Tad was beginning to hate the spear.

It was his first spear, and — when he had woken on the morning of his twelfth Naming Day to find it leaning against the wall beside his bed — he had thought that it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. His father had always pretended that Naming Day presents were brought each year by the Moon Elves, who traveled to Earth on moonbeams and brought gifts to well-behaved girls and boys. But it had been a long time since Tad had believed in the Moon Elves, and besides he would have recognized the handiwork of his father, Pondleweed, anywhere. The spear had a broad chiseled flint point, a polished wooden haft painted in red-and-black stripes, and a leatherleaf handgrip, just the right size for Tad’s hand. There was even a decorative tassel at the end, made of braided silkgrass threaded with brightly colored seeds. No boy, Tad was sure, had ever had a finer weapon or a better Naming Day gift. Just owning it was enough to make him almost burst with pride.

Of course, it wasn’t the way the spear looked that was the problem. It was the way the thing behaved. No matter what Tad did, the spear simply wouldn’t do what he wanted it to. It acted as though some magicker had put an evil spell on it. It seemed to have a mind of its own, and that mind was mischievous, contrary, and sometimes just plain mean.

This time his throw should have been perfect. He had taken his stance just as Pondleweed had taught him: one foot forward, knees braced, back straight. He had taken his time, drawing back his arm, rehearsing every move in his head, taking careful aim. The target was a square of birch bark with a great round eye — the Owl’s Eye, Pondleweed called it — painted with red berry juice in the center. A good spearsman, Pondleweed said, could hit that Eye with every throw — and every man of the Fisher Tribe, it went without saying, was an expert with the spear.

Tad just knew he had it right this time. It felt right. As the spear flew from his hand, he could almost hear the solid thunk of the stone point hitting home and the satisfying hum of the quivering haft. He had even opened his mouth to give a delighted yell of triumph. And then, at the very last minute, everything went sour. The spear wobbled, veered sideways, and dived abruptly out of the air. It bounced once, slithered under the blackberry bushes, scooted across the ground, and splashed heavily into the pond. It floated there for a moment on the water’s surface; then — deliberately, Tad thought — it sank, leaving behind a mocking trail of bubbles. Tad stared after it in dismay.

The pond erupted in a chorus of croaks from a bevy of startled frogs, followed by a raucous burst of what sounded like loud amphibian laughter. A blue jay, balanced on an overhanging branch, set up a derisive squawk. “Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!” She sounded as if something were squeezing her around the middle. Tad wished it were him.

He glared at the blue jay furiously. It wasn’t wise to pick a fight with birds, Pondleweed said; even seed-eating birds could be dangerous, with their knife-edged claws and their dagger-long beaks capable of pecking an unwary Fisher right in two. “If it’s near as big as you or bigger,” Pondleweed always said, in that serious voice that he used for things that were important, “chances are it’s not your friend, and even if it’s got no mind to hurt you, it still might. So don’t you go worrying any birds.”

The blue jay gave a last loud giggle and flew away. Tad clenched his fists and kicked angrily at the ground. “Mudpats!” he muttered under his breath. He looked guiltily over his shoulder, but there seemed to be nobody within earshot. He paused for a moment, trying to think of something even worse to say. “Fish pee! Weasel droppings!”

The red Owl’s Eye seemed to be looking right at him with an expression of mocking contempt. Tad bent down, picked up a pebble, and threw it at the target as hard as he could. The pebble missed too. It was his seventeenth miss that day. Tad felt mad enough to pop like a milkweed pod. At the same time he felt like bursting into tears.

“Tad?”

Tad jumped. It was his little sister, Birdie. Birdie had turned nine on her last Naming Day, in the cold Moon of Bare Trees, and her present, Tad remembered, had been a willow-twig doll. Fisher girls were supposed to cook and sew and grow up to be good wives and mothers. Nobody expected them, Tad reflected bitterly, to perform impossible tricks with hateful mudsucking stone-pointed sticks. Birdie didn’t know how lucky she was.

He turned and looked toward the sound of Birdie’s voice. At first he saw only shifting shadows of brown and green. “Find the right place and stay still,” Pondleweed always said, “and most things will pass you by, seeing no more than a bit of twig and leaf.” The trick, of course, was figuring out which place was the right place and then remembering not to wiggle once you were in it. Birdie was better at it than Tad was. She was sitting cross-legged at the foot of a towering clump of dandelions, her small brown face and misty greenish-brown hair dappled with flickering stripes of shade and sun. The bright yellow dandelion blossoms — wide and flat as furry umbrellas — bobbed gently in the breeze high above her head. Her fringed green tunic — belted with braided linenleaf and stitched around the collar with tiny yellow seeds — was just the color of the dandelion stems.

She probably saw and heard everything, Tad thought. The missed target, the sunken spear, the kicking, the yammering about weasel droppings, that stupid bit with the pebble. He must have looked like a puddleflapping idiot. The pointed tips of his ears turned raspberry with embarrassment. He hated himself. He hated everything. He wished he’d been born a frog.

He scowled furiously at Birdie.

“Were you spying on me?” he demanded.

Birdie scowled right back. Fisher girls weren’t supposed to scowl like that, Tad thought. Fisher girls were supposed to be serene and even-tempered and good at handicrafts. At least that was what Pondleweed said. Birdie was always being scolded about her temper and sent to sit on a rock in the garden until her thoughts were as peaceful as a still pool.

“I was not spying,” Birdie said in an unpeaceful, offended sort of voice. “I don’t spy.” She pointed to a tangled heap of woven pea vines beside her in the grass. “I was mending the fishtrap net.”

She bit her lip, studying Tad’s red face.

“Spear throwing just takes practice,” she said. “You have to be patient. It’s like Father says: ‘Berries don’t ripen overnight.’”

So she was watching, Tad thought. It was nice of Birdie to try to be comforting. But he just wasn’t in the mood right now to hear himself compared to a green berry. He was sick of being a green berry. He wanted to be brave and powerful and admired, like the heroes and warriors in Pondleweed’s stories. Like Bog the Weaselkiller who wore a collar of gold nuggets and weasel claws and carried a spear made of blood-red agate that never missed a foe. Or like Frostwort the Winterborn who fought the White Fox of Far Mountain with nothing but a slingshot and a magic silver pebble.

“I’ll be right back,” he told Birdie gruffly. “I have to get my spear.”

He turned and ran toward the pond, darting out along a half-submerged log at the water’s edge. He hesitated for a moment, judging just where his spear had fallen in. Then, in one swift fluid motion, he dived. The clear green water of the pond closed over his head.

Tad was as at home in the water as a fish. Like all Fisher children, he had learned to swim even before he had learned to walk, first splashing in the shallows, then paddling in the deeper water with a floatstick to hang on to, and finally gliding smoothly through the deeps, sleek and slippery as a young otter or a slim brown minner. His green-brown hair flattened slickly to his head, and flaps of skin sealed his nostrils shut to keep the water from going up his nose. He kicked expertly, his wide brown feet with their long webbed toes sweeping strongly through the cool water. He turned a somersault and then began to paddle slowly back and forth, his eyes searching the pond bottom for the spear.

The underwater world gleamed. Ribbons of sunlight wove back and forth across the sandy bottom, tangling themselves together, then untangling themselves and swiftly sliding away again. Silky strands of eelweed brushed Tad’s legs. A fat spotted rock bass — twice as long as Tad himself — poked a curious nose out from a cluster of water lily stems and goggled foolishly up at him. Its big bulging eyes were slightly crossed. It opened and closed its mouth twice, blew a bubble, and slowly withdrew, wiggling backward with a furl of fins and tail. Tad puffed his cheeks and blew a bubble back. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of red and black. It was the spear, resting neatly on a bed of mud and pebbles, looking somehow pleased with itself, as if it had never made a mistake in its life. He scowled at the spear resentfully and began to swim toward it, stretching out a hand to pick it up.

Then — suddenly — something about the pond felt different. Wrong.

At first it was only a nervous ripple and a creepy feeling between his shoulder blades. Then a thump of alarm. Tad twisted in the water, looking anxiously about him. Something was wrong. It was as if something malevolent — a watersnake? — had suddenly turned its head and looked directly at him. Watching with angry little eyes. But where was it? No danger was in sight, but the peaceful and familiar pond felt hostile. The stems and leaves of the water plants were frightening forests; the rocks, dark lairs of lurking terrors. His skin prickled, his heart began to pound, and the hair stood up on the back of his neck.

Watching.

There were strange toadstools and funguses deep in the forest that sometimes shone at night with an eerie green light, standing out like ghostly fires from their dark surroundings. Glowmolds, Pondleweed called them. Tad, hanging fearfully in the water, felt just like that — like a glowmold, helplessly illuminated, caught in a puddle of light with no place to hide. He felt more and more frightened. Something was watching him. He could feel it. He turned his head desperately from side to side, but nothing was there. Nothing he could see.

Are you the One?

The voice, cool and clear as spring water, echoed inside his head. It was an inhuman, somehow empty voice, the sort of voice that the wind or the rain might have if it could speak. It seemed to come from no direction and from all directions at once. At first it reminded Tad of bell music and chimes; then it grew colder and harder until it sounded like breaking icicles or like frozen pebbles dropped on a silver plate.

Are you the One? Is it you?

Whoever it was meant him no good, Tad was sure of that. He wanted to run and hide, but there was nowhere to go, no way he could tear himself free. A confusing swirl of images filled his brain, like pictures from half-forgotten dreams: a strange silver-eyed face framed in a cloud of pale green hair; a blue-lit chamber paved with pearls and patterned tiles; then — where? — a blaze of flaming torches and a great stone mountain whose cliffs mysteriously moved and shifted; and over all a thundering tide of dark water through which ran the sound of voices, many voices, singing some high sweet song.

What’s happening? he thought frantically. Who are you? And the voice, like an icy silver dagger, answered.

Do you not remember? I am Azabel.