Sage winterwood's Arc

Chapter 5 of 29

Three days later, the buried water ran thin. Sage sang the three notes over her patches, but the pull weakened each morning. By the fourth day, the flow came slow and cold, then slower. Her green plots held, but the vast barren stone beyond them stayed dead. She could not wake water she could not find. She knelt on the rocky ground and pressed her ear to it, as if the stone might tell her where the deep water hid. It told her nothing. The seeds in her pouch glowed, hungry for soil that would drink and give back. "You look ready to bite the dirt." Aquaria stood at the edge of the plot. Her water-blue gown moved though the air held still. She had given Sage the can that never emptied, and she was Sage's oldest friend. This time she carried something. A tall silver pump, marked with runes, a bright stone set in its front like a caught star. "I told you the buried pool would fail," Aquaria said. She set the pump down on the barren stone. "So I went looking. I walked every low place in this land. I listened for deep water the way I listen for rivers." Sage stood. "And?" "And I built you this." Aquaria tapped the pump. Its stone flickered, dark, then steady. "It calls to hidden water, the way my blessing does, but it doesn't run dry. It finds a source and holds the signal. Watch." She worked the handle. The pump groaned. The stone in its front pulsed once, faint. Then it went dark again. Aquaria frowned and pumped harder. Nothing. "It found nothing here," Sage said. Her chest tightened. "The deep water isn't under this plot." "Then we move it." Aquaria lifted the pump and carried it across the stone. Sage followed. They stopped where a wide crack split the ground. Aquaria worked the handle again. The stone in the pump flared gold. It held. A steady light, not a flicker. Beneath their feet, the ground hummed low. "There," Aquaria breathed. "Deep. Deeper than the last. This one won't run thin." Sage dropped to her knees at the crack. Cold air rose from it, damp and clean. Far below, something glowed faint blue, a still pool ringed in pale crystal, charged with old power. A true source. Enough for a whole garden. "It's sealed under rock," Aquaria said. Her voice dropped. "The pump found it. It can't open it. That crust is thick, old earth, packed hard as bone." She looked at Sage. "I move water. I don't move stone." Sage stared into the glowing dark. She had her source at last. But it lay locked beneath the earth, and only one power could split that ground open. She rose and turned toward the far ridge, where the earth god walked with his silver buck.