Before they left, Alma read the page on water. Next to an illustration of the upside-down triangle, the water symbol, were these words:
Water, Water, the genesis of life.
Water that bubbles and flows and refreshes.
And the deeper you go, the truer it becomes.
At the source is where the wonder awaits.
And those Elementals of Water,
do they not possess these same qualities?
Though they be vainglorious and inconstant at times,
are they not adventurous and active,
overflowing with vim and vigor?
Do they not restore the weary and inspire the downtrodden?
Do they not contain hidden depths, waiting to be found?
It seemed fitting, Alma had thought reading those words, that Shirin would be the one leading them to this element. Fast-paced and quick-tongued, Shirin was certainly full of vim and vigor. And now here they were following her toward the Fourth Point neighborhood in the middle of the night.
Alma had never been out so late, never pedaled down streets that were entirely devoid of people and cars, with only the sound of the wind around her. It was unnerving, but it also made her feel awake and energized, almost like she was borrowing some of Shirin’s sense of adventure.
“I live right there,” Shirin said in a voice that Alma felt was much too loud given the lateness of the hour and the definitely not parentally approved nature of their expedition. She was pointing at a lovely blue Victorian with a wraparound porch and a round tower, which was something Alma had always wanted. “Where we’re going is a little farther west though. My sister and I used to go there a lot before she started high school and got too cool. Ugh.”
“I’ve never been over here,” Alma replied. “But I’ve never really been anywhere in Four Points.”
At the end of one of the streets, the houses stopped. Ahead of them were only trees. It was the Preserve, the same one that wrapped past Alma’s house in Third Point, but here in the west, that thin strip of woods became a true forest. Alma didn’t know how far the Preserve extended; on her parents’ map, it went to the very edge of the crinkly brown paper.
“We have to leave our bikes,” Shirin said. She jumped off hers, letting it crash to the ground.
“We’re going into the woods?” Hugo asked, coming to a hesitant stop. “Is that wise at this hour?”
“There’s a trail,” Shirin said impatiently. “Like I said, I used to come here all the time.”
Hugo frowned at her. He stayed on his bike.
Alma felt a shiver of anticipation at the thought of traipsing through the woods after midnight, but she found that she wasn’t scared. After moving to Four Points, she had cooped herself up indoors, afraid of what might happen if she ventured out. But before, in Old Haven, she had always felt more like herself when she was outside. She wondered what the Four Points forest would be like.
“Come on, Hugo,” she said, hopping off her bike and taking the quintescope, set up without its tripod, out of her basket. “We have to find the elements, remember? And we can look for the Starling as we go. She could be in these woods.”
Hugo sighed deeply, but he climbed off his bike.
“This is truly ludicrous,” he muttered.
At first, the trail was wide and easy, and the three walked side by side. But the farther they went, the narrower and more overgrown it became. Soon they were hiking in single file.
Every now and then, Alma paused to peer through the quintescope, scanning the trees for signs of light. It was hard to walk and do this though, especially since Shirin kept tripping over roots and sprawling to the ground right in front of her.
“Ugh, I’m so clumsy,” she said, dusting herself off after her third fall. “It’s because I move so fast. My sister always makes fun of me for it. Well, everyone does, actually. But I can’t help it. Anyway, this is exciting! We’re helping a star! As soon as I read about water, I saw this place in my mind. You’ll see why.”
They moved farther and farther into the woods. Shirin kept up a steady stream of conversation, but Alma was only half listening to her. And she was not listening at all to that voice that had taken up every bit of space in her mind for the past three months.
Instead, she was listening to the woods around her—the few hanging-on dead leaves rustling, the wind through the branches, the hoot of a watchful owl, a far-off roll of thunder.
And another sound, a sound that was growing louder with every footstep. A sort of hushing, a sort of swooshing, a sort of rhythmic lullaby. The path took them past a tall river birch, its peeling white bark like a mummy’s wrappings in the darkness.
And on the other side of the tree, there it was. The source of the lullaby.
“It’s the Fourth Point Creek!” Shirin cried, throwing up her arms. “Isn’t it gorgeous?”
It was. The trees cleared around the stream bank, letting the moonlight and starlight in. The brightness danced on the water as it flowed past, like fireflies or fairies or specks of shining stardust. Alma was seized with a sudden desire to wade into that water, to feel it on her toes. The stream that ran past her backyard in Old Haven had been one of her favorite places. She used to gather rocks for her collection there in the summer and slip-slide down its shining ice path in the winter.
She could see why Shirin had led them to this place.
Here was water. True water. She was sure of it.
“I’m going to put some in the jar,” Shirin said.
She took the container from her backpack, then knelt by the creek, uncorked it, and placed it underwater. Then she pulled it out.
“It’s empty,” she said, confused. She lifted the container up, and Alma saw that there was nothing inside—not a drop.
“Allow me to assist you,” Hugo said, moving carefully over the rocks to stand by Shirin. “This may not be socially appropriate to say, but you don’t strike me as being particularly meticulous or mechanically inclined.”
Shirin wrinkled her nose at Hugo, but she handed over the bottle.
After a few seconds of holding it under, Hugo brought the container back up—still empty.
“Something must be obstructing the opening,” Hugo said, peering into the little hole at the top.
“Oh really, Mr. Mechanically Inclined?” Shirin said.
While Hugo and Shirin tried over and over to fill the bottle, Alma watched the stream. She thought of what the book said and how the water seemed to flow right around the bottle top, like it was refusing to fill it up.
“Maybe,” she said after another failed attempt, “this water isn’t true enough or pure enough or something.”
“This water is extremely pure!” Shirin replied. “It’s a spring-fed creek.”
“What does that mean?” Alma asked.
“It means that the source of the creek is not another body of water such as a lake or a river,” Hugo said, putting the jar under the water again. “The water comes instead from the aquifer—from underground.”
“Oh,” Alma said, the solution suddenly clear to her. “Then let’s go there.”
“Where?” Shirin asked.
“To the spring,” Alma replied. “To the start of the creek. Remember what the book said? ‘At the source is where the wonder awaits.’”
“You want to go farther into the woods?” Hugo asked uncertainly. He took the jar out of the water again. Empty.
“We have to,” Alma said. “Don’t we? For the Starling?”
“Yes! Yes!” Shirin leaped off her perch on a stream rock, then lost her footing. She started stumbling into the many-limbed embrace of a leafless weeping willow before Alma caught her arm and steadied her.
“For the Starling,” agreed a now-breathless Shirin. She grinned at Alma, and Alma felt herself smiling back.