The Steward (46 page)

My heart raced as I ran back up to where the rim was at my waist. I slowly and gently put the saucer on the surface. I
held
my
breath—I didn’t want to
disturb
the water.
After
gingerly let
ting it
go
,
the saucer spun slighly,
and
bobbled a little, but floated. It sat lower in the water than I had hoped, and almost instantly a tiny bubble of water
welled
up from the hole. I placed my hand on the side of the fountain and concentrated o
n
making the large stone disappear. Immediately, water
rushed
out and the surface slowly
went
down.

“Ah, taking the easy way out. Just like your father,” Chalen sneered.

His words didn’t anger me, but they did catch me off guard. I would find out what he meant after this was over.

The bubble of water in the saucer
grew
. At first it was the size of a pea, a few seconds later, a dime. The water in the fountain
lowered six inches, maybe
—I wasn’t going to have time to do it this way. I noticed the saucer moving to my right, slowly—everything was moving. Just like a draining bathtub, a whirlpool formed on the surface near where I altered the stone. I watched a purple-brown leaf drift closer until it was sucked into the vortex. The saucer would be caught in moments.

Draining th
e
water was
the wrong approach
. My barrier nearly failed as I rushed back over to the side and changed the stone back. The water stopped coming out, but I saw a six-inch-long fish flopping on the ground. I fought the urge to slip it back into the fountain. Even though I didn’t want it to die, trying to save it would disturb the surface. My mind w
a
ndered, briefly, back to the first time I saw the basin.

It was frozen,
and
the fish must have been alive under the icy surface all winter. The solution hit me. Chalen
laughed
. I kn
e
w he could hear my heart beating out of my chest
,
and he could read the images in my mind.
The effort it took to keep my
barrier up
weakened
my mental screen, and he
took advantage by catching
glimpses.

So be it. I pictured the frozen surface last winter and remembered the leaves held motionless. I watched him as his smile disappeared. He was afraid, and now I knew he didn’t want me to be
a
Maebown. Fear
—t
here has to be much more to this
situation
than meets the eye
,
and it is something only a Maebown
can
prevent.

Time was
running out
and I had to
control
the water, I thought, not drain it. I smiled at Chalen and the emotion drained from his wretched face. My heart sped up again when I noticed the water in the saucer
had
spread and
filled
the bottom. I
only had
moments. Concentrating on the water, I
pictured
it frozen in my mind. Nothing happened.

I thought of
the
ice in my diet coke at the
Garden Bisto
, and I concentrated on the snow that fell after we moved here. I remembered how cold my hands were when I touched it—the burning numbness was still fresh enough that I could almost feel it. I pictured the icicles that hung from the eaves of the cottage and ran every image of frozen water I could think of though my mind and opened my eyes again. Nothing.

At the Earth trial, I was touching the stone when it moved. Chalen
leaned
over the surface, no longer focusing on me. He
stared
intently at the water, trying to sense any change. When I looked back at the saucer, the little pool was nearly halfway up the sides
,
and the water surface around the edge was at the very rim. Seconds, I thought. I reached down to the water, slowly, holding my breath again. My loose curls fell down over my face and hung around my head, just a foot above the surface. I stretched down a little further until I felt the cool surface on my finger tips. A small ripple spread out, closing on the saucer. I concentrated on the image again, strugging to keep from exhaling—my lungs burned. Nothing happened.

The tiny ripple kissed the edge of the saucer and I heard Chalen take a quick breath. At first the saucer bobbed, just slightly, and then one tiny rivulet of water leaked over the side. I watched it all happen as if
in
slow motion—the saucer filled and sank, fluttering back and forth until it settled on the bottom in a tiny cloud of algae.

Finally exhaling, my finger
still in
the water, I was stunned. Chalen
laughed—b
elly laughed
, really
.

“I knew it! I knew you weren’t
a
Maebown!” he rejoiced, settling back on his heels.

I looked back down
at
the saucer and shook my head.
T
ear
s
welled
up in my eyes. I didn’t stop
them
from falling into the pool.

“It will take you a long time to refill it that way. Maybe you should concentrate on Gavin—that will speed things up a bit.”

“I hate you,” I said under my breath.

“Hate away, Maggie O’Shea. It really doesn’t matter though, not being Water inclined I mean. It’s not like you would have been
a
Maebown.”

“What do you mean?”

“They haven’t told you, have they? Well, allow me. To be
a
Maebown, you have to balance all four elements. Even though you eventually figured out what to do here, I don’t think you’re smart enough to figure out the fifth trial—no offense,” he said, a patronizing smile
spreading
across his thin gray lips.

“Fifth trial?”

“Oh, they have kept you in the dark, haven’t they? Yes, if you had passed this test, p
re
posterous as that now sounds, you would have to take a final test.”

“What is it?”

“That doesn’t matter now, does it?”
H
e laughed again. He was nearly gleeful, and relieved.

“You were afraid I would be
a
Maebown, weren’t you?”

“Afraid
?
Hardly!” he screeched. “But it would have been an inconvenience.”

He was so condescending, but I looked past that—he was hiding something. He was so arrogant, it seemed he wanted to tell me. I began to drop my barrier and he noticed.

“Not yet,” he said pleasantly. It was eerie.

“Why, I failed the test. I’d like to leave.”

“You’ll be doing that soon enough, I think. But this is our first chance to talk, and I’ve wanted to talk to you for months. So, if you would,
Steward
, leave that thing in place. I think you’ll want to hear what I have to say, and I’d prefer it if we didn’t have anyone listening in.

I was right. “Okay.”

He walked around me, glowering, and picked up the fish
.
It had stopped flopping and
only moved
its mouth and gills, strugging in the dry air.

“Do you know what the purpose of this trial was?”

“Beyond the obvious, no,” I said

“Typical. It was right there ... in front of you.”
He laughed, full of himself.
“Think of the surface of the water as the barrier between our two realms. In your childlike attempt to drain the pool, you created havoc below the surface. Sure, it appeared calm on the surface, but for the whirlpool. Beneath though, you affected everything. Do you understand now.”

“Yes, I think so. What we do here affects you, there.”

“For every action on one side of the barrier, there are consequences on the other.”

“So what is your solution, to freeze the barrier?”

A wicked smile grew across his face.

“No
.
T
hat solution would work
, yes
, but we are not going to give up physical
existence
for bipedal water-filled bags of skin with eighty-year shelf
lives
. The Seelie Council believes that we can co-exist, but humans keep rippling the surface. The Unseelie solution, if we had our way...”
he trailed off, as h
e looked at his hand.

He squeezed the fish, di
g
ging his sharp nails into its flesh,
and ripped
it apart. I turned away and drew in a sharp breath.

“Oh sorry,” he said as he tossed the carcus to the ground and licked his fingers.

I fought my gag reflex
,
and did my best to remain calm.

“So what’s your point—that you hate me and want to see me dead?”

“I did
no
t hate the fish.”

“But you do hate me, that’s why you’ve done all of this to me.”

“You? You think this is about you? And they say we’re narcissistic. You w
a
ndered around the Weald for weeks loathing everything about this place—up here when we met, it was no different. But child, this has
never
been about you. You
a
re just an obstacle, and not as serious an obstacle as some had imagined.”

When he said it I fought to keep calm. There
,
in his words, he
spoke
for more than one. It
suddenly made
more sense. My mind wanted to consider the meaning, to rush through the options, but I made myself focus on Chalen. I had more to learn.

“I can’t believe you
would
spend months trying to get me alone just to kill a fish and tell me things about the Unseelie I already know.”

“No, I did
no
t. I wanted to tell
you
just one
other
thing
—do
not interfere. You read me? I do
no
t want you or your family
on
the Weald. It
is
time for new blood, I think. I
ha
ve given you plenty of hints that I want you gone, but you are obviously too thick to figure it out on your own. So again, to be perfectly clear
—if
asked, you will not accept the stewardship. Do you understand me?”
H
e was menacing again, but still not compelling fear. He didn’t need to
—
I was
already
terrified.