by ILIL ARBEL
“I don’t think you can take the box, Vizier,” said Donna with icy calm. “Something is stopping you. I will never, ever, give you the Cinnabar box. I am Wicca and I have my Code –”
Lighting hit the ground. A long fissure appeared in the earth, only a few steps away from Donna. She fell, half fainting, as the cloud lifted itself and disappeared into the sky in a purple tornado.
When she opened her eyes the queen, Camellia, Bartholomew and the prime minister were hovering over her, trying to revive her with the little water they had. “I am all right,” she said. “Why didn’t he kill me?”
“Because it’s not the Vizier in person,” said the queen. “The image in the cloud is his disguise, his illusion, and in a way, his messenger. It takes a tremendous amount of power to keep it going and right now he has to juggle many other illusions. Keeping the water hidden from an entire planet takes an untold amount of energy. The cloud could take the Cinnabar box to the Vizier, but it was not strong enough to make you release it unless you gave way to your fear.”
“Please take the Cinnabar box, Your Majesty,” said Donna wearily. “I am not sure I can handle much more of this.”
The queen took it gently, looking at it with reverence. “Yes, you are right. We will waste no time and go directly to the water source. All the people who live around here can take shelter in the castle. When the river is released, it will be some time until it finds its proper bed, and floods may occur.”
“Can my lemur wait here?” said Donna. “He is tired, perhaps hungry.”
“Of course,” said the queen, gently stroking Gilbert’s head. The lemur licked her hand. “We will call someone from the palace to take special care of him.”
The prime minister climbed with some difficulty on Bartholomew’s back, and the queen and Donna mounted Camellia. As they flew away, Donna saw the long line of the thin, tired people carrying their bundles to the palace. They flew a short distance toward a range of mountains.
The mountain, sheer, dark, and covered with jutting rocks, loomed over them, hiding half the gray sky. “Now,” said the queen. She took the Cinnabar box from her pocket and put her silver ring next to it. The carvings in both items fitted perfectly and the box suddenly burst open. Inside lay a tiny silver key.
The queen stepped forward, stuck the key into a small dark hole in the rock, and turned it carefully. In the total silence around them, Donna heard the creaking sound the key produced in the rock. For a few minutes nothing happened. Then the earth rumbled. Clouds of gray dust swirled around Donna, and as she coughed and choked, the rock walls started sinking into the ground slowly, relentlessly, seized by an irresistible force. She grabbed Camellia’s furry neck, screaming with terror, but no one heard her through the horrible sounds of the earthquake. And suddenly everything stopped and the dust settled. The mountain disappeared, leaving nothing but a plain of yellow sand with some dark green, scrawny plants growing in it. But where was the water?
Donna looked at the queen, and shuddered when she saw the grief, the hopelessness, in the woman’s eyes. “There is no water left in the land,” whispered the queen. “The Vizier won. We are all lost, forever …”
“No!” cried Donna, rage flooding her entire being. “I won’t let this happen! And I must find Aunt Yolanda, too, she must be here somewhere, and she’ll know what to do!”
“Child, look around you,” said the queen, taking her hand gently. “He dried the source of the water, and I don’t have any magic left in me. There is nothing here, nothing but the dead desert. He must have hidden Senior Witch Yolanda in his island after all, or killed her. We are all going to die, anyway, and very soon. It’s time to give up.”
“Never!” Furiously tearing her hand away from the queen’s, Donna ran into the desert. She ran until she could no longer breathe, the pain in her chest choking her in the searing heat. Almost fainting, she fell down, sobbing and scratching the hard, sandy ground with her mud-caked nails.
Her hand landed on something smooth and round, warm to the touch. She looked at it through her tears and saw a golden orange, perfectly rounded and translucent stone, like a miniature sun. It pulsated gently in the glaring light.
Donna’s heart lost a beat. She had never seen such a stone, except, perhaps … “You will earn it or you will find it,” her aunt said about the Wicca stone. Or both, Donna hoped. She touched it again, and it felt warmer. Aunt Yolanda’s Wicca stone told her when Donna needed help. Perhaps this stone could tell her if Aunt Yolanda was alive. Feverishly, she dug the stone out of the ground and dusted it with her dirty T-shirt. Trembling with anticipation, she put it in the silver locket. Slowly it turned darker, deeper orange. Donna stared at it, hypnotized, until a small movement caught her attention.
A tiny fountain of crystal-clear water flowed out of the hole in the ground that the Wicca stone left when Donna dislodged it. The water bubbled gently and streamed across the yellow sand. More and more water gushed out of the ground, pushing the sand out of its way. With amazing speed, the water rushed forward, no longer clear and gentle, but pink and gray, with swirling foam on powerful waves. The sky turned angry yellowish gray, as if an impossible storm was approaching. Donna turned and ran, trying to get away from the furious water, but it was too late. The rushing current seized and carried her in its path. Tumbling and turning, she did her best to swim and keep afloat. The river carried her toward the palace, through one of the deserted shanty towns.
The river hurled itself into the wooden village, destroying the rickety, decaying gray houses in its path. Donna managed to grab the crumbling boards of one of the porches that somehow remained standing and held tightly as the river continued its destructive way through the deserted village.
She held on, gasping and coughing water, when something swooped out of the sky. Camellia, wet and disheveled, landed on the porch, flapping her great wings. “Climb, quickly,” she cried over the sound of rushing water.
“We must find Aunt Yolanda!” Donna shouted, climbing on the camel’s back. “I found my Wicca stone, Camellia! In the desert, it waited for me to come, I know that. I would have never found it if I had given up and stayed with the queen! Never! And the stone tells me she is alive, and not too far, so it will lead us to her!”
They flew above the rushing water. The stone turned light again, so Donna knew they were heading in the wrong direction. Following the darkening and lightening of the stone, they went through the agonizing search in every house left in the way of the river. But Aunt Yolanda was nowhere in this village. The darkening stone led them further back toward the palace.
Purple lightening illuminated the sky, momentarily blinding Camellia, and an opaque cloud, as thick as marshmallow, stopped their advance. “Look, Camellia, it’s the Vizier’s face in the cloud, but it’s shifting, it’s not so clear.”
“He is constructing something solid out of the cloud to stop the river, I think,” said Camellia. “It looks as if he is trying to build a dam.”
On a rock under them, a man was standing, wailing and shrieking. He obviously used Sound Magic which needed so much power that he could no longer maintain the illusion of the horrible face in the cloud.
“But Camellia, it can’t be done. No magic can fight the river. Let’s try to stop the Vizier, he will kill himself.”
“Serves him right,” said Camellia curtly. “Do you know how many lives he took in his greed and cruelty?”
“But he is the only one who knows where my aunt is –”
Camellia dived. “Vizier,” screamed Donna. “Stop fighting the river – you can’t. it will kill you. Come with us, surrender to the queen –”
The man looked up. Insane fury lighted his pale gray eyes, and he directed his wail at their direction. Camellia swayed under the attack.
“Don’t, you miserable idiot!” shouted the camel, for once forgetting her manners. “We are trying to save you!”
The cloud shifted. The Vizier brought his attention back to it to strengthen it, and
it stood firmly, for a moment blocking the river. And then the rushing water, pink and gray and immensely powerful, broke through it and washed the Vizier away,
“We must go back to the palace,” said Camellia sadly. “The Vizier is dead. Perhaps Bartholomew will find your aunt, he has been searching other villages.”
The queen waited for them with the prime minister. Gilbert balanced on her arm, and as he saw Donna he leapt and wrapped his little paws around her neck.
“There is one more task for you to do, my child,” said the queen. “We cannot regain our magic with sufficient speed to accomplish it. You have more strength, so you must be the one to name the great river. Naming it will allow us to direct and control it. Otherwise, the power it unleashes may destroy too much.”
“Later. I must find Aunt Yolanda first,” said Donna. “She is here, I can see it in the stone.”
“There is no time, Donna.”
“I can’t concentrate on magic when I am so worried, Your Majesty.”
“You must. Concentrate. You must name the river,” said the queen patiently. “Until our powers return, you are the only one who can do that.”
“But look at the stone –”
“Stop arguing, child! The good of the people comes first. We will continue to look for your aunt, but you must name the river. You must concentrate.”
Donna’s mind was blank. She could not think about the river, other than it was about to destroy Aunt Yolanda, helplessly imprisoned with no magical powers to release her. She was also distracted by the lemur, who clung desperately to her arm, his ringed tail wrapped tightly around her neck. He stared at the rushing water with his great golden eyes and sniffed loudly.
“Please, Donna,” said the queen sternly. “If you control the river you may save your aunt anyway. Let your mind find a name for the great river. Call the name loudly and tell the river to stop. It’s easy –”
The lemur strained his little body, his eyes intent on one of the shacks, and suddenly leapt into the rushing water. Donna tried to catch his tail, but in vain. The lemur disappeared into the waves. “Gilbert!” Donna screamed with all her might. “Gilbert, stop!”
A strange hush fell over the river. The water stopped rushing. The waves stood in midair. For a few seconds nothing happened, and then the waves rearranged themselves, and moving like marching soldiers, started contracting and organizing the direction of the water. Donna could see the lemur now, swimming steadily.
“Your Majesty,” said the prime minister hesitantly. “I think Donna named the great river after her pet lemur.”
“I didn’t mean to,” said Donna apprehensively. “I am so sorry – I just tried to stop Gilbert –”
“But why not?” said the queen, laughing. ”Life is life. A small lemur is as important as a great river. And the mission is accomplished! The river is named, and restrained. The Gilbert River, now and forever.”
“But it’s still rushing madly through the village,” said Donna. “It’s breaking all the houses.”
The queen smiled at Donna with indescribable happiness. “Don’t you see?” she said gently. “It is good. The river is cleaning all the unhappy remains of our long years of suffering. Now that you have controlled it by the Naming Ritual, it will soon find its proper river bed and settle down to be a good, life-giving waterway. It will restore our prosperous world to us. I will build new houses for my people, clean, beautiful houses, and we will have fields and forests again, and flowers, too. I have not seen a flower for many years, Donna. I think I am going to plant a rose garden.”
But Donna wasn’t really listening. At a distance, she saw someone swimming. Straining her eyes, she suddenly rushed forward, jumped into the water, and swam furiously. In any alien world or strange reality, she knew only one person who could behave so calmly under such circumstances. Only Aunt Yolanda would look so dignified as she was swimming, a fat lemur balancing on top of her head, holding tightly to her floating auburn hair.
~~~
Sitting quietly in a cool room, with a lemur wrapped around her neck and the river whispering outside, felt good. Donna dosed off, occasionally looking at the construction work outside. The inhabitants were so happy, she thought. What a pleasure to have been involved in returning their river, though their thanks embarrassed her. It was good to see Jessamine and her grandmother, too. They will never have to be so poor, ever again.
“My powers are returning,” said Aunt Yolanda, sipping her coffee. “The Vizier’s death broke all the illusions. I can’t tell you, Your Majesty, how strange it felt to be locked in that shack, unable to exercise Wicca powers to release myself. So when Gilbert unlocked the shack’s door with his clever little paws – the joy of seeing him –”
“I can imagine,” said the queen. “And I feel my powers returning, too, but of course it will take longer after being deprived of them for centuries.”
“You managed to turn plain river water into this delicious coffee already, Your Majesty. You are recovering very quickly,” said the prime minister. “How did you conjure these cakes?”
The queen laughed. “Well, all will slowly return to normal. Can you smell the moisture in the air? And what are your plans, Senior Witch Yolanda?”
“First, a vacation,” said Aunt Yolanda. “Donna and I will spend a couple of weeks at the zoo. I spoke to Vainamoinen on the crystal yesterday, and he is coming to visit me there. Poor thing, he was so frustrated by being forbidden to destroy the Vizier. It would have given him such pleasure. Vainamoinen said he will bring Taliesin, since Donna promised him St. John’s Wort medicine to cure his depression. We have plenty of that at the zoo. Then, perhaps, a visit with Shape-Changer. I want to start planning with him some way to save his race, and I have an idea of a special sanctuary attached to my zoo. Donna will help us with the selection and study of plants his people need, of course – her first assignment. Then, we will go back home and seriously start her studies in Wicca. I believe Donna has great talents.”
“More important, she has courage and knows how to keep her wits about her,” said the queen. “I will never forget the moment she cut Camellia’s bonds with the broken lens from her glasses, and her note to Roxanne, the toad! Outstanding.”
“True Wicca resourcefulness,” said Aunt Yolanda with satisfaction.
“I knew you would say that, Senior Witch Yolanda. What about her parents?”
“They will not object to her staying with me, Your Majesty. I will give her a good education and much care. They know that.”
Donna was suddenly wide awake.
“But does Donna want to devote her life to this dangerous work, Senior Witch Yolanda?”
“Nothing will keep me away from it, Your Majesty,” said Donna. “It’s much more fun than my original plan of being a rock star, and unless you sing like my friend Taliesin, a career in music is very difficult to get into in my world.”
“In any world, I imagine,” said the queen sympathetically. “My prime minister had some thoughts of going into show business, four hundred years ago or so, before I convinced him that getting into government was so much easier than –”
The prime minister cleared his throat. “It was a long time ago … no need to bring it up …”
“I believe you wanted to be a dancer, didn’t you, my friend?” said the queen, absent-mindedly, trying to remember.
Donna looked at the rotund figure of the prime minister and almost giggled.
“Shall we invite Jessamine to come with us to our vacation at the zoo, Donna?” said Aunt Yolanda quickly.
~~~
To find that special place at the zoo, they walked a long stretch of a dirt road, glaring and overwhelmingly hot under the direct rays of the sun. Donna and Jessamine dragged themselves, kicking the dust, carrying the soggy brown lunch bags and bottles full of lukewarm water. Going on this trip without water was unthinkable; the dangerous climate had to be treated with utmost respect, even by semi-trained Witches.
They reached the anc
ient wall, built with the pink stones of the region. Little slivers of mica made the stones gleam under the sun, changing colors as the sun changed its position. At that hour the wall was dusty rose, almost the same color as the road. For some reason the huge stones felt cool, rough, and comforting. A few enormous, unfamiliar lizards slept peacefully, balancing on the edge.
The wall had a narrow opening with no gate. Anyone could walk in and gasp, every time, at the sight of thousands of acacia trees, totally covered with yellow flowers. The acacia park was so large it could almost be called a forest. It stood on low hills, gently sloping toward the blue-green sea, a giant aquamarine gem without a single wave or a bit of foam to disturb its calm surface.
It felt unbelievably cool under the green shade of the acacia trees, as the breeze from the sea drifted into the park. With every gust of wind the golden dust from the acacia flowers fell like fairy rain on the girls’ heads and clothes.
They walked toward the sea. The rocks on the white, damp beach had a covering of glass formed naturally millions of years ago. Bits and pieces broke away and spread around the rocks, so Donna and Jessamine each took a small piece for a keepsake. The glass mirrored the color of the sea, a little lighter, perhaps, and shone in the sun. Another aquamarine gem, a tiny one which they could take home and keep forever.
They sat down to eat their lunch on a deep, thick carpet of emerald-green wild grass. Even wilted sandwiches and tepid water tasted delicious there. The golden light filtered in delicate patterns through the acacia canopy, its branches so thick it hid the sky. In every clearing, though, the grass gave way to enormous patches of cherry-red poppies and white daisies, like giant oriental carpets spread here and there in an enchanted palace. They ate quietly, listening to the birds and the hum of thousands of bees. The honey they made from the acacia flowers had a strong, wild flavor.