A Pool In The Desert Part 2

"Why?"

"Why? Why did 1?-because I wanted her to be real, of course! Because I want you to be real! You do not want to waste your dreaming on my life-you do not want to visit me there!-although I wish Ruth could meet you-oh, this is absurd! I am dreaming, and Queen Fortunatar is a myth, a fairy-tale-she is not real."

"Everything that is, is real," murmured Zasharan, as if his mind were on something else. Then he walked round the pool and held his hand out towards her. "Am I real? Take my hand."

Hetta stared at him and his outstretched hand. This was only a dream; she had touched him, dreaming, many times on her visits here; he had half-carried her out of the sandstorm, he had dressed her ankle, he had held a cup for her to drink from, he had led her to this room.

She raised her hand, but curled it up against her own body. What if, when she reached out to him, her hand went through his, as if he were a ghost? As if he were only imaginary, like a legend in a book?

Like a dream upon waking?

She held out her hand, but at the last moment she closed her eyes. Her fingers, groping, felt nothing, where his hand should be. She felt dizzy., and sick, and there was a lumpy mattress against her back, and sheets twisted uncomfortably round her body, and a fish-and-chips-and-wood-shavings smell in her nostrils.

And then it was as if his hand bloomed inside of hers; as if she had held a tiny, imperceptible kernel which the heat of her hand had brought suddenly to blossoming; and her feet in their boots were standing on sand-scattered stone, and she opened her eyes with a gasp, and Zasharan drew her to him and he let go her hand only to put both arms round her.

He said gently, "You must find your own way to come. The way is there. I do not know where; I do not know your world, your time, with the cars and the electricity. If you wish to come, you must find the way. I will wait for you here."

She turned her head as it lay against his shoulder., and stared at the water of the pool at their feet. Somewhere deep within it, she thought a golden eye glittered up at her.

She woke feeling strangely calm. It was just before dawn. The first birds were trying out the occasional chirp, and the chimneys across the street were black against the greying sky. She climbed out of bed and put her dressing gown on and crept down the first flight of stairs, careful of the creaking boards, to Ruth's room. Ruth woke easily; a hand on her shoulder was enough. She put her lips to Ruth's ear. "Will you come with me?"

They made their way noiselessly downstairs, past the shop, into the back room and the garden door. There they paused briefly, baffled, for that door could not be opened silently. Hetta stood with her hand on the bolt, and for a moment she thought she saw Zasharan standing beside her, his hand over her hand. He was looking at her. but then looked up, over her shoulder, at Ruth; then he looked back at Hetta, and smiled. I thank you, he said: she did not hear him, but she saw his lips move. My honour is yours, she said, formally. Then she pulled the bolt and opened the door, and it made no sound. "Whew!" Ruth sighed.

When they reached the pool at the end of the garden, Hetta pulled Ruth into a fierce hug and said softly, "I wanted to say good-bye. I wanted someone here when I-left. I wanted to thank you. I-I don't think I will see you again."

"You are going to go live in a legend," said Ruth. "I-I'll remember the b.u.mblebees. I-make up a legend about me, will you?"

Hetta nodded. She knelt by the pool. Its surface was still opaque in the grey dawn light, but when she put her hand to the surface of the water, the newt crept up immediately into her cupped palm. As she knelt, an edge of her dressing gown slipped forward-"You're bleeding!" said Ruth.

Hetta looked down. The scar on her ankle had opened, and a little fresh blood ran down her leg. The first drop was poised to fall...

She jerked upright to her knees and thrust her foot out over the pool. The blood fell into the water: one drop, two, three. The newt was still clinging to her hand. "Ruth-"

"Go," said Ruth harshly. "Go now."

Hetta slipped forward, into the water, and it closed over her head.

It was a long journey, through water., through sand, through storms and darkness. She often lost track of where she was, who she was, where she was going and why; and then she felt a small skipping sensation against the palm of one hand, or the weight of a small clawed thing hanging to the hair behind her ear, or saw a goldy-black glint of eye with her own eye, and she remembered. She swam through oceans, and through deserts. She was swallowed and vomited up by a green dragon in a great stinking belch of wet black smoke. She eluded sea serpents by drifting, for, like sharks, they respond to movement; and water goblins by hiding in mud, because water goblins, being ugly themselves, are determined to notice only beautiful things, even if this means missing dinner. She was guided on her way by mer-folk, who have a strong liking for romance and adventure, and in whose company she sang her first songs, although they laughed at her for only being able to breathe air, and said that her little gold-eyed friend should teach her better. She spoke to sand-sprites, who have small hissing voices like draughts under doors, and she listened to the desert feys, who rarely speak to humans but often talk to the desert. She was almost trampled by the sand-G.o.d's great armoured horses till her little friend showed her how to hide in the hollow behind their ears and cling to their manes; but Geljdreth stood between her and what she sought and longed for, and at last she had to face him with nothing but her own determination and wit and the strength of her two hands, and a little friend hanging over one ear like an ear-ring. And, perhaps because she was from Roans.h.i.+re in the Homeland where there were no deserts, and she had not lived her life in fear of him, she won out against him., and loosed his horses, and crippled his power.

At last her head broke the surface in a small calm pool; and there was Za-sharan, waiting to pull her out, and wrap her in a cloak, and give her tiarhk to drink, as he had done once before, though he had wiped her face free of grit then, not of water. She turned to look back into the pool, and she saw a gold eye looking back at her. and she could not tell if it were a very large eye or a very small one. "Thank you," she said. "I thank you."

Somewhere-not in her ear; in her heart or her belly or the bottoms of her feet-she heard My honour is yours. "Welcome home," said Zasharan.

Ruth had grown up, married, had two children, and written three best-selling books of popular science concerning the apparent impossibilities the natural world presents that scientists struggle for generations to find explanations for, before she found herself one day tapping the legends of Damar on her computer. Her search engine produced few relevant hits; after a brief flurry of interest for a few years following independence, Damar had again drifted into the backwaters of international attention.

It only took her a few minutes to find a reference to Queen Fortunatar of the Clear Seeing. It described her half-brother, her success as an adjudicator, and the sandstorms that particularly plagued her reign. After a few compact paragraphs the article ended: One of the most famous Damarian bards also began telling stories during For-tunatar's reign. Hetthar is an interesting figure, for part of her personal legend is that she came out of time and place to marry Fortunatar's Fourth Sandpale Watcher, Zasharan, and it was said that after she came, no one was ever again lost to the storms of the Kalarsham, and that the sand-G.o.d hated her for this. But her main fame rests on the cycle of stories she called The Journeying, and whose central character has the strangely un-Damarian name of Ruth.