Wonders of the Invisible World

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  She nodded briefly. “And your voices?”

  “Echoes from somewhere else, they must have been. The river was misty at dawn; I couldn’t see clearly...”

  She drew breath, loosed it silently, and met his eyes again. “That must have been it. Let me know immediately if you find anything.”

  He bowed his head, left her listening to the bewildering silence from the water-mage.

  The water-mage stood listening as well.

  In the rocky, sunken cave where the water ran up out of the secret earth, Eada was little more than a bulky shadow in her black skirts and the veil that hid her long silver hair. She might have been a boulder in the jumble of rock that had broken and cascaded down around the Well so long ago that the shards were growing together again, grain by grain, century by century. The water filled its ancient, rounded pool among the stones with only the slightest tremor at its heart, the little flutter in the center of the pool that spoke of the unseen treasure of water buried deep beneath, in perpetual night. Seemingly without end, it pushed itself up into this silent cave with its little circular roof of sky and light; it gleamed a greeting, then passed into darkness again, down a narrow, shallow bed of stones, pushing more quickly now through its ancient waterway to find the light again, beyond the cave, where it bubbled up and pooled beneath the open sky.

  That pool was where the city dwellers came to worship. They brought gifts, dropped wishes into it in the form of coins or words written on thin strips of metal.

  They crowded around it during the ritual, under the first full summer moon. The knights ringed the Well beneath the ground; the king stood on the earth above, drank water from a gold cup, and dropped coins and jewels the color of blood into the wellspring. Near the natural pool above, and fed by it, a great marble tank had been built, a pretty thing surrounded by broad walkways, flowering vines, fluted pillars with little fountains perpetually offering water to the worshippers. Beyond it, the water flowed free again, very briefly, offering itself to insects, mosses and reeds, birds and wild creatures before it dove underground again, vanished back into the dark. Around this open water, the city dwellers watched the ritual, flooding beyond their human boundaries once a year to honor the mysteries of the Well, and to drink, after the king, the pure water out of the earth.

  The water welling up out of the underearth made no sound.

  The water welling up out of the underearth should have made no sound.

  The mage, standing in the shadows, kept listening for silence from the sunlit pool. An ancient, familiar silence, there should have been in that cave, as old and peaceful as the dark. Instead, there were half-words, like water emptying down a drain; there were hisses, a gurgle like a laugh that echoed against the walls, a sudden splash that left no ripple behind it. The language of water, she recognized. But who spoke? What was said?

  She heard a step in the low passageway that led from the Well to her dwelling. The walls echoed suddenly, as though a stone had spoken. Eada looked quickly into the water, saw nothing but the insouciant reflection of the sky.

  “Mistress, the knight is here,” Perla said. She was a slight young girl, the daughter of a market-boater, used to the vagaries of water, who had come to peer into the cave one day and stayed to give the old mage a hand with this or that. She might have been part water sprite, Eada guessed. She feared nothing that poked its head unexpectedly out of the Well, and didn’t mind running errands between the underearth and sky.

  A hesitant step in the stone chamber beyond told Eada how far the knight had gotten. Her odd experiments, her trifles, had slowed him in her workroom. She played with water in all its forms, even ice in its season. In tanks, she kept strange fish and other river creatures Perla and her friends found; she studied most for a moon or two before she sent them back. Scholars and witches from all over Obelos sent her the odd instrument, the unusual crystal that might interest her.

  Perla was hovering, looking, with her pale hair and scant, restive limbs, like she might sprout wings like a dragonfly if she touched the earth another minute. “Shall I stay, mistress? Or shall I go buy bread?”

  “Go,” Eada said, shooing the sprite away and found her slow way around the stony edges of the pool, and down the passage into her chambers. They were roofed above the earth by domes of stone and wood studded with crystals that caught the daylight and drew it underground in mellow, shimmering shafts. Entering her workroom, the mage found that the knight had indeed been slowed by her playthings; he was toying with a tiny windmill on the table, turning its blades with his forefinger.

  “Better to blow it,” Eada suggested, and he started.

  “I wasn’t sure it worked.”

  “Try it.”

  He blew gently. The slats turned; the mill wheel, driven by the cogs and pistons within, drew up water from a shallow pan, flicked it into a chute that fed it neatly into a pot of basil.

  The knight grunted, almost smiled. But he wasn’t in the habit of it; Eada could tell by the clouds that gathered immediately to engulf the simple moment of pleasure. The mage reckoned that she had not been that young in at least a couple of centuries.

  He looked at her silently then, uneasily. Well he should, she thought. Living in the water-cavern, she had become a shapeless, bulky thing: a boulder with legs and great slab hands. Her neck had vanished somewhere; her white head balanced on her shoulders. Strange colors had seeped into her eyes from what she had seen. Witch-lights, Perla called them; they fascinated the child. But Garner Slade was not a child; he had a good idea of what was worth fearing.

  “Did it speak to you?” she asked, and his eyes widened. He was quick, though; she’d seen that when she chose him.

  “No. It only looked at me.” He hesitated, ventured a question. “What was it?”

  “Something that wanted you to see it. You,” she repeated with emphasis. “Garner Slade. Your eyes.”

  “How did you—how did you know?”

  “I was watching, in the Well. I’m mage, so I can do such things with water.”

  “And you saw—”

  “Everything. I see through all your eyes.” The knight opened his mouth, then closed it, a red tide rising in his face. “That’s how I choose the knights,” Eada continued. “I must be able to see. The young man who thinks he dislikes water sees it with such clarity.... And your cousin loves it, though he might have trouble loving anything human.”

  “I’m sorry,” Garner blurted. “I’m sorry I lost my temper.”

  “Ah, but look what you found. Look what you saw. Something is wrong in the waterworld, and we need to know what. Since you were the one to look trouble in the eye, you’re the one to help me. If we have offended the water realms, if some strange mage is churning up things better left on the bottom, if the kingdom itself is in danger, we need to know.” She turned without waiting for him to answer. “Come.”

  Perversely, now that she wished to show, to illumine, the Well made no sound; not a ripple or a chuckle disturbed it. The bright face of the pool was blank and still. She waited, the knight a breathing shadow beside her. No one even glanced up from underwater to see who was there. Finally, without comment, she led him back into her workroom, where she rummaged through her books and manuscripts. The knight, looking confused, finally spoke.

  “Was there something I should have seen?”

  “I couldn’t see anything either,” she said absently. “They’re teasing our eyes; they knew we were looking. They were whispering and laughing all morning before you came.”

  “Who?” he asked bewilderedly. “Who?”

  She showed him.

  “I drew these on my travels all around Obelos, when I was young,” she said, turning pages slowly in the bound book she had made of her sketches. “I wasn’t even a water-mage then. I didn’t know that’s what I wanted to be. I only knew that I never wanted to be far from water.... Some of these have been given human names. Others are seen so rarely they have no names in our world.”

  Many sh
e had drawn from memory, a brief glimpse of the face within the waterfall, among the flowers along a brook, the shadowy creature swimming with the school of fish. Others she saw clearly; they had human names: the kelpies, the water nymphs, the naiads, and nereids and undines, the mer-people. Some spoke to her in various ways, touching her with pale, webbed fingers, showing alarming teeth in warning, singing to her, beckoning. There seemed a different face for every stream, every pond and branch water. She drew as many as she could find. Some stayed to watch their own faces flowing out of her ink jars onto paper. They knew their human names, and had learned to speak to humans for their own purposes. They did not consider Eada entirely human. They didn’t try to entice her underwater, or into their arms. They questioned her, gossiped about other water creatures, told her where to find the shyest, the most secretive, the wildest.

  They spread her name throughout the water-web of Obelos. When the dying water-mage in Luminum searched for his successor, he heard the water speak Eada’s name and summoned her.

  “And that’s when I finally realized what I am,” she told the speechless knight, who was staring at the wide-set eyes and languid mouth of the face peering up from under a water lily. “Now you know what you’ll be looking for.”

  He came to life again. “What?” he asked huskily.

  “That one will make you forget your own name when you look at her.”

  “What is it you want me to do?”

  “I need your eyes. I need you to follow the waterways of Luminum, looking for such as these. Look into every rivulet, every puddle, every rain barrel, every place where water gathers. See what you can see. You’ll be my eyes; I’ll be behind yours, watching, listening. I must know what is troubling the water creatures. Go swimming if you have to. That worked for you earlier.”

  “The creature seemed more inclined to let me drown than talk to me.”

  “Well, some are like that. Just do your best. I’ll help you in any way I can. We need answers before moonrise tomorrow, or the Ritual of the Well will become the disaster your mishap on the river portended.”

  “That soon,” he breathed.

  “And let Damaris know what I’ve told you to do.”

  He gazed at her, seeing what she knew he would. “Must I?” he asked a little explosively. “I’m the last man she wants to see. She’s the Minister of Water and you’re the water-mage. Shouldn’t you tell her?”

  “I’m hoping you will,” she only said. “Be careful of teeth, and don’t fall in love with anything waterborn.”

  He drew breath, debated over any number of replies. Then he loosed it with a huff and a toss of his hands, and made his way back out of her caverns and across the threshold of day.

  Faced with another encounter with the annoyed Minister of Water, Garner found the most labyrinthine path possible back to the castle. Follow the water, the mage had instructed. So he did, beginning with the irrigation ditches along the broad fields beyond the river. Seeing anything in them but gaudy insects and weeds seemed unlikely. The sudden glimpse of a splintered darkness beneath the surface made him start; his horse gave an uneasy snort. Then he saw the blackbird swoop past him, its shadow flying behind it in the ditchwater. The ditch ended at a canal with its sluice gate closed. He rode along the canal for a while. Nothing disturbed the water; nothing spoke. He watched it carefully, remembering that the mage watched as well. Remembering, too, the lovely eyes beneath the lily pad, he could not help looking for them among the clustering green on the still, sunlit water. But nothing beckoned; nothing lured; the only face he saw in the water was his own.

  Nearer the river, he dismounted to thread his way at random through the streets of the city. On that side of the river, they fanned evenly away from the water toward the fields. The cross-streets, cobbled with fieldstones, were equally straight. Except for the ancient houses along the bank, this part of the city was newer, tidier, and, he discovered, eagerly awaiting the pipes that would connect it to the massive conduit from the Well, send its water flowing into the houses.

  “The minister promised us water by the end of autumn,” a tavern-keeper told Garner, who had stopped to peer into his rain barrel. It was positioned beneath a clay gutter-pipe; water poured out of the wide mouth of an ornate, hideous face that, despite its chipped nose, reminded Garner of one of the sprites in the mage’s book. He gazed with interest into the water. But nothing gazed back at him, with or without teeth. “They have to wait until after harvest to go digging up the fields. I’ve waited years, but it’s hardest to wait that one more season.” He paused, watching Garner curiously. “Something your lordship wanted?”

  Garner nodded, realizing what. “A dip into your barrel?”

  “Help yourself.”

  Garner filled the cup dangling from its chain, drank, felt the sweet rain branch through him in all its secret rills. How can I possibly? he wondered tiredly. How can I find what the mage needs? I might have just drunk the answer down.

  “They say the Well is as pure as rain,” the tavern-keeper commented reverently. “We’ll hear it singing from that fountain across the river in a day or two.”

  Damaris had said something about a fountain, Garner remembered. He let the cup drop. “Is it important, the fountain?”

  The man cocked a brow. “Where have you been?”

  “With the king at the winter court.”

  “Ah. Those with pipes and without take their water from the river, even the king. No telling what you might find in it, especially toward the end of summer before the rains come. The fountain will draw its water from the Well itself. Can’t get much cleaner than that. Straight out of the bones of the earth....”

  “Where is this fountain?”

  “Just across the central bridge, up the street and in the square. Nobody’s seen it yet. It’ll be unveiled and let run after the Ritual of the Well. That’ll be something to celebrate.”

  Garner left him gazing with anticipation in the direction of the square. He continued his meandering way through the streets until one led him to the river, ending at the dock where the market-boats loaded their wares. There he could see distant chestnut trees where the streets ended, and the smudged blur of part of some huge thing standing among them, the unwrapped gift to the city. He debated crossing for a closer look. Then he envisioned the Minister of Water with the same impulse at the same time, and the two of them running into one another under a tree. Not only would he be forced to give Damaris the unpleasant message from the mage, he must present her with the last thing she wanted to look at: his face.

  He turned instead, went downriver toward the sea, and the place where he had seen the water creature.

  That side of the river was wilder, thinly populated; the city tended to cluster around its stronghold and its bridges. Here the fishing boats docked, coming and going with the tide. Here the river quickened as it curved around the headland, broadened to meet the sea. A massive watchtower guarded the castle across the water. Garner had spent some months in it when he was younger, learning how to use his weapons. There was little river traffic now. The fishing boats were still out at sea. The royal dock where Garner had so ignominiously disembarked that morning still ported its pennants and scallops, but the few barges tied there were all empty.

  Garner dismounted at the river, stood watching the water while his horse drank. The bank was low there. The water of the little inlet lapped softly along mossy tree roots and tangles of bramble and wildflowers. Afternoon sun lay gently on the shallows, a rumpled cloth-of-gold, stirring languidly in the backwash of deeper currents. The pennants fluttering like colorful leaves across the water drew Garner’s eyes. He saw Damaris in memory, several years earlier, coming down those steps to welcome the returning court. Garner, who had accompanied one of the king’s knights as his squire, had been transfixed by the sight of her. She had grown quite tall and slender over the winter. She moved like water, he thought. Like kelp, every frond graceful, swaying dreamily to the slightest touch of tide. He felt the m
oment when her eyes met his.

  She laughed and waved; he could only stand there, forgetting to move even after the barge had docked.

  He drew a soft breath, forced his eyes away. No one stood there now, and anyway, all her welcomes were for someone else. Lord Felden, with his wealth, his horn, his absent-minded humming, his amiable disposition. He gave all his passion to his music, Garner had heard, when news of the betrothal reached the winter court. His mother, who reigned in his rich house south of Luminum, must have reminded him that no amount of copious outpourings of beautiful music would transform itself into an heir to his title and fortune, no matter how hard he blew.

  Her eyes met his.

  Garner started, feeling the implosion like a silent lightning bolt all through him. Those eyes, as green as river moss, watched him just above the surface of the water. Her pale hair floated all around her like the petals of some extravagant flower. In the next moment he caught his breath. It was not, could not possibly be Damaris, silent as a wild thing, her nose under water, and from what he could see, naked as an eel.

  A river creature, he realized, his pulse quickening again. Sunning in the shallows, breathing water like air as she gazed at him. He wondered whether, if he spoke, she would vanish with a twist and a ripple, like a fish.

  But he had to risk it. “You startled me,” he said.

  She lifted her face out of the water then, revealing a familiar, charming smile, a slender neck, the curves and hollows of her shoulders. He wondered if her skin was that golden everywhere.

  “I know,” she answered. Her voice was light and sweet, a purl of water. She raised her fingers; he saw the webs between them, delicate, iridescent. She pushed lazily at the water, the light. “Come join me.”

  “I don’t dare,” he said somberly.

  “Then I’ll leave you.”

  “No—Don’t do that.”

  “Then come in with me. We’ll talk.”