By Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
Chapter Twenty-Two "A Glimmer in the Stream"
Dar played in the shallow pool, happy as an otter.
He would splash the water over his head, or squish it playfully between his fingers. He liked the way the moon ran away when he splashed its image in the pool, or would reassemble itself as flawlessly as before in a few moments. He liked his new friend who he had followed away from the house where everyone seemed either sad or angry, or, worse, worried. You could never play any fun games with everyone worrying.
Dar glanced over at his new friend, who was busily diving and leaping in the pool as agilely as a fish. In fact, when Dar had followed his new friend's voice to the edge of the Mickleswift behind the Tones' house earlier in the evening, the first thing he had said when he actually saw his new friend was "Fish!"
His friend, whose scaly hide could be seen flashing in far end of the reed-edged pool, had corrected Dar.
"I am not a fish," he had said. "I, good master, am Gwllal." Gwllal had made a funny sort of glottal stop when he said his name, and that had made Dar laugh.
"Would you like to ride the stream with me to my home?" Gwllal had asked. In answer, Dar, who had been wanting to play in the stream all day, hopped in up to his knees.
"Fine," Gwllal said. He had one large eye on each side of his head, which was as broad as his shoulders where it connected to his torso. And his mouth was at the top of his head, and was a fish's mouth. It moved stiffly when he talked, and all Gwllal's words sounded as if he spoke them while gargling water. He had two pale legs, as skinny as a twelve-year-old's, and two pale arms as bulky as a dockworker's, but short as a dwarf's. In fact, with his webbed fingers and toes, his arms and hands resembled fins more than anything else. Come to think of it, if you were to say that a large silver fish's head had sprouted two arms and two legs, you would have been very close to describing just what Gwllal looked like.
Dar loved his goldfish, "Fishie!", at home in the city, and he liked Gwllal right away too.
The Crossamum Falls could be heard behind the pair, breaking far above the pond. Without the noise and furious action of the falls, there would be no peaceful, reedy pond. The two spent the night in childish games. Peek-a-boo and got-your-nose and some that Gwllal knew. Gwllal blew a bubble large enough for Dar's head from his slimy mouth, and brought Dar under the water with him to see the marvels that darted in the reeds. They ate crayfish raw, and Gwllal informed Dar that he was related to the rubicund herring. Dar giggled to hear such a silly word, like when his sister Abbey told their Mom that her soup was "simply scrumptious!"
"Aerfen is away, and I may do as I may," said Gwllal, but Dar didn't understand him. What Dar did understand was being tickled by bubbles, and getting swatted when he poked Gwllal in his huge eye with a curious finger. It felt like jello, Dar thought. Rubbing his face where Gwllal had slapped him, Dar thought it was worth it to find out, and so stopped crying.
While they were still playing on the bank, the middle of the pool began to swirl and bubble. A whiteness, like a boiling, was rising up in the center of the calmness Gwllal and Dar had been swimming in just minutes before. Dar clapped his hands together and said "Bubbles!"
Gwllal had a different reaction. Gwllal's mouth opened and closed rapidly, like a fish out of water trying to catch its breath. But the boiling and bubbles only grew greater, and they began to rise from the pond in a water spout. Gwllal's knees trembled, and he hopped out of the shallow water he had been standing in, leaving only a single bare foot in the water. Higher and higher the waterspout rose, until it was almost half the height of the Crossamum Falls. It towered over Gwllal and Dar, cutting out the moonlight from the place by the pond. All the moonlight seemed to be gathered into the waterspout itself, glowing brighter than anything else in the quiet dell. Then a shape began to form in the waterspout, or of it, making the waterspout look almost as if it were carved of ice. Gwllal recognized the glassy figure in the waterspout all too well.
"Aerfen, mistress," Gwllal said wetly, curtsying at the knees in a way that made him look rather froggish.
"Gwllal!" Aerfen said, and then continued in some foreign tongue that made no sense to Dar, but which, if translated, would have been something like: "Do you dare the curse of the Autumn Gods with this disobedience?"
Gwllal was speechless. He shook his head negatively. This was difficult to do, since he had no shoulders, and, strictly speaking, no neck. Gwllal looked like he was shivering with fright.
"Blasphamy! Impudence! Cursed be thy progeny!" Aerfen was working herself up into a proper tizzy. She had just come from the humiliation of the Gods of Autumn at the Tones' home, and was still stinging from it. Aerfen thought, in way that gods often do, that she might find some comfort in the obedience of her minions. All the waterways of Treashurstaene, and their sprites, were hers to command. And now her most trusted servant, the once golden Gwllal, was here in this moony pond, sharing all the joys of the waterways with, with....a mortal! Where was the mischief in this? Where was the game played upon unsuspecting innocents that was the proper provenance of a sprite?
Aerfen prepared to destroy the boy and Gwllal both, one by drowning and one by skewering. But just then, Gwllal, Dar, and even Aerfen, as mad as she was, heard a troop of men cracking the underbrush and tromping through the wood, calling out their savage war cries: "Dar! Dar! Whar' are ye, Dar!"
Aerfen had no appetite to confront another coven of wizards and witches on the hunt. She spun herself around with an increasing speed, like a topless top, or a tornado being pulled from the pond. She reached such a tremendous speed, that everything that was touching the Mickleswift for a mile in either direction was sucked into her vortex. Unfortunately for Gwllal, this included him. He was sucked in by his remaining foot, a look of surprise and terror on his fishy face. He didn't even manage a goodbye as he spun around the core of Aerfen's waterspout as helplessly as a leaf before a leaf blower.
Dar watched his friend spin around and around. "Up! Up!" he said, pointing skyward as the waterspout flew north toward the Crossamum Falls. Dar was still pointing and still saying "Up! Up!" when Barnabas Burrbukle and a dozen men broke there way into the quiet dell, Roanie at their heels yelping happily.
"Why th' Meremirror Pond's naught but a mucky hollow!" exclaimed Tommy Lingersall.
"Ay," concurred Eirdritch. "An' do yer hear the Crossamum Falls, who's roar we were a-followin'?"
"Nay, not a whisper o' it, let alone a roar," said Tommy wonderingly.
"It's gone dry as a desert cliff is why," said Eirdrtich, pointing up and away to where the Crossamum Falls were as suddenly silent as if a faucet had been shut off.
"Weel," said Tommy with quiet awe. "Thar's a wonder."
"A wonder is a wonder," concurred Eirdritch. "An' so it mun be."
While Tommy and Eirdritch were wondering what the devil had happened to the Crossamum Falls, Barnabas Burrbuckle spotted Dar by the reedy bank of the emptied pond, and scooped him up onto his broad high shoulders with a single hand. Dar shouted in delight, still crying, "up!"
END OF CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO