Ita nodded. Her eyes were bright with excitement, for she had never gone over the rapids. The rushing waters did not worry Draven now even as he pushed off and felt Hanna catch the canoe in her eager pull. After that nighttime adventure, the rapids gave him not a moment’s fear. And he knew Ita would be careful. Her slight weight could hardly make a difference to the balance in any case.
Not once did Ita scream, even during the largest of the swift-moving drops. She held tight to the sides of the canoe, leaning by intuition. Only once did she lean wrong, but Draven compensated by the strength of his arm, and they were never in danger of overturning. Even so, once they were free of the rapids Ita sat for some while, exhausted and unspeaking.
Draven felt guilt sink like a stone in his gut. This was a mistake. He should never have brought her. He should have worked harder to dissuade her. She was mad, and she never would see reason . . .
But suddenly she turned to him, and her eyes were very bright. “They haven’t hunted Hydrus down here, beyond the rapids,” she said. “I asked the old men, and none of them had. Perhaps their fathers did, but I doubt it. This is where we will find him, brother! I know it.”
Draven decided not to mention that he had hunted Hydrus in these waters to no success. Let her have her dream, at least for a while.
He paddled slowly, and Ita climbed up to the very front of the canoe, her eyes intent upon the water. Draven, however, found his gaze drifting more often to the far shore. He saw the high promontory with the single bare tree at its crown. He watched it as they drew near and even as they passed under it, wondering why it had caused the prisoner such fear. For though its rock walls dominated the landscape, Draven could see nothing strange or fearful about it.
The promontory behind them, they continued down the river in silence. Draven began to suspect that Ita would have him proceed forever downriver. But at last, without any reason he could discern, she said, “Here. It will be here.”
It was as good a place as any, Draven had to admit. The river came to a small curve in this spot, and though a deep trench ran down the middle, there were shallower patches where the lithe form of Hydrus might, if luck was on their side, be spotted. Draven took the canoe to the bank and moored it so that it would not be pulled further down river. Once the canoe was secure, Ita took up her spear as though she expected Hydrus to appear within moments.
Draven shook his head and settled down for a long wait. The end of this, he knew, would be a return journey up the river, a mooring of the canoe before they reached the rapids, then a long, dark, exhausting trek along the banks. He would have to return for the canoe later, for he suspected he would need to carry his sister part of the way. She would resist, but he knew she would never make that long walk on her own.
He cursed himself for allowing her to talk him into this. But Ita was so strong in spirit, it was easy to forget how frail her body really was.
Suddenly Ita gave a great sigh and relaxed her tense and watchful position, sitting back in the canoe. Draven said nothing but passed the waterskin, from which she drank deeply. Finished, she wiped her mouth and turned to Draven. Tired though they were, a light of mischief flickered deep in her eyes.
“So, dear brother,” she said, “how does the fair Lenila these days?”
Draven’s face did not alter even by the merest twitching of his cheek. He answered evenly, “I would not know.”
“Indeed? I have watched you make lamb’s eyes at her since last summer! I’m certain you, of all people, are aware of the comings and goings of Rannul’s brightest blossom.” Ita smiled teasingly. “She has taken her woman’s name now, so a husband must be found for her soon. Do you think—”
“I think Lenila will never take a husband who bears the name Coward,” said Draven. Again his face and voice betrayed nothing. But he could not meet his sister’s gaze, turning instead to study the placid waters of Hanna.
Ita made no response to this but shifted her weight so that the canoe rocked and water sloshed along its sides. She never called him by his new name—always she said “brother” or, sometimes in a forgetful moment, “Gaho.” Never “Draven.” It was as though she had washed the memory of his disgrace from her mind.
Or perhaps she did not view his actions as the disgrace they were. This was both a comfort and an irritation to Draven. Much though he valued the unquestioning trust of this one small heart, he could not appreciate his sister’s tendency to ignore the reality of his situation.
Ita broke her silence with another great sigh and spoke rather more softly than before. “No man of Rannul would take a wife with a great clubfoot,” she said.
But this was no longer the truth, as both Draven and Ita well knew. Since Draven’s naming and subsequent fall from grace, Ita’s prominence had risen in the village. For now the man to whom Gaher gave her in marriage would become heir to the chiefdom. Ita, who had believed all her life that she would not marry and never fretted in the belief, now fretted indeed, knowing that she would be given to the biggest, bravest, and bloodiest of all her father’s warriors. When she received her woman’s name, the vying for her hand would begin.
How the currents of their lives had turned. And how unwelcome the turning!
The heaviness of afternoon fell upon them. The sun was bright and golden overhead, without a cloud to mar his view of doings in the mortal world below. But the trees overhanging the bank were shelter enough against his glare, and neither Draven nor Ita suggested moving on or going back. Not yet. An autumnal haze fell upon the both of them. Draven, gazing after the river’s flow, felt as though he cast his vision into the water and let it be carried for many leagues away, far away. All the way to the rumored Endless Water where Hydrus dwelt.
Who knew what lands might exist beyond those waves? Or, if no country, what oblivion? Draven could hardly say which idea he preferred.
Suddenly, Ita sat up straight. Her motion startled Draven and rocked the canoe. He looked at her sharply, expecting to see her point out some likely shadow beneath the river’s surface. Instead she stared at the bank to which they were moored, and her face had gone pale. “Brother!” she gasped. “Look!”
He looked over his shoulder. And he saw a strange sight indeed.
All along the river’s bank, as though rushing silently to this very place where brother and sister waited, a host of brilliantly red asters were opening up their faces, vivid in the light of the descending sun. They gathered thickest near the canoe as though, if they could, they would spread across the surface of the river and grasp hold of it. Draven had never before seen so many of the wild scarlet blooms in one place.
Before he could catch his breath, a certain silvery voice fell upon their ears: the liquid song of a morning thrush in the branches above their heads. Ita stared up into the thick tangle of overshadowing leaves, gold-touched with the beginning of autumn color. She saw the thrush, his head high, his eye bright, his speckled breast swelled with song.
“It’s time!” Ita cried, drowning out the melody in her excitement. She stood in the canoe, ignoring both the pain in her foot and the mad rocking that could have overturned them if not for her brother’s solid counterweight. “Untie us! Untie us!” she said, reaching for the mooring line with fingers that trembled too hard to be effective.
“Sit down!” Draven barked, and to his surprise, his sister obeyed. He yanked the line free and pushed the canoe back out into the river, using his paddle and the strength of his arm to steady them against the pull of the current. The song of the thrush followed them, but now their senses were much too fixed upon the river itself to pay it heed.
Ita caught up her spear and, ignoring the fiery pain shooting up her leg, stood in the front of the canoe, balancing with far more grace and experience than Draven would have expected. Perhaps she had been practicing without his knowledge.
She raised the spear above her head, grasping the shaft loosely at its balance point. Any pain she experienced was completely lost in the intensity of her focus
. Nevertheless, if Hydrus should by some miracle pass this way at this hour, he might easily slip past through the deep trench in the middle of the river. It would take a stroke of luck unimaginable—
Ita did not have to speak a word. Draven saw the excitement shoot through her body, and he followed her gaze to see, to his utmost surprise, the dark ribbon just beneath the water’s surface. It could be any of the great fish, a smaller mate of Hydrus’s perhaps. But he knew this wasn’t so. Not with the morning bird singing at sunfall.
Ita shifted just a little, enough to communicate everything required to her brother. With a dip of his paddle he turned the canoe, presenting Ita with the best and broadest view of the approaching fish.
And then he was near.
Hydrus!
Hydrus was near!
The dream of every warrior. The magnificent, the cold and ancient one. The setting sun’s rays glanced off the river, but not here. No glare was cast just here.
They beheld enormous eyes meant for seeing in the darkest places. His jutting lower jaw boasted no teeth but was sharp and deadly like that of some weirdly misshapen snapping turtle, open to catch anything that might swim too near. Trailing dorsal fins crowned his head; ten long rays, one for each decade of his life. The pelvic fins were similarly elongated, red-tipped and trailing down the length of his long body. It would have been impossible to say, in that heart-thudding moment, just how long that body was. Fifteen, even eighteen rods of twisting, writhing power. The body was scaleless, the black skin covered with a silvery guanine.
He was hideous. He was beautiful.
He was near.
For an instant, a certain future flashed through Draven’s mind. He saw it all. He saw himself plunging his paddle hard and turning the canoe, putting Ita off balance so that her aim went wide. He saw himself preventing what he knew must happen—preventing the success of his proud, brave sister. Preventing her from capturing the heart’s dream of every man in Rannul. He saw this dark vision, and for the time it took his heart to pound in a single beat, he considered.
Instead, Draven held the canoe firm. All was silent in the ears of both brother and sister poised in this too-brief moment. They did not hear the song of the morning bird. They did not hear the murmur of the river. They did not hear the sudden stilling of the wind that might have blown Ita’s spear off course. Their ears were deaf. Their sight was all.
Ita drew back her arm and threw.
The force with which she hurled her spear caused her to lose all balance. Draven had not even the chance to cry out before his sister disappeared beneath the river’s surface. His ears, still deaf, did not even hear the splash.
And Ita plunged down, down. She felt the pull of the current and knew suddenly, with a heave of her heart, the great strength of Hydrus, who swam against that pull with ease. She forced her eyes open, though the water was too dark for vision.
Yet she did see. Perhaps she only imagined it. Nevertheless, she saw.
She saw the great eye of Hydrus fixed upon her with cold clarity. She saw the body writhe and turn its massive, ugly, snapping jaws. She saw the blood where her spear, thrown true, had pierced the mighty fish. Then another twist, and Hydrus gazed at her again.
For a moment they looked upon one another—the girl who felt every pain, every shame, to the fullest depths of her heart; the fish who felt nothing, who never had felt anything, who moved only according to instinct.
They were one. They looked into each other’s eyes, and ever so briefly both knew, in a moment of conjoined wonder, the wholeness, the truth of life.
Then Hydrus’s massive, twisting body wrapped around Ita. The long rays of his pelvic fins lashed at her face and hands, burning with sharpness she did not expect. The weight of him was crushing, and she had not the strength to break free. But all was well, even in pain: She would die with him gladly for the sake of having lived such a moment.
Just as her lungs were ready to give up and her heart ready to give out, she felt Hydrus’s body pulled away. Powerful arms closed around her, and the next thing she knew, her head broke the surface of the river. Her ears worked again, and she heard the voice of Hanna and choruses of the forest shouting, perhaps in outrage, perhaps in encouragement. It hardly mattered. She heard her brother’s voice in her ear saying, “Relax. Don’t fight me.”
She obeyed, and Draven bore her safely to shore. Her sodden clothes weighed heavily upon her, and she could scarcely raise herself up enough to cough and gasp for breath. She wanted to collapse and lie there upon the bank forever.
But she raised her head, crying, “Hydrus!”
She needn’t have worried. The moment he’d safely deposited her on the shore, Draven plunged back into the river, allowing the current to carry him swiftly. Ita sat up, pushing wet hair from her eyes, and saw the enormous, twisting body caught in the shallow bend of the river. Any moment now, Hanna would catch it up and bear it away forever.
But Draven reached it and hauled it to the shore. It was so vast, she could see his every muscle straining. He could not get it all the way onto the riverbank but managed to haul at least half of it up before he collapsed, exhausted by the effort.
And so they lay—brother, sister, and mighty Hydrus—as the sun fell behind the trees.
Ita’s trophy was far too big to carry back to Rannul. Ita could not even carry herself. She had abused her foot too much for one day, and she would not walk for many hours yet. But she refused to leave her trophy behind.
“No!” she insisted when Draven reached out to pick her up. “No, I will stay. I will guard Hydrus and I will sing the songs of death and passing over him. You go to Rannul, as fast as you can, and tell our father what we have done. They will come. They will help.”
She could not see the strange, sorrowful look on Draven’s face, for dusk was too heavy on the world, and her eyes were too full of Hydrus’s vastness to notice anything else.
Draven did not argue. He looked up and down the river, wishing he might spot his canoe come to ground somewhere near so that he might fetch the remaining spears and leave his sister a weapon at least. “If something should come upon you in the darkness—” he began.
“It will see what I have done and turn away in fear!” Ita replied fiercely, though she herself could not even stand.
So Draven took a small stone knife from his belt and placed it in her hands. He kissed the top of her head before turning and darting into the forest, making his way with all speed back up the riverbank.
How long she sat there keeping watch over Hydrus, Ita never could say. She sang the songs of passing in time to the river’s murmur, her hand lightly touching the slimy head of the fish as she sang. Her arms and face still burned with the cuts he had given her, but she did not blame him for that. Indeed, she welcomed the pain as her just reward. Hydrus’s eyes were as wide and staring in death as ever they were in life. An eerie companion was he, and yet Ita would not have traded this long, lonely vigil for anything.
Once she thought she heard the morning bird sing again, its silver voice beckoning to her. She raised her head and gazed about, seeking after the little singer. She found herself looking across the river.
What was that she saw? On the far bank, in moonlight . . . Who was that standing with a weapon in hand, as though on guard? A form too far away to recognize, and yet somehow familiar. A stranger, an enemy even, on the enemy’s shore.
And yet it seemed to Ita that her eyes met his across the darkness, across the water. Had he seen her fight with Hydrus? Though it may have been a trick of the moonlight, she thought he raised his spear in salute.
But the sudden sound of approaching drums drew her gaze away. Ita turned to look up the bank and saw torchlight. The men of Rannul approached. Casting a glance back across the water, Ita sought the watchful form of the stranger. But he was gone, whoever he was, and her heart sank in that knowledge.
Then the drums were all around her, and the torchlight shone upon the faces of her father and his proud
est warriors.
“What, Ita?” cried Gaher, swooping down upon her and catching her up in his arms. “What is it you have done, my fierce wolf pup?” And he grinned hugely as he surveyed the vast coils of Hydrus’s body. The warriors splashed into the river, and it took sixteen of them to lift that great trophy up onto their shoulders. Several cried out with surprise as Hydrus’s fins cut their hands.
“My daughter has done this!” Gaher declared, his eyes bright in his bearded face. “My Ita. My Itala!” He declared her woman’s name with pride, and his daughter’s heart beat fast with a mixture of joy and sudden terror at the enormity of adulthood come down upon her shoulders.
So the sixteen warriors carried Hydrus back to the village, drums beating and voices shouting victory songs all the way. Gaher and another of his men bore Ita up on their shoulders, and she was obliged to duck and push branches away, so quickly did they carry her back to the victory feasting of Rannul. She longed for nothing so much as to crawl into her small sod house and sleep for days. But this could not be. For she had conquered a dream.
All through the night and the long day following, she cast about for some glimpse of Draven. But she did not see him, not for a seven-night following.
The old woman sat silently for such a long time after finishing her tale, the girl began to wonder if her grandmother had gone to sleep with her eyes open. She seemed to gaze up at the carving of Draven, but her heart and mind were a hundred leagues away.
At length she blinked and addressed herself to Akilun, asking quietly, “Did I tell it right? Is that how the story goes?”
“Indeed you told it perfectly,” Akilun assured her. He had not worked on his carving but stood and listened to the whole of the tale without once moving or interrupting. “I could not have told it better myself.” Then he turned to the girl and smiled at her, and she flushed with pleasure, though her shyness made her lean into her grandmother. “And what do you make of such a tale?” Akilun asked her.