by Deva Fagan
Barnaby drummed his fingers on the table. His hand drifted down to his pack, lying beside him on the ground. He tossed back the last of his cider and set the cup down with a thump. “Let’s take a look at this cursed well.”
The tea-shop mistress pointed toward the center of the town square. “It’s there.”
I squinted against the sun toward the raised stone platform. Barnaby stood, shouldering his pack. “Come on, Prunella.” Without waiting for my reply, he set off toward the well.
I hurried after him. “So now you believe there’s a curse? I thought you said it was just sniffles and corn rot.”
“You saw that tailor in Withywatch. That was no sniffle, and it bothered you as much as it did me, so don’t try playing the heartless bog-witch.”
“I liked her clothes, that’s all.” I jigged from foot to foot, the memory of Mary Morland’s desperate eyes haunting me even now. “Anyway, this probably has nothing to do with that.”
“Or maybe it’s all connected. We’ve got to try, at least.” Barnaby seized the handle of the heavy oaken round that covered the well. The wood scraped back across the stones, exposing a dark, dank pit. He looked at me, a strange intensity in his gaze. “So. What do you think? Is it cursed?”
“If it is, maybe they deserve it,” I muttered. I could still feel the tea woman staring at me from under her awning. But there were others watching us now, too. Hollow-eyed women and nervous men, and a scattering of children with overbright eyes and overeager smiles. I sighed. I might as well check it out.
I circled the well and ran my fingers across the stones. Slitting my eyes, I saw nothing but the thistles and crescents carved into the worn granite. “That’s odd,” I said, tracing the carvings with my finger. “It looks as if the well was charmed once. Standard stuff—keep out the critters, purify the water, make sure it stays full. But it’s gone. I can’t see a speck of magic left.”
“Then it’s not cursed?” Barnaby expelled the breath he’d been holding.
“I don’t know. There’s something strange…” I leaned out over the darkness, sniffing, then listening. Below the glopping of the water, I thought I caught a faint throbbing drone, like a fat bullfrog.
I scrambled away from the edge and clutched my chicken foot. Barnaby drew his dagger, moving to stand between me and the well. “Are you all right? Is it the curse?”
“I’m fine,” I panted. “There’s no curse. But we should leave. Now.” I took a step back, my fingers tight around my withered talisman, tensed for any sound from the depths of the well.
“If it’s not cursed, why do you look like you just ran smack into a swamp ghoul?”
“That’s not far off,” I said. “I’d rather a swamp ghoul than a pondswaggle.” I swallowed, but the lump in my throat remained. “Let’s go, Barnaby. Before it notices us.”
“Wait.” The boy stood his ground. “You’re saying the water’s gone bad because some swamp demon’s shacked up down there?”
I nodded, inching back another step.
“Could the protection charm have lost its magic because the chalice was stolen?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Or maybe it just faded away. The charm must have been put there more than two hundred years ago. But it doesn’t matter! It’s gone now, and the pondswaggle’s moved in, and we need to leave.”
“We’ve got to get that thing out. I told these folks we’d help them.” Barnaby gripped his dagger more tightly.
“Fine, you get it out, then. I didn’t promise anything.”
“How bad is it, really?” Barnaby asked. “I’ve never even heard of a pondswaggle. It can’t be as bad as a wraith or a gargarou or a spectral stallion.”
“One of them chased me and my cousin Ezzie halfway across the Swamp of Shivers just because she called it a toad. We only got away because we hid in a leech pit.” I squirmed at the memory. “Ezzie couldn’t stop it, and her curses actually work. What do you expect me to do?”
“I don’t know.” Barnaby let out a long huff, running his hands back through his untidy hair. “But you’ve got a better shot than these folks. Come on, you heard the tea lady’s story. It might not look like a curse, but it started when the chalice went missing. We have to help them.”
“I don’t see why you’re so keen to play the hero. These aren’t the sort who are going to shower you with gold when you’re done.”
He ignored me. He picked up the bucket standing nearby, then tugged on the rope that connected it to a thick iron ring set into the stones. “I’m going down to kill that thing. With or without your help.”
“Go down there and you’ll just get yourself killed. And it’ll be your own fault for being an idiot.” I turned around, trying not to notice the large crowd of people who had gathered on the edges of the plaza.
“You know, I started to think that you might not be half bad, Prunella,” said Barnaby. “That maybe you weren’t just another Esmeralda. I guess I was wrong.”
I was going to walk away. I was. Grandmother would have marched out of that town without a backward look. But the chains clanked, and terrible images of sharp teeth tearing into Barnaby filled my mind.
“Wait!” I took a step back toward the well. My insides felt like a cloud of needlewings. “You can’t go down there. It’ll kill you!”
He paused, one foot in the bucket. “And you can’t bear to live without me?”
I sniffed. “I need you, that’s all. To get Esmeralda’s grimoire. So I suppose I have to help you. You can’t take on the pondswaggle with just that.” I nodded at his dagger. “Ezzie hit the one chasing us with the biggest fireball she could and didn’t even singe its eyelashes. We can’t fight it.”
Barnaby took his foot out of the bucket and crossed his arms. “I’m listening. What do you suggest?”
“We lead it far enough away that it won’t be able to find its way back.” At least not until after we were long gone from Sweetwater. I didn’t tell him that part. “We just need to get it angry and it’ll chase us anywhere.”
“Wonderful,” said Barnaby, peering doubtfully into the well. “So we’re bait.” An especially loud burbling rose from the depths just then. The boy wrinkled his nose. “I’m not hiding in a leech pit, though. I’d rather try my luck against the pondswaggle.”
He looked around the plaza. I shivered under the press of so many eyes.
“Don’t they have anything better to do?” I muttered. “Do they have to stare?”
Barnaby gave the crowds a cheery wave. “People of Sweetwater,” he proclaimed, “have no fear. We will cleanse the curse from your fair well.” A ragged spate of applause broke out, led by the woman from the tea shop.
“We must summon the terrible beast that lurks below and lure it from the town,” Barnaby went on. “Please, keep back!”
“Are you finished showing off?” I said, after he joined me again at the edge of the well.
“Oh, don’t be sour. Don’t they look like they could use cheering up? Besides, it will make for a better show when we come back victo— Ugh! Not that thing again.”
I had just pulled the chicken foot out from under my scarf. I smirked. “You see, it’s a good thing I kept this around. Pondswaggles hate chickens.” I reached out over the well. Cold air raised gooseflesh along my arms and back. I tried not to think about running across the Swamp of Shivers, and Ezzie’s squeals, and the gurgling bellows of the pondswaggle. My heart hammered so hard I thought it might burst.
I dropped the chicken foot. A moment later, a sploosh echoed up from the well. Then a grumble rose, growing louder by the moment. I tugged Barnaby back from the lip of the well just as a spout of fetid water spurted up. A warty green creature leapt from the plume and goggled at us with froggy eyes. A stench worse than a pot of eel soup gone bad washed over us. Barnaby gulped, but stood his ground. My own pride kept me in place, though my feet itched to run.
“Who did that?” demanded the pondswaggle. “What ragscrabble dunderhead dared profane my home?”
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Screams and shouts rose from the edges of the plaza. I caught a flurry of motion as the crowd scattered. Barnaby didn’t seem able to move. I supposed the stench was too much for his Uplander nose.
“I did,” I croaked. I licked my lips. I had to work quickly, before I lost my nerve. “Not much of a home, is it, Barnaby? No place you’d find a real pondswaggle. A well? In the Uplands?”
The goggle-eyed creature glared up at me for a long moment. I twitched my toes, ready to dash for the road the moment it came after us.
Then a great fat tear slipped from one of the pondswaggle’s eyes and rolled down his green cheek. “You’re right,” he said, in a voice that sounded as if it were fighting its way up out from under ten feet of mud. “I’m not a real pondswaggle.”
“What?” I remained tensed to run, in case this was some sort of trick.
“Look at me,” glugged the creature, waving bulbous fingertips at himself. “A real pondswaggle wouldn’t be living in a well, stinking of charms, surrounded by stones and people who throw chicken feet on him.” He slumped down onto the edge of the well. “But I didn’t have anywhere else to go…” He fell into a long soggy fit of tears.
“Oh, it can’t be that bad,” I said. I couldn’t believe I was actually feeling sorry for a pondswaggle. But the thought of the poor thing wandering in the unmagical Uplands raised an echoing ache inside me. I searched for something useful to say. “You look like a real pondswaggle. What’s your name?”
He gulped. “P-pogboggen.”
“See, that’s a fine pondswagglish name. Right, Barnaby? Isn’t Pog here the most impressive pondswaggle you’ve ever seen?”
“Um…yes. Of course. The greenest, the swaggliest.” Barnaby dug in his pocket and produced a square of green silk. He offered it to Pog between the tips of his fingers.
The creature buried his nose in the handkerchief and let out a long, despairing honk. “My brother has a fen all his own, right in the middle of the Bogthistle demesne. He’s so terrible he once chased two bog-witches across the Swamp of Shivers. And my sister has the entire moat at Blackthorn Manor all to herself.” He rubbed a knobbly hand across his wet eyes. “And then there’s me, not a soggy spot to call my own, wandering high and dry. The best I could do was a stinking old well still itchy with wards. And in the middle of a town! In the Uplands! It’s no wonder they never come and visit. They despise me.”
“Oh.” I hastily rearranged my thoughts. “So, if there was a nice, green-smelling spring with a little bit of a pool nearby, would that be better?”
The pondswaggle’s face split into a wide smile. I tried not to shudder at the rows of sharp teeth. “A pool? That’s almost a pond, isn’t it?”
“That’s right,” said Barnaby. “And it’ll really be a pond, once there’s a pondswaggle living in it.”
“It’s just back a ways, down the road to the east.” I pointed.
The pondswaggle blinked. “You can show me where it is?”
“Of course,” said Barnaby, warming to the plot.
The froggy creature leapt away. Shrieks and yells rose from those denizens of Sweetwater who had not yet retreated. The onlookers scrambled back, clearing the path out of town.
Barnaby raised his arms. “People of Sweetwater…”
I didn’t wait to hear his speech. I had to run to keep up with the pondswaggle’s great bounding pace. He would dash ahead, nearly disappearing behind the rises in the road, before rushing back to ask how far it was.
This was almost as bad as my flight across the Swamp of Shivers. By the time Barnaby caught up with me, I had a burning stitch in my side and was gulping down air like a half-drowned rat.
“Nearly there,” I told Pog when he returned for the dozenth time. “Just ahead. Around that bend and between the two boulders.” I paused, trying to catch my breath.
“I can smell it!” The pondswaggle bounded onward gleefully.
“You think this will work?” asked Barnaby, jogging up to join me.
A shrill cry of delight echoed back to us, followed by a sploosh!
“I think it already has.”
“What about the well?”
“It ought to clear up quickly, now that he’s out,” I said. “But even then, it’ll still just be water. Like I said, the charms are gone.”
Barnaby nodded. For a moment we stood listening to the joyful hooting and hollering coming from the spring. Barnaby grinned. “We didn’t do half bad, did we?”
“We?” I raised one brow.
“Fine, fine. You did most of it. Though I’d never have guessed you could be so…”
“What?”
“If I say ‘kind and courteous,’ are you going to try to curse me again?”
I pursed my lips. “His brother and sister should have visited him, even if he was in a well. Or they should have let him live with them in their fens and ponds.”
“So you felt sorry for him?”
I did. But I wasn’t going to say anything more to Barnaby about it. “Let’s go back. The Mistveil isn’t getting any closer.”
We bade our farewells to Pogboggen, declining his invitation to stay for tea. He wasn’t a bad sort, after all, but tea with a pondswaggle seemed a chancy affair, especially after hearing Pog’s raptures over the quality of the flies buzzing around the pool. Still, we promised to return when we could, and eventually he allowed us to continue on our way.
Walking back toward Sweetwater, my feet sprang as if the highway were clouds underfoot, even though Barnaby wasn’t whistling. Twice I even caught myself smiling.
“Hurry up, Prunella,” called Barnaby, several paces ahead. He had just reached the top of the ridge beneath the oaks. “They’ll probably want to have a feast. I can smell the roast already!” He hastened down the other side, heading for the village.
Before I could follow, a raucous croaking drew my gaze upward. Three crows circled above. My feet turned to stone, locking me there, in the shadow of the tree.
I stood unmoving as the cheers roared up from the town. I could hear cries of “Barnaby! Barnaby the hero!”
Still I stood there. What was I doing? Was I really racing off after cheers and adulation? I gazed up at the crows. Then I walked forward, just enough so I could peer down past the bole of the tree, to Sweetwater.
It looked as if every single person in town had come out to line the highway. I saw a figure in a green jacket being propelled along through the crowd. I squinted. Was he looking back? Searching the hillside? Wondering where I was?
Or was he only turning to take in the riot of cheers all the better?
Blast it. If he wanted to go off without me, fine. I didn’t need any stinking cheers. I glared up at the circling crows, then headed off into the woody scrub. I would go around the town. Barnaby could find me on the other side, once he tired of being cheered and fêted and feasted. By then, I hoped, I would have banished this choking tight feeling in my throat and the wretched stinging in my eyes.
I had a camp all prepared by the time Barnaby found me. A fire snapped, roasting a skewer of mushrooms and two ears of straggly corn I’d nicked from one of the Sweetwater fields. I figured that they owed me that much, at least.
“I’m surprised you didn’t stay in town,” I said as he joined me beside the fire. “Didn’t the mayor offer you his feather bed? Weren’t there enough girls with ribbons in their hair bringing you hot-leaf and sugar biscuits?”
“I was more in the mood for roasted mushrooms anyway,” he said, breathing in the aroma of the skewers appreciatively.
“Oh. Well, fine. I suppose you can stay here.”
“If you didn’t think I’d be back, why did you pile up two beds of rushes?”
I sniffed. “Maybe I shouldn’t have. You’ll ruin your fancy clothes, and I already used up all my soapstone.”
“No worries, the worthy folk of Sweetwater gave me a new set.” Barnaby held up a rich purple coat and pristine white shirt. He even had a jaunty new cap to match.
; “I don’t suppose they gave you anything practical?”
“Of course. Two blankets, a packet of hot-leaf, a flask of Sweetwater sweetwater, and some very fine sausages. It’s not bad being the hero.”
I glowered into the fire as he set his pack over by one of the trees.
“They would have cheered you, too, you know, if you hadn’t run away,” he said after a moment.
“I don’t need cheers. I need to get to the Mistveil.”
“Oh,” said Barnaby, returning to the fire, “I do have something for you.”
I lifted my head, my heart thudding strangely. Then I saw what he was holding out. My chicken foot.
“They found it while they were clearing the muck out of the well. I figured you’d want it back.”
I snatched it out of his hand. “I’ll be sure to keep it out of sight.”
Barnaby gave an exasperated sigh. “I’m going to go get more firewood. You can sit there glooming, or you can do something useful, like cooking the sausages.” He jerked his thumb back toward the tree. “You got exactly what you wanted, Prunella, so stop being such a prickly shrew about it.”
He tramped off into the woods before I could come up with a response. Which was just as well, since I probably would have tried to curse him. Or burst into tears.
Barnaby was a means to an end, I reminded myself. I didn’t need him to like me. I needed him to get me into Blackthorn’s treasury, so I could get the grimoire and go back to the Bottomlands, where things made sense and I knew who I was. I had to stay focused.
And I wasn’t going to sit around glooming about it. I pushed myself up and headed over to the tree where Barnaby’s sack lay. He’d hung his new jacket from one of the branches. I disdained the silly gilt-embroidered thing and knelt beside the pack, setting my hand on the buckle.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
I jerked upright at the harsh demand. Barnaby strode forward, tossing an armful of wood beside the fire. The sticks clattered and bounced, throwing up sparks as they knocked against the burning logs.