Free The Waterstone by Rebecca Rupp

Tad raised his voice.
    “It was a long trip,” he said. “We had to camp overnight along the way, and we met some Hunters. They had seen the Drying too. Only they just call it the Dry. The hunting was poor, they said, and the animals thin and few.”
    The grayer squirrel chittered angrily. The green woman poked it.
    “Then” — to Tad’s dismay he felt his eyes begin to sting and his throat tighten —“then we found what we were looking for. Something — someone — had built a dam up at the top of the stream, where all the water comes from. Behind the dam, the lake . . .”
    Birdie started to cry again. “The lake was horrible. The water was black and all filled with bones,” she sobbed. “And our father just walked into it. He said he heard someone singing, and he walked right into the water and disappeared.”
    The green woman’s face filled with sympathy and sorrow, then with misgiving, and finally with something that looked like shock.
    “Singing? What did it sound like?”
    Birdie opened her mouth and then closed it, looking puzzled. “Like harps, Father said, and . . . coral pipes.” She looked blankly at Tad. “But I couldn’t hear it. I didn’t hear anything at all.”
    “The Witch can only catch one fish at a time,” Tad said without thinking.
    There was a sudden pause. The green woman went silent and still, staring at Tad. The squirrels looked up, startled, beside her, and the reddish squirrel stopped chewing.
    “No more she can,” the green woman said slowly. She studied Tad, frowning, her brilliant blue eyes narrowed. Then she seemed to reach some decision.
    “Wait right there,” she said. She pushed the crowding squirrels aside and vanished backward into the leaves.
    Birdie tugged at Tad’s tunic sleeve.
    “
What
Witch?” she demanded.
    Tad shook his head helplessly. Nothing made sense.
    With a rapid whickering sound, a rope ladder came down, unrolling itself dizzily until it reached the children’s feet. The rope was made of twisted vines, braided, knotted, and then braided again.
    “Climb up!” the voice screeched from overhead. “Bring your frog!”
    Birdie, with a nervous look over her shoulder at Tad, set one bare foot on the lowest rung and cautiously began to climb. Tad followed, with Pippit clinging tightly to his back. It was a long and tiring climb, high into the very heart of the great tree. About halfway up, Pippit, who didn’t like heights, began to make nervous wheepling noises. At last — just as it seemed that they were going to have to go on climbing forever — they scrambled out onto a broad branch and found themselves at the door of a house.
    The house, invisible from the ground, was firmly anchored in a crotch where two broad branches met the oak’s immense trunk. It was built of notched sticks, tightly fitted together, the crevices between them packed with clay. It had a steeply pointed thatched roof, windows hung with green curtains, a window box planted with pale blue forget-me-nots, and a braided grass doormat. As they stared, the door flew open with a bang, and a voice screeched from inside. “Come in!”
    Tad pried the clinging Pippit off his back, which was difficult because Pippit had his eyes squeezed tightly shut and was refusing to let go. They wiped their feet carefully on the doormat — Pippit, protesting, was made to wipe twice — and stepped over the threshold. The green woman — Tad realized that she had never told them her name — was busying herself at a small wooden table, pouring out mugs of maple water from a baked-clay pitcher and cutting generous slices from a frosted cake on a round bark platter. The cake had a whole half of a cherry on the top and looked delicious.
    “Sit down and eat,” she snapped. “Things always look better on a full stomach.”
    She handed the children laden plates.
    “And when you’ve finished, we will talk. And then we will decide what to do next. Clean your plates!”
    Tad’s stomach rumbled