As the weeks passed, the three friends spent whatever time they had collecting materials for their project, storing whatever they found on their island. Luckily, it was the dead of winter and the only other people on the lake were the occasional fisherman heading to the beach to fish or dig for clams. They even celebrated Jahrra’s thirteenth birthday out in the middle of the lake surrounded by foul-smelling seaweed as their noses were nipped by cold gusts of wind pouring off the sea. As the winter came to a slow close, the children had collected enough material to make good progress on their creature’s massive neck.
Spring arrived and with it came the warm weather that enticed the local families out onto Lake Ossar. Jahrra figured that with all of the prying eyes she and her friends would need to find an effective new way to hide their mounting pile of driftwood, rope, and bleached fish and seal bones they’d collected over the past few months.
“I have an idea,” Gieaun hissed one weekend as the three sat hidden behind the rushes and cattails. “We can build a little bit at a time and sink it below the water when we are done for the day. That way no one will ever suspect anything!”
“Good idea Gieaun!” Scede added. “We have to figure out how to keep it under the water anyway, now is a good time to start.”
The process of building a few feet of neck and then sinking it below the lake’s surface seemed tedious at first, but it was their best option. Once they’d collected enough large rocks and attached them to the base of the structure, Scede tied a length of rope to it and lowered the five feet of thick neck they’d completed into the water. It sank easily, disappearing below the lake’s crystal surface. Scede led the rope to the middle of the island and Gieaun and Jahrra helped him tie it securely to a post they’d hammered into the ground.
“All we have to do is make sure our driftwood pile doesn’t get any higher than the cattails,” Jahrra said, looking at the few pieces that were left.
“We need to collect some more soon, maybe next weekend,” Gieaun suggested, eyeing the tiny pile with little interest. “But I think we’ve done enough work for one day.”
The three friends rode home with light hearts that day. Eydeth and Ellysian hadn’t shown up at the lake for weeks, and they started wondering if maybe they didn’t have to finish their lake monster after all.
“Trust me, they’ll be back, I just know it,” Jahrra said begrudgingly as they led their horses through the small wood surrounding the lake. “Summer is coming, so I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of them around here soon. Especially since they won’t be able to harass us everyday like they do at school.”
Despite the misgivings she felt about her limited freedom on Lake Ossar, Jahrra was looking forward to the upcoming summer. Although she’d be busy once again with her Kruelt lessons with Hroombra and defense training with the elves, Jahrra looked forward to spending more time working on the water dragon, even if that time was limited by Eydeth and Ellysian and their insistence on visiting the lake. She figured if they spent at least two days a week building, and one day a week collecting material, they just might be done by the beginning of fall. Well, time will tell. I just hope we can keep this secret from the twins a little bit longer, Jahrra thought as she waved goodbye to her friends at the foot of their long drive.
During the first few weeks of summer, Jahrra contributed to their project by scouring the fields after her defense lessons with Yaraa and Viornen for any bit of wayward material that might be helpful in their endeavor. One day she found a very long piece of discarded rope, another day she found a nicely shaped branch that had broken off a tree. Jahrra dragged them home, hoping that Hroombra wouldn’t ask any questions if he saw her, and hid them in the back of Phrym’s stable.
As the warm season progressed, the three friends added more and more to their lake monster. By the first day back to school in the fall, they had nearly three quarters of the frame finished and weighted down below the water.
Jahrra couldn’t have been more pleased: it was perfect. All that was left was for them to devise a way to get Eydeth and Ellysian out onto the lake at the most opportune time.
“We don’t need to worry about that now,” Scede said when Jahrra brought this up. “We need to focus on finishing the monster first.”
“Yeah, but it wouldn’t hurt to start thinking about it,” Gieaun put in.
“First of all,” Scede hissed in a very low voice, “we shouldn’t talk about it here!”
They had been back to school for two weeks now, and the three of them were standing in the front of the schoolhouse waiting for professor Tarnik to arrive. A few other children were standing around, but like always, they were as far away from the three friends as possible.
“You’re right. If Eydeth and Ellysian got wind of this . . .”
Jahrra shivered. She couldn’t imagine anything worse happening. After all those months of hard work, it would be devastating for their enemy to find out about it.
It was at that very moment that a spotless, white carriage came chattering up the road, pulling to a stop only twenty yards away from them. Jahrra tensed and put a scowl on her face, ready to do battle. Eydeth and Ellysian stepped out of their carriage like mobile porcelain dolls and sauntered confidently over to where Jahrra and her friends stood.
“Haven’t seen you at the puddle lately,” Ellysian commented dryly. “Have you found another mud hole to hang out at?”
It was true. Jahrra, Gieaun and Scede had spent the last three weeks gathering all of the excess horse hair from the summer trimming at Wood’s End Ranch and hadn’t had a chance to visit the lake. Gieaun thought the bedraggled, tangled hair would be a nice touch to their already fearsome looking lake monster.
Jahrra now stared at Ellysian, wondering what her excuse had been for not visiting the lake the entire summer. Were she and Eydeth up to something again? Jahrra furrowed her brow and glared down at the sour girl, ready to give a heated retort before Gieaun grabbed her arm. She turned and saw Scede mimicking what she could only guess was a terrified Eydeth after being frightened away by the lake monster. Jahrra forgot her anger and all three friends burst into laughter, leaving the confused twins standing like dumb statues on the path.
“I cannot wait until we are finished with that monster!” Scede said on the ride home that afternoon.
“As soon as we finish the frame, we’ll be able to add the seaweed and horse hair,” Jahrra shouted gleefully as they raced their horses through the fields. “It won’t be long before our lake creature drowns those spineless twins!”
By the end of that month, they had the frame completed, all fifteen feet of the long neck and head. All that was left for them to do, other than lure Eydeth and Ellysian out onto the lake at the right time of course, was to fill in the skeleton of their creature with muscle and flesh. For that extra touch of authenticity, they gathered dead reeds for stuffing and dried strings of seaweed to hold it all together.
“It already looks terrifying.” Gieaun shivered happily, stepping back and looking at the half-filled neck that stood among the reeds of their little island like a rotting pier post.
The dark seaweed clung to the sturdy neck like thick ropes of decaying flesh, giving the strange skeleton a life-like appearance. Gieaun and Scede closed their eyes and imagined what this creature would look like once it was completed, looming out of the lake, dark and dripping, with a thick mane of grizzled hair running down the back of its neck.
“Hey, I finally found something for the teeth!” Jahrra huffed from the edge of the reeds, interrupting her friends’ thoughts.