Water Keep

by J. Scott Savage

  “Look around.” She reached out and touched an umbrella-shaped object with a strange creature sticking out from the bottom of it. A stream of dark blue flowed down from the creature’s mouth and spilled back up into the umbrella. At her touch, the object changed direction and floated off down the street.

  Marcus realized it was an upside-down fountain. He looked down—or was it up?—at his feet and noticed they weren’t touching anything. But then, neither were Kyja’s. They were both sort of hovering in midair.

  Riph Raph, changed back to his normal self, struggled out of Kyja’s arms and tried to fly. But instead of soaring up into the sky, he spun awkwardly in a circle. “What’s wrong with this place?” the skyte sputtered.

  Kicking his leg and swinging his arm, Marcus managed to rotate himself until he and Kyja were facing the same direction. Once he got the hang of it, it was sort of fun. “Are we underwater?” he asked.

  “If we are, how can we be breathing?” Kyja took a deep breath and let it out, demonstrating her point. There were no bubbles.

  “He-l-l-l-p-p,” Riph Raph cried, flapping his wings as he spun completely out of control.

  Marcus reached out with one hand as the skyte floated past and managed to catch Riph Raph by the leg.

  Riph Raph clutched tightly to Marcus’s arm with his talons. “I don’t like this place. Let’s get out while we can.”

  “We can’t leave,” Kyja said. “We have to find the water elementals and get them to help us.”

  “Speaking of which, check that out.” Marcus pointed to something moving slowly toward a nearby building that tilted like the leaning tower of Pisa. The creature was shaped sort of like a human, but with no discernable features and no fingers or toes—he looked more like a big gingerbread cookie. From inside its gray, semi-transparent body, occasional bursts of blue and yellow light flashed.

  “Excuse me,” Kyja called toward the gingerbread man. “We’re looking for water elementals. Are you one? Or can you tell us where to find them?”

  If the creature heard her, it gave no sign. Instead it continued its slow forward surge and disappeared into the doorway of the building.

  “Let’s catch up with it,” Marcus said. Kicking his arms and legs in a swimming motion, he tried to go toward the building. But he quickly discovered that didn’t work. All he accomplished with his paddling and kicking was a slow, graceless spin.

  “Stop it,” Riph Raph said from his shoulder. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  Kyja seemed to be having better luck using a combination of jumping and walking motions while guiding herself with her arms.

  Holding his hands out to balance himself, Marcus followed her example. It was sort of like the pictures he’d seen of astronauts walking across the moon. With no gravity pulling him down, he found he could leap ten to twelve feet with a single step.

  His aim wasn’t as good as Kyja’s, though. While she stopped just in front of the door, Marcus found himself moving too quickly and ended up slamming against the wall three feet to the left.

  “Look where you’re going,” Riph Raph muttered.

  “Look at this, you two.” Kyja stood peering into the building as she held onto the doorframe.

  Marcus pulled himself hand-over-hand along the wall until he reached her. Staring into the building, he at first thought the large open room was full of paintings. Each of the walls was covered with what looked like large, round picture frames. Some of the frames were empty, but most of them held different pictures—grassy meadows, animals, a strange, pillar-like building with dark, gaping windows, even a family eating lunch on a patch of sandy beach. The frames that held pictures had glowing lights at the bottom.

  But then he realized the things in the pictures were moving. Something that looked like a mix between a fox and a bear lumbered across the meadow and stopped to lap from a stream. Clouds blew past the unfamiliar-looking building. The children at the beach scampered in and out of their frame as though walking past the lens of a video camera.

  But if there were cameras making the pictures, they were the best he’d ever seen. The pictures were so clear you almost expected the people to step right out. And he could swear he heard a child’s distant laughter coming from one of them.

  The pictures weren’t just on the walls, either. Set among more of the color-changing blobs he’d seen outside the building were bowls that looked almost big enough to be small swimming pools. But instead of water, they held pictures too. Kyja moved to the nearest bowl and—placing her hands on the rim—leaned over it.

  “I can actually smell them,” she said, sniffing an image of

  bright-red flowers. “It’s like the TVs in your world, only much better.” She reached toward the picture, but Marcus caught her arm.

  “Look,” he whispered, pointing to the gray creature they’d followed into the building. Across the room, it approached the family on the beach. For a moment it paused, then, pressing itself up against the image, it actually seemed to ooze right through.

  In the picture, the sky above the beach had been a cloudless blue, but as soon as the creature disappeared into it, the horizon immediately began to darken. The family glanced nervously up at the clouds and began gathering their food. Lightning flashed from the thunderheads that rolled quickly in, and Marcus heard the peel of thunder and smelled the electrical aroma of hot ozone. Before the family had finished picking up their blankets, big drops of rain were falling on them.

  “It’s real, isn’t it?” Kyja said. “Those people are real, and somehow that gray thing made it storm wherever they are.”

  “I think that gray thing was the storm,” Marcus said.

  Kyja’s fingers had been hovering over the surface of the bowl in front of her. She snatched them back. “Do you think if you put your hand through one of the pictures, you’d go through too?”

  “I don’t know,” Marcus said, “But I sure don’t want to find out.” Kneeling by the side of the bowl, he noticed a series of different-

  colored circles, glowing with a pulsing light like he’d seen on the frames around the wall.

  As he reached tentatively toward a pink circle, it grew unexpectedly brighter for a moment.

  “How did you do that?” Kyja gasped.

  When Marcus looked back at the surface of the bowl, he saw the picture had zoomed out, so that now, instead of only a few of the red flowers, he could see an entire field of them. Cautiously, he touched a circle glowing a faint blue. Again the circle blazed brightly, and the picture zoomed in on a single flower.

  “They’re some kind of controls,” he said. “Try one.”

  With a trembling hand, Kyja reached out to the gold circle. Instead of flashing as the pink and blue circles had, the gold only glowed a little more brightly. Flowers moved across the screen from right to left.

  Marcus touched the pink again, and the picture zoomed back out. “Put your hand closer,” he said.

  The image began to move faster and faster. The field of flowers was gone, replaced by a long, rolling hill. Kyja put her hand even closer to the gold circle, and the picture raced across the bowl’s surface. Grassy slopes and valleys flew past at a dizzying pace. Streams, trees, and a small crystal blue lake were only a blur. The grass began to be broken-up by clumps of rock as the hills grew into steep slopes and finally mountains.

  Kyja took a deep breath, her cheeks glowing. “It’s like flying,” she said. “It’s like we’re on the back of a great big bird and—”

  “What are you doing here?” a child’s voice said from behind them.

  Marcus and Kyja spun around to see a small girl in a pale aqua gown that came nearly to the tops of her bare feet. Her hair—which reached almost to her waist and looked like strands of seaweed—trailed out behind her as she kicked her small feet and glided through the door toward them.

  “It’s the girl from the wall,” Kyja whispered, grabbing Marcus’s hand. “The one who tied me up. The one who turned you and Riph Raph into fish.”


  Chapter 55

  Caught

  How did you get inside the city?” the little girl asked with a curious smile. “No one ever gets past the walls.”

  “No thanks to you,” Kyja said, glaring at the girl. “You didn’t have to turn Marcus and Riph Raph into fish. And tying me up was rude, to say the least.”

  The girl raised her fingers to her mouth to cover a smile. “I didn’t do that. It was the walls. I just wanted to see who you were. We don’t get visitors very often.”

  “I can see why,” Kyja shot back.

  Marcus gave her a warning look. The last thing they needed was another argument. He tried putting on his friendliest smile. “Hi, there. What’s your name?” He reached out toward her, thinking he might shake her hand, but with a flick of her wrists and feet she zipped out the door and vanished behind one of the shifting blobs.

  “Come on,” Marcus said. He and Kyja followed the little girl through the door, but when they reached the blob, she wasn’t there. They searched all around, but she seemed to have disappeared.

  “I’m not down there, silly,” a voice called from behind them.

  Marcus turned to see the girl looking out the second-story window of the building they had just left.

  “How did you get up there?” Marcus asked.

  The girl only giggled.

  “Can you help us?” Kyja tried.

  The child disappeared from the window.

  “Help you what?” she asked. She was back in the room with the pictures again, sitting cross-legged on the floor, playing with a string of golden beads in her lap.

  Kyja jump-kicked back to the door. “We need to talk to someone right away. A grown-up.”

  “Grown-up?” The girl took one of the beads from her string and let it float away. Arriving at Kyja’s side, Marcus watched with fascination as the small, golden ball approached one of the empty frames on the wall and a picture began to appear in the dark center of the circle. Rays of sunlight peeked over the horizon of a still meadow, and the golden ball disappeared into the image. A moment later, tiny drops of water beaded on the flowers and blades of grass.

  “Dew,” Marcus breathed, and the little girl flashed a knowing smile in his direction.

  Marcus approached her carefully, trying not to scare her off this time. “Could you please take us to someone older? Maybe your mom or dad?”

  She plucked another bead from the string and held it up in front of her face—admiring its glittering surface before tossing it toward one of the bowls. “What’s a mom-or-dad?”

  Kyja put both hands on her hips. “This is very important. Isn’t there someone in charge here?”

  “In charge of what?” the girl asked, returning the beads to a pocket of her gown.

  “Arghh,” Kyja growled in frustration. “In charge of everything. You know, like a mayor or a king or something?”

  The girl seemed to want to understand, so Marcus tried explaining. “There’s a group called the Dark Circle trying to destroy Farworld. And there’s something we might be able to do to stop them. Only we need the help of the water elementals to do that.”

  The girl had listened closely all through Marcus’s explanation, but when he got to the part about needing the water elementals’ help, she kicked her feet and burst into laughter as if that was the funniest joke she’d ever heard.

  “Elementals don’t help,” she said with a giggle.

  “You!” a gruff voice shouted from behind them.

  Marcus turned to see two shapes racing in their direction. He stared at the figures in amazement. He’d thought the girl was strange. But she was nothing compared to these two.

  At first glance, they looked sort of like fish. Each of them had gaping, big-lipped mouths and bulging eyes. And their skin was covered in glittering, rainbow-colored scales. But they also had arms and legs that looked almost human, except that instead of ending in hands and feet, they had broad, nearly-transparent fins. He wondered if they were some kind of guards.

  “Stop where you are,” the one on the left said.

  “We aren’t moving,” Kyja answered.

  That seemed to confuse the guard-fish for a minute, but the one on the right quickly took over. “Who are you?”

  Before they could answer, the one on the left demanded, “What are you doing here?”

  “We were just talking to . . .” Marcus turned to point to the girl, but she was gone.

  Chapter 56

  Trial and Error

  Kyja looked around the large chamber. Unlike the rest of Water Keep, the wide, bowl-shaped room was dark and clammy. There were none of the bright colors or unusual buildings. Only a big, empty, dreary space.

  She wasn’t exactly sure how they’d gotten there. The guard-fish—as she’d come to think of them—had led Marcus and her to one of the strange blob shapes. Suddenly, the shape opened up before them, and the next thing she knew, they were stepping out of another blob and into this room.

  They’d been standing here for what felt like at least half an hour, doing absolutely nothing. But anytime she, Marcus, or Riph Raph tried to speak or move, the guard-fish made threatening gestures and told them to be still.

  “If you’d just let me ex—” she tried again, but the guard-fish on the right tugged her arm.

  “Ouch,” she said, rubbing her shoulder.

  “Leave her alone.” Marcus yanked at the guard-fish holding him, but couldn’t pull free.

  Riph Raph tried to blow a fireball, but it sputtered out before it even left his mouth.

  “Quiet!” Marcus’s guard-fish said.

  Kyja looked desperately around the room, a feeling of deep hopelessness settling over her. Was Zhethar right all along? Would they fail this close to the goal? She licked her lips and shivered. The guard-fish holding her continued to stare straight ahead as if watching something only he could see.

  A low, vibrating hum filled the air, and the room began to grow brighter. Both of the guard-fish straightened. Kyja glanced nervously at Marcus and mouthed, What is it?

  Marcus shook his head, looking as scared as Kyja felt.

  “Is the council present?” A booming voice echoed through the room. Kyja turned to see that the room was no longer empty. A fat man with several chins stood before a golden throne shaped like a huge shell. On the wall above the shell, the symbol for water was emblazoned in shining gold. As he lowered himself into the chair, the man’s chins shook and wobbled. He reached into a school of small fish circling his head and popped one into his mouth.

  “Mist is present,” said an airy voice. A fragile-looking woman with long, thin arms and legs materialized out of nowhere and reclined in a high-backed, nearly transparent chair. The woman and the chair were surrounded by a silvery cloud that sparkled as if it were made of tiny diamonds.

  On the other side of the room, a squat woman with big, damp-looking eyes set in a fat but pleasant face dropped from the darkness to land softly on a puffy, white pillow. Each time she moved, her silky robe changed colors—flashing first red, then yellow, blue, red again, and finally a color Kyja didn’t even recognize. “Raindrop is

  he-e-re,” called the woman in a musical voice.

  “Cascade is present.” An athletic figure who didn’t look to be much older than a boy strode gracefully into the room. He had a handsome face with spiky, white hair and a faintly-blue tinge to his skin. “Has anyone seen Morning Dew?” he asked, in a voice that soothed like a babbling brook.

  There was a rustling as each of the others looked toward a large, empty, green leaf.

  The fat man snapped his pudgy fingers, and another fish-guard appeared.

  Cascade whispered something to the guard, and it zoomed away. “Morning Dew is not present, Tide,” Cascade said before taking a seat on a sandstone bench.

  “Very well. We will proceed without her,” Tide said. “Bring the criminals forward.”

  Kyja turned to Marcus as the guards pulled them into the center of the room. Were they r
eally criminals? Would they be thrown into some kind of underwater jail?

  The guard-fish pushed them onto a large, blue circle with the water symbol at its center. The circle lifted up out of the floor, raising the three of them into the air.

  When the platform stopped rising, Tide was just shoving another fish between his plump lips, but he quickly pushed himself out of his shell chair and swallowed. He fixed his eyes on Marcus, Kyja, and Riph Raph with a look that was almost recognition, as if he’d seen them before and was expecting them.

  He tugged on his heavy robes and cleared his throat. “You three are charged with, ahem, unlawful ingress, desecration of effects, illegal interaction with—”

  Marcus raised his hand. “I don’t understand what any of that means.”

  “Silence!” Tide thundered.

  Kyja held out her hands to the Fontasians. “Why do you have to use all those big words? If you think we did something wrong, just say what you mean.”

  Down below, the fish-guards scowled, but Raindrop nodded her head. “The humans are right. Get to the point, Tide. I have a storm to look after.”

  Tide coughed into his hand and looked around uncertainly. “Well,” he said, his triple chins trembling. “That is . . .” Finally, he gestured to Cascade and returned to his shell.

  Cascade turned to Kyja and Marcus. “We’re not very good at this. You see, we . . .” He glanced at Mist, who gestured him to continue with her waif-like hand. “We don’t do this very often. In fact, we’ve never done it before. You’re the first outsiders to enter our city.”

  Cascade ran his hands down the sides of his deep blue robes, which rippled beneath his touch like a dancing brook. “We’re not very good with your language. Dew is really the best, but she’s not here at the moment. What we’re trying to say is that you entered our city without . . .” He ran his fingers through his white hair in thought.

  “Permission?” Marcus suggested.

  Kyja gave him a dark look, and he mouthed, Sorry.

  “That’s right,” Cascade said, brightening. “You entered our city without permission. And you touched things. Those are high crimes.”