The Wand & the Sea (4 page)

The three of them fell quiet as the key continued to pulse.

W
 . . . for
water
?

“See these weird rocks, like a pipe or something?” Holly said. “The key is trying to tell us something about the water, like Mr. Gallaway said.”

A shrill screech sounded above their heads. The red parrot landed on a high branch, looking at her very hard with one black eye.

Telling her something.

Holly dropped the boys' hands and thrust the key beneath the stone spigot. The water poured over it, freezing it to her fingers. She gritted her teeth; the key was still pulsing its letter
W
, faster now. She couldn't pull away until it was finished, but finished doing what, she didn't know. Her breath, coming in fierce, pain-racked gasps, began to smoke. A sheet of ice crept over her hand.

“Holly, stop!” Ben cried.

“Don't,” said Everett. “She has to keep going.”

“It's freezing her to death!”

“Just wait,” she said through her teeth. “It's okay.” But tears started from her eyes, solidifying into ice crystals on her cheeks.

Then, just as she felt she would have to let go, a weak heat stirred in her chest. It fluttered like a dying flame, then sputtered down her wrist into her fingers, and the ice began to melt.

The key went silent.

Holly pulled away from the icy water, and the hot, delicious sun warmed her blue hand.

The parrot squawked with satisfaction and flew away.

“Are you okay?” With one finger, Ben touched the back of her hand, which was turning pink.

“Yeah. I think so.” Holly took a shaky breath. Her jaw hurt from clenching it.

“We ought to have stopped you,” Everett said. “It went on too long.”

“No, it's all right. Look.”

She held up the iron key. One of the symbols forged on the loop—the water symbol—glowed with a blue light. Holly cupped her hands around it against the sun, and the glow brightened.

“Cool,” Ben whispered.

“It's ready now,” said Holly. “I think it will open the oak tree.”

The boys didn't argue with her. They helped her pull her boot out of the mud, and the three of them followed the stream back to the tree bridge. Although Everett walked across it easily, Holly insisted that Ben straddle the tree trunk, because, as she reminded him, he had failed to learn to swim at camp last month. “Not so loud,” he whispered fiercely, glancing at Everett, but he did as she asked.

Holly stuffed her poncho in her backpack when they reached the glade, and just as she started to say, “I can't believe how hot it is,” a cloud enveloped the sun and a cold breeze whipped up.

The key vibrated again in her hand. She hadn't put it away.

Ben and Everett hung back, letting her step up to the oak tree alone.

Suddenly she wished that one of them would stand beside her. In a way she liked that things were always up to her, but she couldn't help wondering why that was. Why
she
was the Adept, the only one left. Ranulf the centaur had told her that the king had exiled the Adepts native to Anglielle years ago, but he couldn't explain how Holly, a human from another world, could wield their magic. Nor could Almaric, the magician who had befriended her.

As she stepped closer to the oak tree, the iron key extended in front of her like a sword, the hum of the forest rose in pitch, and the key matched it. Her heart quickened. The water symbol glowed faintly on the key, then undulated, like a real wave. It made her feel a little—could she be?—
seasick
.

The breeze stiffened. The sky darkened.

Once again the forest fire glowed orange through the oak tree's ruined keyhole. Taking a deep breath, as if bringing two live wires together, Holly touched the key to it.

It fused there, and Holly couldn't let it go. An icy gurgle of water flooded through the warped keyhole and over her fingers. Her boots sank in the mire up to her ankles as the glade became a bog. A chill wind whipped her braids about her face, and again her hand went numb; the orange glow began to fade.

The lock stretched like pulled taffy, first so long and skinny that the keyhole narrowed to a slit. Then it shrank back, short and fat, and Holly heard a familiar whooshing sound: ocean waves crashing on a rocky beach. A hundred other noises followed, gurgles and splutterings, rainfall, bubbles, and the
drip-drip-drip
of water falling off leaves following a cloudburst. Finally, all at once, the keyhole righted itself with a kind of sigh.

Holly had fixed it.

She felt rather than heard the boys tiptoeing up behind her. Everett took her hand so he could see the lock properly. “You did it,” he whispered. “It's perfect.”

“Just like it was before,” Ben said, too loud, as usual.

Holly tried—and failed—to keep her mouth from turning up in a self-satisfied smile. Of course her magic still worked. After checking that everyone had hands joined, she drove the key into the lock and turned it forcefully.

The three of them planted their feet in the marshy ground, knowing what was coming next: The earth trembled and the oak tree split apart in a bolt of lightning to form a rectangular doorway. They stepped through.

The earthquake stopped.

The lightning didn't.

All at once the clouds dipped low into the forest, creating a strange twilight in the glade. Thunder cracked all around like bombs going off, and Ben clamped his chubby hand around Holly's arm like a lobster. Everett stumbled, sending them all sprawling as a bolt of lightning singed the grass. The rain descended in torrents.

“What'll we do?” Ben yelled above the deluge.

“Find a tree, and fast,” Everett said. They staggered to their feet. The water rose to their ankles in the boggy ground. The rain poured over them like a waterfall, and the four beech trees surrounding the glade whipped wildly in the gale. One of them would take them to Anglielle now that Holly had unlocked the oak.

“I don't know which one to choose!” she shouted.

“Go clockwise, like Gallaway said!” Everett pulled the group over to where their portal had once stood. He pointed to the beech to the right of the empty space.

Holly squinted through the rain at the tall, skinny tree. A small keyhole had appeared in its trunk, just like on all the beeches. A rune carved below it looked like a right triangle without a bottom bar, but that meant nothing to Holly. As she gazed into the upper branches, they swayed and undulated, like . . .

Like water.

Another bolt of lightning crackled down, narrowly missing them, and the thunder's sound wave threw them toward the tree trunk.

“Just do it!” Ben cried.

Holly thrust the key into the lock. Ben gripped her arm tight, and Everett took hold of her other elbow. She turned the key and waited for the rumble of earth and the blinding flash that would transport them to Anglielle.

It didn't happen exactly that way.

The ground trembled, but the blinding flash was just another bolt of lightning that struck beside them with a resounding
boom
that sent Holly lurching toward the beech. She fell through a wide fork at the tree's base, Ben and Everett tumbling messily behind her, until the three of them ended up . . . someplace.

She couldn't breathe.

Or see.

Her limbs felt strangely heavy. The boys' hands slipped away from her, and Holly scrabbled for them in slow motion. And then she noticed that her feet weren't on the ground either, but bicycling in thin air.

No: in thin
water
.

A light glimmered above, and the water materialized around her. As the light brightened, she saw she was in a murky underwater place filled with rocks and plants and a few long silver fish who wiggled by. She tried to cough, swallowed a mouthful of water, and then, unable to see the others, kicked her way toward the light above.

She gulped cold air and coughed until her ribs ached as she flailed her arms. Where were the boys? Was this some kind of water kingdom? She wasn't in Anglielle—how could she be?

Rain pattered on her face. She breathed deep, tried to calm down. She scissored her legs again, treading water.

Through her spattered glasses she saw that she was in a forest, heading rapidly downstream through a stand of tall grasses and water lilies. She tried to grab one as she floated past, but her hands slid through the slick leaves.

Her hands. The key!

She floated down a fork in the stream into a still pool, and grappled with her backpack, which weighed her down. There, tangled in the straps, was the key—or rather, the wand.

For it was always a wand here.

She
had
to be in Anglielle.

But then, where were the boys?

“Holly! Holl—”

The voice was small and strangled. Holly whipped her head around, searching the trees.
Please, let him be on the bank.
It was Ben.

Ben, who couldn't swim.

Holly paddled toward the bank, flung the backpack among the trees, and shoved the wand back into its scabbard, buckling it in tight. “Ben!” she cried. Her eyes roved through the rushing water.

“Holly! Here!”

She nearly cried with relief. There, clinging to an overgrown root of a beech tree, was Ben's face just barely above the water. Every few seconds, a wave washed over his head, and he sputtered. But he kept hold.

“Hang on! I'll get you out!”

If she could get herself out.

Downstream, she saw Everett, dripping on the near bank, draped over a skinny tree trunk flung across the stream. She let herself drift and grabbed hold of the trunk as she passed, then hauled herself ashore.

Everett's reddish-brown hair was plastered to his head, his ruddy cheeks scratched and bleeding. His chest heaved as if he could never draw enough breath.

“Are you okay?” Holly asked.

“Yeah . . . Ben . . . in the . . . water.”

“I know. Stay here, I'll help him.”

It sounded brave when she said it. But as she flung herself from one tree to the next, peering through the mist, she wasn't so sure. “Ben!” she called. “Say something!” But she heard nothing but the stream tumbling by.

Then, a sound. She stopped, listening.

“I said, if you'd stop screaming, maybe you'd hear me,” said a small, sullen voice a few feet away.

“Ben! Hang on.”
Learn to swim, why can't you,
an angry voice inside her said. But she ignored it and groped her way through the forest until she saw his chubby arms wrapped around the tree root. She reached down. “Grab my hand.”

She braced one arm around a shrub, ignoring the thorns that tore at her sleeve, and strained the other hand to reach him. His slippery fingers grasped weakly at her wrist. But he was weighed down—his backpack was snagged on another tree root.

“How can I take it off?” he said. “I can't let go!”

“Here.” Everett came up behind Holly, dragging a long, ropey vine with him. “Lower this grapevine down. Ben, tie it round your waist. We'll pull you up.”

“Give it to me.” Holly seized Everett's end and ran to the trunk of the beech tree. She looped it around and tied a half hitch.

“What are you, a sailor?” Everett asked.

“I know how to tie knots, okay? It's a useful survival skill.” She took the other end and wound it around her legs and waist in a makeshift harness.

“Hang on, you're not going down there.” Everett grabbed her arm. “You'll never make it.”

“He can't drag himself out, either.” Whatever Everett might think—and Holly hadn't forgotten his opinion of what girls could and couldn't do—he'd have to save it until after Ben was on dry land. She squished through the mud and sat on the bank. Well, relatively dry land.

“Here.” She tossed the loose vine back at Everett. “Ben, I'm coming down.”

“And just how's this gonna work?” he asked.

“Pull the slack, Everett! First of all . . .” Holly slid into the water and looped the taut grapevine around one hand, bracing herself against the stream bank. She pulled out her Swiss Army knife and sliced the backpack free, then heaved it up into the forest. Then, grasping the grapevine, she worked her way around to take hold of the tree root just in front of her brother.

“I'm secure, Ben. Now let go and take the vine with both hands. Then Everett will pull you up. Ready?” she hollered up.

“Anytime!” He played out a little slack, and the grapevine settled in the water.

Ben stared at her, goggle-eyed. “I'll have to climb
over
you, Holly.”

“Or learn to swim right now.
Which
,” she couldn't help adding, “you should've done at camp.”

“
Okay
, I'm going.” He grabbed hold of the grapevine and braced one foot on the tree root, his short arms trembling, and then plopped like a fat trout onto Holly's back. His boots skidded over her back and onto her head, smearing mud across her braids and into her neck as he scaled her body like a mountain. Holly gathered up the grapevine's slack as the rushing water tugged at her feet.

“Just a bit farther,” Everett said above her head. “That's it . . . I've got you. . . .”

And then, a mighty heave, and she heard the satisfying squish of Ben's chubby body landing flat out in the mud.

Now
that
was funny.

“Come on, Holly, you're next,” said Everett, pulling the vine taut again.

Holly braced her feet against the tree root and hauled herself up. Everett pulled her the last few feet until she, too, landed in the mud.

For a moment the three of them sat, panting. The rain misted over Holly's glasses and wet silt dripped down her forehead.