Sage winterwood's Arc

Chapter 4 of 29

Dawn found Sage between her two patches. The first grew green and thick. The second sat dark and bare, and its center had gone pale and dry overnight. She poured from the magic can onto the new soil. The water sank in, but the can could feed only one patch at a time. When she turned back to the first, its edges were already cracking. She could not water both. New sprouts had pushed up in the second plot, thin and hopeful. By noon they would wither. She sat back on her heels and pressed her palms to her eyes. Two plots, one can. There was no way to split it. "You're going to wear a hole in the ground doing that." Sage looked up. Aquaria stood at the edge of the plots, her water-blue gown moving though there was no wind. She had given Sage the can that never ran empty, and she was Sage's oldest friend. She crouched beside the pale soil and touched a drooping sprout with one finger. "I can't save both," Sage said. "If I water this one, the other dies." Aquaria studied the dry center of the new plot. She pressed her hand flat to the ground and went still. "There's water here," she said quietly. "Deep. Trapped under the stone. I can feel it pulling." "The spring is gone. You told me that yourself." "The spring is gone." Aquaria stood. "But water doesn't vanish. It only sinks and waits." She looked at the can in Sage's hands. "My blessing pours out. What if it could also call?" Sage did not understand. Aquaria took the can and knelt at the dry patch. She poured a thin line onto the pale soil. Then she laid her hand in the wet streak and sang low, three notes, over and over. The ground trembled. Not the deep roll of Terros. This was a shiver, close to the surface. Water welled up through the cracks. It seeped along the whole plot, dark and cold, and pooled around the thin sprouts. Their leaves lifted. The pale soil turned brown and rich. "There," Aquaria said, breathless. "The buried water. I woke it, but I can't hold it. It'll follow you now, in the can, if you keep singing to it." She hummed the three notes again and pressed them into Sage's memory. Sage watered the first patch. Both plots drank at once. She stared, hardly believing it. "Both," she whispered. "I can feed both." "For now." Aquaria wiped her hands and smiled, but her eyes were tired. "The buried water is shallow. It'll run thin fast. If you want a whole garden, you'll need a true source. A deep one." Sage looked past her two green patches to the vast barren stone beyond. A garden of every plant would need more water than any hidden pool could give. She had solved today. Tomorrow's plots would swallow it whole.