowing on it to get the smoke
moving. She spoke to Alaysha. "Would you help me gather the honey? I need
a boost into the tree."

Alaysha nodded and uncurled her legs. She
stood and reached for the girl's hand. "I can't imagine those peaches and
berries without a honey drizzle now I've decided to have it."

The tree wasn't terribly high, but the way
the girl made several attempts to climb with no avail set suspicion into
Alaysha's spine. She wove her fingers together and bid the girl step into the
cup they made. They were well away from hearing, but Alaysha whispered anyway.

"Could your shamans bring rain
too?" She had to know. Were these powers more common than she thought;
were there others like her?

The girl giggled as she placed her foot
into Alaysha's hands. "Meroshi was lucky if he could put food into his own
mouth."

"But --"

The girl's eyes caught Alaysha's
conspiratorially. "He was a madman in my village. We had no shaman. Only
warriors. Cunning warriors." She peered over Alaysha's shoulders.
"Don't look, but another Meroshi trap has just been set." She sprang
up and clambered into the tree then waved the tinder moss over the hole. Smoke
curled in and around and a few bees seeped drowsily from the entrance.

"What will happen then?" Alaysha
asked.

The girl cupped her palm and reached slowly
into the crevice. "You'll see come nightfall."

"Tell me about your warriors."

"They're fierce. They fear nothing.
Care for nothing. They move in the dark and in the light with equal prowess."

The pride in her voice was almost painful
to hear, knowing that she was right now running from her captor. Alaysha
thought back to battle sixteen. It hadn't seemed particularly fierce. In fact,
except that she had to send the power out over and over again to meet the waves
of new fighters, it had seemed very easy.

"Then how did Yuri capture such grand
warriors?"

The girl looked at her, no emotion in her
face. "He didn't capture them. You killed them."

Alaysha found she couldn't keep the girl's
gaze. She thought back to that battle and the warriors she'd murdered at her
father's behest. She wondered just how much this girl knew of her power--how
much she'd seen or heard. It would explain her complacency back at Yuri's camp,
when she'd seen the result of the power on that poor babe, when the power had
drained the ready water from the pots and skins. And if this girl had some
inkling of the power, then how many others?

It was a long wait till nightfall but an
enjoyable one. Number Nineteen had somehow got the fire to a perfect blaze to
roast the frog legs and cattail-wrapped worms. With peaches and berries
bubbling happily in a syrupy bowl of honey at the edge of the fire, and sliced
cattail roots frying on flat rocks, all they had to do was stretch before the
flames and relax.

The feast was as grand as anything she'd
eaten, and she wasn't sure if it was the food or the chatter and laughter of
the other two that put a perpetual smile on her face. It could have been the
way her leg touched Number Nineteen every now and then, and the way he made
small, but frequent attempts to touch her. All she knew was she was happy, and
she'd not felt happy since her nohma was alive.

No one mentioned or even glanced at the
gourd outside the edge of the fire, purposefully hidden between small stones
and branches, but Alaysha knew it was filled with a soup of wriggling yellow
bodies.

"So what of your tribe," she
asked him. He had licked the last of his fingers clean of honey and lay
stretched sideways to the fire, his black hair loosed and hanging in his eyes.
From where Alaysha sat, those eyes looked like lit honey. She reached out to
wipe a bit of peach from his chin.

"Your tribe, you mean," he said.

She shrugged. "So you say."

He rubbed his stomach. "Our tribe is
made of four major clans. I am Fire Clan. You are Water. Didn't your nohma tell
you this?" He sounded as though he couldn't believe she'd not been taught
such a simple thing. She felt stung at the tone, much as she would if a bee had
bit her.

When he noticed she wasn't answering, he
rolled onto his back.

"You think you have secrets from
me," he said to the growing dark.

"It's all I have," she murmured.
She and the girl were huddled close together, bracing against the chill at
their backs.
 

"You have less than you think, then.
Don't you want to know where you came from?"

"I know enough," she lied.

His low chuckle rumbled with the fire.
"Your enough makes you hunger for more, but you're afraid to ask."

"I was trained not to fear."

"Then what was that you felt the night
I came to you?"

She couldn't answer. It hadn't been the
first time she'd accidentally let loose her power, but it had been the first
time in many years. It unnerved her to think her power was getting the better
of her, that she couldn't control it.

"I'll tell you what it is,
Alaysha," he said. "It's the power growing in you; it's coming to its
peak as you mature and it will soon overwhelm you." He craned his neck to
look at her across the flame, and as the light danced on his features, she
thought she saw fire within him. "You need me," he said.

She looked away, out into the shadows of
the trees, and listened for Barruch's breathing in the dark to ground her, to
remind her who she was and why she was here. The conversation had gone too far
deep into the pits of those things she'd always longed for and been afraid of.
He'd touched too far into the hollow spaces she'd spent years trying to fill
with her collections.

"I always thought I needed no
one," she said. It was true, wasn't it? She'd spent so many years alone,
despite the companionship of this fire, she had survived without affection for
so long, she knew she could manage without it again if she had to.

As if realizing he'd gone too far, he
pointed to the first star winking in the sky, the one high above them, already
brighter than the pale moon. "I was named after that light."

Alaysha's attention piqued. She knew what
her nohma called that first light of the evening.—that brightest purplish light
that lasted far into the early morning. It was the Eye of Yenic, she'd said,
peering open to watch over his beloved Yen, the soft belly of the earth below
him, until the sun could care for her properly.

"And here I was calling you
Nineteen," she said, forcing a laugh.