Robin McKinley - Water

She sat up slowly. Ruth waited. She began to tell Ruth everything, from the first dream. She stumbled first over saying Fortunatar’s name: Queen Fortunatar of the Clear Seeing. And she paused before she explained what had happened in the library the day before. “It’s all imaginary. It’s not only not real, it’s not even history—it’s just legends. I might as well be dreaming of King Arthur and Robin Hood and Puck of Pook’s Hill and Middle Earth. If—if you’re right that a little of my soul lives there, then—then it’s an imaginary soul too.” Nothing, whispered her mind. Nothing but here, now, this. She looked at the walls around the garden; even from this, the garden’s farthest point, she could hear the electric buzz of woodworking tools, and the wind, from the wrong direction today, brought them the smell of hot oil from Benny’s Fish and Chips.

Ruth was silent a long time, but she held on to one of her sister’s hands, and Hetta, exhausted from the effort of weeping and explaining, made no attempt to draw away. She would have to go indoors soon, and start supper. First she had to pull the fleece back over her exposed cabbages; there was going to be a frost tonight. Soon she had to do it. Not just yet.

Ruth said at last: “Well, they thought for hundreds of years that bumblebees couldn’t fly, and the bumblebees went on flying while they argued about it, and then they finally figured it out. It never made any difference to the bumblebees. And I met Melanie’s great-uncle once and he was no fool, and Melanie and I are friends because she’s not really a space case, it’s just that if she pretends to be one, she can tell her uncle’s stories. Haven’t you ever thought that legends have a lot of truth in them? History is just organised around facts. Facts aren’t the whole story or the bumblebees would have had to stop flying till the scientists figured out how they could.”

Hetta said wearily, “That’s a little too poetical for me. Legends and poetry don’t change the fact that I have to go get supper now.”

Ruth said, “Wait. Wait. I’m still thinking. I’ll help you with supper.” Her head was bowed, and the hand that wasn’t holding Hetta’s was still trailing in the pool, and she flicked up water drops as if her thoughts were stinging her. “You know, I think there’s a newt trying to get your attention. One of these big red fellows.”

“Yes, I’ve met him before,” said Hetta, trying to sound light-hearted, trying to go with Ruth’s sudden change of subject, trying to accept that there was nothing to be done about Damarian dream-legends, and that this was her life.

“Not very newt-like behaviour,” Ruth said. “Look.” There was a newt swimming, back and forth, as it—he or she—had swum before. “Watch,” said Ruth. She dabbled her fingers near the newt and it ducked round them and continued its tiny laps, back and forth, in front of the place where Hetta sat. Ruth dabbled again, and it ducked again, and came straight back to Hetta. “Put your hand in the water,” said Ruth.

Hetta was still in that half-trance mood of having told her secret, and so she put her hand into the water without protest. The newt swam to her and crept up on the back of her hand. She raised her hand out of the pond, slowly, as she had done once before; the newt clung on. She stared into the small golden eyes, and watched the vertical pupil dilate as it looked back at her.

“Maybe Queen Fortunatar of the Clear Seeing is trying to send you a message,” said Ruth.

Hetta dreamed again that night. She came through the door she had first entered by, when Zasharan had saved her from the storm. She came in alone, the sand swirling around her, and closed the door against the wind with her own strength. She felt well and alert and clear-headed. She dropped the scarf she had wrapped around her face, and set off, as if she knew the way, striding briskly down the corridors, the sand sliding away under her soft-booted feet, and then up a series of low stairs, where the sand grated between her soles and the stair-stone. The same dim light shone as it had shone the night that Zasharan had guided her, but she often put her hand against the wall for reassurance, for the shadows seemed to fall more thickly than they had done when she was with him. She was not aware of why she chose one way rather than another, but she made every choice at every turning without hesitation.

She came to the spiral stair, and climbed it. When she put her hand to the door of the Eye’s chamber, it opened.

Zasharan was standing on the far side of the pool. Hetta raised her hands and pushed her hair back from her face, suddenly needing to do something homely and familiar, suddenly feeling that nothing but her own body was familiar. She let her palms rest against her cheekbones briefly. The sleeves of the strange, pale, loose garment she was wearing fell back from her forearms; there was a shift beneath it, and loose trousers beneath that, and the soft boots with their long laces wrapped the trousers around her calves. Her right ankle throbbed.

Zasharan made no move to approach her. From the far side of the pool of the Eye, he said, “I thought you would not return. It has been a sennight since you disappeared. If there had not been the hollow in the sand beside the pool where you had lain, I might have believed I had dreamed you. I went back to the little room by the lowest door where I first brought you, and the dressings cabinet still lay open, and the needle lay beside it with the end of the thread I had used on your ankle, and one bandage was missing; and I could see where your blood had fallen in the sand, for no one goes there but me, and I had not swept nor put things to rights. I—when you first came, I—I thought I knew why you were here. I thought—I thought I had read the signs—not only in the sand, but in your face. I was glad. But you do not wish to come here, do you? That is what I missed, when I searched the records. That is why your story is different. Sandstorms are treacherous; I knew that; I just did not see what it meant here. It is only the blood you shed here that brings you back, the blood you shed by the treachery of the sand. That is all. I must let you go. I am glad you have come back once more, to let me say good-bye, and to apologise for trying to hold you against your will.”

There were tears under Hetta’s palms. She smeared them away and dropped her hands. “I—I dream you.” She meant to say I only dream you, you are just a dream.

Zasharan smiled; it was a painful smile. “Of course. How else could we meet? You have told me of Roanshire, in a land I do not know. I should have realised . . . when you never invited me to come to you in your dreams . . .”

“I only dream you! You are just a dream!” Hetta put her hands to her face again, and clawed at her hair. “I looked up Queen Fortunatar in the library! She is a legend! She is not real! Even if she were real, she would have been real hundreds of years ago! We have airports now, and cars, and electric lights and television and computers!”

Zasharan stepped forward abruptly, to the very edge of the pool. “Queen Fortunatar is in your library?” he said. “You have read about her—you sought to read about her in your waking Roanshire?”

“Yes, yes,” said Hetta impatiently. “But—”

“Why?”

“Why? Why did I?—because I wanted her to be real, of course! Because I want you to be real! You do not want to waste your dreaming on my life—you do not want to visit me there!—although I wish Ruth could meet you—oh, this is absurd! I am dreaming, and Queen Fortunatar is a myth, a fairy-tale—she is not real.”