Crossing the Naiad

by J.M. Ney-Grimm

  The man was short and knobby, his kindly face twisted by rage and grief both, and by something else.

  Bagging eyes, elongated nose, sagging chin.

  He was a troll. How many hangmen had looped a noose for his neck?

  The weapons were gouts of light and thunder: piercing silver cast by the lady toward the troll; sizzling orange hurled back by her foe.

  The lady was beautiful, but she scared him.

  The troll should scare him, but Elias wasn't scared, not of him. Why not?

  It was their faces: the lady, cold and hating and . . . hungry – feed my lady – the words whispered in his mind; the troll, diseased, yes, but . . . humane.

  Who were they?

  Why did they contest so fierily within this trap of cold stone?

  * * *

  Kimmer could see a hand – gauzy and translucent in the water, nearly unseen, but there – encircling her own wrist, drawing her into a presence: alien and cool with no good purpose.

  A pale female face coalesced.

  The spirit of the river? A naiad?

  Her lightless eyes focused on Kimmer. Come, she hissed soundlessly.

  Kimmer yanked her arm.

  In plain air she would be free. Here, submerged and entangled, her intended vigor transmuted into a gliding dance.

  The grip on her wrist tightened and pierced the chartreuse light summoned by her keyholding.

  Aching, bruising pain bloomed in the joint.

  A different current flowed, an inner tide of hurt drawn from Kimmer's bones.

  She felt strength leaving her body and jerked again at the grasp holding her.

  The stream of departing energy intensified.

  For an interval, she struggled futilely . . . then relaxed.

  Physical resistance would not free her.

  She reached inside herself through her keys: there the energea surged limitlessly. She channeled it, saw the chartreuse of her keyholder's armor brighten, and felt the drain by the river spirit lessen.

  The naiad's face tightened.

  Mine.

  She attacked again.

  This time Kimmer knew how to defend.

  Her energetic shield edged toward citron.

  They balanced there, held in the water's current, besieger and besieged, predator and prey.

  “Who are you?” Kimmer mouthed.

  The naiad smiled, but not in answer, not in comprehension. She anticipated her next onslaught, potent and penetrating.

  Suddenly Kimmer was angry, no longer reacting and protecting.

  Take that, you fiend!

  She cast a net of sparkling silver toward her foe.

  An attack?

  Not exactly.

  Kimmer had learned none of a magical nature. Keyholding aimed to build and create and heal. But it was time to push out. So she pushed.

  The naiad's face registered surprise, then shock.

  And Kimmer found herself immersed in memories not her own: the loss of something precious, more precious than coin or sovereignty, more longed for than beauty or love.

  The queen had lost a child, and her hunger sharpened by the year.

  * * *

  Sarvet plunged into the river feet first, over her head in both water and memory, the memories of the queen Faien.

  Grieving and empty, she glided through her marble palace.

  Furious and famished, she excoriated her chancellor.

  Aghast and angry, he castigated her.

  Their difference was simple: deprived of a daughter, the queen sought power; deprived of a princess, the chancellor sought magic.

  And each considered the other wrong.

  Their emotions tumbled Sarvet's mind and heart even as the river tumbled her body.

  “You risk incantatio” – the perilous magic of trolls – “and troll-disease!” accused the queen.

  “You risk cruelty and tyranny!” countered her adviser, Theon.

  And, in the end, both were right: she, an embittered mourner who leapt to her death in the raging torrent; he, a troll whose incantatio killed him when he extended it to save (and fail) his sovereign.

  Sarvet's feet struck bottom, the scoured rock of the river bed.

  Holding her breath, she kicked to plunge upward.

  I can swim, she reminded herself. I can.

  But this river was rougher by far than the calm lake where she'd learned, and the buffeting of thoughts not her own broke her concentration.

  The dead – Faien, cold and covetous; Theon, rigid and despairing – were not the only souls drowning.

  Sarvet sensed the pair she'd seen fall – the girl and the boy, both young – also fighting the river's strength.

  I know this, she realized slowly.

  And she did. She'd fought her clan's customs and lost. She'd fought her mother's fear. And lost. She'd fought her own fear. And lost.

  But then . . . she'd surrendered and won.

  Her head popped to the water's surface, its white froth swirling and racing, but less tumultuous than the stretch immediately under the bridge.

  She allowed her legs to swing around and surged feet first downstream.

  She opened her mind, inviting the intruders in.

  “Be here,” she whispered. “Be now.”

  * * *

  Kimmer felt the arrival of the newcomer within the net of communication she'd woven.

  Oh! She is Hammarleeding.

  “Be here, be now,” enjoined the girl from the bluff. Sarvet. Her name was Sarvet. How unusual!

  The water-queen's lips thinned. “The river entraps me. How should I be elsewhere?”

  Sarvet answered her: “Are you sure? Is there no consent for imprisonment within you?”

  Faien's reply was oblique and terrifying. “You shall feed me, too.”

  “I think not.”

  Kimmer hoped that were true, but how could it be?

  Without her consent, the Gweltspaen's current held her fast, while the queen's antagonism prevented her from seeking the surface and shore.

  But even were Sarvet wrong, at least she was on the right side.

  Kimmer added her voice to the argument: “Please, you have other choices.”

  Did she?

  Did Kimmer herself?

  Keyholder Pavana always said so, when Kimmer's choice was inept.

  Another presence arrived, and then another: both male, one strange, the other . . . not.

  Elias!

  So he had been close on Aani's terrier heels.

  “Let her go!” demanded the bully.

  “My lady must sup,” declared the stranger.

  “This hurts you as well,” insisted Sarvet. “I should know.”

  “How can you know anything of me and mine?” The queen was contemptuous.

  Her male advocate, derisive. “How could you know?”

  Kimmer had a feeling Sarvet did know, young as she was, perhaps a year or two older than Kimmer herself. But what would she say?

  “My losses were my own, not yours. Yes. But they were real.”

  Silence from the queen and her companion – Faien and . . . Theon – at this pronouncement.

  Sarvet continued: “Others hurt me, but the hurts I dealt myself in the struggle were the worst ones. The ones hardest to heal from.”

  “There is no healing for me,” said Faien.

  “Then, let go,” Sarvet urged.

  The queen's face – the only one Kimmer could see, despite the incorporeal presence of the others – tightened, and her lips drew back. “Never.”

  Kimmer felt the deep pain of Faien's draining recommence, stronger this time, penetrating the keyholding shield even as Kimmer renewed her defense. Her joints throbbed; her bones ached.

  You have another choice. The words from memory echoed.

  No! How could defeat be a real choice? Be a freedom? Surely those words were for the queen, not for Kimmer.

  Not defeat: surrender. No memory, this time. Sarvet?
And what could she mean?

  Find the current. Align your will to it and . . . push. Or pull.

  Kimmer didn't want to.

  And yet . . . she was weakening. Another interval of resisting this draining and her hold on her own keys would fade.

  Would she drown first? Or would Faien empty her sooner? Either would be defeat indeed.

  She let go.

  The chartreuse light of her armor flashed yellow, then ceased. The tide of energea leaving her quickened. And the silver lattice connecting all five swimmers brightened.

  Faien . . . screamed.

  And let go.

  What? Then Kimmer saw through the queen's eyes.

  A shepherd girl lay in the water, the calming water, pale and dying, blond hair loosed from its braids and fanned by the river. She was lovely, her fading life lovelier still. Come back! Oh, come back!

  What was there in this to conjure Faien's scream?

  Another child: a girl-child, younger and sweet, her short curls drifting among Kimmer's long locks.

  “My baby!” The queen's voice was harsh. “My child!”

  And now Sarvet was there. “She could be yours. Will you kill her?”

  Faien sobbed, her mouth agonized. Had she never come close to her victims before? Never touched their humanity? Never seen herself or her daughter within them?

  “So much pain,” moaned the queen. “I hurt.”

  “Yes,” whispered Sarvet.

  “Help me.”

  “If I can.” A reaching hand, Sarvet's hand, swept through Kimmer's vision.

  “Please,” groaned Faien.

  “Let it in.”

  “I cannot.”

  “You can.”

  “I'm afraid.”

  “Yes.”

  With that affirmation, the queen's face relaxed. Her translucence gained, grew transparent, became water and a rush of bubbles.

  Kimmer seemed to follow them upward, watching them break the river's surface as a mist, rising skyward into pale sunlight.

  She returned to herself, enervated and bleached.

  I must swim.

  She hung suspended. Drowning?

  Then a hand gripped the back of her bodice and yanked.

  She broke air coughing, hearing Elias' yells in her ear. “I'll kill you if you drown!”

  She laughed and choked and gasped all the way to the bank, dragged by the bully's frantic determination.

  * * *

  When Elias tumbled once more from stone into water – calmer water this time – Kimmer's listless body hung below him.

  Dear Sias, he was late! Too late?

  He dove, reaching for her, snagging the fabric of her dress, and hauled her to the surface.

  Air; she needs air.

  Next moment she was coughing and . . . laughing? Thank the goddess, she breathed.

  He shifted his grip and stroked toward shore, relieved and thinking.

  What had happened just now in the stone?

  He'd felt himself to be Theon, the troll counselor to a queen of old. Theon's twisted body had become his for a time. Theon's thoughts tangled with his.

  Sarvet – the girl Kimmer knew, but he didn't – said: “Be here, be now.”

  And Elias – no, Theon – thought: We are here, young optimist. Drowned here. Forever here. And my lady must sup.

  “This hurts you,” came Sarvet's observation.

  Any prison galls. The one you create yourself . . . ravages and consumes. My lady must sup.

  “The hurts I dealt myself were the worst.”

  Oh, yes. Yes. This I dealt myself . . . and to my lady. My magic lacked strength enough to save or to heal. My magic could only destroy.

  “There is no healing for me” – Faien's words.

  Heed her, heed her! Theon was begging.

  “Never!”

  Ah, Faien.

  “You have another choice.” Kimmer! Not drowned yet!

  Ah, the shepherd girl, the youngest of us all.

  So strange to be Theon and Elias combined.

  Sarvet again: “Find the current. Align your will.”

  Stubborn resistance from Faien.

  Please, my lady, heed her. Heed her and free us all. My incantatio must break.

  Came . . . something. Had the queen surrendered? Had Kimmer?

  An agonized scream.

  My lady! My lady!

  And then Elias was himself alone.

  As he tumbled into water, a fleeting vision lingered before his mind's eye: the troll Theon emerging from the bridge stone as marble, the statue of a troll, then crumbling to dust – a dust that sifted on the breeze and spiraled upward, dissolving in the sun.

  Elias' stroking hand brushed the pebbled river bottom. He pulled his feet under him, rising and bringing Kimmer up too.

  * * *

  Sarvet came ashore just downstream of the two lowlanders – Elias and Kimmer, she reminded herself.

  Her dripping tunic dragged heavily against her thighs. Her hair twists, more resistant to moisture, shed water down her back.

  Thank Sias she'd lost her cape on the trail and tossed her pack just before she hit the bridge. They'd have taken her down never to rise, if she'd retained them in the river.

  She glanced upward once more.

  The ascending mist of the dead queen was gone, likewise the spiraling dust of her loyal chancellor.

  Had she truly seen winged translucence – pegasi? – accompanying the lost souls as warm Sias gathered them home? If so, they were gone as well.

  Sarvet's feet stumbled on the shifting pebbles underfoot, and she looked down to catch her balance. Elias and Kimmer were hugging and jabbering at one another, but they turned as Sarvet approached.

  “Goddess! The queen's ghost would have devoured us without you! Thank you!” the boy – Elias – exclaimed.

  The girl was quieter. “Were they trapped in the bridge all that time? Centuries?” She shuddered.

  Sarvet nodded. “The bridge and the river, I think. You freed them.”

  “Me?” Kimmer's eyes widened. “You did it, not me!” She shivered, and Elias slung an arm over her shoulders in a futile attempt to warm her.

  Sarvet shook her head and smiled, but didn't argue. “Let's go hunt up my pack. It's got blankets. And my cape is warm, too. If we can find it.”

  The wool of her tunic, despite its wetness, was gathering her body heat the way wool tended to do. But the linens worn by the lowlanders wouldn't do the same. And they all needed to get dry, even though the spring afternoon was mild.

  “We're on the wrong side of the river,” Elias pointed out as they crossed the shingle toward the slope of the ravine.

  “The bridge should be safe.” Sarvet gestured. Its stone arch was visible over the trees, white in the sunlight, just around the bend upstream.

  Elias nodded and reached for Kimmer's hand.

  * * *

  Later, quite a bit later, they gathered around a fire on the bridge's western apron.

  Kimmer had crossed the span unharmed – twice – to help retrieve Sarvet's belongings.

  They'd scavenged kindling and a dead branch; doffed their clothes, wrung them out, and draped them on a few convenient, sunlit boulders; then wrapped up in the makings of Sarvet's bedroll while the goats grazed nearby on the verge.

  The Hammarleeding girl shared out dried pears from her pack.

  Kimmer chewed. Umm. Softer and sweeter than the Silmarish version. And with a stronger spicing as well.

  “So, you're on a . . . a wanderyar?” Kimmer asked. What was a wanderyar anyway?

  Sarvet explained that Hammarleeding boys had always traveled for a year or two when they turned sixteen or seventeen.

  “Usually from father-lodge to father-lodge, but a few leave the mountains. I'm the first girl to try it.” Her eyes glowed. “I never dreamed it would be like this!” She waved at the bridge behind them. “But I'm so glad I met you. You're . . . you're amazing!”
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  Kimmer felt herself blushing.

  Elias interrupted whatever Sarvet was going to say next. Was he embarrassed too?

  “We're glad you came along. You saved us, you know,” he insisted.

  Sarvet tilted her head. “You needed help,” she agreed. “But . . . I think Kimmer's willingness to let the queen in is what saved us. I was caught also,” she added.

  “Were you?” Evidently Elias hadn't realized that.

  Kimmer pulled her blanket closer, brushed a spark that snapped from the fire off the wool. Ow! Hot!

  She hadn't realized either that Sarvet was caught. “It was so sad, the queen grieving and grieving for hundreds of years.”

  “More likely thousands,” put in Sarvet.

  “But I was too scared to feel sad for her.” Kimmer nibbled on a second slice of dried pear. “I just wanted her to go, leave me be, let me live.”

  Elias shifted uncomfortably in his blanket. “Kimmer . . .”

  Kimmer frowned. Why was he unhappy? They were safe. And they'd made a new friend.

  “Kimmer, I'm really sorry about . . .”

  Oh, he was thinking further back than the events of this afternoon.

  Kimmer felt her lips curving up. Somehow she'd forgotten Elias was a bully. Getting pulled from drowning by someone did that to a person. “For calling me cheese licker and wool grubber and who knows what else?” Her voice had a saucy note to it.

  “Wheyface,” he confessed. “I mean – no! I –”

  Kimmer laughed, but asked, “Why did you?”

  He looked down. “It seems pretty stupid, but – I guess I was jealous.”

  “Jealous?! Of me?”

  “Jealous of – of Pavana,” he hurried on at what must be the surprise in her face, “because Pavana got your attention. And jealous of you, because you get Pavana's teaching. I wish” – he shook his head – “I wish I could learn keyholding too.”

  “Oh!” She would never have guessed that.

  Elias continued, “I'd really like it if – we could be friends.” He ducked his head again.

  Kimmer reached out to touch his wrist.

  When he looked up, she said, “Of course I'd like to be friends. We are friends. I think you saved my life, dragging me out of the river there at the end.”

  Elias fell silent, but his eyes beamed. Then he added, looking at Sarvet, “Will you be our friend too? Even after you travel onward?”

  Sarvet smiled.

  “Kimmer's right. We did something amazing there in the water, and it connects us. But you're right too. Because we have a choice about what we'll do with our connection.” She nodded. “I'd love to be friends. No matter where I am. Forever.”

  Kimmer let her breath go in satisfaction. Feeling relaxed. Feeling happy. Feeling . . . right.