Drinking Life (Keeper of the Water Book 1) (27 page)

“I might know a way to get you those
proper supplies
,” I tell Celeste, who looks up at me in surprise. Without another word, I turn and sprint toward the trees near the river.

Adrenaline fuels me, the only thing propelling me forward since my body is still weak from being shot. I weave in and out of the thick trees that line the river, trying to stay close enough to the shore to see the water. It’s not long before I catch a glimpse of the soldier—arrow impaling his chest—floating on his back. I squeeze between a pair of trees and leap off the riverbank, diving into the cold water below.

With the worry of John bleeding to the death at any moment, I cut through the water like a dolphin, pumping my arms and legs furiously. It doesn’t take me long to reach the floating body—
and
another section of rapids. I’m wary when I approach the body but there’s no time for caution. Every second that passes takes me farther away from helping John, especially in the faster waters. Besides, the soldier’s eyes are still closed and he hasn’t budged the entire time I’ve seen him.

It’s tough searching through a body while treading water that moves so fast. I rifle through pocket after pocket, becoming increasingly nervous each time I come up empty. I smash into a couple rocks along the way but ignore the pain, ignore the water that splashes in my face and forces its way up my nose. The final pocket in the goon’s pants is also empty and my heart sinks. I search all the pockets a second time with the same disappointing results.

Did the other soldier steal all the water? The body suddenly smashes into a rock, tearing the soldier’s shirt. For a split second, I see a bluish glow coming from
within
his shirt. My heart soars and I reach into his hidden pocket, grabbing the small vial of special water. But there’s little time to celebrate. We’ve reached a small lull between faster areas of the river and I turn to swim back toward shore.

I don’t get very far.

“Give me that back,
bitch
,” the soldier says, his eyes snapping open.

He grabs my shoulder and spins me around in the water, punching me in the face surprisingly hard. I’m trying to hold on to the vial
and
keep my head above water, making it nearly impossible to protect myself. My instinct is to fight back but I need to get back to John. I try to swim away but the soldier grabs hold of my wrist and drags me with him into the next set of rapids.

He punches me several more times but has even more trouble than me in the raging waters. With the arrow still impaled in his chest, he can’t stay in an upright position for more than a few seconds, especially since the water and surrounding rocks drive the arrow farther into him. I use this to my advantage, ripping my arm free from his grasp and swimming away from him. Without the water, there’s no way he’ll survive much longer…

I turn to swim away when I see—too late—a huge boulder sticking out of the river. I try to duck and put my hands up but don’t have the time before my head smashes into it. My skulls
cracks
and my brain jars in my head. An explosion of silvery light erupts in front of my eyes. Then, blackness. I don’t think I ever fully lose consciousness because I’m still cognizant of the water sloshing against my face, of spitting out the water I’m choking on. But by the time I force my eyes open, I’m in calmer water. For a moment, I forget what I’m doing in the river.

The vial! Both my hands are empty. I try to search around me but the sunlight reflecting off the river’s surface appears extra bright, making it impossible to concentrate since my head pounds so heavily. It’s not until I hear
splashing
nearby and spot the soldier slowly paddling on his back that I spot the vial floating atop the water. He’s only a few feet away from it so I ignore my pain and take off swimming toward it. Waves of nausea crash over me. I fight the urge to stop and be sick the entire way. If the soldier wasn’t so near death, he’d have no trouble reaching it first and drinking the whole thing before I got there. But he’s worse off than me and barely wraps his fingers around the vial when I reach him.

With his free hand, he lands another punch to the side of my head. He swings with his weaker hand and is even more off balance than before but he hits me right where the boulder struck my head. I’m on the verge of blacking out again and even drift a few feet away before I come back to reality. The goon clumsily twists at the vial’s cap so I launch myself at him, flailing my arms as I knock him underwater. He surfaces and swings at the bloody part of my head again but I anticipate the attack and dive under the water. When I come back up, I grab hold of the arrow in his chest and yank with all my might.

The soldier’s guttural cry echoes across the river. The arrow doesn’t come all the way out of his chest but I can feel its tip shred apart his insides. He drops the vial and I dive for it but it’s no sooner in my hands when he lands another lucky kick and I see stars. I breathe in a mouthful of river water before swimming to the surface and throwing it all up. I must have blacked out for a few seconds because the soldier floats only a few feet away, vial in hand. He pulls the rest of the arrow from his chest and the water around him is quickly tinged red. He struggles to open the vial as I swim at him again.

The vial’s stopper pops off and he raises the glowing water just above his gushing chest wound. I dive and knock it out of his hand just as the first drop falls.

“No!” he cries in agony, though I doubt it’s from the physical pain of me smashing into him.

The open vial plops down into the river, its bright bluish contents spilling out into the river. I snatch the empty vial and try to scoop the special water back in but most of it slips through my fingers and disperses. I fill the small vial but the water glows very dimly, river water heavily watering down the magic kind.

“What have you done?” the soldier asks weakly, still trying to grab the vial from me though every movement he makes pumps out more blood.

“What have
I
done?” I yell, anger exploding within me. “You killed my father, shot John and now ruined his only chance to live.”

I punch him with all the rage I can muster. He’s so injured already that it’s not a fair fight but he’s
never
played by any rules so why should I? The goon finally goes limp as he splashes down into the water. Blood finally stops spurting out of him; nothing can pump out if his heart no longer beats. But with his dying breath, I hear him laugh just before he slips under the water’s surface forever.

I wish I could stay and revel in the soldier’s death but the thought of John gets me moving. I swim back to shore and take off sprinting upriver. My head pounds and I can’t see straight, which makes it hard to move as fast as I want. Several times I nearly smack into trees and a particularly large root trips me up. At one point, a fall causes the vial to slip from my hands and my heart stops at the thought of it smashing against a rock. But the vial remains intact and I run a bit slower, knowing that John has
zero
chance of living if I lose this water.

It feels like I run forever and I’m worried the knock to my head has ruined my sense of direction. I’m convinced that I somehow missed the others until I hear the distant sound of Cassie’s voice yelling at her mother. Apparently chasing the goon took me farther away than I thought.

When I emerge from the woods, their voices have quieted and Celeste holds my bow, which she aims at me.

“Sorry, who knows what might still be lurking in these woods,” she says. “Where did you go? What took so long?”

John still lies on the ground. I can’t tell if his chest is still moving. Cassie kneels over him, crying dramatically.

“Is he…” I start to ask, my voice cracking before I can get out the words.

“He’s still alive but he doesn’t have long,” Mom says. “You should probably say your goodbyes,
both
of you.”

“Don’t say that!” Cassie screams at her.

“Maybe
this
will help,” I say, holding up the vial for Celeste to see.

At first glance, Celeste looks confused. The vial’s contents appear to be nothing more than simple river water. But when the sunlight filtering through the trees hits the water at just the right angle, there’s the slightest of bluish glows. Her expression changes to shock. I can tell right away that she
knows
what she’s looking at. Celeste hurries over and grabs the water from my hand, examining it more closely.

“There was more but it spilled into the river. I tried to save as much as I could but it all mixed together,” I explain.

“Where did you get this?” Celeste asks.

“What
is
it?” Cassie demands to know.

“I
hope
it’s medicine,” I tell Cassie before turning to her mother. “I got it from the soldier. They each had a vial’s worth that they stole from a bigger supply John once had. John used the rest of his stash to save my life earlier.”

I still wear John’s riding jacket and open it up to show the bloody mess of a shirt underneath. Mom looks at me with worry but then turns to Celeste.

“How much of it could
she
have given away?” Mom asks her.

Celeste’s eyes start to turn toward me and Cassie but she stops herself from looking in our direction. I’m getting tired of Mom and Celeste keeping so many secrets from me.

“I want some answers later,” I tell them both. “But for now, we
have to
try giving John that water.”

“Don’t,” he says, his voice a whisper. He doesn’t open his eyes but knows I’m standing near. “Save it for yourself…”

“For once I agree with him,” Celeste says.

I swipe the vial back from her hands—there’s no time to stand here and argue with her about what to do with the water. I pop off the stopper and kneel next to John, pouring a few drops of water around the wound before yanking the arrow out. I know it’s not pleasant for him, as his eyes snap open, wide with shock. John’s mouth opens and I expect an ungodly scream but barely a whimper escapes his lips.

Before he loses too much blood, I pour half of the water onto the open wound. I don’t know if I’m doing this right or if there’s some sort of procedure in using the magic water but I just copy what John did to help me earlier. The laceration seems to get a little smaller but too much blood still comes out. I panic, worried that I made it worse. I look back to Celeste, who stares down at me and sighs.

“Pour a little more on it, about half of what you have left,” she explains skeptically. “Then, have him drink the rest.”

I do as she says and the arrow hole in his stomach closes even more, though still not enough to stop the bleeding completely. He slowly drinks the rest. I remember this being the most painful part as my body put itself back together. John thrashes on the ground but it only goes on for few seconds, not nearly as long as my agony lasted.

“What’s happening to him?” Cassie asks nervously. “It looks like this is making him worse.”

“He’s healing… I hope,” I tell her.

Some of the color returns to his cheeks—he no longer looks like such a ghost—and his eyes crack open. But he’s still too weak to say much and his breathing remains labored. Celeste looks down at him and shakes her head.

“Nope, didn’t think so. It’s not going to be enough,” she says. The satisfaction she has in her voice when saying this infuriates me though I try to keep my cool for John’s benefit. “Besides,
his kind
isn’t supposed to have our water anyway.”

I sit on the ground and wrap my arms around my knees, utterly defeated and exhausted. John blinks back more pain, his face scrunched up in agony. The little bit of water that
has
absorbed into his body probably makes things worse for him. His body was so close to death before that he was no longer in pain—now, I’m making him go through the entire painful process of dying yet again.

He writhes in pain, moans pathetically with every breath he takes. Despite my feelings for him, I wish I wasn’t here right now to see this, I wish there was someone I could chase or something I could do to help.

“Can you help him in
any
way, Mom?” Cassie asks softly, for once her voice not tinged with anger or annoyance or bossiness. “Please.”

I almost feel bad for her despite my jealousy that John chooses her over me every time. None of that seems important anymore; if he could somehow just survive, I’d have no problem if the two of them ended up together. Unfortunately, I see no way of that possibly happening.

“There’s nothing else we can do,” I tell Cassie. “If that water didn’t work,
nothing
will.”

Cassie scowls at me but I think it’s just her instinct. When she sees that I’m just as distraught as her, her expression softens.

“That might not be totally true,” Celeste says to our surprise. “Nia, come help me with the raft.”

I’m shocked but jump to my feet and follow her to the edge of the river, where we pulled the damaged raft onto the shore and dump out the water. Air still slowly
hisses
out where the arrow punctured it but the raft is compartmentalized and half of it is still fully inflated.

“There’s one thing that
might
help him if I have enough time to get there—it won’t be an easy trip for me,” Celeste sighs. “But I will
try
to help if you agree to my one condition.”