“Now,” said Denaeh clasping her hands together in a gesture suggesting she was about to clean an untidy room, much less plot revenge, “you’ll have to attack them in a place that is in your territory. Now when I say your territory, I mean a place that is comfortable and well known by you. For instance.”
Denaeh cocked her head so one side of her face was exposed to Jahrra. “Lake Ossar . . ?”
Jahrra snorted. “Oh, they go out there as often as they can now. But Gieaun and Scede and I know it far better than they do.”
Jahrra sat up now and rested her elbows on her knees, allowing her legs to dangle freely. Denaeh stood there, her left arm supporting the elbow of the arm whose hand was now thrust under her chin. Jahrra couldn’t make out her expression; her face was downturned.
“And how deep is this lake?” Denaeh continued.
“Probably only twenty feet at the most in the center,” Jahrra answered blankly, sitting up a little straighter and returning her focus on Denaeh.
“And what sorts of animals live in this lake?” the Mystic asked casually, waving her free hand around as if trying to extend the smoky scent of burning incense.
“Oh, nothing more dangerous than large trout and bass, frogs and tadpoles, turtles, and some water bugs. Leeches, maybe.”
Jahrra counted the creatures off on her fingers, then after a few moments of silence, she chuckled and sat up fully on the large limb.
The Mystic finally raised her head.
“What is it?” she asked, looking truly confused since the first time Jahrra had met her.
“Oh, I was just thinking about what else might live in the lake, and I remembered some stories Gieaun’s and Scede’s father used to tell us.”
“What kinds of stories?” Denaeh pressed on, casualty still cloaking her voice.
“Just stories to scare us. Stories about a lake monster. They’re harmless, but they sure scared me when I was younger.”
A glint of mischief flared within the Mystic’s eyes, turning them for just a second from clear golden honey to living, burning sunlight. She smiled ever so slightly.
“A lake monster, huh?” she said composedly.
“Yeah, just legends to tell over a campfire really,” Jahrra answered lazily, letting her shoulders slouch under the weight of the fog.
Denaeh paused for a moment, and Jahrra sensed that she was thinking carefully.
“So, there’s no way that the lake is fathoms deep in the center, and it is in no way possible that a hideous creature lives at the lake’s bottom and comes up every so often to feed upon whatever disturbs the surface?”
Jahrra stared down at Denaeh with a furrowed brow. Then, as the realization of what the Mystic was getting at set in, she smiled broadly, both hands set firmly on the mossy perch on either side of her. The silent sounds of the foggy wood were soon filled with the enchanting laughter of the two women, one very young and one very old.
-Chapter Two-
The Plan
Jahrra told Gieaun and Scede the very next day of the plan she and Denaeh had concocted. She rightfully gave the Mystic most of the credit, seeing as it really had been her idea. Gieaun giggled with glee and Scede took on the same impish grin that Jahrra herself had held the day before.
“I don’t care if Denaeh is a Mystic or not, she sure has some good ideas,” Scede offered apologetically.
He and Gieaun had finally struck up the courage to visit Denaeh. They’d found her strange and eccentric, but like their friend, they’d been impressed and awed by her stories and garden of outlandish plant life. The Black Swamp still frightened them, and although they acted as if they had no more qualms with the Mystic, Jahrra could tell that they still didn’t completely trust her. That didn’t keep them from being appreciative of her offer of help, however. The scheme she’d devised, in their eyes at least, was ingenious.
The plan was simple and quite harmless in their opinion: they would construct a model of the lake monster, and they would use it to frighten Eydeth and Ellysian away from Lake Ossar. At first the three friends had no idea how to even begin such a massive project, for the creature they were to create had to be big, really big, and it had to be believable.
“We just need to come up with a design and figure out what we’re going to use to build it,” Scede said, screwing his face up in thought.
“Let’s start with the basics. What should we use for the frame?” Jahrra asked.
It had been almost a month since the plan had been hatched, and it was the first time, in several weeks, since the three friends arrived at Lake Ossar and hadn’t found the twins there. Jahrra, Gieaun and Scede wasted no time in paddling out to their little island, and were now stretched out flat on their picnic blanket staring at a blank piece of parchment. Jahrra held a piece of charcoal in her hand, and Gieaun and Scede were trying very hard to come up with ideas for their monster.
“We could use reeds to bind the frame together,” Gieaun suggested.
“No, they would fall apart under the water,” Scede said. “Wait, I know, we could use drift wood! For the frame! It would hold up, and it would make it more solid.”
“That would be perfect! And we can cover it with seaweed, reeds and maybe some horse hair to make it look more gruesome,” Jahrra said, smiling brightly. “But we’ll have to find some rope or something to bind it together.”
Gieaun sat up and crossed her arms. “So we know what we are using to make it, but how big are we going to make this thing? If we want it to be realistic, it’ll have to be huge. Where are we going to hide it?”
Gieaun had a look of skepticism on her face. Jahrra slouched, feeling like they hadn’t made any progress at all.
“How about we just make the neck and the head? We don’t need to make the whole monster, do we?” Scede queried, looking first at his sister and then at Jahrra.
The two girls glanced at each other and then looked back at Scede.
“You know,” Jahrra said, “I think that might just work.”
Gieaun clapped her hands in delight, and Jahrra smiled more broadly than ever. Scede just sat back in smug satisfaction, a sly grin gracing his face.
“Now, all we need to do is sketch it out, and that’s your job Jahrra,” Gieaun said happily.
And so for the rest of that afternoon Jahrra sketched as Gieaun and Scede directed her to make the neck longer or the head bigger, to add more spikes or more teeth. If anyone had been walking down the boardwalk on that relatively quiet day, they may have been taken by surprise by the sound of joyful laughter spilling from an island of reeds in the middle of the lake.
In the end, it took longer than expected for the three friends to come up with a good design for a terrifying water beast, but by the beginning of winter break, they had the perfect picture of their ideal lake monster. Jahrra had drawn a hideous water dragon with a long neck, a large grotesque head and several extended, saber-like teeth.
“I don’t know what we’ll use to make the teeth,” Jahrra said as she scrutinized her artwork. “Maybe we can just use broken branches or driftwood.”
“It’s going to take us forever to collect enough driftwood and seaweed to make this thing!” Scede complained.
“Maybe, but just think of how wonderful it will be when Lake Ossar is ours again!” Gieaun added, trying to cheer her friend and brother up.
“Gieaun’s right, Scede. It’ll definitely be worth the effort.”
Jahrra smiled at her two friends, and they set their sights on the day that their creation would be finished.