Water Song (2 page)

Jack Verde was on fire. He felt as if someone had blasted a blowtorch straight into his eyes. He'd gotten to his knees and sucked in a last gasp of good air when he saw others around him start to choke.

He'd done it just in time too, because the gas, apparently heavier than the air, was quickly sinking down and settling into the trenches. He knew this because the green glowed most intensely closest to the ground.

Blindly he groped his way out of the muddy earthworks of the trench, desperate to escape the deadly mist. On every side, other soldiers did the same but he could only see them as dim outlines.

The only thing real to him was the drive to get away from the foul and burning air.

A hand gripped him. "Jack! Help!"

He recognized the voice immediately and pulled a large handkerchief from his uniform pocket, thrusting it toward the young soldier's face, pressing it over his mouth and nose. He didn't dare speak or he'd lose the gulp of air he'd managed to inhale before the poison gas enveloped them completely.

He gestured for the soldier, who was no more than a boy, to follow him out of the trench. Before they had gone a yard, though, a shell exploded several feet away.

The boy flew into the air, thrown by the impact. All around him, soldiers were upended.

As the debris rained down in the thick, acrid fog, he searched for the boy, going back into the trench and following it for several yards.

He couldn't find him. Hopefully he'd been able to make a run for it, just as all the others were now doing.

Jack climbed above the trench again, his arms out, stumbling blindly forward. His fogged vision produced only dark outlines of fleeing men.

Still holding his breath, he kept moving ahead, not knowing what else to do. He didn't dare shut his burning eyes for fear of stumbling into a roll of barbed wire. If he became entangled in its lethal spikes it would be the end of him.

He'd been staring at this open field from the protection of the trench for days now. Of all times to get stuck here with this French regiment! Because he spoke French, he and the kid soldier had been sent to deliver a message from their own English and Canadian unit farther north. But the Germans had moved in unexpectedly and cut them off, leaving them stranded there.

Sitting in the filthy, rat-infested trench with nothing to do but look out had burned the landscape into his memory. The fields rolled on for miles before ending in a distant ridge with some impressive, manor-type structure sitting on top of it. In the distance, maybe two miles away or so, were trees. If he could get to the shelter of the trees, maybe they would shield him from the poison.

Several yards out, he marveled that he had still not been caught by a grenade, stumbled into a shell hole, or been snagged on barbed wire. He was in a crowd of fleeing soldiers, yet they could do nothing to help one another. Each of them suffered in his own private hell.

His lungs strained, screaming for oxygen. He held on longer, knowing he had to make use of what air he had. He, who could hold his breath longer than anyone else he knew; the champion of underwater swimming--he had to hold on now as if his life depended on it.

His life did depend on it.

A searing pain on his arm made him glance sharply at his uniform sleeve, checking for fire. He saw no flame, but his flesh continued to burn. The cloth must be absorbing the poison gas.

Frantically he began to strip off his jacket. The burning spread, as if he was spreading it by moving the cloth. He couldn't get the uniform off fast enough.

He clutched at the straps and buckles of his boots, yanking them off, tossing them blindly. He wasted no time in climbing out of his putty-colored leggings. The burning lessened, but there must still be some chemical in his tan union suit, the army-issued, one-piece undergarment he still wore. He began to tear at the tiny buttons, unable to unbutton them fast enough. Before he could get his union suit off, he teetered forward and tripped over a spent shell casing, hurtling onto the dirt.

His breath was knocked out sharply. As he instinctively inhaled, the scorching pain ran up his nostrils, down his throat, and traveled straight into his lungs.

His lungs fought to expel the invisible inferno raging within them. He collapsed into a fit of uncontrollable coughing, feeling consciousness lift and leave him, when suddenly ...

He was swimming under the cool, lovely water. He was swimming in the Mississippi River.

He was free.

Free from the police who were going to take him for a crime he didn't commit. He'd never again see the inside of the waif's home where he'd spent the end of his boyhood. He would miss the jazz of New Orleans, but that was all right. The current was carrying him away to a new life.

All the magic his mother had taught him before her death would serve him in this new adventure. Every trick he'd learned in order to survive on his own on Bourbon Street would come in handy now.

He stopped swimming and popped his head above the surface for air... .

And he awoke once again into the cloud of putrid green air. And he knew that now, as then, water was the only thing that could save him.

The next morning, Emma stepped out of the manor into the cool, dewy morning and almost immediately she coughed. Her eyes and her throat tingled. Was the sickly green mist from the night before still lingering in the air? Were the spring breezes now blowing it her way?

She considered going back inside. It would be the smart thing to do if something unhealthy lingered in the air. Wiping her eyes, she convinced herself she had no more than a touch of hay fever.

The dream she'd had of the girls gossiping about her parents had made her long for them more than ever. With the bombs falling outside her window, she desperately wished to see them and had remembered that she had a photo of them in her locket. She'd put the picture of Lloyd over it, but it would still be there and ...

That was when she realized--with a slowly spreading chill--what she'd done. She had rashly hurled her locket into the well, forgetting all about the photo of her parents that lay beneath Lloyd's photograph.

And not only had she lost the picture of her parents, she'd also lost a family heirloom that had been in her family for over a century. She pictured the locket now, as it had been when she held it in her hand the day before. One half of the sphere contained a glass-covered frame suitable for inserting a picture--the place where she'd put Lloyd's picture over that of her parents. The other half had a compartment that didn't open although, if shaken, something clearly rattled around inside it.

Her mother had told her she didn't know what the sealed half held. "Great-grandmother said it was a little something for an emergency and that I should be content to leave it there in case one should arise," her mother had revealed. "I hope you'll never need to know what it is."

Upon receiving it, Emma had burned with curiosity, attempting to pry it loose with her fingernails, toothpicks, kitchen knives; but nothing worked. Often she would shake it wondering what it could be. A poison capsule? A priceless jewel? A secret code revealing that she was related to the queen?

How could she have thrown it down the well? "I am such a total idiot!" she blamed herself, throwing her arms out from her sides in frustration as she moved toward the well.

In her anger at Lloyd she hadn't stopped to remember that her mother's picture was under there. The last night's nearby attack had reawakened all her dread of the war and her terror at being left here on her own. She felt desperate to see her parents' faces once again! If she didn't make it back to London, it might be her last chance to ever look at them again. She suddenly felt desperate to see her mother's face once more.

How beautiful her mother had been with her wavy, auburn hair so like Emma's, and with the same gray-blue eyes. That's where their similarity ended, though. Emma had none of her mother's fragility or delicate grace; at least she couldn't see it in herself.

There were, though, less visible things that she'd gotten from her mother, such as her impulsive temperament. Hadn't her mother recklessly run off to Belgium saying she was worried about her family's ancestral home and felt an urgent need to check on it? And hadn't Emma insisted just as impulsively on going with her, bored with the rounds of society parties and eager for a more interesting adventure?

And now in one burst of frustration, an ill-considered fit of pique, she'd thrown away her only picture of her parents, not to mention the golden locket itself, and whatever emergency valuable was stashed in the other half.

Peering over the side of the well into the darkness below, she wondered if she could get it back somehow. It wasn't the North Sea or even the English Channel, after all. It was only a well.

Checking around, she looked for Willem. The old caretaker was never there when she needed him! Of course, she couldn't ask the ancient old troll to climb down the well, but at least he might help her with the very tall ladder she'd seen leaning up against the garden shed at the back of the estate the other day.

Checking for the ladder, she saw that it was no longer there. Strange. What could Willem be doing with such a tall ladder? Surely he was too frail to climb it.

She just had to get that locket back!

With a sigh, she planted her hands on her hips and considered the well. No longer in use, it had long ago lost its protective roof and windup bucket. It was actually just a deep stone pit in the ground and probably should be covered up. She made a mental note to tell Willem to board it over.

Was there even water in it?

Unsure, she went to the well and leaned over its wall as far as she could and peered into the darkness below. Very far down, a small circle of sunlight was reflected back to her, proving that there was indeed water inside.

But was the circle really sunlight, or the ball medallion of her locket?

Digging her nails into the crevices of the stones for support, she leaned in farther. Then, for the first time, she saw that the tall ladder was inside the well leaning against its inside wall.

It was definitely the same ladder she'd seen the other day. This meant that since yesterday, someone had dropped it down into the well. She doubted that Willem could have managed it. But then who did?

When her eyes had adjusted somewhat to the darkness within the well, she became aware of an even darker mass at the bottom. It splashed. An animal, perhaps? It could have been panicked by yesterday's bombing and stumbled in. Tilting her head for a better angle, she tried to make out its shape. Whatever it was, it was large.

Emma shifted her grip on the well's wall and knocked a stone down into the well. Before plunking into the water with the unmistakable sound of a wet surface being broken, it first hit the solid mass, causing the creature to cough as though it were trying to rid itself of its very lungs--and might soon succeed.

Emma knew instantly that this was no animal.

There was a man at the bottom of her well.

Three quarters of the way down the ladder, Emma's bare foot hit cold water. "Hello?" she called, peering into the black water and just barely making out his shoulders and head against the cylindrical wall. The rest of him was submerged below the surface. He had to be freezing!

"Are you all right?" she asked mildly.
Stupid question,
she chided herself.
Of course he's not all right!
She hiked up her ankle-length skirt, tucking its hem into her waistband to keep it dry as she stood on the ladder, knee-deep in water.

He could only cough in reply.

As her eyes adjusted further to the darkness, she could almost make out his appearance. He was young, maybe a little older than she, with close-cropped black hair. At first she thought he wore no shirt but then realized that some sort of plain, collarless tan cloth was plastered to his soaked body.

But she couldn't make out his eyes. Something was wrong with them. What?

He made no move toward her but turned his face away, still coughing, trying hard to stop, his hand raised to support himself against the well's wall, his shoulders heaving with the effort.

"Come on," she said. "Let's get you out of here."

He turned and stepped forward into the patch of sunlight. She cringed to see his eyes. They were swollen nearly shut, the lids puffed to three times the size they should have been.

And his skin was peeling, almost in shreds at some spots!

He looked to her like some sort of a giant amphibian. Yes, a frog, with his mottled skin and bulging, slitted eyes, was croaking there in the water.

She shoved the thought aside as being uncharitable and was instantly ashamed. He was injured, after all. He couldn't help how he looked. She realized he was most probably a soldier.

"Do you speak German?" she asked, speaking in German she had studied in school.

He stepped back against the wall.

"English?" she asked in English.

"Eng ... I'm with the English ... ," he managed in a rasp before the coughing overtook him once again.

His accent surprised her. "You're American," she surmised.

He nodded as he coughed, leaning against the well's wall.

Had the Americans declared war? She hadn't heard that they had joined the fight, though the Allied Forces desperately hoped they would. They needed American soldiers to replace their injured and war-weary troops, as well as American supplies to replenish their depleted resources.

At least he wasn't an enemy soldier, at any rate. That would have made the situation a lot more complicated.

Once his coughing finally calmed down, she extended her hand to him. "Come on. You have to get up the ladder," she said.

He pulled away from her, shaking his head violently.

"You must. You'll die if you stay down here," she insisted.

He pointed up. "Gas!"

"Gas? I don't understand," she said. "Do you mean gasoline? Did you come here in a motorcar?"

Again he shook his head, then slumped against the wall as if tired out by the effort of communicating even that much. The memory of the greenish vapor she'd seen the day before came back to Emma, and she felt sick as its meaning became clear to her.

It
was
gas, then! Poison chlorine gas!

She'd read about it in the newspapers. The Germans and Austrians had tried to use poison gas on England's allies, the Russians, on the war's Eastern Front. But it had been too cold in Russia.

The cold air had done something to the gas, making it ineffective. But apparently it had worked here, thanks to the fine, Belgian spring.

"There is no gas up there," she told him. "Well, maybe just a bit left," she said, remembering the tingling in her throat. "Most of it didn't come this far or else it's blown off. You're safe now. We have to get you some help."

She shivered as the cold water began to chill her. "We really must get out of here," she said again.

The news that there was no more gas aboveground seemed to take the panic out of him and he came toward her, sloshing through the water. "Can you climb?" she asked. "If you're strong enough, we can go slowly and you can feel your way along."

He nodded and Emma took the lead. Above them, the round opening of bright blue sky grew larger and brighter as they neared the top. From time to time she checked behind to make sure the soldier was still with her. One time, he rested his head on the rung of a ladder, seeming unable to continue, but after a moment's rest, resumed their climb.

"Nearly there," Emma encouraged him, again checking down. Turning back, she noticed that the sun had suddenly shaded over.

Looking up, she confronted two pairs of vivid blue eyes in unsmiling faces topped by the distinctive helmets of German soldiers. "The two of you! Get out of there! Now!" one of the soldiers barked in German. "Quickly--or we shoot!"