Elida told no one when she first saw the water’s heartbeat, a thrum of bright points piercing the still surface of the pool with their light. When the adults found out, she would sit at the table beside the other students. She would be watched, and she wouldn’t be allowed to dawdle at the dryad’s pool.
Elida loved the dryad. She was a flicker of blushing flowers among the dark conifer trees, softness and light in a hard, dark forest. When Elida lay very still and pretended to sleep in the summer sun, the woman-shaped flowers came so close that Elida could smell white trumpet-honey blossoms and freshly trampled mint. She always ran when Elida turned her head, making great speed look effortless as her branch-like legs grew to touch the ground and then snapped off as she ran. Each afternoon, Elida filled her bucket at the pool and then held still a little longer than the day before. Each afternoon, the scent of flowers was a little stronger when she could no longer resist opening her eyes.
The dryad’s water sparkled more than any water that Elida had seen since waking to the heartbeat. She tried to catch as many of the motes as she could, so that Racker would keep choosing her to fetch water. Today she had brought a tight pinecone from the forest as bait to trap them. Racker said that the pinecones opened when there was a fire, but the forest had not burned since before Elida was born. She knew them as tight green eggs, knobby and scaled like a lizard’s back.
She knelt and held the pinecone out over the sparkling water. Elida felt the water’s attention as lights gathered under her hand, forming a luminous shadow. She placed the pinecone on the water’s surface, and the bright motes touched it.
“Lift it,” she whispered.
The pinecone did not sink. As soft ripples echoed its shape across the pond, more motes gathered to reinforce the net of light.
Elida raised her iron-bound bucket and started a smooth and careful movement toward the water. At the instant that the rim touched the water’s surface, the lights recoiled, clustering on the other side of the pinecone. “Get in,” said Elida, shoving without words in the way that raised the water, sometimes. She felt a very small tingle run up her neck.
She felt the water’s will push back, like gentle hands on her shoulders that nudged her away from the pool.
“Get in,” she said. She shoved harder, leaning forward. “You have to do what I say. You’re little.” The bright specks scattered and the pinecone dropped, sinking.
Elida whined and threw down her bucket. She threw herself backward after it, landing in the grass beside the pond. She’d pretend to nap until the lights came back. Maybe she’d see the dryad, too.
She pretended so well that she actually slept for a while.
Loud sniffing woke her. The feet beside her were large cloven hooves, and Elida looked up to see a mean little face. The man’s nose was smashed flat, and his red eyes were close and piggy. Wide animal ears jutted from either side of his head, under two ridged and curling horns. Thick hair circled his entire head, and a dark short beard flowed seamlessly into the fur of his muscled chest. He was squatting, hunched over Elida, scowling and sniffing.
“You stink, little milk-drinker.” His breath was hot and fetid. He stood and tugged the ash-blackened cloth around his body back into place. A horse’s tail emerged from the base, and he draped it over one arm. He carried a stick in his opposite hand, wrapped with ribbons, and on the end was a pinecone like no pinecone Elida had ever seen, its scales open to dark little caverns.
“Well, you smell like a goat that’s rolled in burned fish,” replied Elida, sitting up.
He hissed with laughter, grimacing widely over closed teeth. “This is not your water,” he said. “It smells of sweeter visitors. I have been following her scent for six long days, since I caught it on the wind. So tell me, milk-drinker child, where is she?”
“Which she?” asked Elida, her throat thick. “Our whole village comes to this pond.”
“Don’t play-act a simpleton.” The goat-man reached out and gripped Elida’s jaw in his fleshy palm. “I can see your power and I will have your dryad now, little water-wizard.”
“I don’t know what any of that is,” said Elida. He squeezed, and she yelped in pain. Then he stopped, his eyes looking over her head, and released her face.
She turned and looked across the water. The dryad stood at the edge of the trees, white in the dappled shade. Elida could see the fear on her open, pink-blooming face even from this distance.
The dryad ran, and the hairy creature sprinted around the pool, his cloven hooves packing the dirt at its edge. Both figures disappeared into the trees before Elida got her feet under her. She stared into the dark forest, already closed over the figures, and then balled her tunic in her fists and hiked it up to run up the steep hill home.
She went straight to the long wooden table where the learners hunched over their gilded bowls, and she shouted. Racker turned from his pacing as he supervised the line of students. Their faces lifted, every tendril that had been laboriously coaxed from the water splashing back down into golden bowls.
“Hush,” Racker said as he caught Elida by the shoulders. “Where’s our water?”
“There’s a goaty-man by the pool,” said Elida. “A monster.”
“A satyr has finally come,” said Racker. He released Elida and nodded to the others. “No more practice, today. We’ll tell the Elders and then we can help them protect the village.”
“What about the dryad? Who will protect her?” asked Elida.
“We don’t interfere with wild magic,” said Racker.
“But what is he going to do to her?” demanded Elida.
Racker exchanged a glance with the oldest boy at the table, and both their mouths quirked to one side in a leer. “Nothing you need to worry about, little one,” he said.
“She looked afraid,” Elida pressed.
“I bet she is.” Racker picked up a bundle of sticks and handed each student a thin switch. “That’s how things go, out there in the wild. Change is brutal and scary and tough. We stay away from it and protect our own.”
“We know her. She’s part of our village too,” said Elida. “She’s not wild.”
“We’ve seen her, but she’s not one of us,” Racker said. “We don’t owe her anything. Besides, it’s a satyr. Even the Elders can’t call enough water to fight a satyr. Go inside the longhouse, and wait.”
“I’m not a baby and I will not hide with the mothers,” said Elida.
“Everyone will be in the longhouse except for us chosen by the water,” said Racker, with a proud lift of his head. One hand went to the silver brooch on his homespun tunic, a thin boat with a dragon’s-head prow. It was a badge for the strongest student, given as a reminder to break the water to his will so thoroughly that, like the ship, he would not only float but dare to taunt it with a symbol of fire. The brooch was also a sign of his authority over the other children, because he was the tasked with teaching them what came naturally to him. “We will go with the Elders and keep the village from burning, and then you can all thank us.”
“I’m chosen too,” said Elida.
“I don’t believe you,” said Racker. “You’re lying. Go inside.”
“No,” said Elida. “I’m going to go help her, even if you won’t.”
“You have to do what I say,” he said. “You’re little.”
Elida turned and ran down the slope, back to the pond. She could see only the top of the dark green mass of trees, and as she ran toward them and dropped away from the village she heard Racker’s voice shouting, then adult voices. She ignored the shouts and looked past the pond toward the trees where the smoke was thickest.
Elida ran to her abandoned bucket where it lay beside the water. She crashed into the ankle-deep shallows, ignoring the twinkling motes. She felt their fear as they scattered, but they were thinking of the burning woods now, not her vessel. Elida scooped water in a single huge motion, using all of her strength. She hurried between the trees, pursuing the fire with the heavy bucket hitting her kneecaps.
She smelled crushed petals before she saw the two creatures. The satyr had run the dryad to ground in a dark bed of conifer needles, not far from the tree line. He crouched over her still, pale form, stroking a nearby seedling tree with his black fingernails. As he pulled his fingers along its length, the green wood began to smolder and flame. Trees behind him already burned, and the pinecone on his staff was aflame like a bright torch. He reached for the dryad’s back, a thin rib of stick with the petals ripped away, and caught one of her branches between his fingers.
Elida planted her feet and lifted her bucket.
The satyr raised his face to her in a grotesque smile, and she poured the entire bucket of water over him before he could speak. His staff was extinguished.
With a roar, the satyr launched himself at her. His two ram-horns caught Elida in the belly, tossing her into the air, and his curly hair hung wet and straight and whipped her as she flew. She hit the ground hard, breathless.
The wet satyr stepped toward her and ripped the bucket handle from her grasp. “No water wizard needs a bucket,” he said, sparking quick flame on his fingers and igniting the wood. He threw her bucket aside, new kindling for his fires, and seized Elida in his burning hands.
She screamed as the flames caught her shirt and hair. Smoke stung her eyes, and she struggled against the grip that held her as her flesh began to scald and broil. His hooves drummed at the dirt.
He stopped abruptly, jarring Elida, who he still held aloft in her burning clothes. The heat was drying his hair even as it consumed Elida’s. Stinking like any wet mammal, it began to curl around his red eyes. “You are untrained. You are nothing,” he said. “Let’s see if you are so pathetic that you drown.”
The satyr threw Elida backward into the pool.
She heard his laugh start before the water closed over her ears. She sank, limbs struggling, the hot burns on her chest eased but still raw. She called to the lights. Lift me, she thought. Lift me! Lift me!
The motes gathered around her, trailing her sinking body like the bubbles that escaped her tunic. They didn’t understand the urgency. “Lift me,” she said aloud, angry at their curiosity, and her air escaped with the command.
She felt them push back, a wordless no.
Elida’s next breath was water. Her chest spasmed inward trying to throw it out, but her flaring nostrils and frantic mouth only took in more water. The motes pushed her down. Her rump touched the bottom of the pond, and Elida saw a cloud of sand rise up after the bubbles and motes, dimming her vision.
All she could see were the sparkling lights, and they were beautiful and wild and free.
“Do what you want to, then,” whispered Elida, her lips moving around the water.
The lights came crashing down on her. She felt the shiver start in her fingertips and collide over her heart as they drew something out. She was not commanding the motes. They were drawing something out of her for their own purpose.
The pond’s water surged up, and the light around Elida grew brighter for a breathless heartbeat as she approached the surface. The water dropped her on the shore and then all of it rushed into the woods, flying together in a great clear mass, even flowing out of her lungs. She took in sweet air, on her knees and palms, and stared at the empty bowl of wet sand that had been the pond. Then she turned her head in the direction of the water’s roaring.
The wave surged back, still flying over the land, with the satyr suspended inside. His mouth gaped when he met Elida’s eyes, but whatever insult he tried to shout cost him his last breath. The water parted over Elida, whisking the goat-man to one side, and flowed back into its pool.
She stood, and turned to the pond. The light-spangled surface was perfectly smooth, although Elida could see a brown form struggling in the depths, chained in golden lights.
She could hear adults shouting her name, and she looked to the hill. A perfect line of rain clouds waited at the top of the ridge, dazzling with spots of white light in their dark depths. A thick fence of rain was coming down. The Elders, all wearing blue cloaks, were spaced evenly underneath it with their thick staffs held high. She saw one distant figure gesture to someone behind to stay back, and then they all stepped as one, moving the rain and the clouds closer to the burning forest. A crowd pressed forward just behind the rain.
They were coming for her. The village was braving the satyr to come for their child, but they were only coming for her, and they were too slow to help the dryad.
Elida turned away and plunged into the fiery trees. She followed the water’s path over wet, extinguished logs back to the clearing. The flames here had been extinguished by the living pond, but the dryad was no more than wet ash outlined by skeletal sticks. Her petals, and her lively magic, were gone from the corpse.
Elida fell heavily to the ground with a sob. She reached out to touch one burned rib, and the thin charcoal crumbled beneath her fingers. Her fingers followed it down until she hit something firm, and she sat up and brushed ash away.
A pinecone as large as her head was at the center of the burned dryad, its scales fully open. Bright lights glowed within. She lifted it and saw a newborn baby curled in one of its crevices, and then another, and another. Each would fit in the palm of her hand, and had a greenish inner glow. The tiny dryads slept, folded tightly in their niches.
Elida lifted the pinecone reverently, cradling it in her arms.
She walked back toward the pond, her burned skin aching. She could hear adults shouting. Her father’s voice was loudest above the others, calling her name. She emerged from the trees to see the line of rain more than halfway down the grassy hill, advancing slowly, with the adults of the village gathered behind it.
When he saw Elida, her father ran forward through the barrier of water, ignoring the Elders. He lifted her, and she folded herself up against him, curling limply around the pinecone. She smelled sweat in the bend of his neck. Others followed him, running forward to surround Elida and her father, then spreading out to roam curiously. The Elders on the hillside lowered their arms, and the clouds cleared.
After a long quiet, her father spoke. “Elida,” he said. His voice was thick with fear but already getting hard and scolding by the end of her name. “You—”
“Did you see the water?” a soft voice interrupted him.
Her father lowered Elida from his face and turned to the speaker.
The oldest of the wizards, his thin hair soaking wet, stood before them. “Did you see the water? Don’t scold the child,” he said. He looked deeply into Elida’s eyes and then down to the pinecone she held. He nodded at her slightly.
The Elder took off his own damp cloak. He lifted the blue mantle and placed it around her shoulders, and then he tucked it over the pinecone. The wizard held out his hand. “Racker,” he called.
The older boy stepped out of the crowd. “She’s the youngest,” he protested.
Elida gently squeezed her small charges.
“That’s a satyr,” said the Elder, “dead at the hands of an untrained child. She has discovered something that she needs to teach us all.” He beckoned with his fingers, never taking his dark eyes from Elida.
Racker stepped forward and gave up the ship-shaped brooch.
Elida put her cheek back down on her father’s shoulder. “I don’t want to stand by the table,” she said, looking over the water at the blackened tree trunks. Her childhood freedom had burned today. She saw the friendly sparkles in the pool, and she felt the tip of the pinecone bite into the soft flesh under her jaw. “The wild little ones are part of our village too. That’s all.”
The Elder gently plucked a fold of blue cloth away from Elida’s chest. “Then your only work is to remind us of that lesson while you go about your business.” He pinned the ship to her robe with a soft touch.
The pond winked to Elida as she was carried home.
About the Author
C.A. Barrett is a lifelong reader and writer. This is her first fiction publication.