The road to the festival lay under water. Tavi could see the top of a fence and a tree with somebody’s washing caught in it. Beyond that, the valley steamed.
They had been paid a travel allowance. The festival fee, twice as much, waited at the far end of this road, provided they arrived to play that evening. Tavi put a hand over the purse at their belt. Enough to hire a boat, perhaps.
A woman stood in the shallows holding a child above the water. Her hair ran down her back like a clear stream. The child was clear too, except for two dark eyes.
“Do you ferry people?” Tavi asked.
“I keep the river,” the woman said. “At present I’m not keeping it very well.”
Her name was Pell. The child was her daughter. Until yesterday they had lived in a pool beside the road. That pool was now warm enough to hurt the child, and the water kept rising.
Tavi had a flute, a small bag and a talent for asking the wrong question first.
“Could you lower it?”
“I can move it. That doesn’t mean it will stay where I put it.”
She pointed to a stone ring above the bank. Four short lines of music were cut into it. Tavi climbed up to read them. The shapes were old, but the tune was simple. Water, stone, air and fire, each with a phrase of its own.
“Our four voices set the valley’s cycle together,” Pell said. “Water travels down, air moves through, fire stays where heat is needed, stone holds the ground. We can change our own parts separately. The others have to take what we push onto them.”
“What happened?”
“The air keeper is missing. Wind has been blowing into the hill furnace all night. The fire is too high. The water has been driven from the high channels. Now it is here.”
Tavi looked at the road. They could play a four-line tune. They could not find a missing keeper by evening.
“What if we try just your part?”
Pell shifted her daughter against her shoulder.
“I told you what happens.”
“Just enough to clear the road?”
Pell looked toward an orchard on the far slope. Then she nodded, reluctantly. Tavi played the water phrase. Pell answered with a low rising sound.
The road began to appear. Brown water rolled away from it and rushed across the orchard slope. Soil came loose beneath the trees.
From the hill, a voice shouted, “Stop that!”
Tavi stopped playing. Pell stopped answering. The road flooded again, but the soil already washed away did not come back.
A squat fae figure came down through the orchard. Roots curled around his fingers. His name was Kurr, and he kept the hillside stone.
“You’ve given my trees a bath without their ground,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” Tavi said.
“Then don’t do it twice.”
Pell pointed at the four lines. “We need everyone here. Freeing the air will stop the forced wind. It won’t put the cycle back in order. We have to begin the four parts together.”
Kurr folded his arms. “I won’t leave that slope while it is washing away.”
“And I won’t leave her in this water,” Pell said, lifting her child higher.
Tavi looked at the afternoon light. It was early yet. It would not remain early because they wanted it to.
A boatman came along the narrow channel behind the orchard. His boat held dry logs, covered with a cloth. He wanted to get them to the furnace, but the builder there had refused his price.
“Wind is cheaper,” the boatman said. “That was yesterday’s opinion. I wonder if he holds it still.”
“Can you take Pell and her daughter?” Tavi asked.
“Through this side channel, yes. The ridge keeps the hot water out. There’s a cool pool at the stone ring.”
Pell looked at the route. She touched the water herself before agreeing.
The boatman put her child into the boat in a wooden tub. Pell followed. Kurr climbed aboard last, still looking at the orchard. Tavi promised they would keep the water phrase quiet until all four voices could answer.
They helped pole the boat as far as the furnace landing. Pell remained aboard with her daughter, while Tavi and Kurr climbed the hot path.
The furnace stood inside a low hill. It heated a bathhouse and the rooms where people sheltered in winter. Beside it a great leather bellows swelled and emptied without a hand upon it.
Inside the bellows, someone was coughing.
Tavi put their flute away.
The builder came out carrying a shovel. His face was blackened, and his hands shook from work.
“Don’t touch that,” he said.
“You have the air keeper.”
“I borrowed the wind.”
A thin voice from the bellows said, “You tied the opening shut.”
The builder stared at the laces.
“It was meant to last one morning.”
“You’ve had a whole night to untie it,” Kurr said.
“The wood costs more than I have. We need this furnace when the cold comes. I thought I could keep it going while I found something cheaper.”
“You’ve burned enough for a week,” said another voice. A small bright figure sat inside the furnace mouth. The fire keeper had pulled the flames into a narrow column, but every breath from the bellows spread them again.
“I want fuel,” she said. “I do not want this wind.”
Tavi went down to the boat. The covered logs were stacked firmly and still dry.
“How much?” they asked.
The boatman named a price. It was almost the whole travel allowance.
Tavi imagined arriving without it, hungry but ready to collect the larger festival fee. Then they looked up at the smoke. The festival road was still beneath the wrong water. Even if it cleared now, helping here would leave no time to reach the stage.
“I’ll pay,” they said. “The builder takes the wood and lets the air keeper out.”
“Ask him.”
The boatman would not accept a musician’s promise on somebody else’s behalf.
Tavi asked. The builder came down to inspect the logs. He accepted enough fuel for the furnace to run at its ordinary heat, then went straight up the path and loosened the bellows laces.
The air keeper came out in a gust that knocked the shovel over. She was pale and narrow, with hair standing in every direction.
She did not thank the builder. She made him open the other end as well, then tore the fastening strip off and carried it with her.
The forced wind stopped. The fire keeper drew the flame down. The steam over the valley thinned, but the road stayed flooded. The cycle was still out of step.
They took the boat to the ring. Pell set her daughter’s tub beside the cool pool, where she could see it. Kurr watched the orchard across the water. The fire keeper sat upon a flat stone. The air keeper let the fastening strip blow away from her hand.
Tavi showed each of them the four lines before lifting the flute.
“Water begins,” Pell said. “We know the tune.”
“Then let me give you the beat.”
Tavi tapped a foot against the stone. They played the water phrase, and Pell answered. On the next beat came stone and Kurr’s rough low voice. Air answered the third. Fire answered the fourth.
This time none pushed alone.
The high channels opened. Water moved back into them instead of across the orchard. Cool air traveled over the pools. The ground settled beneath the surviving trees. The furnace smoke rose in a thin line, with no steam cloud racing ahead of it.
They sang the cycle again, slower, until the river ran in its bed. Then Tavi lowered the flute.
The road was visible. So were a broken fence, a fallen tree and the remains of a house wall beneath it. Nothing in the tune put those things back.
Pell lifted her daughter out of the tub. Kurr went to the orchard. The two other keepers went toward the furnace, where the builder and boatman were unloading logs.
Tavi counted the coins left in their purse. One would pay for a place in the boat going back toward town. They would miss the festival and its fee. They would have to tell the organizer why.
“Can you play while we travel?” the boatman asked when they climbed aboard.
“What would you like?”
“Something with a steady pull to it.”
Tavi played the ordinary river tune they knew from home. The boatman’s pole touched bottom in time with it. Behind them, people came down the road carrying tools toward the broken fence.
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