Briar Willowshade's Arc

Chapter 8 of 9

By dawn the four channels had drunk the pool down to mud. Briar knelt at the cave mouth and stared at the bare stone. The spring bubbled up through cracks, but the channels pulled it away faster than it rose. She had spread the moss. Now the water that fed it was nearly gone. If she couldn't slow the flow, the pool would empty by night. Then the new moss would die, and the spring's claim would swing back to her. She tried to dam the channels with clumps of moss. The water pushed through and around them. She scraped soil into the first channel. The current carried it off. Each fix leaked. The pool sank another finger's width while she worked. "Blocking it kills the grove," Oberon said. The fae king stood at the cave mouth, black against the light. He had taught her every rule of the spring and softened none. "Starve the channels and the moss dries. Feed them and the pool empties. You need both." "Then I need to hold water back and let it out slow," Briar said. "A gate. Something that stores it." Oberon said nothing. He watched. Briar looked at the trickle threading down the wall. Above the channel mouths, the stone dipped into a wide shallow bowl. Water gathered there before it spilled over. It held, then released. She pressed her palm to the lip of the bowl and felt the slow overflow. She carried stones from the cave floor and built up the bowl's broken rim. She packed the gaps with the dense moss that swelled with water. The bowl deepened. Water pooled inside it instead of running straight to the channels. It rose to the mended lip, then dribbled over in a thin, steady sheet. The channels no longer roared. They sipped. Briar knelt and watched the pool below. It stopped sinking. The spring's slow rise now matched the trickle she let through. The bowl caught the spring, held it, and fed the grove a measured share. The winged cat leapt to the bowl's rim and dipped a paw. Water spilled over its edge in bright drops. "It holds," Briar said. Oberon studied the standing water in the basin. "For weeks, maybe. The moss will spread slower now." He looked at her scar, then at the pool. "Slower is what keeps you alive. The spring drinks less. So does its claim on you." Briar sat back, hands muddy, and let out a long breath. She had stopped fighting the water twice now. First she followed it. Now she caged it. "But the bowl only stores what the spring gives," Oberon said. He turned toward the light. "And the spring gives less each day. It's not sick anymore. It's tired. Something is drawing it down from below, past your channels." He stepped out. "Find what's pulling from the deep, or your gate holds back nothing."