Enchantment (18 page)

She choked back an angry “What are you doing!” and instead scraped her feet on the trail so the ranger would hear her. He looked up, glasses glinting beneath his hat.

“Oh, hello.” He stood, brushing his hands together, and faced Holly.

“Mr. Drover.”

He looked a lot less intimidating out here in the woods instead of behind his huge desk. He could have been any ranger, not the director of the district.

He smiled. “Thought I'd take your advice, and have another look before the project starts.”

“See anything new?”

“Same old wear and tear. See this coupling?”

He pointed to the corner of the coffin he'd been looking at. Holly glanced at the water, wondering where Ohlan was, then bent down to look.

Coming out of the corner of the box was an old metal pipe that dove into the ground. Holly hadn't noticed it before.

“It's almost rusted through,” said Mr. Drover. “Another winter and it would break, and we'd be back to a flooded trail and an eroding mountainside.”

Holly stared at it, blinking, wanting to offer an alternative to destroying the spring. “It can't be repaired?”

“The whole pipeline is like this. All the way down to the reservoir. Replacing it would be a bigger project than the trail restoration. And see over here—”

He stood and went around to the east end of the coffin, where the drain-looking thingie was. Holly followed.

“That's the intake, where the water from the spring comes into the housing. There's something wrong there, too, because the flow-through isn't as high as it should be, but we can't even figure out the problem without demolishing the housing. The CCC set the whole thing in concrete.”

Holly bit her lip, feeling like her arguments, feeble as they were to begin with, were being pounded to smithereens. She shifted her gaze slightly, looking at the color of the water instead of at the intake. It was more greenish than gold in this dim light. A soft shimmer made her catch her breath, but it was gone again immediately.

“Did you see that?”

“What?”

“Movement. In the water.”

“Just a ripple in the inflow, probably.”

“
Do you ever just look at the water? Look
into
it?” Holly asked.

He'd probably think she was nuts. She glanced up and saw him watching her, looking curious.

“Can't say that I have. It's just water.”

“But water is life.”

He folded his arms. “Oh, I see. A meditation. No, I haven't done that, at least not here.”

“You should try it. You might be surprised.”

“What is it about this old spring that's so important to you, Miss Parker?”

She couldn't very well answer that. She gazed back at the spring, wishing Ohlan would appear. She was starting to worry.

“There's magic here,” she said, shrugging. “I can't really explain it. I was hoping you'd see it yourself.”

He gazed at her, glanced around the glen, then frowned down at the coffin. “Our aim is to make this place more beautiful, not less.”

Holly didn't have an answer for that. The only thing that would give sense to her arguments was the one thing she couldn't explain.

A rumble of thunder sounded overhead. Mr. Drover looked westward, up the trail.

“Sounds like we're in for a dumper. Can I give you a ride home?”

Holly shook her head. “I'm going to stay a bit.”

“Well, keep out from under the tall pines.”

Holly nodded. She knew the routine about lightning. She stepped closer to the coffin, gazing down into the water.

“And don't touch that water.”

Holly gave him a look of scorn. Instead of scolding, as she'd expected, he sighed.

“Keep safe, Miss Parker.”

“I'm always safe here.”

He stood looking at her, as if trying to figure out what she meant. Another distant peal of thunder rolled around the mountainsides.

At last Mr. Drover turned and headed down the trail. Holly listened until the crunch, crunch of his strides had faded completely away, and the silence closed in again.

“Ohlan?”

The water in the spring began to glow at once. Relieved, Holly watched as it grew brighter, then Ohlan stood up in the coffin.

“Where were you?” Holly said, stepping toward him.

“That man—an official—“

“He's a forest ranger.”

“I thought he was here to destroy the spring, as you said, so I withdrew to the heart of the water.”

Holly frowned. “The project doesn't start for a few more days. Actually, I was hoping he would see you—he has the power to stop it.”

Ohland looked down the trail, after Mr. Drover. “If he saw me, he would assume I was human.”

“Not if you were glowing, like now!”

Ohlan smiled sadly and shook his head. “Most people don't notice that.”

“Well, if you changed shape—“

“He would manage to forget it, or rationalize it away. Believe me, Holly—only a very few humans are open-minded enough to see me as I am.”

She thought about the flash photo she'd taken of him—the storm of water droplets—and remembered how little she really knew about Ohlan. She tended to think he was human. Even she believed the illusion, when she knew it wasn't real.

He bent down and reached into the spring, then stood again, holding out the library book she'd brought him the previous day. “Thank you. I enjoyed reading it.”

“You're done already?”

“It's been quiet.”

She accepted the book. “You kept it dry. How did you do that?“

He shrugged. “I protected it, as you asked me.”

“But you had it in the spring … except I didn't see it there just now.”

“I had it in a safe place.”

Holly turned the book over, half-expecting to find a damp patch, but it was fine. She took off her pack and slid the book into it, then leaned it against the coffin.

“Would you like me to bring you some more?”

Ohlan nodded. “I'd like that very much.”

“What do you want to read?”

“Anything you consider interesting.”

She grinned. “Trains?”

He smiled back. “Sure.”

Brightness filled the glen, changing Ohlan to a mass of swirling droplets. Holly gasped, but he coalesced again before she could say anything, as if her eyes had just gone out of focus for a moment.

A crack of thunder hit the mountains, and a fat raindrop landed on Holly's wrist. She glanced upslope, noticing the woods were even darker.

“Maybe I should go before I get drenched.”

“You won't get drenched.”

Holly gave him a skeptical look. Ohlan sat on the edge of the coffin and beckoned to her. She couldn't resist a hug, even if she did pay for it by getting wet. She sat beside him and he put his arms around her, just as the rain began in earnest.

None of it struck her. She looked up, and saw the raindrops sliding aside, as if a force field was repelling them. Rain danced in the water of the spring, but none of it touched Holly.

“Whoa.”

She looked at Ohlan, who grinned. A thought occurred to her and she tried to reach down. Ohlan held her tight, resisting her attempt to move.

“My pack!”

“I've got it.”

She glanced down and saw that the rain was staying off the pack. Relieved, she relaxed and snuggled against him, leaning her head on his shoulder.

“My water man,” she said. “Good trick.”

“Thanks.”

She looked up at him. “So I have to stay here as long as it's raining, or I get wet?”

“I'm afraid so. If I could, I would escort you to the street.”

“That's OK. I'm fine right here.”

Ohlan smiled and kissed her. Holly's stomach tried to flip over—no matter how often she saw him, or kissed him, she never got over the thrill and the wonder. She kissed him back, again and again.

She wished the rain would never end.

It did end, barely in time for Holly to get home without being late for dinner. Mom frowned but didn't say anything, and Holly again spent the evening doing chores and homework. Just before going to bed she checked her email, and found a message from Madison.

Heard you're still obsessing about that spring. Get a life, kiddo. You're graduating this year, you're too old for fairy tales.

Anger burned in Holly's chest. First of all, Mad was wrong, and second, where did she get off talking to her like that? She'd made it clear she wasn't interested in being Holly's keeper, so she had no business telling Holly what to do.

Holly hit reply and attached the photo she'd taken of Ohlan, without comment. See how Mad liked that.

She shut down her computer and went to bed, still fuming. Finally she got to sleep by thinking about Ohlan, imagining herself back at the spring with his arms around her and the rain falling gently all around.

~

“I think you'd better come straight home from school and get your chores done,” Dad said at breakfast the next morning. “That way we'll have the evening for the college fair.”

Holly didn't like this plan. “I've got to work on my article.”

“Oh yes, the article. How's it coming?”

“I need to type it up from my notes.”

“Do you have a deadline?”

“N-no. I was hoping to get it in the next issue.”

“Well, if we get back early you can work on it after you do your homework.”

Dissatisfied, she poked at her eggs. She wished she could skip the college fair, but she knew the only way out would have been to choose a college ahead of time, and she suspected a sudden announcement that she wanted to go to UNM wouldn't fly.

Besides, she didn't want to go to UNM. She wanted to stay here, with Ohlan.

Her heart clenched at the thought that Ohlan might not be here to make her laugh and make her breathless. Just the idea of it hurt.

Dad wiped up the last of his egg yolk with his toast, munched it down, then got up from the table. “Gotta go. Have a great day, you two. See you at supper.”

Holly mumbled a goodbye while Mom went to the door with Dad. In a minute she came back and picked up Dad's plate.

“You'd better finish up, or you'll be late.”

“I'm not hungry.”

Holly stood and took her own plate into the kitchen, dumping what was left of her breakfast in the trash. As she headed for the sink she noticed Mom watching her, frowning.

“Sorry, Mom. It was good, I just couldn't eat it all.”

She kissed Mom's cheek and headed to her room to fetch her pack. When she came back through the kitchen on her way to the garage to get her bike, Mom was still standing in the same place.

“Is something wrong, honey? You've been pretty—distracted, lately.”

“Just getting back into the swing of school. You know.”

“You'd come and tell me if you were in trouble, right?”

“I'm not in trouble, Mom. Where did that come from?”

Mom shrugged and picked up a towel to wipe the counter, which was already clean. Holly walked over and caught her in a hug.

“Worried about your baby bird leaving the nest?”

“Oh.” Mom laughed. “Maybe a little.”

“What if I decided to stay? I could get a job and pay you rent.”

“It's not about money, honey. You need a good education.”

The conversation was starting to sound familiar. Holly cut it short, squeezing Mom's shoulders and smooching her cheek.

“See you after school.”

She cruised to the school on rainwashed streets. The air had a cool bite to it, and Holly couldn't help but think of Ohlan. Maybe she'd ditch her last class and sneak in a visit with him.

Great, Parker. First week of school and you're already ditching classes?

At lunch she sat with Jen and Debbie, who were full of plans for seeing the robot movie on Friday. Jen razzed her about going to
Soldier's Farewell
last Friday.

“Told you it would be a dud. It was a dud, wasn't it?”

“Yeah. You were right. I think I fell asleep.”

“
Well, you won't fall asleep in
Glory Daze
!”

“I'll have to make sure my parents are cool with me going.”

Holly wondered briefly if she could turn this into another visit to Ohlan, then decided against it. She didn't want to ditch her friends again, or they'd get annoyed and maybe suspicious.

Maybe she'd sneak out of the house Saturday night. That might be her last chance to spend a night with Ohlan. She tried to think of some legitimate way of getting out, but came up blank. It was almost as if her anxiety to be with him kept her from thinking.

If you have sex with an illusion, are you still a virgin?

The bell rang, and she headed off to class. She was so used to the routine already that she forgot her idea of ditching until after she'd walked into her final period classroom. Couldn't very well leave again, so she sat down, resigned to missing Ohlan for another day.

Back home, she rushed to get through her chores. Mom was still moody, so Holly tried extra hard to please her, even offering to make the salad for dinner because she knew Mom didn't like chopping vegetables.

Mom had made chicken and dumplings, Dad's favorite dinner. It put him in a good mood, for which Holly was grateful. She had a feeling the college fair wasn't going to be fun,.

The fair was set up at the high school. Each college had a classroom where they could hand out brochures and talk about their school.

Holly walked past the room with the University of Colorado at Boulder sign and picked another room at random. It turned out to be a liberal arts college in the Midwest, small and expensive. Holly listened to the nice woman—an alumnus who lived in town—rave about how great the school was, and accepted a brochure. Dad asked a couple of questions.