Speaker 1: A forest of earth and move an Arcane Heart Studio production.
Created and written by Eansley Bay. Chapter twenty two, The Water.
I wake up thirsty. It's the kind of thirst that
makes your throat feel like dust and will not let
you sleep. I stumble out of bed, careful not to
wake The space beside me is empty, right viv Is gone,
gone to the hollow, gone to pay a debt that
wasn't hers. And suddenly a dry throat doesn't feel quite
so bad. I close my eyes for a second, letting
the pain wash over me. It's still not a familiar feeling.
I don't ever want it to be a familiar feeling.
It's a constant dull ache and the center of my
chest where the bond used to hum with such strength
it made everything better. It isn't broken exactly. It's just quiet,
like a part of the forest where the thorns and
brush don't grow because a trail lived there decades earlier.
It's not a trail anymore, but the trail is still there.
I push the feeling down. I have work to do,
a pack to lead, a father, to manage a closet
dwelling faye, to keep from destroying the house. I look
at the clock. It's five am. I'm not going to
be able to get back to sleep, so I decide
to face the day. I walk into the bathroom. The
tiles are cold under my feet. I turn on the shower.
The water's ice cold, just the way I like it.
I climb in and something feels wrong. I look around
before realizing it's the water. I breathe in through my nose.
It's definitely the water. It is missing the slight chemical
smell it usually has after going through the house filtration system.
It smells like slate run No, I whisper, thinking that
the cousin had turned off the filtration system and fed
the creak water directly into the house, because of course
he did. I cup the water in my hand and
take a drink. As I swallow, I feel my feet
lift off the floor just an inch. I'm hovering. I
look around and the walls are now bark and neon.
Light is the sun? No no, I grabbed the wall
of the shower to anchor myself. Things quickly returned to normal.
The shower is a shower. The light is a light,
but the water it's still not right. I toss on
my robe and storm out of the bedroom, down the
hall and straight to my father's room. I don't bother knocking.
I marched through the bedroom, past a bed where Malcolm
is sleeping fitfully, and bang on the closet door. Cousin,
the canopy is resting and the stones have welcomed me,
comes the muffled reply. Open the door. The door swings open.
The cousin is lying in a pile of shoes. You
possess no rhythm, he complains. Dawn is for stillness, for
the gathering of dew. What did you do to the water,
he blinks slowly. The water was sad, the pipes were evil,
and you hurt the water with a machine. It was cool.
You enchanted the plumbing. I liberated the water, he corrects.
Now the water remembers the sky, It remembers the stars.
It has the spirit of the hollow. It made me
float and the walls look like bark. It's a wonderful enchantment,
is it not? You see the world as it should be,
not as it is. You poisoned our water to cause hallucinations.
Change it back. I cannot a song. One's song cannot
be unsung. We have carpenters coming today, I shout, human carpenters,
to build a wall for your closet, because you won't
live in a room like a normal person. Ah the
wood shapers, he looks interested. Will they bring offerings? They
will bring thirst, They will want water, and if they
drink from the tap and start floating, we have a problem.
Then give them wine, he suggests, humans like wine. It
makes impliable. I am not giving the construction crew wine
at nine in the morning. Then let them float, he shrugs,
closing his eyes. Perhaps they will build better if they
are closer to the world as it should be. I
slammed the closet door. The carpenters arrive at nine shark.
There are three of them, big men with tool belts
and heavy boots and the kind of practical, no nonsense
aura that usually makes me feel grounded. I know the foreman,
while the others are familiar in that small town way.
You've seen them around or maybe even hired them in
the distant past, but you don't know their names. The
easy familiarity is nice and one of the things I
love about small towns, but today it makes me panic.
Morning Here, says Frank, the foreman. He's known my family
since I was a boy. He built the gazebo on
the south lawn. He fixed the roof after the Storm
of eight, which was actually an invasion from a rival
pack that ended with a fight on the roof. He
thinks we're eccentric, wealthy recluses. Frank, I say, blocking the
entrance to the kitchen. Good to see you. Ready to
get started on that partition? He says, we'll need access
to the master suite. Of course, you know the drill
straight up the stairs. Later, I'm introduced to Dave, who
comes down and asks about a glass of water. Of
course he does, and with that easy small town familiarity,
he asks, mind if it used the sink. He weighs
a water bottle, water filt is broken. I reply, trying
to sound casual. Want to die coke? Uh? Sure? He
looks disappointed, which is a lot better than looking suspicious.
Two hours later, DEAs strikes. I'm in the study trying
to focus on contracts when I hear a shout from upstairs.
What in the holy hell? I sprint up the stairs.
I find Frank in the master bedroom. He's standing by
the closet door, staring at the wall. It looks like stone. Correction,
it actually is stone, and standing in front of it
is the cousin. Uh, Frank, that's Sorchaw's cousin. He's going
to be taking over as our butler. You know, Sorchow
is getting up there in age. Frank ignores the funny
looking dude in the closet and points to the wall
that was wood an hour ago. I made it more
like the earth. The cousin replies calmly. Yeah, Frank, cousin
here is helping redecorate. He found Frank Lloyd Writ's old plans,
and you know how he wanted the house to blend
in with the creek and land. Cousin is managing the
redesign to get it closer to those original plans. Frank
looks at me with a face that's half shock and
half curiosity. I swear that wall was sedar an hour ago.
You must have just glanced at it. Frank cousin tore
that out and had it updated days ago. I give
cousin a look that I hope reads his. Please don't
say anything else. Frank looks a cousin. Cousin, you can
call him couz, but you may want to get to
know him better. Before doing that, I lightly punch Frank's shoulder,
but I'm not quite sure he's buying it. Finally, he
turns back to his almost finished wall and the door
that his crew were still working on. Sure, here he
turns to Cousin and says, nice work on the wall,
cause and to my immense gratitude. Cousin looks pleased, but
doesn't say anything, and the men go back to their work.
The shadows where the light one stood. So then I
whispers inlyti, the winded rise. It calls a man, a
fleeting ancles signal chosen fa