The Waterstone by Rebecca Rupp

Author:Rebecca Rupp [Rupp, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7636-7428-1
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2002-04-07T05:00:00+00:00

The hawk’s voice was like wind in high mountains. It was a strange wild voice with an edge of cruelty to it, an uncompromising voice full of valor and pride. No one having such a voice would ever give up or give in, no matter what. It was, Tad thought, a warrior’s voice.

“I know you, Sagamore,” the great bird said.

Tad opened his mouth but no sound came. Shakily he got to his feet. His knees felt as wobbly as crab-apple jelly. He had never been this close to a hunting bird before. The hawk loomed over him, terrifyingly huge.

“H-how . . . ?” He tried again. “How do you know me? I don’t understand.”

“By your marking,” the bird said.

“Marking?” Tad repeated blankly. What marking? He was sure he didn’t have any special marking. He was just ordinary. Not like Witherwood with his terrible scar, or like Voice with all that red hair.

“Each Family has its own marking. It is how we tell one from another,” the bird said. “The goshawks by their striped faces; the marsh hawks by their gray wings; the rufous hawks by their red shoulders.” He bent forward slightly and flared his fiery tail. “The red-tails as you see.” His amber eye, unblinking, regarded Tad.

“You are marked,” the bird said, “by your shine.”

Tad held a hand out in front of his face and looked at it, puzzled. He looked down at his bare webbed feet. Shine? He couldn’t see so much as a glimmer. All he saw was brown skin — somewhat grubby — and a dusty brown tunic that was now much the worse for wear.

The bird blinked rapidly and cocked his head at a different angle. “There is a glittering rim around you, right at the edges,” he said helpfully. “It’s quite plain.” The hawk gestured with his beak toward Witherwood, still seemingly dozing on his sunlit bench. “The Old One can see it too.”

Witherwood turned his head, and he and the hawk studied each other solemnly for a long moment. An understanding seemed to pass between them. Witherwood made a gesture with his hands, the first fingers linking tightly together.

“Brother,” said Voice. He sounded as if something large were caught in his throat. “That means ‘brother.’”

The bird’s eye gleamed brighter for an instant, then clouded with sorrow.

“I am Kral of the Red-tails,” the hawk said. “I have come to seek your aid. The times are ill and the Families are fearful. The winds beneath our wings are dry and thick with dust. My mate has been taken by the black water. My nestlings are weak with thirst.”

“It’s what my father calls a Drying Time,” Tad said. “We think that it’s caused by the Nixies, the Water Witches. They have a magic token called the Waterstone that they’re using to capture all the water.”

The bird nodded. His feathers glowed in the sunlight, gold-brown tinged with red, the color of leaves on bright afternoons in the Moon of First Frosts. Tad had never realized that a hawk was so beautiful.

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