Robin McKinley - Water

That night Iril took no leaf. He made Jarro move his bedding closer to his own, and as the wave formed, woke himself and reached out and felt for Jarro’s arm. The flesh was stiff and shuddering with nightmare, so Iril woke the boy and held him in his arms like a baby as the wave went by, and again in the faint light of dawn as the ebb began and the monster returned to the sea.

Jarro slept late, and when he rose he was heavy-eyed and pale, but he said, “To-night do not wake me, Father. It is better that I watch this thing, and learn its ways.”

Mel was there in the morning in his own body, though it was three days’ march to Silverspring.

“Siron caused this,” he said. “I did not think she had the power.”

“Can you counter it?” asked Iril.

“My power is from the Fathergod. It is of air and fire, the creatures of daylight. Hers is from the old Earth-mother. It is of water and under-earth. I have wondered why she has made no move to delay our taking the stones, though she would have known that I could overcome her.”

“She could perhaps have dried out the river.”

“She would not do that. The river is holy.”

“Then you can do nothing about this serpent.”

“Nothing directly. I will think what else. Let us see if it appears again to-day.”

It did not, nor the next, though both Iril and Jarro, dreaming the forming wave, sensed strongly on all four tides that the same large thing was following close behind it. The attack of the serpent had not been seen from the southern shore, so on the third day Farn brought a raft over on the ebb to find what was amiss that none had returned on the wave. Fortunately for him and his crew, the tide was still high, so the monster had the whole estuary to patrol, and missed him. With him came Iril’s nephew. This man, always a boaster, insisted that he would test the passage by crossing back on the wave, and persuaded two others to go with him. The serpent rose as before in the main channel, coiled round the raft, and smashed it to pieces with hammer blows of its head. None of the men came ashore.

Farn said, “This thing cannot come into the shallows. We can pole the stones singly up along the shore as far as the river mouth, cross there on a low tide, and return down the southern shore.”

“How many days?” said Mel.

“Two moons or more. We could move at high tide only. The water must cover the mudbanks each time.”

“Too long. The powers I have laid asleep in the stones will begin to stir at bud-break. I must have them in place by then.”

“If you were to take them back to Silverspring and wait another year . . .” suggested Farn.

“No,” said Iril. “We have a contract. And something else. This serpent, if we sneak the stones round by the water’s edge or take them back to their place, will it leave these waters, do you think?”

“Not while Siron chooses to keep the way barred,” said Mel.

“We live by this water,” said Iril. “It is our field. The wave is the ox with which we plough it. How shall we live if these are taken from us? If people fear that the serpent may return, will they use our rafts to save a few days’ journey? What are a few days out of a life? By the axe of Manaw, I will take the stones over, or else die. And I will also overcome and destroy this serpent that has killed my sister’s son, and my men and passengers. I, Iril, say this.”

The men sitting around the fire muttered praise. Nobody asked how it should be done.

Iril gave orders and worked all night with the men while they built a light raft, buoyed with skins, with no platform, so that it would float either way up. For the moment it did not lie level in the water, having extra float-skins on one side, near the sternboard, with a slip rope up to the post where Iril would stand. Jarro crouched by his side to watch as with his own hands Iril shaped the inner edge of the sternboard. When the raft was on the water, he levelled it with a net of boulders lashed above the extra floats. The sun rose over the glistening mudbanks of low tide.

“Give me leaf,” said Jarro. “Let me dream the wave as you go.”

“You are too young,” said Iril. “You dream well without it.”

“No,” said Jarro. “There is something more to dream. I do not know what. Give me leaf, Father.”

Iril passed him the little leather pouch and watched the boy retire to their hut. Yes, he thought. To-day may well be the last time I ride the wave. If so, Jarro must see how I fail.

With two sweepmen, heavily greased against the cold, and with safety lines round their waists, he took the raft out on the morning wave.

Being so light it travelled fast, and Iril sped it along, slanting the sternboard to its limit against the wave-foot. All rafts had different quirks, and he had only this short stretch over the shallows to learn this one’s bad habits. For the moment his mind was wholly on that, but just before they swept into the main channel, he experienced a sort of internal blink, a flicker, as if something voiceless had spoken to him. It is there. It waits.

There was no time for astonishment or wonder. As the raft lurched into the rougher waters of the channel the serpent reared behind them and arched over as before. Seen this close, its hugeness and speed were not the worst of it. There was a ferocity about it, a malice, an unstoppable focussed power as it performed the single act for which it was made. Iril watched in silence. When its head plunged back into the water, he yelled. The sweepmen flung their weight against the shafts. Iril tugged at the slip rope, releasing the extra floats, then clung to his post. The sweepmen crouched and gripped the loops that had been tied in the deck, ready for this moment.

The raft spun. The weight of the boulders tilted the shaped edge of the sternboard into the wave. The raft dipped further under the mass of water, stood on its side, was swallowed by roaring foam, and finally rose clear of the coiling body and well behind the wave, floating in the long side-eddy for which Iril had been racing.

The sweepmen loosed the net of boulders and heaved them over, levelling the raft once more. Then they took their sweeps and worked with all their strength to use the flow of the tide behind the wave to carry them over the mudbank on the upstream side of the channel. Iril twisted to and fro, watching his course and studying what the serpent did.

Its head had emerged while the raft had been buried in the wave. By the time he could see it again, it had completed its second coil, and only as it now reemerged discovered that it had caught nothing. Still it lashed down at the place where the raft should have been, several blows, before it started to look around. Even then it did not seem to perceive the raft and for a while continued to search the water close around it. At last it withdrew its neck and disappeared.

Another of those flickers— It comes back!

A sudden ruffling of the surface confirmed that the serpent was racing back along the channel to where the raft had come out of the wave.

By now the men had laid their sweeps aside and were poling their way across shallows. The serpent’s head emerged and peered round. It saw the raft and turned. When it felt the check of the mudbank, it reared high out of the water and struck forward, but still fell a good pole-length short of the raft. Iril told the sweepmen to back water, and then tempted it, judging his distance. Once it almost stranded itself and needed violent wallowings to get clear, but the tide was still rising and he dared not stay long. It continued to rage up and down, looking for a way round the obstacle, long after Iril had guided the raft over the next channel and into the more regular shallows along which they could pole their way home, using where they could the secondary currents of inflow and ebb. It was a weary distance, but every now and then that secondary awareness flickered into Iril’s mind and showed him the serpent patrolling the deeper water. Now that he had leisure to think about it, he understood what had been happening to him, and his heart lightened with the knowledge that the task he had set himself was a little less impossible.