Wild Water Magic

by Lynne Jonell

  There was a glint of metal down by the stone arch bridge. Their bikes were still where Mr. Wopter had dropped them off yesterday. No one had wanted to bring a bike up the long hill after the tiring trip to the library.

  Tate called through the house, but no one answered. She went outside and opened the door to the hut her mother used as a studio.

  Mrs. Willow was painting wildly. She had two brushes in each hand and one in her mouth.

  “Mom?” said Tate, alarmed.

  Her mother turned and smiled, still holding the brush between her teeth.

  “Have you seen Abner and Derek and Celia?”

  “Mmmph gningy!” Mother shook her head. Drops of paint spattered on her shirt.

  “Okay,” said Tate, backing up. As she closed the door, she saw her mother kick off a sandal and put a paintbrush between her toes.

  Where could the others have gone? Maybe they were in the basement and hadn’t heard her calling.

  Tate was suddenly inspired to do a good deed. She would bring all the bikes up to the garage! That would help make up for what she had done yesterday.

  She whistled as she skipped down the driveway. Today was different from the day before. She was reading just as fast. But she’d been good at staying away from water. Maybe she had just needed a day to get used to drinkable magic, that was all.

  Tate reached the river. She dragged her bike up on the bank, away from the water that lapped at its tires. Wait—what was Derek’s scouting book doing on the ground? And here was the long rope they had used to pull her out of the well yesterday. Derek must have been using it to practice his knots.

  She put the book into her bike basket. Then she coiled the rope on top. Derek should know better than to leave a book on the damp grass.

  But where was Derek? And where were the others?

  A flutter of motion downstream caught her attention. Tate shaded her eyes with her hand. There! They were all playing on the big log.

  She frowned. The fallen log wasn’t safe, not anymore. Abner should know that. He’d been on it yesterday, and it had been unsteady. And the river had been pushing and pushing at it, all night long.…

  But Abner would be just as reckless around water today as she had been yesterday. Why hadn’t she kept better watch over them all? She should have known that they would go to the river!

  Tate dropped her bike and started running. She waved her arms. “GET OFF!” she called.

  Abner, Derek, and Celia waved back wildly.

  “CLIMB ON!” shouted Abner.

  “THIS IS SO FUN!” yelled Derek.

  “THE WATER IS SWIRLY!” cried Celia.

  For a moment, Tate was tempted to join them. The water was swirly! It did look fun! She longed to give in to the wild water magic that was still inside her.

  But if she did, then who would keep her brothers and sister safe?

  “LOOK!” shouted Derek. “THE LOG CAN BOUNCE!”

  Tate gasped. “DON’T! IT’S DANGEROUS!”

  But the others were already rocking their bodies up and down. The big log, buoyed up by the river, bobbed and swayed. With a sudden crack, its roots gave way. The log slid out from the sodden riverbank, rolling sideways. Abner, Derek, and Celia scrabbled at the bark with their hands for a long moment. Then they slipped into the river. Their heads went under.

  Tate stood perfectly still for one frozen second. It felt like forever. Then, in the next moment, she was thinking faster than she ever had before. She was on her bike and riding across the bridge like the wind, before she was aware of having thought at all.

  There was no time to go for her mother. By the time she ran up the hill, explained everything, and ran back down, her sister and brothers would be far downstream. If only her father hadn’t taken the car! A car was much faster than a bike.

  But a bike could go faster than the river. Tate could tell by the floating twigs she passed. The river was running four miles an hour—maybe five. She could bike ten miles in an hour, she was pretty sure. And with water magic inside her, she could go even faster.

  Tate gasped with relief when she saw three heads surface. She put on even more speed, racing beyond them. When she had gotten well in the lead, she looked for a branch.

  She found something better—an old plank, fallen from a fence. She dragged it to the water’s edge and narrowed her eyes, thinking. She threw a smaller branch into the river and watched how the current took it. Then she waited for the right moment.

  “Grab on!” she shouted, and pushed the plank far into the stream.

  Abner was holding Celia up. Derek had a grip on Abner’s shirt. They all were moving their arms and legs to stay afloat. They didn’t look afraid. They looked like they were having fun.

  Tate clenched her hands together. Water magic was like that. But the danger was still real. She had learned that yesterday.

  Abner grabbed the plank. Then the others stretched their arms across it. “Thanks!” they yelled.

  Tate got back on her bike and tore ahead. The rope was still in her basket. When she was far enough ahead again, she stopped and took out the rope. She looped one end around her body and got ready.

  Her toss was perfect. The rope landed right on the plank, and Abner grabbed it with one hand.

  But the current was too strong. He couldn’t hold the weight of three people against the whole flow of the river. Tate couldn’t, either. Their weight dragged her along, and she fell to the ground. The rope slipped out of Abner’s hand.

  Tate never knew how she got back on her bike. Suddenly she was riding, with one end of the rope still around her body, and the rest bouncing behind in the dust of the road. If only someone would drive by and help! But the country road was deserted.

  Tate pulled the rope into her basket and pedaled faster than she ever had before. She had to ride far, far ahead. She had to give herself enough time to figure out some way to save them. And she had to do it before they came to the waterfall.

  Tate’s breath was coming in wheezing gasps when she finally made it to the little park above the waterfall. It was right in town—surely there would be somebody here! But there was no one at the picnic table, no one drinking from the fountain, and no one coming along the trail.

  Think! Think! If her mind was going so much faster, why couldn’t it come up with a way to save her brothers and sister?

  And then, all at once, it did.

  Tate turned over the picnic table with a strength she didn’t know she had. She tied one end of her rope to its legs, and the other end to the drinking fountain. She pulled the table down the slope to the river, just above the bend. Then she watched, her heart beating fast and hard, for three heads to round a bend farther upriver.

  Sweat rolled into her eyes. She blinked. She almost pushed the table into the current when she saw a moving shadow of a bird, but she stopped in time.

  There they were! Three bobbing heads, three pairs of arms still gripping the plank. With a strong shove, she launched the upside-down table into the river like a boat, and leaped in. The current carried the table out past the lower bend, into the middle of the river. Was she out far enough? Or would the current carry the others past her?

  “KICK HARD!” Tate shouted, against the roar of the falls.

  There was a flurry of white foam behind Abner, Derek, and Celia as their feet kicked up a spray of water. Thud! They crashed into the table. Tate hauled Celia in by her hair, and Derek and Abner scrambled onto the table, gasping. It sank beneath their weight, but only by a couple of inches. It still held them up.

  The wooden plank floated down the river, tilted for a moment at the cliff’s edge, and disappeared over the falls.

  The current swung the table downstream. The rope held it tight and snubbed it into the bank. The Willows stumbled onto the shore, holding the rope. Everyone was safe.

  Perhaps the magic had lost some of its strength, sitting in the coffeemaker all night. Whatever the reason, it wore off faster this time.

  For the re
st of the weekend, Tate read the ninth book. She didn’t play, or even watch when Mr. Wopter covered the well. At supper on Saturday, she heard that her father’s experiment (with water) was going well. And her mother had finished three paintings (they were watercolors). But then Tate picked up her book again. She read late into the night, and all of Sunday except for at church. Although the magic was gone, she still felt she had to try. She had been through too much to give up now.

  By bedtime on Sunday, she only had one chapter to go. She curled up on the couch in the Loft and kept reading, past ten o’clock. The lamp cast a golden glow on the book in her lap as she turned the final page and read “The End.”

  Tate gave a deep sigh. A Wrinkle in Time had been the best of all. Even if she didn’t make the Quiz Team, it would have been worth it, just to read that story.

  She looked at the clock on the wall.

  She hadn’t wanted to give up. She had tried to pretend she could read book number ten in time for the test on Monday. But now she had to admit that she couldn’t.

  Bedsprings creaked in the boys’ room. Abner padded out the door in his slippers, shading his eyes against the light. He leaned over the back of the couch.

  “Are you done yet?” he asked.

  Tate sighed. “There’s still one book left. Even if I stayed awake all night, I’d never finish.” She closed the cover and smoothed it with her hand. “It was fun to read nine stories, though. In fact, this whole weekend has been fun. Scary, too, but exciting.”

  “You were kind of amazing, Tate,” Abner said seriously. “The way you threw us that plank, and then how you saved us in the end.”

  Tate shrugged. “That was just the magic.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Abner. “I had magic in me, too, but I was thinking about things like the speed of the current, and how fast we had to kick against it, and at what angle. Derek had magic in him, but it all went to his legs—he kicked like a wild man, and it kept turning us around. And Celia had magic in her, but do you know what she did?”

  Tate had no idea. “She tried to draw a picture in water?”

  “She made up a song about going down the river!” Abner rolled his eyes. “I mean, it was a nice song and all—it had seven verses—but it didn’t help us much.”

  Tate laughed.

  Abner wasn’t finished. “Sure, maybe the magic helped you think of things to do a little faster than normal. But they were the kind of things you do think of. You’re the one who comes up with plans when no one else can think of anything.”

  “That’s just thinking ahead,” said Tate.

  Abner shook his head. “It’s being smart. It’s just not the sort of smart they measure in school.”

  Tate smiled a little. Maybe Abner was right. But she was still sad that she wasn’t going to make the Book Quiz Team.

  Abner went back to bed. Tate turned out the light. She drifted to the window and breathed in the cool September air. The sky shone with stars, and the crescent moon was a little bigger than the night before.

  Someone had forgotten to turn off the porch light. It cast long shadows across the grass. There was the big, flat rock, above the wild side of the hill. There was the vegetable garden and the clothesline, too. Her shirt fluttered in the night breeze, light and dry once more. Her jeans flapped lazily, and even her socks blew up and down.

  But Mr. Bunny was not swaying in the breeze. He hung straight down, as if he were stuffed with sand instead of cotton, too heavy for the light little breeze to push around.

  No, thought Tate suddenly. Not sand. Water.

  Tate flew down the stairs like a ghost, her nightgown whirling behind her. The grass was cool and damp on her feet as she rounded the vegetable garden. She stubbed her toe on the pumpkin that had grown out as far as the clothesline, but she hardly noticed.

  It was as Tate had guessed. Mr. Bunny had stopped dripping, but he was still damp and squishy in the middle. His cotton stuffing had soaked up water like a sponge. His plump rabbit body had been too thick to dry, even after two days on the line.

  Gently, carefully, she undid the clothespins that held Mr. Bunny’s ears clamped tight. Slowly, cradling the soggy rabbit in her arms, she walked into the house.

  She squeezed Mr. Bunny into an empty pitcher. She squished his soft head, and twisted his four legs, and wrung out his long pink ears.

  “Sorry, Mr. Bunny,” she whispered.

  The water was a little fuzzy-looking. She poured it through a strainer.

  Then she put the water into the coffeemaker and pushed the button. She didn’t need to add any coffee grounds. All she had to do was heat the water. Her father had said that would make it safe.

  Soon steaming-hot water trickled down into a waiting mug. Tate added two ice cubes to cool it down. Then she drank it, every drop. It tasted a little like stuffed rabbit, but that was a small price to pay for magic.

  She opened the tenth book and began to read.…

  Lynne Jonell is the author of the popular Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat, a Booklist Editors’ Choice and one of School Library Journal’s Best Books of the Year, as well as three more books about the Willow family: Hamster Magic, Lawn Mower Magic, and Grasshopper Magic. Other works include three children’s novels and seven picture books. As for water magic, Lynne likes it splashy, not too cold, and rushing beneath her sailboat!