The Spring Between Us

Chapter 54: The Missing Page

We laid the corner of the map on the attic floor next to the map itself and fit them together.

The tear was not a tear. It was a cut, clean and straight, and the corner fit into it like a lid into a box, and when the two of them were together again the canyon map was whole. The branch came off the bottom of the page, through the quarry, and down to the small square mark with the name beside it. The old ore shaft.

But there was more on the corner.

The corner had been folded small and it had been folded many times and there were creases in it that had gone through the paper. When we laid it flat I could see that there was writing on it that was not on the main map. Along the edge of the corner, in my father's small square hand, there was a line of words.

The branch under the quarry runs east from the cistern and joins the deep water. The deep water runs from the spring house to the town. The Council pumps it at the quarry and sells it at the town and the packs are told the spring is dry. The spring is not dry. The spring has never been dry. The water goes down and the deep water goes east and if a wolf were to open the branch at the cistern the water would come back up into the pipe and the spring would run again.

I sat back on my heels.

"The spring has never been dry," I said.

"It has never been dry." Hank was reading over my shoulder. "The water goes down at the cistern and east under the quarry and the Council pumps it and sells it to the town. The packs get a trickle and the town gets a river and the Council gets paid twice." He put his finger on the line. "Derya. If a wolf opened the branch at the cistern the water would come back up."

"The branch is at the cistern." I turned the map around. "The cistern behind the pack house. There is a branch under it. My father drew it and he wrote it down and nobody has read it in eighteen years because the corner of the map was in a box under a pump house."

"The cistern has a valve." Hank stood up. "Every cistern has a valve. The line comes in from the spring house and there is a valve at the cistern and a valve at the spring house and a valve at the quarry. If the branch is at the cistern and the valve has been closed for twenty years, then the water has been going down and east instead of up and into the cistern, and the spring house has been filling a pipe that goes nowhere while the branch sits there under the cistern full of water."

I got up. My knees were stiff from the floorboards and my hands still hurt from the concrete, and I picked up the lantern and said, "We are going to the cistern."

"Now?"

"Now. Before Wren wakes up and before Silas sends another soldier up the mesa road." I rolled the map and put it inside my jacket. "Cal is at the ore shaft with Sten. Mira is in her hut. Berik is at the stable. That is four wolves and that is enough to turn a valve."

We went down the ladder and out of the stable and across the yard to the cistern. The yard was quiet and the pack house was dark and the moon was behind the western rim. The cistern was a great stone tank behind the kitchen with an iron lid and a gauge on the side and a pipe coming down into it from the spring house and a pipe going out of it east toward the quarry.

I put the lantern down on the lid and looked at the gauge. It was low. It had been low since the spring.

"Where is the valve?" Hank said.

"Under the lid." I looked at him. "Berik. Help me with this."

The lid was heavy and iron and it had a ring in the middle. Berik and Hank got it up and set it aside and the smell came up out of the cistern, old stone and wet and a little green. I took the lantern and got down on my knees and held it over the opening.

The cistern was half full. The water in it was still and dark and the bottom was out of sight. On the east wall, near the bottom, there was a pipe, and beside the pipe there was an iron wheel on a stem. The wheel was rusted and it was shut tight.

"There," I said. "The valve."

"It is at the bottom of a cistern," Berik said.

"Then one of us is going down." I stood up. "Get the rope from the stable. And a pry bar and the lantern and a pair of boots that do not matter."

Berik went. Hank looked at me.

"I will go down," he said.

"You are the Alpha of the Çöl pack and if a wolf of the Kızıltaş pack finds the Alpha of the Çöl pack at the bottom of their cistern in the middle of the night there will be a fight in this yard." I pulled off my jacket. "I am going down. I know that cistern. I climbed in it when I was a girl."

Berik came back with the rope and the pry bar. I tied the rope under my arms and got my boots off and got down on the edge of the cistern with my feet on the wall and they lowered me down.

The water came up to my waist. It was cold and it smelled of stone and there was a scum of green on the top of it, and my feet found the bottom and I stood there with the lantern held up and the water around me and the iron wheel in front of my face.

It was rusted shut. I put the pry bar into the spokes and pulled and it did not move. I pulled again and it did not move. Then Hank leaned over the top of the cistern and said, "Try it the other way."

I tried it the other way.

The wheel moved. It moved a quarter turn and then a half and then it turned under the bar, and there was a sound in the pipe, a deep knocking sound that went through the stone and up into my feet, and then the water came.

It came out of the east pipe in a rush and it hit me in the chest and knocked me back against the wall of the cistern, and the whole cistern began to fill. The water came up from my waist to my chest and then to my shoulders and I dropped the pry bar and got both hands on the rope and shouted, and Hank and Berik pulled me up and out and over the rim and onto the stones of the yard.

I lay on my back on the stones with the water running off me and the lantern still burning on the lid, and the cistern behind me was filling with a sound like a river.

Hank was on his knees beside me. "Derya. Are you hurt?"

"No." I sat up. I was soaked through and my hair was in my eyes and I was shaking. "Listen."

We listened. The cistern was filling. And under the sound of the cistern filling there was another sound, a sound I had not heard in three years, coming from the direction of the creek bed.

The creek.

Berik ran to the south gate and looked over and came back at a run.

"Luna," he said. "The creek is running. It is running higher than it was last night. It is running over the stones."

I got up. I stood in the yard with the water dripping off me and the cistern filling and the creek running and the mark on my arm warm and bright, and I said, "The water was never gone. It was going down and east and we have been drinking from a trickle for three years while the Council sold the rest of it to the town."

The pack house door opened. Wren came out onto the porch with a lantern and her hair down and her jacket half on. She looked at the cistern and at the creek and at me standing in the yard soaked through, and her face went white.

"What have you done?" she said.

"I have opened a valve," I said. "And in the morning I am going to open the rest of it. And you can go down that mesa road and tell the Council man that the spring is running again, and that the pair that opened it is standing in this yard, and that there is nothing in the Council's law that can close it."

Wren stood on the porch with her lantern and her face white and did not say anything at all.

Then Cal came in through the south gate at a run.

"Luna," he said. "Sten is coming. He has twenty two warriors and he is coming up the road and he has his jacket on and his sword at his belt and he wants to talk to you."

I stood in the wet yard with the water dripping off me. "Where is he?"

"At the south gate. He says he will not come into the yard until you tell him he can."

I went to the south gate.