Water Witch (12 page)

"Nineteen?"

She hung her head and felt a curtain of
hair mercifully cover her face. "Yes. The one that got away."

He thought for a moment.
"Nineteen," he said after a time. "After the eighteen you
killed."

"Yes," was all she could say.

He shifted to sit cross-legged. "You
counted wrong," he murmured. "There were twenty."

She squirmed when she thought about it.
"Yes. One woman was pregnant."

"My sister," he said.

Alaysha fell silent, the sense of shame
covering her like a fur. It had been war, so she thought. She'd not given the
village inhabitants much thought as she'd sent the power out, thirsting for
whatever water it could find. She'd let it go and traveled the paths with the
energy – down to the ground, along the grasses, up bare feet and legs, through
tear ducts. When the power got to the unborn, it was already too late.

Its eyes would have been amber, she
realized. Were amber.

"I remember her," she whispered.

"My sister?"

"No. Your niece."

The words fell like stones to the earth,
and Yenic said nothing but rose from his spot at the fire and kicked the place
where the worms rested in their gourd. He reached down with his elegant, but
callused fingers and lifted the bowl from its spot and trudged into the
underbrush. He disappeared in the cascade of leaves and branches.

The girl beside her shifted. "I feel
bad for what's about to happen to him now," she said, a subtle chuckle in
her tone.

"I feel nothing," Alaysha
responded, seeing his reaction. She hadn't wanted to hurt him and now she had
she wanted to take it back. She wanted to return to the sense that those things
didn't matter. She couldn't afford to feel anything. It wasn't a warrior's
place to question or feel guilt about killing on command. If one did, then a
whole life would be spent recovering from a single deed.

"Is he telling the truth about his
tribe and yours being the same?"

Alaysha nodded. "I think so. My father
told me as much."

"Is that why we're here?"

Alaysha sighed. She wasn't sure anymore.
She'd wanted to know the connection at first, but now she thought all she
really wanted was to get away. What did it matter that she belonged to a nearly
extinct tribe.

"We're here because we needed a place
to rest," she said and pulled the girl closer.

"Did you really kill his people?"

"I did."

"How could you?"

"How could I not?" Alaysha
shrugged. "I was not my own. Much as you aren't."

"I ran away, and I am my own
now."

Alaysha squeezed her tightly, enjoying the
feeling that for once she had the comfort of another body next to hers. Scrawny
though it might be, it was a great consolation.

"As I am my own, now, too."

"Maybe I should go stop him."

Alaysha held the girl back when she started
to pull away.

"I doubt he wants anyone around at the
moment. Whatever it is you've done to him with those worms, it'll keep for a
while."

Yenic was gone a long time; Alaysha was
startled to find she had fallen asleep and was cushioning the girl's head as
she also slept. At times, though she'd felt herself nodding off next to the
heat, she hadn't thought she'd actually succumbed to the night. She hadn't
remembered feeding the fire either and yet it roared merrily on.

She heard him coming long before she saw
him, and Barruch whickered noisily when the bushes rustled.

At first, she wasn't sure what she was
seeing, but it looked like fireflies hovering in six straight lines behind the
lacy cover of leaves. They lifted and moved together left and right, bobbing up
and down, all in unison. Then they shot towards the ground and the stomping
racket of feet too much in a hurry to care about making noise rattled across
the air.

"Something's wrong," Yenic was
saying, his voice a hoarse, pained noise. "What have you done to me?"

Alarmed now, Alaysha pushed the girl's head
from her lap and jumped to her feet, taking the strides she needed to grab her
sword from her bundle. Yenic broke through the tree cover, the six stripes on
his cheeks more obvious now, not fireflies as she'd thought, but the
phosphorescent yellow color of the grub's skin. His hands were aloft as he
looked at them, the yellow shining brightly through the dark where it was
smeared on the tips of his fingers and palm.

A low chuckle came from behind her,
stopping Alaysha in her tracks. She turned to the girl to see her moving
towards Yenic with her hand over her mouth, trying to keep the laughter in.

"Can you still see, Yenic? Can you see
in the dark?"

"No better than I did before." He
didn't sound impressed.

"Does it burn yet?"

"You mean it's going to burn?"

"And steal your vision once your eyes
swell shut."

Yenic made a noise between a groan and a
scream, then stumbled about, feeling his way around as though he was already
blind. "Shouldn't you at least help me?"

"I can take you to the water. That
should prevent the burning."

"And the swelling?"

"Oh, yes. Of course, the
swelling." The girl snickered and Alaysha sent her a reproachful look that
sent the black eyes downcast so quick it was obvious she realized she'd played
a poor game.

"You did this to him; you should
help."

"I didn't do anything," came the
protest, but the girl minced toward him and reached out for his hand when she
was close enough. "Here, I'll help rinse it all off. But we'd better hurry
before you start seeing things."

His shouts rose an octave and mixed with
words Alaysha had never heard even in her rides with the most swarthy of warriors.
The only intelligible thing she could make out were his last, frantic ones.

"Seeing things?"

The dry response was nearly lost in the
bushes as the girl answered. "Where do you think Meroshi's power came
from? Magic?"

"I believed you," Yenic's tone
turned pouting.

"Of course you did. It's a story we
tell every outsider, knowing they'll try it. So we can see them coming should
they decide to attack, and if they do attack, they fight the shadows of their
night terrors rather than any one of us." She guided him away from the
fire toward the waterfall and Alaysha could hear Yenic's plaintiff protest that
he wasn't an outsider.

The girl's matter-of-fact reply came right
on its heels. "Maybe not, but how often do you think I get a chance to
tell that story? Why even the youngest of us knows better than to play with the
dreamer's worm."

Alaysha watched them go and settled back
down near the fire. If the girl knew such a use for a grub that Yenic's kind
did nothing with but eat, she wondered what else the girl and her tribe might
know. Alaysha had never seen the repugnant thing before let alone know to eat
it.

It was one more thing that reminded her of
how ignorant she was. All she'd ever known was battle and loneliness, duty and
despair.

She resolved again to find out as much as
she could – and to get as far away from her father as she could. Now she'd
tasted freedom without the burden of duty, she rather enjoyed it.

As it turned out, Yenic's eyes were sore
enough that he lay curled next to the fire when they returned. The girl tried
her best to coax conversation with him, but he only grunted at her and rubbed
at his eyes.

"Don't worry," she said.
"It'll only hurt for a little while. We got it all off in plenty of
time."

He said nothing.

"And even if we hadn't, the effects
are only temporary. A day or so of hallucinations and swelling, and it's all
gone again."

He blinked. "But you got it all off in
time," he said blandly.

She smiled brightly. "Right."

"Right," he said and curled
further into an indignant ball and went to sleep without a further word.

Alaysha had made a cozy spot next to the
fire with her thatched mat and fur and let the girl crawl into the crook she
made with the curve of her body. She heard a small sigh and thought it might
have been her own. She might have shared her blanket with Yenic had things gone
differently.

"He's angry," Alaysha whispered
so not to disturb him.

"Yes, he's angry, but not half so
angry as he'll be tomorrow night."

"Why, what happens tomorrow?"
Alaysha was almost afraid to ask.

"The sun will gather on his cheeks
where the stripes are and store there till nighttime."

"And…?"

"And he will glow as brightly tomorrow
night as he does tonight."

Alaysha moaned softly. "For how
long?"

"It wears off after a couple of days.
The longer it stays painted on, the longer it lasts. He should stop glowing in
a couple of nights."

"Does he know this?"

The girl shook her head.

Come morning, Alaysha woke to a smoky,
dampened fire. She shivered beneath her fur and realized the girl was gone. She
lifted her head to peer across the smoke and saw Yenic sitting on a rock, knees
up, feet that were filthy from rummaging planted solidly against the stone. He
was munching on a handful of what she presumed were nuts, popping one after the
other into his mouth and chewing thoroughly.

He was staring straight at her and her
heart made an almost audible thunk in her chest.

"Where is the girl?" she asked
him.

He shrugged.

"How long have you been awake?"

"Long enough."

"What does that mean?" She wasn't
sure anymore what to make of him. Was he still angry at her for killing his
sister, for mentioning the unborn child?

He let one foot slide off the rock, and
then the other until he stood and stretched. His rib cage lifted and Alaysha
could see the way the ribbon of tattaus actually went up underneath his armpit
and onto the fleshy, tender spot of his tricep.

"Do all our tribe have these
tattaus?"

He shook his head and some of his hair
stuck to his cheek and left strands of black beneath the faint glow of green.
"Did you see tattaus on all the people you killed back there?" He
jerked his head in the direction of the arid piece of land. His voice almost
sounded condescending until she caught his amber eyes with her own, then she
realized his ego was still just hurting from the trick they'd played on him.

And so she was able to give it some
thought. The first man had the markings, yes. And a few of the others. The
crones did: theirs were identical in placement as her own. The children were
clean, though. And most of the women.

"Your sister was marked."

He nodded warily, but it looked like he was
trying to keep the wariness from his eyes. They still looked like benign, sweet
honey. She thought of the honey bee she'd seen trapped in a gem of amber that
her nohma had shown her when she was a few seasons old, then she promptly
reburied the memory. Thoughts of Nohma were too painful. She struggled to pull
her eyes from his.

"Your sister's tattaus were just open
symbols." Alysha had to force herself think back, let her memory recall the
flesh path the power had taken when it had crept over the village. She'd
overlooked the detail before because it was insignificant at the time.

"Across her chin," he said.

Alaysha's fingers went involuntarily to her
face, wanting to touch the narrow ribbon of ink snaking from earlobe to earlobe
and across her chin. She remembered her nohma putting the marks there. It had
hurt, but since Nohma had the odd tattaus too, she'd wanted them and put up
with the pain. She wanted hers to be exactly the same, but Nohma wouldn't have
it.

"Nohma wouldn't put mine on my back
where hers were. She told me mine must be on my face."

Yenic stepped closer, as though he were
testing the temperature of water. As he came around the fire pit, he lifted his
arm and with the fingers of his other hand traced the tattau's path from tricep
to hip. When he got close enough that Alaysha could touch him, he took her hand
and placed it in the middle of his markings – near the first rib. She felt his
skin pimple and laid her palm flat against it.

"I got the first mark when I was
four," he told her.

"I was young too," she said.

"The Arms of the Witch are tattaued
like this because we are her reach. Her protection. Our arms are in service to
her." He met her eyes and held them with his own so intensely, she could
barely swallow.

"How many?"

"One for each witch."

"And my Nohma?"

"She shoulders the burden of caring
for the witch."

Alaysha nodded. The symbolism made sense.
She let her hands search the markings while he stood, silently letting her
trace one to the next. They were quite beautiful up close, the way the skin
showed through against the black band surrounding them. It must have taken
hours to craft such a long line with such intricate detail and symbols. Her
fingers reached the base of his armpit and she felt him shudder.