The Hidden Bell

How Shiora Rill found the gray dust, was nearly eaten twice, and learned that her mountain has an inside.

Shae Rill had spent most of the morning trying to turn over a dead leaf.

It had fallen in the night and landed exactly where it should not have, broadside across three of the bells just beginning to push their white heads up from the cold ground, and although the leaf had gone soft at the edges it was still an oak leaf, which at Shae's size made it less like moving a leaf than persuading a roof to reconsider its position.

She had got one shoulder underneath it when the mountain moved.

Not much.

Enough.

The leaf slid off her back and settled exactly where it had been before.

Shae stayed crouched beneath the red-brown edge of it, listening.

Nothing followed.

A titmouse scolded somewhere above her. Water moved down the creek. The hemlock branches made their usual dry whisper where they crossed one another overhead, and after a while a beetle came out from beneath the same leaf Shae had been fighting and walked across her foot as though nothing of consequence had happened.

She waited.

The mountain did not move again.

Shae pushed the beetle gently aside and went back to work.

By noon she had freed two of the bells.

The third had bent under the weight but not broken. She cupped the little stem in both hands, straightened it as far as it wanted to go, then left it alone. There was a point beyond which helping became another kind of damage, and Shae had learned this earlier than most.

She was cleaning dirt from the fringe of the flower when she noticed that the seep had gone quiet.

There were many kinds of quiet in the cove. The good sort sat underneath everything else and made room for it. This was not that.

Shae stood.

The seep came out of the slope above her patch, thin as a thread most of the year, broader after rain, never important enough for anyone large to give it a name. It passed under galax and between two stones, crossed a patch of moss, then sank again before reaching the creek.

Today the moss was still dark.

The water was gone.

Shae climbed.

It was not far, but the ground became steep quickly, and she had to pull herself over a root that rose nearly to her waist. At the stone shelf she found mud where the water should have been and, in the mud, a little drift of pale gray grit.

She touched it.

It clung to her finger.

The mountain moved again.

This time she heard it afterward.

A sound arrived through the trees, dull and enormous, as though something very far away had shut a door too hard.

Shae looked uphill.

There were places above the cove she had never been.

This was not unusual. Shae had lived a long time without finding any particular virtue in going everywhere. The world was very large and most of it did not contain oconee bells.

She went anyway.

By the time she reached the creek proper, the light had begun to flatten between the trees. She had expected to find the gray grit again and did, in the slow water behind a stone where it had collected in a crescent along the edge.

She had not expected the whiskers.

They rose in front of her without warning.

Shae stopped.

The whiskers stopped.

She leaned forward.

The water beneath them opened.

There was no other sensible word for it. One moment there was creek. The next there was mouth.

Shae threw herself backward as the catfish came up after her and struck the bank hard enough to cover them both in mud.

For several seconds neither moved.

Then the catfish backed into the water.

Shae remained on her back.

The catfish looked at her.

She looked at the catfish.

"You are very small," it said.

"You are very rude."

"I thought you were something else."

"What?"

The catfish considered this.

"Food."

Shae sat up and wiped mud from one eye.

"That is not something else."

The catfish sank until only its head remained above the surface.

It had a broad, ugly, intelligent face.

Shae disliked this combination immediately.

"What are you?" it asked.

"Shae Rill."

"That wasn't what I asked."

"What are you?"

"Hungry."

"That wasn't what I asked."

The catfish blinked slowly.

Shae brushed grit from her cloak.

"Have you seen this?"

The fish's eyes followed her hand.

The gray dust.

"Yes."

"Where did it come from?"

"Up."

She waited.

"So did I."

The fish did not appear troubled by this failure.

Shae picked up a small piece of the grit and held it out.

"Has it always been here?"

"No."

"When did it start?"

The catfish turned sideways in the current.

"Before the minnows left."

"What minnows?"

"The minnows."

"There are many minnows."

"Not anymore."

That made Shae look at the creek again.

She had not noticed until then how empty the shallows were.

There should have been flashes.

There should have been tiny bodies scattering away from her shadow.

There were none.

"Where did they go?"

The catfish opened its mouth and closed it again.

"Away."

Shae thought the conversation might be improved by almost anyone else.

"What is your name?"

"Gullet."

Of course it was.

Gullet watched her climb onto the nearest exposed root.

"Where are you going?"

"Upstream."

"Why?"

"To find out what is happening."

"Bring back a minnow."

"No."

"Two, then."

Shae continued along the root.

Behind her Gullet said, "I nearly ate you."

"I remember."

"That means you owe me something."

She did not turn around.

"I don't think it does."

Gullet appeared to think about this for some time.

Then, very faintly behind her:

"One minnow."

The creek narrowed and became difficult to follow.

More gray sediment appeared along the banks. Then little scraps of things Shae did not recognize. A shining twist of metal. A torn strip of orange material caught high on a briar. A wooden stake driven into the ground with a bright ribbon tied to it.

Shae stopped at that.

The ribbon moved in the wind.

Nothing in the forest was that color.

She climbed the stake.

It took longer than she expected, and when she reached the top she found black marks cut into the wood.

Numbers.

Human marks.

Shae sat astride the stake and looked through the trees.

There was another ribbon twenty feet away.

Then another.

A line.

She followed them.

The line eventually brought her to Bront.

Shae did not know his name yet, though he introduced it quickly enough.

"You."

She had been edging around the muddy side of a pond when the voice struck her from the reeds.

She kept walking.

"You there."

Still walking.

A bullfrog landed in front of her.

Mud splashed to her knees.

He was very large even for a bullfrog, yellow-throated, mottled, and possessed of the expression of someone who had spent a considerable amount of time being obeyed by creatures unable to leave quickly.

"You are in my pond."

"I am beside your pond."

"My bank, then."

Shae stepped to the left.

Bront stepped to the left.

She stepped right.

He followed.

"What do you want?"

"An apology."

"For what?"

"For entering the dominion of Bront without permission."

Shae looked past him.

The pond was small enough that she could see the opposite bank.

"Is Bront someone else?"

The frog swelled.

"I am Bront."

"Oh."

There was a pause.

Bront seemed disappointed by it.

Shae tried to walk around him again.

His tongue struck the ground immediately beside her.

Not touching her.

Close enough.

She looked at the wet mark it left in the mud.

Then at him.

"Do that again."

Something in her voice made him pull the tongue back more slowly.

"You should be afraid of me."

"I was almost eaten by a catfish this afternoon."

Bront blinked.

"That seems more immediately relevant."

The frog inflated his throat.

The sound that followed shook water from the reeds.

Shae waited until he finished.

Then the pond made a noise.

Not a large noise.

A small one.

A soft sucking from somewhere beneath the bank.

Shae turned.

A line of wet mud had appeared around one of the stones at the edge.

She watched.

The line widened.

The water was falling.

Bront saw it too.

He hopped to the stone.

The pond dropped another fraction.

"No."

He jumped into the water.

Shae crouched beside the exposed mud.

There was movement under the roots.

Not something alive.

Water.

Going the wrong way.

The little current was slipping beneath a mat of rhododendron roots at the back of the pond.

Shae pushed the leaves aside.

Cold air came out.

Bront surfaced behind her.

"Don't."

Shae looked into the opening.

Black water ran beneath the bank.

"How long has this been here?"

"It has always been there."

"You said this was your pond."

"It is."

"What is under it?"

Bront did not answer.

Shae looked back at him.

The frog's eyes had gone flat.

"You don't go down there."

That was the first useful thing he had said.

"Why?"

Bront sank lower in the pond.

"They pull."

"Who?"

He said nothing.

The mountain moved.

This time the sound came almost at once.

The pond jumped.

Water slapped the banks.

Somewhere underneath them came a deeper sound, stone grinding against stone.

Bront vanished completely beneath the surface.

Shae did not think.

She went into the hole.

The water caught her immediately.

It was colder than the creek and much faster than it looked. Her leaf cloak snapped behind her as the current dragged her between the roots, and for an instant she saw daylight above and behind, already too far away, then only brown water and bubbles and the pale underside of roots.

She struck stone.

Turned.

Dropped.

Something caught her ankle.

Shae kicked.

The grip tightened.

A hand closed over her mouth.

It had too many fingers.

Or fingers too long.

She bit one.

Whatever held her made a violent sound underwater and let go.

Shae twisted upward and found no upward.

There was blackness in every direction.

Then a pair of yellow eyes opened in front of her.

A face followed.

Green-black skin.

Wide mouth.

Hair drifting in the current.

One long webbed hand came toward her.

Shae reached for the knife at her belt.

Another hand caught her wrist.

Then another creature appeared behind the first.

And another.

They had been there the whole time.

Shae simply had not been able to see them.

One of them pushed something into her hands.

A hollow reed.

Shae stared at it.

The creature pointed to her mouth.

She put the reed between her lips.

Air came through.

She inhaled so hard she coughed it back into the tube.

The creatures jerked away from the bubbles.

For several seconds they stared at one another.

Then the one she had bitten held up its hand.

There were two neat marks in the webbing between its fingers.

It looked at Shae.

Shae looked at the bite.

"Sorry," she said around the reed.

This produced more bubbles.

The creature's mouth opened.

Its teeth were small and numerous.

Shae could not tell whether it was smiling.

A second creature touched the first on the shoulder, then pointed downstream.

Only it was not downstream.

Not exactly.

The passage opened behind them into something much larger, a black channel under the mountain where pale weeds grew in deliberate lines along the stone.

Not wild.

Planted.

Shae stared.

More shapes moved beyond them.

Dozens.

Some small.

Some larger.

One carrying what looked like a basket woven from water grass.

Another with a child clinging flat against its back.

Shae forgot Bront.

Forgot Gullet.

Forgot the gray dust.

For one long moment she forgot even the mountain shaking above them.

There was a road under her feet.

No.

Not under her feet.

Under everything.

One of the creatures came closer.

It touched its chest.

Then pointed down one of the planted weed lines.

Then touched its chest again and spoke.

The name was long.

Shae caught almost none of it.

A second name followed, or perhaps another part of the first, full of water sounds and place sounds and something that seemed less like introducing oneself than reciting a route.

Shae touched her own chest.

"Shae Rill."

The creature went still.

The others did too.

Shae wondered whether she had accidentally insulted everyone.

Then the first creature reached toward her very carefully and touched one finger to the little bronze-red edge beginning to show along her cloak.

"Rill," it said.

Not quite correctly.

Shae nodded.

The creature pointed toward the black channel.

Then upward.

The mountain shook again.

This time, down there, Shae saw what it did.

A crack opened in the stone.

Not wide.

A white line.

Water burst through it in a thin violent jet.

Every Grindyloc in the passage turned at once.

There was no confusion.

No shouting.

The ones carrying children disappeared first. Two others tore up sections of the pale weed markers and began moving them. Another pressed both hands against the crack as though hands could stop a mountain from splitting.

The creature beside Shae looked upward again.

Its expression had changed.

Shae did not need to understand the language.

She knew that look.

It was the same one she had worn beside the dry seep.

Something that had always been there had stopped being where it belonged.

The Grindyloc took Shae by the arm and pulled her deeper into the mountain.

She resisted.

"My bells."

The creature did not understand.

"My home."

Nothing.

Shae pointed upward.

Then downstream.

Then touched the leaf around her shoulders.

The Grindyloc watched.

Something moved through its face.

Recognition, perhaps, or only impatience.

Then it dragged Shae toward the wall.

At first she thought it wanted to show her the crack.

Instead it pushed aside a curtain of weed.

Behind it, scratched into the stone, were marks.

Not writing.

Lines.

Hundreds of them.

Channels splitting and crossing and rejoining, marked with little hollows, loops, knots and shapes Shae did not know.

The creature touched one.

Then another.

Then a third.

Each time it gave a name.

It moved farther across the wall.

More names.

More water.

More places.

Finally it touched a narrow line near the edge of the carving.

A line so small Shae had not noticed it.

The creature looked at her cloak.

Then at her.

"Rill."

Shae leaned closer.

The line ran down through three larger channels before ending at a small hollow.

Her creek.

The creature moved one finger upward from it.

Past the pond.

Past channels Shae had never seen.

Past deep places beneath the mountain.

Then it stopped.

Above that point someone had cut a new mark into the stone.

A straight slash.

Fresh.

Gray grit still clung inside it.

The Grindyloc pressed its fingertip there.

Then struck its fist against the wall.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

Shae understood.

She looked at the map again.

At the little line that was her creek.

At the larger black waterways beneath it.

At the routes full of Grindylocs she had not known existed an hour ago.

At the fresh white crack leaking water through stone.

She thought of the dry seep.

The missing minnows.

Gullet waiting downstream with an empty stomach.

Bront shouting ownership at a pond that was disappearing underneath him.

Her bells under the oak leaf.

The white one she had straightened that morning.

The mountain moved again.

Shae put one hand against the wall.

This time she did not feel one blow.

She felt all of it.

The water shifting through the cracks.

Roots losing what they had held.

Stone opening where stone had not opened before.

A road collapsing somewhere far below.

Something large falling into water.

The Grindyloc beside her watched her.

Shae lifted her hand.

Gray dust covered her palm.

She had spent most of her life being difficult to find.

It had always seemed sensible.

There were creatures that survived by teeth, creatures that survived by being larger than whatever wished to eat them, creatures like Bront who apparently survived through the strategic application of volume. Shae had never needed any of that. She knew how to become the underside of a leaf. She knew how to stand beside a stone and cease to be something worth noticing.

Once, long before Shae herself had been born, people had lost the oconee bells for nearly a hundred years.

They had gone looking.

The bells had remained where they were.

Shae had always liked that story.

Down in the dark water, with the mountain cracking above her, she found she liked it less.

The Grindyloc touched the slash in the map.

Then looked at her.

Shae looked back toward the way she had come.

Somewhere beyond all that stone, men were preparing to blast the mountain open.

They did not know about the bells.

They did not know about the black roads under the pond.

They did not know about the Grindylocs.

Perhaps they did not know about the seep either.

It occurred to Shae that being hidden was only useful when the thing looking for you wanted to find you.

She took the reed from her mouth.

The Grindyloc reached for it urgently.

Shae held up one hand.

"I need to go back."

The creature stared at her.

Shae pointed toward the surface.

Then to herself.

Then to the map.

Then, because she had no sign for what came next, she opened both hands.

Everything.

The creature studied her for a while.

Then it showed its teeth again.

This time Shae was almost certain it was smiling.

Cast: Shiora Rill · Gullet · Bront · Veyr-of-the-Black-Run · the Grindylocs · the mining crew