The Waterstone by Rebecca Rupp Read Free Book Online

fish with shredded swamp cabbage and scooping it into their mouths, while Pondleweed, Tad, and Birdie used carved forks and spoons. Tad and Birdie had never tasted anything like the Hunters’ food. The sausage, smelling more strongly than ever of onion grass and wild mustard, made their noses tingle and their tongues burn. Tad bit into a tiny round red berry and gasped. His mouth was suddenly on fire. His eyes filled with tears. He reached, panting, for his mug of mint tea, and found Ditani laughing at him.
    “It’s a firepepper,” she said. “You’re not supposed to eat them, silly. They’re just for flavoring.”
    Uncle Czabo, squatting on the opposite side of the fire, gave his bullfrog bellow of laughter. “Give the boy some drink or we see smoke coming out ears!”
    Flavoring!
Tad thought furiously, gulping cold tea and reaching out his mug for more. The things were hot enough to melt your teeth. He tried surreptitiously to cool his tongue by breathing through his mouth.
    “I’ve eaten hotter peppers,” he said defiantly. “Back home we eat them all the time.”
    Birdie, caught by surprise, snorted. Ditani looked impressed.
    “It’s been many moons since we have seen Hunters in these parts,” Pondleweed said. His plate was empty. He reached for another helping of Branica’s sausage. Tad noticed that he avoided the firepeppers.
    “It is a bad year for Hunting,” Nobono said briefly.
    “The forest is dry and the feed poor,” Branica said. “The animals grow few and thin. Like this skinny mouse, eh? In a fine year, our wagon now would be heavy with pelts, but we have only these small bundles. You, too, have seen it, no? The Dry?”
    “It is the Drying Time then?” Pondleweed said.
    Nobono threw a fish bone into the fire, where it flared and sparked.
    “A Dry and perhaps more,” he said. “We Hunters in our travels hear many stories, and the tales these days are dark and feary.”
    Branica nodded, pursing her lips and glancing quickly at the children. Kelti had her head in her mother’s lap and seemed to have fallen asleep. Birdie and the Hunter boys, giggling, had scraped a smooth spot on the ground and begun a game of pebblehop. Tad stared down at his webbed toes and tried hard to make himself invisible. The olders always seemed to have something important to talk about that the youngers weren’t supposed to hear. Well, he’d had enough of that. He was going to stay right where he was. Now that he’d been given his first spear, it seemed to him that he was old enough to be told what was going on.
    Uncle Czabo spoke with lowered voice.
    “Weasels,” he rumbled. “A whole warren, by the paw marks. They fell upon a Hunter camp seven sunrises ago at the north side of the Piney Forest. When the camp was discovered, naught was left but toppled wagons and chewed bones.”
    Ditani, her eyes enormous in the firelight, edged closer to Tad. She really was the prettiest girl he had ever seen. For a moment Tad almost forgot to pay attention to the conversation.
    “My cousin Vico came upon a stone circle,” Nobono said, “and in the center of it were charred marks as of a great fire and an altar stone smeared with dried blood.”
    Tad’s heart gave a huge lurch in his chest.
A stone circle . . .
    He heard Ditani, startled, say his name. He turned to answer, but before the words could pass his lips, the scene before his eyes shifted and changed.
    He felt as if he were falling backward, whirling down and away through a long dark tunnel. His head spun dizzily and his vision blurred. He squeezed his eyes tight shut. What was happening? The Remembers hadn’t felt like this before. Or maybe this wasn’t a Remember. This felt . . . more real. The very air felt different — cooler, sharper, redolent with pine. When he opened his eyes again, he was in darkness. Pondleweed and the Hunters, the campsite by the honeysuckle bush, were gone. A voice — a familiar, somehow furry-sounding voice — spoke softly