Rosario and the Water of Life - part 2

Rosario and the Water of Life - part 2

We found a little path where the stones muttered to themselves. Armand, Malena, and Graciano headed off immediately, but father and Morgan stopped Mayur and I before we could follow. Dad pulled a long, familiar knife from a sheath under his shirt, and passed it to me, saying, “Morgan and I are going to follow those people to try and keep them from the Water of Life. If anything happens to us, the blade will become bloodied, and then you must come and find out what happened.”

“Normal people would tell us to run,” I said, grinning weakly. Stefanos smiled and tousled my hair, then patted Mayur’s shoulder in a surprisingly fatherly way before turning and going up the path. Morgan tipped his hat to us, then followed his friend.

After each gone four feet up the path, they vanished. For what felt like hours, Mayur and I waited, my eyes on the knife, his on the pathway. Finally, however, the blade turned red - more than that, it began to drip blood. I grabbed Mayur’s wrist and launched myself onto the path before he could open his mouth, but he figured it out even before he saw the knife.

Almost immediately after we crossed the point where Dad and Morgan vanished, our ears were assailed with the nastiest taunts I’d ever heard. I reminded Mayur of the giant’s words, so that we would know not to turn around, but it was hard going. I’ve never been one to care about insults, but these had a way of worming into your bones. A few minutes later, though, we saw that the threat of turning to stone was not an idle one. Malena stood on our path, face twisted with anger, cigarette frozen to stone lips, her right hand raised to throw a rock at the jeering stones. Mayur and I gave her a wide berth, and went on.

We hadn’t gone very far before we came across Graciano’s stone form - but with him were Dad and Morgan, who had apparently been frozen trying to stop the Spaniard from turning. I hurried past them, more determined than ever to get to the end.

It occurred to me, then, that it was unusual for the three of them to believe the giant’s words. Even though he was a giant, giants could be “explained away”, but these three had immediately believed him. Myself and my companions had believed him because he spoke that strange language, and we knew from experience that such things were possible. I wondered if, perhaps, the unusual group had known about the giant beforehand and had been trying to find him. Meeting us must have been some amazing luck for them, since I just so happened to understand what the giant was saying. But the more I thought about it, the more our meeting seemed less like chance and more like purpose.

Mayur grabbed my shoulder, startling me out of my thoughts, and I realized that the jeering rocks had gone quiet. I looked around and saw that, while we were still on the path, it now had trees growing on either side of it, their branches arcing over the path and giving us shade. The ground beneath our feet was mossy and soft, and as I looked, I saw the dark footprints that led forward. The footprints were about the size of Armand’s sneakers, but where they touched the ground, the moss was dead and burnt, and in some places, there were still tiny flames. I took a step and looked back, and found that my own feet left no mark at all - Mayur did the same, with results similar to mine. Starting to worry, we continued along, following the burnt footsteps until we found ourselves going uphill. The greenery along the sides of the path grew thicker, the branches overhead more entangled, endeavoring to look ominous. The mossy path underfoot gave way to rough stone steps, and we climbed the hill in silence.

Once we reached the top, we stepped through a curtain of gently falling water and found ourselves in a beautiful clearing. The hill was a small one, and the top was mostly taken up by a large, shallow pool of crystal-clear water. In the middle of the pool, growing on a stone with its roots in the water, was an enormous tree that stretched up to shade the entire clearing. In one of its branches, a wonderfully colored bird preened itself. I stepped forward, and found myself knee-deep in unnaturally tall clover, and as I turned to look back at Mayur, I saw Armand.

He was crouched near one edge of the pool, staring at the water as if hypnotised. As Mayur stepped off the stone and into the sea of clover, I made my towards the French-American, but as I neared him, I saw something that made me stop in my tracks, surprised.

The clover around Armand was dying and, under the influence of the pool, growing back immediately, only to die again. After a few moments, he looked up at me, stood, and smiled, flashing rows of sharp teeth. “Hello, Rosario. I did quite a number on those other fools, didn’t I? It was almost surprisingly easy to make them turn around - especially your father. Who knew he was such a hero-”

He was interrupted by my fist connecting with his face.

My brother, Vincente, took boxing while he was in school. At my request, he taught me everything he knew, and even after becoming involved in the supernatural, I kept up the practice. This gave me upper body strength that most people didn’t expect, and the force of the blow I dealt Armand actually sent him sprawling. He lay, stunned, for several moments, and I kept my guard up while he sat up. He gingerly touched his nose, which was quite thoroughly broken, and hissed in pain. Eyes turning to dark slits, Armand unsteadily got to his feet, and as I watched, his hands became mouths with nasty-looking teeth, and the teeth in his head grew outward, forcing the rest of his head to tilt back. His eyes stretched, becoming entirely black, and fins sprouted from his body, tearing his clothing with their sharp barbs. An antenna with a light sprouted from his head, and I wondered what the hell he was. Mayur grabbed me and pulled me back out of range, and the rusted sword from the lake appeared in his hands.

Armand looked at the sword and laughed - until, that is, there was a flash of light. When the light faded, the sword was pristine and unblemished, its blade so shiny it was blinding. The padparadschas and rubies in the hilt pulsed with light, and Mayur’s street clothes were gone, replaced with the rich Indian clothes he’d worn the first time I saw him.

“Get your sword, Rosario,” he said over his shoulder, eyes fixed on Armand.

“How?” I asked, then realized it was probably the same as my gifts. I concentrated on the sword, and in a heartbeat, its weight rested in my hands. A flash of light and it, too, was clean and perfect, and there was a strange weight on my shoulders. I looked down to find myself in royal blue robes, with gilded shoes. When I looked up again, Armand’s face was pale with horror.

“Allow us to introduce ourselves,” Mayur said, tossing his head to get his long, fine hair out of his face. “I am the Peacock King.”

“And I am Rosario the Painter,” I said, and felt a strange thrill go through me as the words left my lips.

The man-fish quickly bowed low, until all that could be seen of him was the antenna on top of his head. Mayur nodded at me, and I sheathed my sword - for a sheath had appeared with my clothes - before moving to the edge of the pool. I wondered for a moment what to put the water in, for I knew now that we had to use it to bring back those who had been turned to stone, but as I thought, I remembered one of my gifts had been a pottery jug. I wished the plain vessel into my hands, and carefully dipped it into the pool. I filled it to the brim, then straightened and found myself face to face with a beautiful old woman.

She had a soft, round face with dark brown skin like the bark on a tree. Her hair was fine and purest white, and hung around her face like spiderwebs. There were beads of dew on her hair, and her eyelashes were delicate green leaves. As I looked at her, I realized that she had come out of the tree in the middle of the pool, and was hanging down from one of the thickest branches. Her arms and legs grew out of the branch itself, and there were tiny blossoms growing out of her body. Her eyes, wide and pale, caught the color of the water. We stared at each other for a long moment, before a third arm grew out of her left arm and plucked a blossom from her collarbone. She stretched the arm out, creaking, and tucked the blossom behind my ear, gently patting my cheek afterwards. The third arm broke itself off of the main body and fell into the pool with a splash, then sank down to the bottom and disappeared. Within moments, however, I saw little tiny trees sprouting along the edges of the pool.

“Greetings, Painter,” she said, her voice the gentle whisper of the wind. “May the Water of Life serve you well, and the Winds take you wherever you need be.”

She was gone into the tree before I could respond, and after a moment, I bowed low to the tree. I then turned my attention to the others, just in time to see Armand launch himself at Mayur. My friend was fast with a sword, but my gut told me that Armand’s barbs and teeth were poisonous. Hardly knowing what I was doing, I hurriedly set the jug down, water spilling over the side and onto my hands, and ran at the man-fish.

His barbs ripped through my clothing and scraped my skin as I tackled him to the ground, pulling my father’s knife from my pocket. A voice screamed, “Fire! Fire! Kill him with fire or he can come back!” I placed my left knee to his neck to keep him pinned, then used my fingertip to write the word fire in the blood on the blade of the knife. Immediately, the blade burst into flames, and Armand uttered a hair-raising scream. He thrashed around, almost dislodging me, and opened his mouth to bite my left arm. As his long teeth began to close over my elbow, I struck with my right, bringing the knife down into his head. He screamed again as his head burst into flames, and I hurriedly got off of him. His mouth still latched onto my arm, I pulled the knife out and stabbed repeatedly at his jaw until he was forced to let go. Mayur grabbed me and pulled me away, and as we watched, Armand’s entire body caught fire and blazed for a few moments before turning to ash. The clover that had died beneath him immediately burst into life, and soon we couldn’t even see where he’d been.

“That was stupid,” Mayur said, and hugged me tightly.

“Ow,” I replied, and he remembered that I’d been hurt. He pulled back and attempted to inspect me, but found that my clothes were too bulky.

“Put those robes away, Rosario, we need you in your normal clothes,” he said. I stared at him in consternation for a moment, then wished away both the clothes and the sword, and found myself back in my plain shirt and khaki pants. He rolled up my suddenly bloodied sleeves, and we discovered that, while the wounds still bled, the poison on the barbs was running out of them faster than the blood was. Taking out a handkerchief, Mayur carefully wiped the poison away from the cuts until he was satisfied that there was little danger.

I took off my shirt - for I had a tank top on underneath - and tore it into strips to use as bandages. The only wound that seemed serious was the one where Armand had bit me, so I picked up the jug of water and Mayur wished his normal clothing back. We returned to the path, and found ourselves facing a problem. We weren’t sure if the jeering stones would let us pass back, so I decided to walk backwards until I reached Morgan and my father and Graciano, because I had a feeling that the Spaniard could tell us the story. It seemed to take forever, but when I reached them, I sprinkled water on Graciano’s head and torso, returning the upper half of his body back to life. He gasped for breath, and was surprised to find himself still partially stone, though he was even more surprised to see me wounded.

Before he could speak, I shouted over the sound of the stones, “How do I quiet them?”

He pointed to the jug in my hands and said, “Sprinkle them with water, like in the story. It will turn them back. Though, if you are who I think you are, you needn’t worry.”

I turned from him and flung water in a wide arc, and the stones on either side of the path turned to tiny people who vanished into the underbrush almost immediately. I turned and sprinkled water on Graciano’s legs to free the rest of him, then freed my father and Morgan. As they returned to life, I kissed their cheeks, called to Mayur, then headed back down the path to free Malena and turn the rest of the stones.

They caught up with me just as Malena threw her cigarette on the ground and crushed it under the heel of her shoe. “That,” she declared, “is the very last time I do this sort of thing. It’s back to the books for me!”

A little Water of Life remained in the bottom of the jug, and my father bid me drink half of it before we returned to the human world. I did so, and we left the path, my wounds healing a little more with every step. Once we were off the path entirely, my father asked me to drink the rest of the Water of Life, and when I did, I came out of it sputtering.

“Whiskey!” I said, looking at my father with wide eyes. “It’s turned to whiskey!”

“Aptly named, isn’t it?” he asked, grinning. “Whiskey, I mean.”

“Water of life, indeed,” I said, and laughed.



Malena left us shortly after, and Graciano told the rest of us the story as he knew it. In it, three brothers and a sister built a castle, and were told by an old man that they needed the water of life, a branch where the smell of the flowers gave eternal beauty, and the talking bird. They set out and met a giant, who told them to ignore the stones. The brothers were all turned to stone, but the sister made it through and brought back the things they needed, and restored the stones and her brothers to life.

After thanking us, Graciano went off on his own, and we returned to our hotel. While Morgan went to rest - his brief stint as a statue had not improved the ill feeling that assailed him in warm climates - and Mayur went to bathe, my father and I sat out on the balcony of my room to talk. He and Morgan had heard the story of what had happened on the hill by that time, so I instead told him what I’d learned from Mayur. He listened quietly, and confirmed that it was all true. Better, he told me that I was now a fully-fledged Painter, merely because I had summoned the sword and set the knife on fire. The sword couldn’t be summoned the way my gifts were, because the sword itself wasn’t magic. The clothes, like Mayur’s, were only something that would appear if I wanted them, or if I entered a realm that was ruled by magic. The reason they hadn’t appeared in Annwn was because I hadn’t yet come into full power.

“So, Rosario, what will you do with yourself now?” my father asked, remembering that I’d told him my goal was to find out what my role in everything was.

“Well,” I said, rubbing my chin thoughtfully, “I think I’ll work towards stopping Arawn. Where do you think I ought to go next?”

He smiled. “I heard there’s been some trouble down in Australia lately. It might be a start for you, so you can get used to your power.”

“Australia, huh? Sounds good to me,” I said, grinning.



Morgan and Stefanos stayed in Spain for another few days, then began the journey back to Alaska. I, on the other hand, made arrangements to go to Italy, wanting to visit Sebastiano before going to Australia. I asked the Peacock King if he wanted to tag along, and he quite gladly accepted the invitation.

My great-uncle - I still thought of him that way, though we weren’t blood-related - was surprised to see us, and I was surprised to find that the Hungarians still worked with him. It had been about five or six weeks since I’d left Italy, and there was a good deal to catch Sebastiano up on. The Hungarians, who’d gotten jobs on top of modeling for Sebastiano, treated us to dinner, and revealed that they were greatly enjoying life as mortals. They knew Mayur, and were just as pleased as I’d been to find that he wasn’t as much of an ass as he’d pretended to be.

We spent a week in Italy, then set off on our next adventure, but as we boarded the plane, I realized that I was beginning to miss Mal Hatun, and wondered if I could get back to Turkey soon to see her.