Chapter 18: The Water’s Grasp
I tried to concentrate on Eddy’s request, but my whole body focused on the warmth that surrounded my hand, as it lay in his. I glanced down at my mother, lying beside us on the carpet. Beneath the blanket she looked peaceful, as if she was enjoying a deserved nap. She had said she was going to bring the sword out of the dead lake, somehow, but she had been unable to. How could I do what she couldn’t? I looked up at Eddy and tried to assess how he felt, holding my hand. He had his face under complete control, though, and I could read nothing in it.
I bit my lip. “I’ll try.”
“Good.” He snapped into commander-in-chief mode and let my hand fall. “We need to take your mother with us, it’s the only way we can make sure she’s okay. Boxer could carry the three of us, of course, but it wouldn’t be comfortable for your Mum. We should take your car. Can you drive?”
I shook my head.
“I’ve driven a tractor, I’m sure I’ll learn.”
“But you’ve not got a license. It’s against the law.”
Eddy raised his eyebrows slightly, giving me a magnificent look that said. ‘I am the King.’
“Right. Okay. Um, shall I make some travel mugs?” Oh my God. Put me in a crisis and I was still capable of saying the stupidest things. “Of course not, no time for tea or coffee. Let’s go.”
I took the car keys from their hook on the kitchen wall. Eddy bent and lifted Mum as if she weighed no more than the cushion she rested her head on. Every time he exhibited it, I was astonished by Eddy’s enormous strength.
I opened the door to let him out, then closed and locked it behind us, though I guessed that one small Yale lock wouldn’t stop Morgan le Fay if she really wanted to get in. Rain still poured out of the sky, but now that I knew I was doing it, I kept myself completely dry. I diverted raindrops around me as if I stood beneath a small breeze that blew outwards.
We settled Mum in the back seat of the car, then Eddy jogged away to the back garden. I got into the passenger seat of the car and for the first time I remembered Boxer. The gigantic horse had been standing in our back garden all this time!
Eddy returned and jumped into the driver’s seat. “He’ll wait here for me to come back. He’s alright.”
“Poor thing.”
“Anyway,” Eddy held out his hand and I dropped the key into it. He scanned the dashboard and stuck it into the ignition. The engine hummed to life and he glanced down at his feet among the pedals. “Let’s see.” He folded the gearstick in his enormous fist, twitched it forward, and the car jerked backwards along the driveway. “Sorry about that.”
On the road he turned the car tightly in reverse, then stopped and drove it slowly down Chalice Drive. I held my breath. What if somebody saw us? What if – heaven forbid – the police stopped us? Would they accuse Eddy of stealing Mum’s car?
Eddy scanned the dashboard for a split-second, then flipped an indicator and turned left onto the main road. “See.” He grinned. “Easy.”
There were no limits to the boy’s talents, it seemed. I directed him to the hives, then got out and unlocked the gate. Eddy parked the car next to the hut and I kissed Mum on the cheek. “Wish me luck,” I whispered.
Walking between the hives I trembled, remembering how the effort of summoning the water had affected Mum. I halted at the last hive, on the top of the slight rise. “Okay. This is where Mum stood.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“No, I don’t think so. Just stand next to me, and be ready to catch me, or talk me back to being normal if I seem to go a bit mental.”
“I’m sure you won’t.”
I tried not to think about it, but still my stomach twisted with fear. Was this my last moment of sanity? Would I remember whatever happened next?
“Well, I hope not...” I took one last look at Eddy’s face, soaking at all in. “You’ll take care of Mum if some thing happens?”
“Of course Madeleine. But you’ll be fine. He touched a hand to my cheek. I shivered and held my breath. Beneath the familiar electricity of his touch I felt strength and confidence flowing through me.
“Right. Let’s do this.” I raised my hands as I had seen Mum raise hers, and let my mind scan the countryside for water. There was a jagged trickle in the ditch, but at the end of the field the ditch ran out into a much wider drainage canal. That was where Mum had sought the water, I was sure.
Somewhere, on the edge of my perception the canal ran into the river, but I focused on the nearest section. Embracing it with my thoughts, I stopped it from flowing away from me. It grew fractionally as water flowed into it, and I skimmed the build up towards me. I pulled the trickle of water into the little drainage ditch in front of us, and felt it swell.
Encouraged I fastened on an entire section of the canal and urged it towards me. I gritted my teeth at the effort.
The flow into the crease at the bottom of the rise built to a steady pour.
“It’s working,” Eddy whispered beside me. “There’s water around the fence posts.”
I sighed with relief. I felt under strain, but nothing that I couldn’t handle. It was as if I was setting out on a hard swim, working at speed, but still with a good distance to travel. Water in the drainage canal surged into the space I had created and I took hold of that as well, hauling it towards me. Into the small pool I created the flow from the canal turned into a flood. I risked shifting from my water eye to my actual sight.
I gasped.
Black and glistening water lapped halfway up the fence posts, far higher than Mum had managed. Still, though, there was work to be done if I was to create a lake of any note. I reached further afield and fastened upon the river in the distance. It had energy and flow of its own, so it didn’t take too much effort on my part to divert the liquid and pull it towards me. Impatient I grabbed at it, hurrying the river along the canal. In the distance I felt a rowboat, bobbing on the end of a fragile line. Suddenly filled with ambition I pushed water under the boat, rocking it and shoving at it until suddenly it broke free. I shaped water into a cradle under its hull and skimmed it from the river into the canal and towards us.
I felt the weight of Eddy’s hand on my shoulder. “Oh well done Maddie, that’s fantastic.”
I looked again, and gasped. The night landscape before me was completely transformed. Instead of scrubby grass falling to a ditch, and fence, and then rising away to fallow winter meadow, I stood on the bank of a large pond. The fence had completely disappeared. The pool crept towards our feet, its surface choppy and swirling as water poured in at one end.
“You’ve done it,” Eddy said. “Now all we need is my sword.”
I faltered. I hadn’t thought as far ahead as the sword. I had only seen Mum gather the water.
“I don’t know...”
“Use the water in the lake.” Eddy’s hand dropped to the small of my back and he urged me forward. “It will be like an extension of yourself.”
I stepped toward the water, crouched, and dipped my fingers into it. I felt the great mass of water. It whirled and shifted, but it was empty save for silt and leaves. No sword. I shook my head.
Eddy moved his hand to my shoulder. “Are you okay Maddie? It’s not hurting you is it?”
“No. It’s just difficult.”
He shifted his grip on my shoulder, warm and comforting. “Try the bottom.”
I scanned the shape of the ditch and meadow under the body of water. Ragged grass and humps and lumps of soil. The fence posts. Molehills. Still nothing. I grasped the depths of the pool with my mind and pressed them into the ground. I pushed tendrils of water seeping, searching into the soil. Stones and tree roots. A sudden surge as water flooded down an abandoned rabbit hole. Nothing. Deeper into the ground and then... Something. A smooth shape, a cylinder. I levered water towards it, all around it, testing it. A long, hard, heavy shape, longer than my arm and narrow.
I sighed with relief. I had it.
I for
ced water into cracks and gaps in the soil around the sword, until I turned it all into glutinous mud. Soupier and soupier, it became more water than mud.
“It’s there,” I gasped. “But I don’t know what to do with it. It won’t float.”
We both stood ankle deep in water now. The lake was as wide as a soccer pitch and Eddy stepped into it up to his knees, as if he could catch sight of his sword. “It’s been done before. It has to be possible. Your mother thought she could do it. I believe in you, you can do it too.”
The sword lay in water now, entirely free of the ground, but deep below the surface of the lake. The moon broke away from clouds and I stared at the silvery liquid, trying to calculate where the sword lay hidden. The row boat bobbed into view and floated gently towards us.
“Flood water lifts cars, it smashes up bridges. It has the power to move metal. You just need to work it.”
“Ok.” Floodwater, I thought, surging. I seized a portion of the lake water and compressed it, as if squeezing it between my cupped hands. When I released it, the pressurized section leapt forward, its leading edge harder than the rest of the depths. I tried again, pressurising more water, and tighter. As I released it I aimed the surge at the sword, and the weapon moved. It bobbed away from the speed of the heavy water. Before it had time to sink back down, I pushed it again, and again. The fourth time I managed the underwater surge into a steady, controlled motion, shaping it into a bed beneath the sword. I carried it, lifted it.
“Maddie!” Eddy’s voice sounded tight with emotion. “There it is. You’ve done it!”
He stepped into the water, then lurched sideways as something shifted underfoot.
“Stop a minute.” I raised one hand, as if telling the sword to wait. With the other I beckoned at the boat. It slid smoothly towards us.
“This is going to be easier than in the swimming pool. Good job.”
I smirked. “If there was any chance of getting you back in your lost property costume, then I might think twice about it.”
The boat rocked as Eddy climbed in. He looked at me expectantly, as I screwed one eye shut. Holding the sword on the water’s surface, while slipping the boat towards it, was a new kind of multi-tasking. I took a couple of deep breaths, then got the boat moving again. When it had a bit of momentum I shifted concentration to the sword. As my mind adjusted to the effort and sensations of manipulating the water it became easier. I remembered a pre-Raphaelite painting I had seen somewhere of the King and Excalibur. Gathering the hard surface of water I had formed under the sword I compressed it into a smaller and smaller point on which the middle of the sword rested. Streams of water ran from the scabbard and dripped from its end as it rose from the surface. When the sword rested on a foot high column of water I turned my attention to its appearance. A shaft of moonlight made it into silver filigree and lace, and I let its surface hang slightly, like the folds of a silken sleeve. As the boat bearing Eddy neared it I rolled the water into five smooth tubes, wrapping them around the scabbard like fingers and thumb.
The arm lifted further from the water and Eddy looked back at me. “Madeleine, this is amazing. It’s the hand of the lady through the surface of the lake.”
“Concentrate on the sword,” I warned.
Clouds cleared the moon completely. The entire surface of the lake turned to silver with stripes of black in the wake of the rowboat. Eddy leaned across its prow, his hair hung over his face, and moonlight bleached it to the colour of ivory. He stretched out an arm towards the pale hand protruding from the water’s surface. Gleaming drops ran down its silken sleeve and Eddy gently lifted Excalibur from the grasp of lake. The water melted away and he sat up straight, then stood as I began pulling the boat towards me.
“Careful.” I stepped back.
“I trust you.” He only had eyes for the sword as he slid it gently from the scabbard. Moonlight flickered down its blade. A thousand years in the mud and it looked as good as new.
“Right.” He jumped over the prow of the boat into foot-deep water and set spray splashing toward me.
“Careful.” I winced, hearing myself sound just like my grandmother.
“Maddie, this is completely amazing.” He grabbed me around the shoulders, squashing the air out of my lungs. For a split second I leaned against him, enough to feel one beat of his heart, before he stepped away again. “You’ve done so well. I’m so proud of you.” Eddy’s voice fizzed with excitement.
I gulped, understanding how armies and countries could follow somebody like this. “Really? I’m pretty amazed myself but...”
“Let’s get your mother back.” He swished Excalibur through the air. “Come on.”
“Care... Okay.”
I reached my mind out to the dam I had woven from the canal water. Gently I let it melt and fold over from the top. A surge of water across the meadows could do all sorts of damage. The canal had to return gradually to the way it lay before I messed with it.
Mum seemed to be sleeping soundly in the back seat of the car. Eddy drove us quickly and carefully back to Chalice Drive. It was like he had been driving for years.
Outside the house I managed to wake Mum up, then led her inside, upstairs and to bed. Downstairs I saw Eddy through the kitchen window, talking to his enormous chestnut horse in the back garden.
I grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl, then, outside, I stroked Boxer’s nose. “Hey big fella. You know how much I’m in your debt, again.”
“Hey.” Eddy raised an eyebrow.
“And yours of course.” I touched a hand to his chest. “Big fella...”
Surprise flickered across his face. I gulped, waiting for his inevitable step away.
He stayed where he was and a smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. “Good.”
“I was going to give him this.” I held out the apple. “But you can have it if you want.”
“I’m not sure.” His chest rose as he took a deep breath. “You think this deserves a hug?”
My own inhalation caught in my throat. Unable to speak, barely able to think about anything other than the anticipation of Eddy’s embrace, I quivered and locked my gaze on his face.
Eddy stepped closer and wrapped his arms around me. I tilted my face up to him. My pulse raced and I inhaled his smell of cut grass and leather. Closing my eyes I felt his warm breath on my face. I parted my lips and tried to stop my knees from buckling.
He dropped his lips to mine. My mind wiped clear. All my self, all my mind, all my body focused on the connection between his lips and mine. His mouth stirred against me. Gently then harder. My knees gave way and his right hand caught me in the small of my back.
Eddy moved his face away a fraction. “I’m a bit embarrassed,” he murmured. “In front of Boxer.”
I examined his face. Once again he gave nothing away, but his kiss had told me enough.
“Okay.” I took his hand and led him into the kitchen. Everything I wanted, everything I dreamed of, was coming true in an instant. I felt I had become who I was supposed to be, and this was my reward. There would be no more wondering about what Madeleine was really like.
I closed the kitchen door. Eddy stood against the wall, on the opposite side of the room. His eyes shone as his gaze looped over my face, and I pursued him. I needed to connect my lips to his again, to feel right, to feel complete. I placed a hand either side of his ribcage, impossibly wide, and felt his heart drumming beneath my fingers. He was too tall for me to kiss him without him bending, so I stood on tiptoes and lifted my face as close to his as I could, holding my breath. Again I felt his generous lips on mine. I opened my mouth and pressed my body against his spare muscular frame. His tongue tilted over the inside of my lips.
He broke away.
“What?” I kept my eyes closed.
“I heard something.” He lifted his head, far above mine.
“It’s nothing, or, Boxer.”
“No.” With one hand on my waist he moved into the middle of the room. “Somethi
ng at the front of the house.”
I followed him into the doorway to the front room and screamed. The old woman with the empty shopping basket stood in our front garden, her face pressed to the window. She heaved the basket at the glass and it shattered in pieces. The outside became inside, inside was outside, and we were defenceless.