Song of the Sword

by Edward Willett

  “‘Go to your room!’” Ariane mimicked savagely. “‘You’re grounded, young lady.’ You’re treating me like a child. I’m almost sixteen. Do you realize that?”

  “I’m through arguing. Go to your room. Now!”

  “Go to hell!” Ariane spun on her heel and crashed out through the front door into the gathering autumn twilight.

  “Ariane!” she heard Aunt Phyllis shout, but she didn’t look back. She thought she might explode. She wanted to break something, crush something, punch someone. Instead, she ran down the front walk and up the street, brushing past some girl on the sidewalk who was turned away from her, talking into a phone. After a few more steps, Arian realized that she was heading for the same place she had sought refuge that morning – the lake.

  Her kingdom, if the Lady could be believed. Though at that moment, she didn’t want a kingdom.

  She wanted sanctuary.

  ~ • ~

  Wally had never had a more unpleasant shock in his fourteen years than the one he received a few minutes after Ariane ran out.

  He was in the utility room, getting ready to wash their lake-soaked clothes. He had just poured in the soap and closed the lid when he heard the front door open. She came back, he thought with great relief. “Ariane?” he shouted. “I’m in here.”

  He turned around – and came face to face with his sister, whose glare was hot enough to melt lead. Her voice, on the other hand, could have frozen air. “What was she doing here?”

  Wally’s first impulse, to play dumb, was dumb. Felicia had probably seen Ariane leaving the house. “She...had an accident. On the way to school. She...needed to clean up.”

  “She was wearing my clothes!”

  “Well, she had to wear something.” Wally cast a longing gaze at the door into the kitchen, thinking of escape...and saw Shania, leaning against the kitchen counter. Muffled voices from the living room revealed the presence of...Buffy? Heather? What were those girls’ names...?

  “You let her into my room?” Felicia’s voice turned sharp as an icicle.

  “My clothes are too small.” Shut up, Wally, he warned himself. You’re not helping.

  “Shut up, Wally,” Felicia snapped. Apparently she agreed. She grabbed his arm, spun him around, pinned his wrist against his shoulder blades, and frog-marched him out of the utility room.

  Shania didn’t even look away from the glitter she was brushing onto her fingernails. “So what’s up?”

  “My little brother –” Felicia made him sound like something green and furry she’d found growing on leftovers – “let that foster brat into my room. He told her,” she yanked his wrist higher, making him gasp, “that she could wear my clothes.”

  Shania held out her left hand and wriggled the fingers, admiring her handiwork. “What happened to hers?”

  Felicia jerked her head at the utility room. “In the washing machine.”

  Shania straightened up, and grinned – or, at least, showed her teeth. It made her look like a shark. “I’ll get them for her. We’ll want to return them, won’t we?”

  “Yeah.” Felicia bared her teeth in turn. “We will.”

  “Shouldn’t we all be getting to school?” Wally said hopefully.

  “Shut up,” Felicia snapped, but Shania turned her shark-like smile toward him.

  “Somebody set off a stink bomb in the chemistry lab before the first bell even rang. Classes are cancelled for the rest of the day.”

  At least that explained why they were here, at home, where he’d thought he’d be safe. If I ever find the guy who made that stink bomb...

  Shania turned toward the living room. “Stephanie! Cassandra!”

  Oh, yeah, Wally thought. That’s it. Stephanie and Cassan – “Ow!” he yelped as Felicia pushed him toward the stairs. She forced him up to the second floor while Shania started to issue orders downstairs.

  “Get over to Ariane’s house. Wallace Street, remember? Both of you. Keep watch. All day if you have to – you can spell each other off. The minute you see her, call me. If she’s going in, stay put and wait. If she’s coming out, follow her.”

  “What are we going to do to her?” Stephanie – or was it Cassandra? – asked, but Wally didn’t have a chance to hear the answer. By then, Felicia was propelling him down the hallway toward her room.

  So Wally repeated the question to his sister. “What are you going to do to Ariane?”

  Instead of answering, she released him and shoved him hard against the wall. His head hit with a dull thud. “Ow!” Rubbing his skull, he turned just in time to see Felicia open the door to her room.

  Her mouth fell open. “Oh...my...God!” Each word was two notes higher and ten decibels louder than the one before. Wally, feeling his head for a bump, peered around her, and gaped.

  It looked like every piece of clothing Felicia owned had been pulled from its place in the dresser or closet and tossed on the floor. Wally felt an urge to laugh that could only be classified as insane – in the mood Felicia was in, she’d undoubtedly kill him.

  “Sorry,” he managed to say, hoping he sounded believably contrite. “I didn’t know –”

  “Shut up!” Felicia grabbed him and shoved him into her room. He fell again and slid, on a pile of panties, a metre across the carpet. “I want this room to look exactly the way it did when I left it this morning, or so help me –”

  “Okay, okay,” Wally muttered. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “You do that. And we’ll take care of Ariane!”

  She slammed the door. Wally sighed and got to his feet. This is not, he thought as he picked up a purple sock and began casting around for its mate, a propitious beginning to our quest.

  He glanced out the window. Cassandra and Stephanie were just turning the corner of the block. It was too late to follow them to Ariane’s house, and unlike them, he didn’t know Ariane’s address. (He wondered how they did. Maybe as head witch of the coven, Shania asked her good friend Satan for assistance, he thought.) He didn’t even know Ariane’s aunt’s name. He had no way to warn her. All he could do was wait to find out what happened.

  He heard voices downstairs. Felicia and Shania were still in the living room, and that meant the only safe place for him was...right here.

  He spotted the second purple sock, hanging from the desk lamp. He grabbed it, folded it with its mate, then leaned over and picked up a frilly black bra.

  At least he had plenty to keep him occupied.

  ~ • ~

  By the time Ariane reached the empty parking lot by the lake it was almost dark, and much colder. She hugged herself tightly. Her anger still burned, but it didn’t provide much warmth, and it was beginning to be tempered by guilt. I’ll go back soon. She had to: she had nowhere else to go.

  She walked to the boulder where she had been sitting when she first heard the water calling her. She sat down on it again and stared at the lake – a smooth, silver sheet that reflected the twilight sky. She heard a car pull into the parking lot. Lights swept over her, briefly illuminating the naked trees on Willow Island. Ariane hunched her shoulders and hoped whoever it was would leave her alone.

  A car door slammed, then another. Now footsteps were crunching toward her – too many to be one person. Ariane still didn’t turn around. Wascana Lake, right in the heart of the city, was always popular with people out for a stroll, but why these annoying strollers had chosen this particular moment –

  “Well, well, well. If it isn’t Airy-Anne, out enjoying the fresh air.”

  Ariane slowly turned her head. Four girls stood behind her. Hail, hail, the gang’s all here, she thought. She saw Shania, but Felicia seemed to be in charge for the moment. She was carrying a plastic shopping bag. “Those are my clothes you’re wearing, Airy-Anne.” She opened the bag and tossed the contents onto the ground in Ariane’s direction. “These are yours.”

  The black shirt and jeans Ariane had been wearing that morning, still filthy and unwashed, landed with a sodden thump. So did her le
ather jacket. Someone had slashed the sleeves and lining beyond repair.

  Anger surged in her again. Keeping her eyes on the gang, she rose to her feet. The four girls had her trapped between the parking lot and Wascana’s cold water. A red Toyota SUV idled behind them. Its exhaust puffed out into the chill, still air, glowing golden under the parking lot’s sodium-vapour lights. “It was very sweet of you to loan them to me,” she said.

  “You mean it was very stupid of my brother,” Felicia growled. She crumpled up the shopping bag she’d brought Ariane’s clothes in and tossed it to one side. At least I don’t have to worry about getting Wally in trouble, Ariane thought. He’s already in it.

  “Your brother’s very nice, Flish.” She remembered that Wally had told her his sister hated that nickname. “Amazingly enough.”

  “My brother,” Felicia snarled, “is a geek loser who should learn to keep his pimply nose out of my business – and out of my room.” She took a step closer. “I want my clothes back, Airy-Anne.”

  “I’ll mail them to you.” She stepped off the boulder in the direction of the parking lot – she needed room to manoeuvre.

  Felicia grabbed her arm. “I want them now.”

  Ariane jerked free, but someone else grabbed her from behind. She opened her mouth to scream, but a hand clamped over her lips. A moment later, someone jammed a twisted scarf between her teeth and tied it around her head so tightly she thought her cheeks would split. She struggled, but the two girls holding her forced her down onto her back and pinned her arms to the ground. She kicked as hard as she could, just missing Felicia’s shin.

  Felicia’s eyes glittered yellow in the sodium light. “Strip her.”

  Ariane’s anger swelled to rage. A distant roaring began, and grew louder. There was something familiar about it.

  The girls lifted her up and forced one arm out of the sweater sleeve, then the other, then peeled the sweater over her head. She kicked again, this time landing a solid blow on Felicia’s knee, but the girls threw her back to the ground. Felicia swore and limped backward. “The jeans!” she snapped.

  “Felicia, are you sure...” Ariane recognized Shania’s voice, and knew her first instinct had been correct. Felicia was in charge this time – maybe from this time on. The other two girls didn’t pay any attention to Shania’s concerned query. One of them sat on Ariane’s legs to keep her from kicking, and tugged off first one shoe, then the other.

  The roaring in Ariane’s mind crescendoed and grew more distinct, and at last she recognized it. Four years ago, when she was eleven, her mom had taken her to Toronto. While they were there they had driven down to Niagara Falls. That was where she had heard that sound before – it was the earthshaking thunder of countless tonnes of water hurtling over a cliff, falling, pounding against the rocks far below.

  But this time, Ariane heard something new mingled with that thunder: a joyful chanting, solemn and powerful in its own way. It was the song of the water she had heard only hours before, the call of – or maybe to – the Lady of the Lake.

  She dimly felt her socks being pulled off, the cold air flowing around her bare feet.

  Felicia held up her cell phone. “Two seconds after you’re naked, the pictures are going to be hitting the phone of every kid in my contact list,” Felicia said. “You’re about to become the most famous girl in Oscana Collegiate, Airy-Anne.”

  The girl sitting on Ariane’s knees turned herself around and began fumbling with the button of Ariane’s jeans. Ariane hardly noticed. Her attention was turned inward, seeking the source of that thunderous song. It was like following an unfamiliar path through a dark, dripping rain forest, trying to find a view of the sea. She was close, so close...

  Jeans unbuttoned and unzipped. Hands in the waistband, about to pull them off.

  “Wait, get her to her feet first,” Felicia said. “Stephanie, you pull the t-shirt over her head. Cassandra, pull the jeans down from behind. That way neither of you will be in the shot.”

  Almost...almost...

  They hauled her to her feet. In a moment she’d be standing naked before Felicia’s cell phone lens.

  And then, with an almost physical shock, as though she’d stuck her finger in an electrical socket, she connected with the power she had sensed building inside of her.

  Gadewch y dyfroedd byw ynoch, a chi o fewn y dyfroedd. Y p ˆwer yn eiddo i chi!

  The Lady’s voice echoed in her head with the force of waves breaking against a rocky shore.

  Let the waters live within you, and you within the waters. The power be yours!

  And it was hers, at last. Here was the epiphany she had missed before: power she had never imagined, suddenly at her beck and call. All the water in Wascana Lake felt like a part of her body. She could sense everything in it, locate every fish, every rock, every sunken bicycle and pop can and grocery cart. The water lived in her and she in it – and she could use it as she willed.

  And she willed...this.

  The lake erupted. Ropes of water like muddy snakes shot skyward, poised above her and her tormentors. Felicia, Shania, Stephanie, and Cassandra froze like hares caught in a car’s headlights. Ariane pulled free of Stephanie’s slackened grip, ripped the gag from her mouth, and waded three steps into the lake. The water, though it had to be ice-cold, felt as warm as a blanket around her bare feet.

  “If I were you,” she said, “I’d run.”

  The girls stared at her in confusion, faces yellow in the lamplight.

  And then Ariane struck.

  The watery ropes, black with rotting muck, sank back toward the surface of the lake, thickening, crouching, and trembling like feral cats – and then sprang toward the shore with the force of a water cannon. The first struck Felicia in the chest, knocking her off her feet, rolling her over and over across the parking lot. The other girls turned to run, but it was too late. The blasts of mud-choked water hit their backs instead of their chests, throwing them to the pavement.

  Screaming, they tried to scramble to their feet, but Ariane wasn’t finished.

  Thinner, cleaner tentacles of water reached out from the lake and snapped down on the cowering girls like whips. One smashed Felicia’s cell phone, and glittering shards of plastic and circuitry scattered across the asphalt. Other tendrils struck the girls with audible cracks, leaving red marks on their bare skin. Weeping and shrieking, the girls ran for the Toyota. A tendril of water smashed in the back window, scattering shards of shining glass across the pavement. The SUV skidded out of the parking lot before the doors even closed.

  Ariane raised her hands and the tendrils of water slipped back into the lake, leaving behind only a few flecks of foam. She turned to face the once-more placid water. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  The roaring had subsided, but she could feel it, tucked away, ready to be called upon if she ever needed it again. This was the power the Lady had bequeathed to her. Ariane needed to study it, to understand it...

  A fit of shivering gripped her, so strong her teeth clattered like castanets. Her feet suddenly felt as if she’d stuck them in a deep freezer, and a wave of tiredness washed over her. She was exhausted. She needed to go home, fast.

  She buttoned her jeans and zipped them up again. The shoes, socks, and sweater the gang had stripped off her lay soaked in the parking lot. Ariane knelt and touched them. The water sprang away on her command, and she gratefully pulled on the now-dry sweater. As she was tugging on the equally dry shoes and socks, a lone jogger passed through the parking lot, glancing at her as if wondering what nut would go wading in the lake in this weather.

  She gave him her most innocent smile, gathered her own filthy clothes, stuffed them in the shopping bag Felicia had brought them in, and headed home.

  She had plans to make.

  ~ • ~

  Wally was supposed to be doing homework in the living room (but was actually watching TV) when Felicia came in that night. Once he had finished tidying her room, he’d stayed upstairs until he heard Felicia an
d Shania leave. When he did come downstairs, he discovered that they’d taken Ariane’s clothes, still unwashed, with them.

  His presence in the house had been an unpleasant surprise for Ms. Carson when she’d arrived around three. She didn’t believe his story of a stink bomb in the chemistry lab until she called the school and confirmed it herself. Fortunately, she didn’t think to ask if he’d been at school at all.

  He hoped Ariane would send some kind of message, but the house phone didn’t ring, nobody knocked on the door, and the only e-mails he received promised him cut-rate prescription drugs and a significant portion of a Nigerian ex-politician’s fortune.

  At five-thirty he ate his spaghetti under the baleful glare of Ms. Carson, who somehow made it clear, without saying a word, that she considered it his fault Felicia hadn’t come home yet. After supper he retired to the living room with a Coke and a plate of Oreos, while Ms. Carson banged around in the kitchen for a while. Before she left for one of her committee meetings – Save Our Squirrels or Protectors of the Park or something like that – she warned him sternly to tell his sister where the leftover spaghetti was when she came in. “She’ll need to eat after a hard night of studying with her friends. You tell her, now.”

  “I promise.” Wally didn’t try to disabuse Ms. Carson of the fanciful notion that Felicia had been studying.

  About a quarter to seven, more than half an hour after the sun had set, Wally heard the front door open and close. He only caught a glimpse of Felicia as she passed the living room door on the way to the stairs, but what he saw was enough to make him jump to his feet and rush after her.

  He reached the bottom of the stairs just as his sister disappeared along the upstairs hallway. He looked at the front door, and then up the steps.

  A clear trail of black, wet spots marked Felicia’s passage.

  He ran upstairs. She was in the bathroom, T-shirt half-off. Stinking water and black muck soaked her from head to foot – just as it had soaked him and Ariane that morning. On her chest, just below her bra, he saw a big purpling bruise.