Birdie's Book Read online

  Kerka hadn’t even noticed my transformation. Instead, she was pacing back and forth at the edge of the pond, having a conversation with herself. “I can handle a Kalis stick. I can play soccer. I can sail. I can skate. I’m just afraid to go underwater. But there is no reason to be afraid.”

  I went up to her and touched her arm. She looked at me with a frustrated expression.

  “It’s okay. I’ll help you,” I said, remembering how Dad was when he took me to swim classes back home in Califa. “We’ll just take this slowly, and I’ll be with you.”

  Kerka nodded and lifted her chin. She strode back to the edge of the water. “I can do this!” she announced. But then she stood there, continuing her argument with herself. “I can’t. Yes, I can! I can’t. But I will do this, I will!”

  I waited, giving her a little time to gather her courage—before I would push her in myself. I knew she’d be okay with the river maidens. Getting in was the scariest part. Once that was done, Kerka would be fine!

  Then, without warning, the maidens reached up and touched Kerka’s arms. Just like me, she fell instantly into the pond. But unlike me, she thrashed around (in a shimmering amethyst wet suit). She disappeared beneath the surface, then her head came up again.

  “Birdie!” she yelped before her head went back under.

  I jumped in and started swimming toward her. Why weren’t the maidens helping her? Where were they?

  Then I saw them under the water with Kerka. They were pulling her down!

  Kerka popped up one last time, arms thrashing, her eyes huge and panicky. Then she went under, and I couldn’t see her or the river maidens anywhere, only ripples on the surface of the water where Kerka had been.

  “Kerka!” I screamed as I swam to the spot where she had disappeared.

  I dove beneath the water, opening my eyes to look for Kerka. What were the maidens trying to do? Drown her? Maybe that old Finnish legend was actually true!

  The water was a misty green, and where the land was, it looked like a wall of rock that went down farther than I could see. I could just make out Kerka struggling with the river maidens a ways below me. I swam down, the suit and fins making me as fast as a seal. Before I reached Kerka, though, my lungs started burning. I turned, ready to rise to the surface for another breath when something grabbed my ankles!

  I looked down. It was one of the river maidens. She smiled at me and nodded. I shook my head frantically, trying to get away. The river maiden looked frustrated. Then she let go of one of my ankles, touched her nose, and made a sound almost like breathing. I was so surprised that I didn’t try to get away again; instead, I just said “What?” The word came out almost clearly, with just a hint of a gurgle.

  As soon as I said that one word, I was breathing. I laughed, and drew in a great big breath. I could breathe underwater, just like a fish! I was a fish girl—and a shiny green one, at that. I would have tumbled around like an otter to celebrate, but I had a friend to save.

  “I’m here, Kerka!” I shouted, trying to get my bearings again. My voice traveled loudly through the water.

  The river maiden pointed down. Below us, I could see the two maidens surrounding a limp Kerka. I swam down as fast as I could. Kerka’s eyes were open and bulging. She had stopped struggling to save energy, and now she was just holding her breath.

  “You can breathe!” I said. “All you have to do is breathe, just like on land, Kerka!”

  Kerka looked stubborn, even as she was about to pass out. But she couldn’t very well argue with me, as I was breathing and talking underwater myself. She closed her eyes and took in a big gulp of water. She opened her eyes, and bubbles came from her mouth as she exhaled. Then a smile spread across her face. “I can breathe!” Kerka said. “And talk!”

  “Cool, huh?” I said, bubbling back. “The river maidens only pulled you under to make you breathe so you’d feel okay with swimming underwater.”

  The river maidens giggled happily. Kerka giggled, too, and started floating around like a sleek amethyst angel. “If only I’d known,” she said, “I wouldn’t have struggled. In fact, I would have jumped in ages ago!”

  “Well,” I said, “communication doesn’t seem to be the river maidens’ best skill. They did what they could.”

  The river maidens gurgled their approval as they watched Kerka start swimming as if she were born to it.

  Just then, two weird things happened. First, I heard a tiny voice say, “Fortis!” (Fortis is Latin for “Bravo! Nice job!”) I circled around to see where the voice had come from. The voice called again. I swam toward the rock wall, and it came into focus through the misty water. A large red flower was sprouting from a crevice, waving its head back and forth in the mild current. I had never seen or read about that kind of flower before. But we were in a magical dream world, so likely it was some sort of magic flower, maybe even a talking one.

  “Did you just say ‘Bravo’?” I asked it, in Latin. Well, my Latin tenses weren’t quite that advanced, so what I said was something more like “You say ‘Bravo’?”

  “Fortis!” the flower said again, its voice sweet and clear.

  A strange underwater flower was talking! Speaking Latin! To me!

  “Hey, Kerka!” I cried out. “This flower is talking, and I am talking back! I wish my mom could be here to see this!”

  But the second thing that had happened was keeping Kerka entertained. The maidens were tossing a big bubble back and forth like a transparent beach ball. Inside the bubble were Kerka’s backpack and her Kalis stick!

  “I guess my equipment’s in good hands,” Kerka said with a smile.

  The maidens all dove, like synchronized swimmers, taking the bubble with them.

  Kerka and I exchanged hesitant looks.

  “I guess this is it,” I said. “Time to go!”

  Kerka nodded. “I’m ready!”

  I shouted “Good-bye!” (“Bonus!”) to the red flower before we dipped toward the darkness at the bottom of the river. Kerka and I followed the sound of the maidens’ musical voices.

  “I like swimming like this,” I said.

  “It’s like we were given gills,” Kerka agreed.

  The thought of gilled girls made me giggle for some reason. A bouquet of shiny bubbles came from my mouth and sped toward the surface.

  “By the way,” Kerka said then, swimming closer to me, “what did you say back there? Something about wishing your mother could see you?”

  I didn’t even know Kerka had heard me! I searched for a reason for my Mom comment. A straightforward reason was that my mother had made me take Latin on Saturdays for the last two years (don’t ask why), and I think this was the first time I’d ever actually spoken it in real life (does a dream world count as real life?). Anyway, the other reason was that I wanted my mother to be happy for me, but I didn’t know if she actually could. You know how some moms always know the right thing to say to their kid? My mom wasn’t one of them. I mean, she was great in some ways (she liked to take me shopping, and she made a killer potato salad!), but my dad was the one I always went to for understanding. I did have a few memories of my mom being different, a long time ago, when I was really little.

  “Birdie, I get the feeling that you and your mother have nothing in common,” Kerka said, rewinding her braid as she kicked ahead.

  “We don’t,” I said frankly. As we swam deeper, the turquoise waters were growing darker, turning more cobalt blue. Up ahead, where we would soon be swimming, it looked dark as night. “Creepy, isn’t it?” I said.

  “Creepy about not getting along with your mom? Or creepy about swimming into that darkness?” she asked.

  “The darkness,” I said.

  “Oh.” Kerka was quiet for a moment. “But about your mom,” she began again. (Obviously, she wasn’t going to let me off the hook.) “Could it be because you carry a part of her in you—like we each carry a part of our parents? Maybe you’re afraid you’ll become her?”

  “I don’t know,” I said
, thinking of how my mom turned her back on Mo, how it was more important for her to understand the people she worked with than to understand me. My mom had no idea about my hopes, my dreams. I wriggled my legs, shooting myself ahead in the direction of the maidens.

  “Birdie?” Kerka caught up with me and waved her hand in front of my face, like I’d checked out of the conversation. “Do you resemble your mom? Or the other women in your family?”

  “I don’t know,” I said again. “I guess I have Mom’s eyes. I look kind of like Mo, in my coloring. But I don’t remember my dad’s mom, since she died when I was two.”

  “I don’t mean physical resemblance,” Kerka said, rolling her eyes. “Are you like them in spirit, the way you act?”

  “Well, now that I’ve met her, I see I’m a lot like Granny Mo!” I said. It made me happy to know that, I realized. “My dad says Mo and Mom are like matches and gasoline together. Combustible. Mom calls Mo a crazy old bat, full of hocus-pocus. So far, Mo hasn’t really said anything about Mom, at least not about the way she is now.”

  The walls of rock were now on all sides, as if we were in a vertical tunnel. The water had turned a darker blue, and it was getting harder to see the river maidens’ watercolor tails as they swam down ahead of us. What was left of the light from the surface reflected off the bubble holding Kerka’s belongings as the maidens tossed it back and forth.

  “And what about your mom, Kerka?” I asked. I figured it was okay to ask her, now that I’d shared some of my own family … issues.

  “I’m sorry, Birdie,” she said, her voice very soft. “I’m just not really ready to talk about it. Is that all right?”

  “Of course,” I said. Now I felt bad that I’d asked, trying to make things even. “Even” shouldn’t count between friends.

  “I do have an older sister and a younger sister,” Kerka offered, clearly feeling bad herself for not sharing—because isn’t that what friends do? “I guess I am a little like both of them, but in different ways. And I fight with my older sister sometimes, but mostly she doesn’t pay attention to me. And I get along with my dad the way that you do.”

  It was incredibly dark and misty ahead of us, and the rock walls had gotten a lot closer. “Whoa,” I said. “I wonder if the river maidens have lights or anything.”

  A few bubbles rose from the wall nearest us, racing to the surface that was very far away now.

  Kerka grabbed my arm, and I stopped swimming immediately.

  “Do you see all the eyes?” Kerka whispered in my ear.

  I grabbed her hand when I saw what she was talking about. Those were eyes, sure enough, looking out through what must be crevices in the rocks: tiny glowing yellow eyes, lots of them!

  “Let’s catch up to the river maidens,” I whispered. “And fast!”

  “I knew I didn’t like the water for a reason,” Kerka whispered.

  I gave a limp grin that no one could see. Then I squeezed Kerka’s hand, and she squeezed back. Together we kicked like mad and shot downward. I couldn’t see the maidens at all, but with the rock wall so close, there was only one direction they could have gone.

  All at once the tunnel was filled with an eerie orange light. I glanced back. The glowing eyes had separated from the wall. They all belonged to a huge eel-like creature. A glowing orange ball dangled in front of the creature’s wide-open mouth like a lantern. I couldn’t tell if the ball was connected to its back or head or if it was some kind of monster magic.

  At least we can see what’s going to eat us, I thought.

  Thankfully, the eel thing wasn’t moving very fast. But its mouth was full of what looked like extremely sharp teeth.

  Kerka turned to me, saying, “Why are you slowing down?”

  “I just want to get a good look at it,” I replied. “And it is moving pretty slowly.”

  “The only kind of predator that moves slowly is one that knows it will be catching its dinner,” said Kerka.

  I gulped, and decided we needed help, just as the eel shot some kind of light dart at us. I didn’t wait to find out what it was. “Come on Kerka, let’s book.”

  We both put on speed, kicking our flippers as fast as we could. While more of the eel’s light darts shot at us, I screamed to the river maidens ahead of us, my voice echoing through the tunnel. “Hey! There’s a giant river monster back here!”

  As soon as they heard me, the maidens spun around and shot back through the water. They circled around Kerka and me, moving in a watery blur of protection. Through their protective circle, we could see glowing darts shooting from the giant eel’s many eyes. They looked electrical somehow—like they would stun or shock you, and then the monster would gobble you up.

  One of the river maidens gave a high-pitched shriek. A dart must have gotten her! The other two maidens immediately gathered up their limp companion and swam off quickly, the injured maiden’s hair flowing behind them. We didn’t even have a chance to say good-bye, and, honestly, I didn’t even think about it, because now we had this big monster to deal with—alone!

  Kerka and I swam and dodged darts as if we were in a living video game. Luckily, the creature was not exactly aiming. In a particularly bright blast of darts, I saw what looked like a small opening in the tunnel wall.

  “Cave in the wall,” I told Kerka breathlessly.

  She looked hastily. “I think I see it. Let’s work our way over there.”

  Crazily dodging the light darts, we finally made it to the little cave and squeezed in together. We barely fit. The darts were whizzing past us. Now I noticed that they made a weird whistling sound in the water. We waited until there was a lot less of the whistling going past us. Finally, the lights petered out altogether, and we were left in the dark.

  “I don’t think it’s very smart,” whispered Kerka. “Predators for whom game is plentiful don’t have to be clever.”

  I shuddered, thinking of Kerka and me as “game,” but I saw what she meant. “Let’s wait a little longer,” I whispered back.

  The wait felt like a long one, but it was probably only five minutes. Everything was silent. We peeked out into the darkness.

  “How can we tell if it’s gone?” I asked Kerka.

  “We can’t—we just have to risk it,” she answered. “I’ll go first.”

  “Really?” I asked. “That would be great.”

  “Here I go,” Kerka said.

  I felt her moving out of our little shelter and instantly felt like a coward. If there was something to face, we should face it together. I took a deep breath and swam out a little. I saw a tiny bit of dim light approaching us.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  Kerka laughed. “It’s my bubble with all my gear in it. The maidens must have dropped it.”

  “I didn’t realize it had that glow to it before,” I said.

  “Me neither,” said Kerka. “But let’s get it and get out of here! And keep a look out for anything else that looks hungry or dangerous.”

  We swam down to the bubble and pushed it in front of us, making sure to keep an eye out in all directions. That was clearly the smart thing to do, but it meant we really couldn’t talk. The tunnel flattened out and then began going up again. It grew wider and wider, and finally we saw a sparkling light up ahead. The light got brighter and the walls receded until we were in clear blue water with silvery little fish darting everywhere. Then we were swimming along a shallower area, not swimming upward at all. The river floor was carpeted with thick mossy grass, water lilies floated above our heads, and sparkling light dappled everything.

  One of the river maidens swam toward us, and I saw the other two behind her (whichever one had been hit by the light dart was clearly okay now). The river maidens laughed and swam about, changing colors as if one of them hadn’t just been hurt and they hadn’t abandoned us. I looked over at Kerka. She shrugged, and I laughed as we followed the maidens while they poked their heads above the waterline.

  The maidens pulled themselves up on some rocks t
hat formed the wall of a little natural pool, and stretched their bodies out in the sunlight. As Kerka and I climbed up with considerably less grace, our regular clothes instantly reappeared on us (bone dry!). We both flopped onto the warm rocks and sighed in relief. From that position, I spotted a beautiful flower bush nestled in the rocks just below the surface of the little pool. I immediately recognized it. The flower stems were long and vinelike and floated in the water.

  “Kerka, there they are! Our Agminium!” The flowers hummed and murmured among themselves as they shyly pushed their pink blossoms to the surface.

  “Pulchritudo. Bellus. Formosus,” they said in unison as they emerged to greet us.

  I blinked and grinned. “Wow … They’re speaking Latin, too!”

  I bowed to them and said, “Salutatio.”

  Suddenly the river maidens all leapt into the water again. They splashed at the rocky edge of the pond and sang and giggled in delight. Then they stared at Kerka and me and put out their hands, palms down. It took some sign language before we realized that we were supposed to kiss their hands in thanks.

  “A little dramatic?” Kerka whispered to me, grinning.

  “Very,” I agreed.

  But we decided to oblige the river maidens anyway. After all, we had arrived safe and sound. With a great deal of ceremony, we slipped into the water and swam to the maidens. We kissed each of their hands, nodding our heads and batting our eyelashes as much as possible. They batted their eyelashes back at us and turned color after color, giving us one final light show before they swam away.

  Kerka and I climbed out of the river again at the little pool where the Agminium flowers lived. Many of the flowers had poked their heads up out of the water.

  “Ave, amica,” the flowers said, speaking in a chorus and swaying as if there were a breeze in the water.

  I laughed and turned to Kerka. “This is amazing!” Then I went back to the pink-petaled family. “Friend flowers, can you show us the way to the fairies?” I asked in the best Latin I could muster.

  They gave me an ensemble nod. But first, it seemed, they were anxious to tell us a story. Here’s my translation of it: