CHAPTER THREE

“The Power Be Yours”

Wally struggled up the water staircase, feeling as if he were trapped in a nightmare. The stairs were still there, but losing their form. And they were as slippery as ice – with every step Wally felt in danger of sliding back down to the bottom, into that impossible chamber under the water, with that impossible talking statue made of water. The Lady of the Lake? he thought incredulously. Really?

But disbelief took a back seat to his most immediate problem, which was that he didn’t know how to swim.

The water, clear as crystal a moment before, turned brown and began to foam. The rectangle of sky he’d been struggling for was an arm’s length above him. He was almost out...

And then the steps vanished, the walls disappeared, and Wascana Lake roared in to fill the void.

Wally floundered in foul-tasting water. He kicked frantically and managed to pop his head above the surface for an instant, catching a glimpse of the boulders by the parking lot before the weight of his clothes dragged him under again. A strangely detached portion of his mind noted that his earlier question about whether the lake was deep enough to drown in was about to be answered.

Another kick. His head burst into the air again, and he desperately gulped a breath, then managed to squeak out, “Help...!” But the water sucked him under again, and this time, when he kicked and flailed, he couldn’t find his way back to the surface in the foam and scum and brown muddy soup created by the collapse of the magical chamber.

His lungs cried out for air. I’m drowning, he thought, disbelieving. I’m drowning in Wascana Lake...

...Mom and Dad will sue them for making it deeper a few years ago...

...and then something grabbed him. Panic-stricken, he clutched it, pulling it down with him. When he realized it must be Ariane, he forced himself to go limp. Just when he thought he couldn’t bear it a moment longer, his head broke through the surface. Ariane struck out for the shore, and within seconds both of them were belly-down in the mud by the parking lot boulders, coughing and spitting.

“Thanks,” Wally choked out. “I can’t swim.”

“I noticed.” Ariane rolled over, sat up, and stared at the lake. Wally followed her gaze. Aside from a spot of water muddier than the rest, there was no sign of the Lady’s underwater lair.

Maybe I dreamed it, Wally thought. Or hallucinated it. Maybe it was a...what’s that old hippie phrase?...a “bad trip.”

But he’d never done drugs. And neither dreams nor hallucinations left you soaking wet, muddy, or stinking. Which left only one other possibility:

It had really happened. Impossibly, incredibly, in defiance of everything he knew about science and history, he and Ariane had seen – had spoken to – the Lady of the Lake.

He turned to Ariane. “We need to talk.” He looked down at himself. “And change.” He sniffed. “And shower.”

“I can’t go home looking like this,” Ariane said.

Wally checked his watch, which somewhat to his surprise still worked. Unlike his malfunctioning and now-lost smartphone. “We can go to my house. There won’t be anyone there. My sister always leaves early to meet up with her friends before school. You can change into some of her clothes while we wash yours. You’re about the same size.”

Ariane blinked. “You have a sister?”

“Yeah. You’ve met her.” His mouth twitched into a half-smile. “Her name’s Flish – uh, Felicia. She’s a friend of Shania’s.”

Ariane’s eyes widened. “She’s your sister?”

“Yeah.” He shrugged. “Sorry. You can’t choose your family.”

Her smile surprised him. “You’re inviting me to go into Felicia’s bedroom and borrow her clothes?”

He felt a sudden pang of trepidation. “Uh, yeah, I guess...”

Her smile widened. “Wouldn’t pass up that chance for the world.” The smile vanished. “But what about school?”

“Aren’t you suspended?”

“For you, not me.”

He glanced down at himself. “I can’t go like this anyway.” He looked up again, grinning. “And fortunately, I have the perfect excuse.” He held up his right wrist. “Fencing injury. I have a note and everything. I’m in excruciating pain. Couldn’t possibly sit through classes.”

“You’re not even wearing the bandage you had on in the office yesterday,” Ariane pointed out.

“Well, true, but they can’t see that over the phone.” He shrugged. “Anyway, it’s at home. I’ll put it on for Monday.”

Ariane smiled again. Wally decided he liked her smile. “If I’m going home with you,” she said, “shouldn’t you at least tell me your name?”

“Wally,” he said. “Wally Knight.”

“Well, Wally Knight, lead on.”

~ • ~

Dripping and making squelching noises with every step, Ariane followed the unexpected Wally as he wheeled his bicycle west along the bike path. The mist had lifted from the lake, and the morning sun sparkled on the water. A few joggers and dog-walkers gave the dripping duo puzzled looks, but Wally just smiled at them and kept moving.

They took the pedestrian underpass under the north end of the busy Albert Street bridge, then walked a half-block before turning left into a cul-de-sac whose street-sign labeled it Harrington Mews. Wally kept a wary eye out for neighbours as they made their way up the front walk of his much-grander-than-hers house – complete with stone lions flanking the steps – then, once they were through the big red door, showed Ariane to the upstairs bathroom. He waited outside while she stripped, then took away the soaked and stinking clothes she carefully passed out through the door before heading for the second bathroom in the basement.

Ariane hesitated before stepping into the shower, remembering the strange hallucination that had gripped her that morning. Don’t be silly, she chided herself. You can’t go the rest of your life without taking a shower. Besides, a mere hallucination seemed almost homey compared to what had happened since.

She got in and turned on the water. Nothing strange happened, and she leaned against the tiles with relief as the hot water sluicing through her hair and down her back washed away the brown residue from Wascana Lake. She stayed there a long time, unwilling to leave her steamy sanctuary and face what she had just experienced.

Part of her wanted to believe it had been a dream. But dreams faded quickly, whereas everything that had happened in the lake was seared in her memory, clear and indelible, right down to the strange phrase she had heard in her mind when the Lady looked deep into her eyes.

Gadewch y dyfroedd byw ynoch, a chi o fewn y dyfroedd. Y  p ˆwer yn eiddo i chi. She didn’t recognize the language, much less speak it, but somehow she knew its meaning: Let the waters live within you, and you within the waters. The power be yours.

You have the power to defeat him, if you will grasp it, the Lady had said first. “Him” being Merlin. Apparently they were supposed to keep Merlin from getting the shards of Arthur’s famous sword Excalibur, remaking it, and using it to take over the world.

Yeah, right, she thought. And anyway, how am I supposed to “grasp” this supposed power? How am I even supposed to know if I want it? Mom didn’t.

She remembered her mother coming back to the house, soaked to the skin, changed beyond recognition. If her mother had seen the Lady that night, Ariane could understand why she had seemed so shaken, not in her right mind. But that didn’t explain why she had denied Ariane was her daughter, or that she even had a daughter – or why she had run away.

Why did she abandon me?

Ariane sighed. Showering wasn’t getting her anything but wet.

She turned off the water and stepped onto the pink fuzzy bathmat – the Knights’ bathroom was a bit frilly and froufrou for her taste – and only then realized there wasn’t a towel to be seen.

“Gee, thanks, Wally,” she muttered as she knelt, opening the cabinets under the sink. She found toilet paper, bottles of Mr. Clean, a scrub brush, and several old bath toys, but no towels. “How am I supposed to dry myself off – just wish the water away?”

And then she gasped and jerked backward, losing her footing and falling onto her bare bottom with a floor-shaking thump.

Her bone-dry bottom. Like every other square centimetre of her – she raised a hand, jerked it back again – even my hair! – her backside was no longer wet.

Wally knocked on the door. “Are you all right in there? Did you fall?”

“I’m...I’m fine...I just...” Just what? “...slipped.”

“Okay.” Wally sounded dubious. “Are you almost done?”

“Yeah, I’m done. But there aren’t any towels.”

“Oh, sorry! I’ll get you one. Just a second.”

Ariane heard his footsteps move down the hall, and she looked around her while waiting. The water from her body hadn’t vanished: instead, it had formed a ring-shaped puddle on the floor where she had been standing. It had...fled, as if she really had wished it from her body.

This day is getting weirder and weirder.

“I’ve got a towel,” Wally said from the other side of the door. In the reverse of the dance they’d performed earlier when she’d handed him her clothes, Ariane scooted over to the door, positioned herself carefully out of Wally’s line of sight, and eased it open. Wally’s hand appeared, holding out a dark green towel. She took it, closed the door, then wrapped the towel around her as best she could. Although it was on the smallish side, at least it covered the embarrassing bits. Her hair looked like she’d stuck her finger in a light socket – not surprising, since she hadn’t had a chance to comb it while it was wet.

Using one hand to hold her precarious covering in place, she opened the door with the other and sailed out into the hallway, past Wally. Unlike her, he was at least half-dressed, wearing jeans but no shirt or socks. The ribs stood out on his skinny chest. He blushed waist to crown when he saw her, then after that first glance looked up…down…sideways…anywhere but right at her. “Where’s your sister’s room?” she said.

“It’s...uh...” Wally made a slight gagging sound, as though he found it hard to form words. “Down the hall. Last door. On the right.”

“Thank you.” Using her free hand to hold the back of the towel as low as possible, Ariane walked down the hall with all the dignity she could muster. Once inside Felicia’s room, she let the towel fall away.

The bathroom’s frilly décor must have represented Felicia’s mother’s taste, not Felicia’s. Cool functionality was her style: dark blue carpet, purple bedding, white walls, and, for decoration, a poster of a tattooed and pierced all-girl band Ariane had never heard of. The dresser and desk were utterly bare, everything tucked out of sight.

“A neat freak,” Ariane muttered. “Who would have guessed?” She began digging in Felicia’s dresser drawers and closet for clothes. She didn’t worry about keeping things tidy. By the time she was done, Felicia’s room looked a lot less like a House & Home photo spread and a lot more like a going-out-of-business sale at Teen Fashions R Us. Ariane couldn’t bring herself to wear any of Felicia’s underwear, but she donned a plain white cotton top, a heavy wool sweater, a pair of jeans that probably looked like they were sprayed on when Felicia wore them but were comfortably loose on her, white gym socks, and an expensive-looking pair of runners, only one size too big.

She surveyed the mess she’d made, smiled, then went out into the hall and gently closed the door behind her.

Wally wasn’t in sight. Ariane descended to the living room and plopped herself on the overstuffed white-leather couch to wait for him, trying not to think about everything that had happened, but unable to stop. It was impossible. Things like that just didn’t happen. She must have been hallucinating – another peculiar vision.

But if she had been, then Wally had been hallucinating right along with her. Because here she was, in his house – in Felicia’s house – wearing Felicia’s clothes, while her own were...

She frowned. Where were hers, anyway?

She got up and went into the kitchen, decorated in stark black and white. As obsessively neat as the rest of the house, it made the comfortable clutter of Aunt Phyllis’s kitchen look like a rummage sale in mid-rummage. A door at the far end led into a utility room, where she could see an open washing machine. A quick look confirmed that both her and Wally’s clothes were in there, and when she glanced around, she saw her leather jacket hanging, dripping, from a hook by the door.

She wrinkled her nose as she picked at its sodden sleeve. Soaking wet and stinking, it was something else she definitely wouldn’t have hallucinated. So somehow, some impossible how, the Lady of the Lake – or someone who called herself the Lady of the Lake, at least – had opened up a chamber of water in Wascana Lake, had spoken to them...

...and expected them to reassemble Excalibur before Merlin – Merlin, of all people! – could do so.

She snorted. The Lady of the Lake was all wet in more ways than one if she thought her mumbo-jumbo was going to get Ariane to undertake a wild-goose chase like that. Mom refused the power. So will I.

But she thought uneasily of the way the water had fled her body in the bathroom. That seemed to imply she had some of the Lady’s power already. Had she already accepted it? Some of it, at least? Did that mean she really wanted it – without even knowing what it was?

The thought made her uncomfortable. Ironically, she also felt terribly thirsty. She returned to the kitchen, found a glass in the cupboard above the sink, and turned on the tap, letting it run for a few seconds to get cold. Absentmindedly, she stuck her fingers into the flow of the water to test the temperature.

Rushing and gurgling down the drain and through the trap, and into the sewer pipe, flowing out toward the street to the main sewer line to the – 

She gasped and jerked her hand out of the water, and the vision – no, the sensation – vanished. For a horrifying instant she had felt as if she were about to pour down the drain with the flowing liquid, dissolving into it as it rushed to lake, river, and sea. She stared at her dripping hand. It trembled. The trembling spread to her arm, to her knees, and then to her whole body. She groped for one of the tall, black stools that ringed the granite-topped island in the middle of the kitchen, and hauled herself onto it before she could collapse where she stood.

~ • ~

Wally tried to act cool when Ariane came out of the shower wearing only a towel...an act made more difficult by the fact that he hadn’t been able to find a shirt downstairs. He knew he was blushing, and knew there was no way to hide it. Worse, he also knew he looked like a twelve-year-old even though he’d been fourteen for a month, and he hated it. He was owed an adolescent growth spurt, damn it!

Still, even if he couldn’t do anything about his scrawny body, he could at least try to be a gentleman and not stare at Ariane’s not-scrawny one. He could also try hard not to hope that her towel slipped off before she made it to Felicia’s room.

He almost succeeded.

As the closing door hid her from sight, he glanced into the bathroom, and frowned at the floor. “What the...?” He bent over and looked at a strange, ring-shaped puddle. The tiling was bone-dry in the centre. He couldn’t imagine how it could have formed.

Well, it was hardly the strangest thing that had happened that morning. He went into his own room, where he rummaged in his dresser for clean socks. He tugged them on, then pulled out a T-shirt that bore the words REAL MEN HUNT DEER WITH SWORDS above an image of a leaping deer cut in half. He slipped it on, then picked up his hairbrush. As he met his own gaze in the mirror, he paused, remembering those panic-filled moments when he couldn’t keep his head above the lake’s surface.

Ariane saved my life. He’d barely met her, but what had happened that morning was so amazing that he felt like he’d known her all his life. He shook his head, ran a brush through his red hair, then padded down the hall and down the stairs.

He found Ariane sitting on one of the stools at the island in the centre of the kitchen, her face pale, cheeks shining with tears.

“What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost!” Wally realized the instant he spoke that it was a monumentally stupid thing to say in light of everything that had happened.

“I don’t know what I saw. In the lake, or...” Ariane looked at her hand, then wiped it hastily on her borrowed jeans.

“But she told you.” Wally clambered onto the stool next to her. “I heard it too. The Lady gave you – gave us! – a quest.” He relished that thought. He’d completed hordes of virtual quests, and now he was part of a real one! “To find the shards of Excalibur. ‘Seek for the sword that was broken, in Imladris it dwells...’” He grinned, savouring the words like a chunk of Belgian chocolate.

“Stop it!” Ariane snapped, voice sharp as a slap. “Just stop it! This isn’t The Lord of the Rings. This isn’t a story. This is...I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s all a hallucination. Maybe I tripped on the stairs this morning and I’m lying in the hospital with a fractured skull.”

“Hallucinations aren’t this internally consistent,” Wally said. He reached out and pinched her arm.

“Ow!” She jerked it away. For a second she looked as if she would hit him.

Wally raised his hands. “Sorry! But see? No hallucination. Anyway, why on earth would you hallucinate me? Why not Elijah Wood?” From her expression, she’d already wondered that. That stung a little, even if he was the one who had said it.

“But...it can’t be real,” Ariane said, though it sounded as if she was arguing more with herself than with him. “Arthur? Merlin? The Lady of the Lake? Excalibur? They’re storybook characters.”

“Make up your mind. First you say it isn’t a story, then you say it is. You can’t have it both ways. I say it’s real. I say you’re the new Lady of the Lake.”

“That can’t be!”

“That’s what the Lady said – you’re her heir. That makes you the Lady of the Lake for the twenty-first century, just like she was for the eleventh or the ninth or whenever the heck she lived. And that means you have a responsibility, a duty.” He leaned in close, caught up in the excitement of the thing. “You have to stop Merlin from gathering the shards of Excalibur. It’s up to you to save the world.” And I get to help you. He grinned and leaned back again. “Man, you are so freakin’ lucky!”

~ • ~

Ariane couldn’t believe what Wally had just said, couldn’t believe he was grinning at her as he said it. “Lucky?” She glared at him. “Lucky?” She stood up. “I may be going crazy, but you’re already there!”

“You’re not crazy. And neither am I. You have to – ”

“I don’t have to do anything!” Ariane snapped. “Except go home and face the music now that my aunt knows I’ve been suspended for three days. And next Wednesday, I’ll go back to school, and everything will go back to normal.”

Wally shook his head. “No, it won’t. She gave you something, some kind of power – what was it she said, some kind of magic spell – ”

Gadewch y dyfroedd byw ynoch, a chi o fewn y dyfroedd. Y  p ˆwer yn eiddo i chi. The words echoed in Ariane’s mind even when she didn’t want them to.

“I don’t care what she said!” she shouted, trying to drown out the memories of the Lady’s voice, of the waters singing to her, of the dreams of a sword in the water, of the wishing away of the water on her body, of the sensation of rushing away with the running water down the drain. “It’s all crap! She can go to hell!”

She leaped up so violently her stool fell over. Wally jumped off his own to avoid being hit by it. Both stools crashed behind her as she ran out, throwing open the front door so hard it bounced and banged shut again behind her.

A group of girls appeared at the mouth of the cul-de-sac just as she reached it. Half-blinded by tears, she dashed through them, careening off of someone who didn’t move out of her way fast enough. “Hey! Stop!” one of them shouted, but she kept running.

An instant later she realized who the girls had been: Shania and Felicia’s little gang, probably cutting class – and heading to Felicia’s house.

Wally!

She shoved aside her momentary pang of guilt. She didn’t want to think about Wally. She didn’t want to think at all.

It was all too much. Two and a half years ago, everything had been fine, everything had been normal, she’d been just another seventh-grader, recently turned thirteen, looking forward to being a teenager at last...now her mom was gone, her old friends were gone, her old life was gone, and she was supposed to save the world? Throw away every last vestige of normality, her final chance to be just one more kid in a sea of kids and become some kind of freak instead?

She ran until her legs and breath gave out. Back in Wascana Park, she doubled over, gasping for breath, then straightened, leaned against a tree, and slid down its rough trunk to the brown grass beneath it. Out of sight of the lake – she didn’t want to see the lake again – and out of sight of passersby as well, she buried her head in her folded arms.

When her heartbeat had slowed and she could draw her breath more easily, she raised her head and looked at her watch. Apparently it really was waterproof: it was still running, and told her it was just after nine in the morning.

It seemed incredible that so little time had passed since she had first heard the singing of the water.

Running hadn’t changed anything. She couldn’t run away from reality, and as fantastic as it seemed, her reality now included the Lady of the Lake. She had no choice but to confront the ordeal, and now that she was alone and slowly calming down, she thought perhaps she could. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and thought back to that morning’s encounter.

Her mother had met the Lady, too. That seemed clear. And refused the power the Lady had offered her. And then…for whatever reason…she had run away: not only from the Lady and her proffered power, but from Ariane as well.

And then, tentatively, another thought took shape in her mind, a thought she hardly dared to put into words, for fear it would evaporate into nothing more than wishful thinking if she held it up to the light. But it wouldn’t go away, and at last she dared to let it rise to the surface: With the Lady’s power, I might be able to find Mom.

She told herself not to be an idiot, not to let herself get sucked in by false hope. No one had been able to figure out what had happened to her mom, not the police, not Aunt Phyllis, not the media. She’d tried to accept that, tried to accept that her mother was gone forever...

But if I can use magic...

She blinked away sudden tears as a surge of hope threatened to overwhelm her. Even if the power is real, there’s no guarantee you can use it to find Mom, she told herself, fighting to stay sensible. She may not be out there to find. She may be dead. Everyone thinks she is. Everyone...

...everyone except me! And with that fierce inward shout of defiance, she let the faint flicker of hope burst into a white-hot flame that for the moment, at least, burned away all her doubts.

For you, Mom, Ariane thought fiercely. Not for the Lady, but for you, I’ll accept the Lady’s power – whatever it is!

For a moment nothing happened. Then the bright October sunlight shining all around her became cold and watery, as if she were beneath the surface of the lake again, looking up through rippling water. Though she knew she was alone, she heard the Lady’s voice from close behind her: Gadewch y dyfroedd byw ynoch, a chi o fewn y dyfroedd. Y  p ˆwer yn eiddo i chi...Let the waters live within you, and you within the waters. The power be yours.

“The power be mine!” Ariane whispered.

The sense that the Lady stood right behind her lasted a few seconds longer, then faded. The sunlight regained its normal strength. She took a deep, shuddering breath as the everyday world reasserted itself. A motorcycle roared along the winding park road, and from the playground she heard the distant shrieks and squeals of small children.

In some ways, nothing had changed. She was still suspended from school, and she still had to go home and face the consequences, just like any other teenager in trouble. But unlike any other teenager, she had a quest – not a video game quest, but a real life-and-death quest.

An impossible quest, Ariane thought. I need to learn everything I can about Excalibur, Merlin and the Lady of the Lake.

She couldn’t go home to her own computer, and she had to spend the day somewhere. She got to her feet and set off on the five-block walk to the central branch of the Regina Public Library.