Robin McKinley - Water

The rain continued over the next several days. It was early autumn, when the change of weather often comes quickly and strongly, and when storms are common. The winds that caromed around their little meadow seemed wilder and more directionless than usual, even for autumn; but Tamia deliberately did not think about this. She had mopped up the rain-water pools, and while she opened the shutters as often as she could for daylight, however grey, and fresh air, however damp, she kept sentry-watch against the rain spotting the floor. Her Guardian drifted in and out of sleep, but Tamia hoped it was only sleep now. She ate obediently, and tried to help when Tamia washed and turned her, so she would not grow sore from lying in the same position too long; and she regained control over her body functions. And she allowed—because she was given no choice—her apprentice to rub the dead side of her body, and to move that leg and foot, and bend the arm, and curl and uncurl the fingers.

Every time Tamia went near that side of the house, indoors or out, she felt what she had done to the water-garden pulling at her.

As the days passed, the rain fell harder and the wind blew stronger, till Tamia could rarely open the shutters at all, and during the days as well as the nights the world seemed very dark. Even with the shutters closed the house rattled and creaked, and the wind and rain battered the walls like fists, and little draughts crept in and played with the lamplight. The cloud-cover hung low and thick and menacing over their meadow, and Tamia only went outdoors long enough to draw water from the well, and to greet the yew tree, and ran back in again. She began to wonder if she might not be able to collect enough water by setting bowls and basins on the stepping-stones, and then she would not have to linger so long beneath this bleak and accusing sky. When she had lived in the valley she had hated stormy weather, when she could not go outdoors; but now the pressure of the gloomy hostile weather seemed the proper backdrop to her fears. The water-garden throbbed like a bruise.

“Something wrong—this weather,” said her Guardian; Tamia shrugged. She was more interested in gently flexing her Guardian’s ankle. “Water-garden?”

Tamia frowned a little at the foot she was holding. The seven stones meant that the rest of the garden felt so different, she had not dared touch anything else; but she was determined that her Guardian should know nothing that might trouble her, if it could be done by Tamia not telling her about it. She had been sure that her seven stones would be noticed by some other Guardian. Well; apparently she had guessed wrong. It had been almost a fortnight. Perhaps she should remove them; the bruise feeling was growing stronger, and every time she walked across the stepping-stones now, she got a headache as well.

Perhaps the weather was so savage outside their meadow that no one could come to them. Tamia’s eyes strayed to the larder. They were already running low on lamp oil but they had some weeks’ food left; and then a trader must come. . . .

The last thing she expected was the apparition that burst through the door late that night, in the middle of the worst storm yet. It was a tall male apparition, wringing wet, and it found Tamia with its eyes and roared at her.

She had been sitting, as she sat every evening, by her Guardian’s bed, holding her hand. It was nearly time for her to go to her own bed, dragged out from her own little room to the other side of the hearth, so that she could hear her Guardian easily in the night. The bellow of the storm tonight was curiously soporific; and she had been thinking about nothing in particular for some time when the door was flung open, and a wave of water hurled the tall figure in upon them. The water, as it fell on the floor, arranged itself into seven small pools like seven stones in a water-garden.

“What have you done, girl, are you trying to drown the world?”

Tamia sat where she was, open-mouthed in shock; barely she felt her Guardian stir herself for a great effort, and sit up, leaning on her good arm. The force of the man’s gaze held Tamia motionless; she felt it burning through her, and she thought, When it reaches my heart, I will die.

But her Guardian said, “Water Gate! You let my apprentice go, or I will fry your entrails for my supper!” It was the longest sentence she had spoken since she had fallen ill.

Tamia was released so suddenly, she fell off her low stool and onto the floor. Dimly she heard the conversation over her head, her Guardian’s exhausted voice, speaking in broken phrases now, and the slurring, which Tamia had grown accustomed to, so strong, she could hardly make out the words; and the man her Guardian had called Water Gate, his voice dropping down in sorrow and grief as he understood what had happened. And then they talked of other things, but Tamia did not listen, drifting in and out of some cold grey place where the wind howled.

At last Tamia felt Water Gate’s hard strong hands, under her arms, pulling her gently but irresistably upright. He did not put her on her backless stool, but leant her against the edge of the Guardian’s mattress; and he brought her a cup of her own broth, and wrapped her hands round it, and held them so while she drank. And then he said to her: “I beg your pardon most humbly, and I am ashamed, as Western Mouth has told me clearly I should be. It is true that I should have known that what Western Mouth’s apprentice has done was through desperate need.

“But you see, apprentice of Western Mouth, you have torn a hole in the close-woven fabric that divides the earth of our world from the water of the next; and through that rent the water is pouring through. And you, apprentice of Western Mouth, are the only person who can stitch it up again—if it can be stitched.”

Her Guardian, looking grey and weak, said, “I am sorry, my dear, but what he says is true. He would tell me that I chose an apprentice too late; I would say to him that you were born too late, and what has happened has happened.”

She paused, but Tamia was still too shaken by Water Gate’s greeting to stir or speak. Rest, rest, she wanted to say to her Guardian, I know it cannot be good for you to talk so much. But she looked at her Guardian, and saw Water Gate move to sit next to her, one arm round her shoulders, holding her good hand in his other hand, and realised that he was giving her his strength somehow; and a little, feeble hope stirred in her, and she thought: I will not care that I have drowned the world, if he will help my Guardian.

“Listen, my dear,” whispered her Guardian. “It is almost dawn. There will be a lull soon—Water Gate has arranged that. And when there is, you will take the bowl on the top shelf, the one at the back behind all the other bowls, and fill it with water from the well; and you will bring it to me here. Fill it as full as you can carry it; and then do not spill it. Not a drop.” And then Water Gate let her lie down, but still he sat beside her, where Tamia had sat for over a fortnight, and looked into her face, and held her hand. Tamia told herself that he was doing for her what she could not do, but still a lonely and hurt little voice inside her said, He is a Guardian, a real Guardian, not a five-years’ apprentice, why cannot he do it, and leave me with my Guardian? It is not he who should sit there. But her Guardian had given the order, and so she did not say it aloud.

She heard the storm die away, and she opened one shutter cautiously and saw dawn struggling to penetrate the clouds. She took down the bowl—she had never seen this bowl before, though she thought she knew every bowl on the shelf, for the Guardians often used bowls in their work—this one tingled against her skin like the stones in the water-garden. She went outdoors to the well. The ground of their meadow was an ocean of mud; tufts of broken grass crowned the crests of the waves. She tried to pick her way carefully, but there was nowhere to put her feet that was any better than any other. She was muddy to mid-shin by the time she returned to the house, and she was so anxious not to spill a drop that she did not dare kick off her shoes before she went indoors.