Curl nodded as she chewed busily.

  “Keshua has never come to me, not where I could see him. You are so lucky,” Lacht told the girl in front of her enviously.

  She glanced around them and couldn’t hold back a smile. What had she just said? Curl began to laugh and almost choked before she swallowed down her bite of pooma.

  “Oh bursting bubbles, I am so lucky. What nice pooma I have!” she said as soon as she could.

  “And such long leaves,” pointed out Lacht.

  “And a dark cave,” added Curl giggling.

  They laughed companionably for as long as they could make it last.

  When she couldn’t laugh anymore, Lacht said, “Really, it is special to have Keshua come to you. He came to Lynn too, you know.”

  “Who’s Lynn?” asked Curl.

  The Wassandra girl had finished her pooma stick and seemed to be getting a drink of water. Her mouth opened and closed while her throat made swallowing movements. She did it quite naturally. Lacht watched and promised herself that she would drink only when Curl couldn’t see her.

  Curl looks like a normal person getting a drink of water, not a fish with a gulping mouth.

  “Lynn was a young woman about my age. Keshua brought her to Tarth from another world,” she began.

  Curl leaned against her shoulder during the story, which Lacht told in great detail. When she’d finished, the Wassandra commented, “That’s a good story. Do you think it really happened?”

  “Yes, I know Lynn and Chell. We lived in the desert with the Stalli volunteers and met Lynn when she first came to Tarth.”

  “Is she still alive?” Curl asked next.

  When she nodded, the girl said, “I want to meet her!”

  Lacht agreed, “You can meet Lynn and her family this fall. They’re supposed to visit us then,” but the corners of her mouth plummeted as she said the words. Would they ever get out? I don’t think so.

  Curl moved next to her and pushed her face against Lacht’s dress. “It’s coming,” she whimpered.

  They sat and fought their feelings of panic, but the fears grew steadily worse—not suffocating, but stabbing like sharp knives again. They cut into Lacht’s mind deeper and deeper. She didn’t think she could move. What had Ploddin said? Something about the Wert paralyzing its victims?

  She wasn’t paralyzed yet! With an effort she stood up, pulling Curl with her. “The Wert’s coming through the leaves. We’ve got to get out of here. It’ll hypnotize us if we see its eyes,” she said shrilly.

  Curl shook visibly even in the dim light of the cave, but she put a finger on her lips and tugged at Lacht’s arm.

  Fear didn’t make Lacht shake; it made her want to repeat everything she had said, only louder this time. She closed her mouth and made it stay closed as she followed the Wassandra girl. Curl didn’t need to hear about the Wert. She’d grown up in Wasso Lake. She knew all about underwater monsters.

  They hurried through the leaves, retracing Lacht’s steps, because the fear knives were coming from the opposite direction. Maybe the Wert had gone around the plant until it found a thinned-out section of leaves.

  Lacht hoped desperately that the leaves on their side would stop it, but as they reached the last layers, every leaf they brushed past pulled loose from its high mooring. The panotka plant had died that afternoon. It could no longer protect them.

  Even so both girls winced when they stepped onto the empty floor of the pond, but they had no time to waste regretting the loss of their shelter. Side by side they ran across the floor of the pond toward the steep slope Lacht had slid down.

  You can’t run fast in water, not even golden water. Curl doesn’t know how to go any faster than I do, Lacht’s mind chattered fearfully.

  One of her legs made a slow bound forward and then the other leg took a measured bound; however, they’d almost crossed the flat part. In one or two more bounds, they could—

  Without warning the Wert landed nine feet away on their right side. There was a loud scream, and Lacht never knew whether the scream had come out of her or Curl. The two girls shrank away from the squat orange body, shielding their faces from its eyes.

  The Wert bent its right knee and jumped to their left, long arms undulating out on either side. As soon as it landed, it bent its left knee and jumped back to their right.

  “It’s playing with us,” Curl said shakily.

  The monster’s mouth opened and beneath her sheltering hands Lacht saw an orange tongue writhing forward over two rows of teeth.

  “Keshua!” she shouted with all the strength left in her.

  “Keshua!” Curl shouted in a responsive echo.

  The Wert bent both knees as it prepared to move again, this time straight at them.

  With a thump a body landed on the floor of the pond between the two girls and the monster.

  “Lacht, get her out of here,” snapped a familiar voice.

  “Ploddin!” gasped Lacht.

  The Wert had backed up a step or two. It didn’t like the long black stick Ploddin was waving in its face. Nevertheless, it didn’t want to leave, not with fresh meat so tantalizingly close. One of its arms made a sudden grab at Ploddin.

  He banged the arm with the stick and the Wert howled in pain. Its mouth opened into a circle when it howled, a teeth-rimmed circle. Lacht watched under her hand shield. She couldn’t look away.

  Curl was pulling at her arm, however, and she allowed the younger girl to pull her backwards, one step at a time. Ploddin.

  “Go on!” ordered Ploddin, as if he could see her hesitation though his eyes never left the Wert’s knees.

  He must have noticed the monster’s knees bend before it jumped to either side of the girls. He had come down the steep slope just in time to learn that revealing fact. Then he had jumped in-between them.

  Lacht took another step back, her face turned toward Ploddin and the Wert. Shouldn’t she help?

  The Wert lunged to the left and grabbed at Ploddin from several different directions. Two of its long arms almost touched him, fingernails clacking together in anticipation, but he sprang up in the water and stuck the point of his stick into one of the arms as it snaked beneath him.

  The ensuing howl bounced off their side of the pond and clamored its way to the other. Both girls flinched and Curl let go of Lacht in order to cover her ears.

  The point of the stick had stuck in the Wert’s arm. Ploddin tugged at it, but it didn’t come out right away. The other arms whipped toward him and the Wert stopped howling and cackled at its opportunity.

  Right before the attacking arms reached him, Ploddin whacked one of them with the other end of the stick, and the sideways motion pulled the point clear.

  “Keshua sent you to rescue that girl. Now get busy and do it!” he shouted, and his familiar crossness freed Lacht from inaction.

  “Let’s go, Curl,” she said reaching for the younger girl’s hand. The two of them bounded through the water once more, but this time they bounded up the steep underwater slope.

  We’re going to fall and slide back down, thought Lacht in a panic, but Curl knew how to run up steep slopes. Holding her body at an angle, the Wassandra girl landed on her toes, throwing her free hand out for balance, and Lacht copied her.

  The long weeks of imprisonment had weakened Curl, however. Halfway up the slope she stopped, gasping for breath. Lacht had to grab the younger girl around the waist and propel both of them forward at the necessary angle. Somehow they kept going.

  Another step, just one more; now another, please another.

  With a brilliance that hurt their eyes, the sun shot its shafts at them as their heads broke above the surface of the pond. The girls staggered through the shallows and out of the water. They didn’t stop until they’d gone three feet up the short bank. Then Lacht collapsed onto the grass, and Curl bumped down next to her.

  “We’re out. We’re out. We made it!” sang the Wassandra girl with a radiant smile, peeking between her fingers at the sun and the trees and the grass; and blinking hard to accustom her eyes to sunlight after all the weeks of semidarkness.

  Lacht didn’t respond. She didn’t even hear the happy girl. Sitting rigidly on the grass and blinking as her eyes adjusted quicker than Curl’s, she stared at the pond.

  It lay still and serene under the late afternoon mists that swirled above its surface. The mists would lift higher and higher as evening came until Tarth’s nightlights danced in the night sky. Then the mists would dance too, three feet above their golden home.

  Tears trickled down Lacht’s cheeks.

  She started when Curl put an arm around her neck. The younger girl had adjusted somewhat to the light, enough to take her fingers away from her eyes. She clutched a fistful of sun- warmed grass with one hand, but her other tried to wipe Lacht’s wet cheeks.

  “Who’s down there?” she asked.

  Lacht whispered, “Ploddin, a friend of mine, but I don’t know how he—”

  “Look,” Curl interrupted abruptly, pointing at a nearby bush.

  Lacht obediently looked, though she couldn’t see anything at first. Then she spotted the small brown head.

  “Brownie, you brought Ploddin, didn’t you?” she asked in a broken voice, holding a hand out toward the little dog.

  Hesitatingly with an eye on the newcomer, Brownie slid out of the bush.

  Curl knew no hesitation. “Brownie, you’re the most wonderful animal I’ve ever seen!” she shouted.

  Fortunately Curl’s weakened state did not allow her shout to reach intimidation level. Brownie’s ears cringed back and his tail went down, but he crept closer.

  “You’ve never seen a dog before?” asked Lacht absentmindedly.

  “No, is that what he is?” the Wassandra girl questioned back with delight. “It’s not fair that you Stallis have better animals than we do!”

  Brownie reached them then and as Curl stroked the soft hairs on his head and back, the little dog lost all his normal reserve. He crawled into Lacht’s lap and licked both of their faces.

  Curl shrieked with delight, and Brownie whined in ecstasy. Only Lacht stayed silent, staring at the golden surface of the pond.

  When the water started moving, she sprang to her feet, knocking Curl away and dumping Brownie onto the ground. Neither girl nor dog cared. They were staring at the water now too. Ripples were erupting from deep within the pond, ripples that made tiny waves slosh against the bank. Then a dark spot appeared in the center and spread out in a widening circle, visible even through the mists.

  “What’s happening?” asked Curl, but Lacht had wanted to ask her the same question.

  She shook her head helplessly and her eyes widened unnaturally. When Brownie leaned trembling against Curl, the girl put an arm around the little dog. In her peripheral vision, Lacht could see the two of them sitting on the grass next to her, but she didn’t turn toward them.

  The dark stain spread further and further.

  Lacht stood with a hand at her throat, until it reached the edge of the bank. Then she screamed, “Ploddin!” and took a quick step toward the pond.

  “Don’t touch that water,” gasped Curl.

  Lacht stopped short but not because of Curl.

  Eleven

  Ploddin

  “What kind of a welcome do you call that!” someone protested.

  On Lacht’s left, where the stream from Wasso Lake still poured golden water into the stained pond, a head poked up above the tall water reeds—Ploddin’s head.

  Lacht stared at him, her mouth falling open. How had he gotten there?

  “Up until now, only my leg limped. Now I think my ears might well—”

  “Ears don’t limp!” Lacht shouted into the young man’s complaint.

  She ran into the stream and knelt beside him, hugging him close. He hugged her back for a long minute.

  Then he remarked conversationally, “You know, Wet Ones do have advantages, after all. For example, I can sit in this golden stream without getting wet. On the other hand, your tears have drenched the front of my shirt. Do you think we could get up? I want to meet the Wassandra girl who caused all this trouble.”

  “It wasn’t me. I didn’t cause the trouble. The Wert did,” immediately stated a voice from over beside Brownie.

  “Oh yes, the Wert did it all, did he?” Ploddin responded as he limped over the blue grass toward her.

  “Well, I kind of ran away, but I wished I hadn’t. I wished I hadn’t lots of times,” Curl admitted.

  “I bet you did,” he agreed, kneeling beside her and laying a hand on Brownie’s head. “Brownie led me to you,” he said over his shoulder.

  “I figured that much out,” replied Lacht as she approached the other two. She felt a little shaky still. “Ploddin, the Wert—?”

  “It’s dead. I killed it with an iron rod that was supposed to hold up a gate. That rod made a good weapon. It made a good walking stick too, point up, though it was heavy out of the water, and Brownie insisted on coming straight here—I mean, literally straight here. He chose the shortest possible route, no doubt; but a dog can run faster than a person, even a person without a limp, and underbrush didn’t slow Brownie down. He wiggled through in seconds, and then barked until I caught up.”

  “How did you kill the Wert? Didn’t it try to paralyze you?”” Curl asked, brightening with curiosity.

  “It tried. However, I’d read the book and knew better than to look at its eyes,” the young man responded as he sat on the grass and leaned back on his elbows.

  “I never read the book. You told me about the Wert’s eyes, but I never saw the explanation in print,” Lacht felt compelled to say.

  “Yes, I believe you now. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you before,” he said, squinting at her apologetically.

  “The Wert. I want to hear about the Wert,” Curl reminded him, bouncing up and down on the grass.

  “Nasty, ugly, orange thing,” he commented and lay back on the warm blue grass, putting his hands behind his head. “Why on Tarth would you want to hear about it? You should’ve had enough of that monster to last a lifetime.”

  Curl insisted, “He’s interesting now that we’re safe out here. How did you kill him?”

  “Werts don’t like iron,” he explained , his eyes half­ closing as if he were about to fall asleep, but Lacht knew better.

  He was teasing the Wassandra girl, and she refused to allow it. Curl may have run away from home, but she had certainly suffered for it. If she wanted to know about that monster, then—

  “Ploddin, tell Curl about the Wert,” she ordered.

  Ploddin opened his eyes and drawled, “Curl, is it. All right, Curl, I’ll tell you but I will not answer detailed questions. It’s not my favorite topic of conversation.”

  He sat up and gazed at the water. Lacht glanced at it along with him and shuddered slightly.

  Already the current in the fast moving stream had pushed the stain back a few feet. Gold would triumph eventually, making the pond beautiful once more; but she never wanted to see that part of the Stalli Mountains again, beautiful or not.

  Turning toward Ploddin again, she was just in time to see the muscles in his face tighten. His expression didn’t resemble a sourplum yet, but it was in the first stages. When his whole body went tense, responsive tears pushed at the back of her eyes. If Ploddin hadn’t arrived when he did....

  “The Wert put up a good fight,” he began, breaking into her thoughts.

  “It almost got me a couple of times with all those arms. I felt like I was fighting several monsters at once. Fortunately it really did hate iron. All I had to do was touch my rod to one of its arms, and it would pull all of them back, howling in pain. Finally I got close enough to stick the point of the rod into its body.

  “I knew I must have killed it when it didn’t howl. Its mouth opened but no sound came out, only an oily ooze. At first the ooze only trickled , but then it started to gush and the water got dark all around the Wert. When the darkness began spreading, I ran for it.

  “You know, I’m not as lame underwater as I am on land. I ran remarkably well, only the fight had mixed up my directions and I didn’t know where to come up—not that I felt particularly picky. Anywhere out of that ooze suited me. I felt the current of the stream pushing against me and followed it out.

  “I was lying in the streambed trying to catch my breath when the highest pitched scream ever uttered on Tarth burst into the air. I thought my ears—”

  “All right, Ploddin, that’s enough,” Lacht told him, smiling.

  Curl was smiling too. “Stallis have black hair. Your hair looked dark-gold in the cave, Lacht,” she remarked with great interest.

  “I know. So did yours,” Lacht agreed, gazing with appreciation at the Wassandra. Curl’s skin gleamed pale gold under golden clothing of a slightly darker hue. Her long arms were graceful, rather than grotesque; and her long fingers waved with supple movements in the air whenever she talked.

  “You talk with your fingers as much as your mouth,” Lacht marveled.

  “You have the prettiest, dark brown eyes,” responded Curl. “All Wassandra have golden eyes. Everything is golden in Wasso Lake. It’s so boring!”

  Lacht laughed at the gold-hating girl and looked admiringly at Curl’s eyes, flecked by light-brown bits of color. “Your hair’s brown,” she pointed out.

  “Yes, but it has golden highlights,” Curl complained.

  Ploddin’s body had relaxed now that he’d quit talking about the Wert. Lacht wanted to stretch out next to him on the warm blue grass and take a nap, but she gave a great sigh instead.

  “We need to take Curl to her parents,” she said reluctantly.

  Ploddin nodded and pushed himself onto his feet with a groan.

  “You’re right,” he agreed.

  Curl buried her head in Brownie’s soft side.

  “They’ll yell at me,” she whimpered.

  “Not at first. That’ll happen later,” the young Stalli man corrected her cheerfully. “Come on.”

  He reached out his arms and without any further objection the girl catapulted into them.

  “Hey, don’t you think you can walk?” asked Lacht.