Corinn asked, "Water from this tank can be distributed throughout the entire irrigation system?" The engineer began to say that it had never done that, but Corinn cut him off. "Could water from this tank be distributed throughout the entire system? I asked to be brought to a tank that was central to everything. Is this it?"
"As near as there is to that, yes," the engineer said. "Some channels would have to be modified, perhaps embankments reorganized." The man looked to his companions for help. They offered none. "I am not sure, Your Majesty, what you-"
"You have answered me," Corinn said. She slipped down from the saddle and touched the ground. She looked immediately composed, her cream-colored trousers-deceptively cut to look like a dress-as unwrinkled as when she began the ride. She bent and plucked a pebble from the ground, studied it, and then enfolded it in her palm. "I'll have you all wait for me here. No one is to approach me while I'm in the tank no matter what happens. Understand?" She was answered first with silence, and then with a quick barrage of half-formed questions. She cut through them, glancing up at her son as she did so. "Aaden, that means you. Numrek, you stay here as well. I'll be back in a moment." With that, she stepped over the rim and began a careful descent into the tank.
She had to catch herself from falling several times, slamming her palm down against the coarse earth as her feet slipped, careful to keep the pebble trapped in her other hand. It was a deeper pit than she had realized. On reaching the bottom, she glanced up at the figures gathered at the rim. They seemed very far away. Aaden raised his arm to wave at her. She turned and walked on. Again, it took her longer than she expected to reach the center of the tank. She felt the men's eyes on her the entire time.
The heart spring was a scar in the ground just wide enough that she could have leaped into it and fallen to its depths. It was simply a hole with jagged edges that quickly faded to shadow. Looking at it, Corinn had the momentary feeling that it was the puckered maw of some wormlike creature, stuck fast in the rock-hard soil, begging for moisture. She moved up close to it, planted her feet, and sang. She opened her mouth and exhaled the first words that came to her mind.
It was as if the song had been in the air already, and she had joined it midflow the moment she began. She knew the right words, the correct notes, and the tempo and rhythm and duration and inflection at precisely the moment it came into and left her mouth. She did not remember what she had sung once it was past, nor did she anticipate what she was going to sing. There was no linear progression. She was not following the notes or words as written on a page. She was the song, changing with it each moment.
And the song was beautiful. She knew it was. She knew that nothing else since the world's creation had captured beauty so perfectly in sound. She felt her body pulled and swayed with the ribbons of god talk that eddied around her. They caressed her, tugged at her, pulled away bits of her being and floated them on the air and returned them to her, changed. While she did not control the song, she did infuse it with her intentions. She explained-using the words that came to her unbidden-what she wished, what she asked for, what she needed. She sang this into the song, and she could feel understanding between her and the swirling music grow.
At the point that she felt the impulse to, she lifted her arm, opened her hand, and let the pebble fall into the well, singing the entire time. A breath of heated air surged up from the well, as if the worm creature were coughing itself to life. Corinn took a half step back, steadied herself, and sang through it without faltering. A few moments later, the well sputtered, gurgled, coughed again. She felt a spray of vapor rise out of it and evaporate instantly in the sun. She sang on.
The water, when it finally bubbled out of the hole, was thick with soil. It seeped into the thirsty ground. For a few moments it seemed as if the lip of the hole would drink it all. But soon the water began to roll forward, carrying dirt and ash before it, a stain on the ground that the watchers must have seen clearly. It flowed in all directions. Corinn felt it touch her toes and grab at the hem of her trouser skirt. She kept singing. She heard the merchants exclaiming up on the rim. A Numrek shouted her name, but she kept singing.
The water began to gush. It surged a few feet into the air. It splashed the front of her dress and reached up over her ankles, buffeting her feet. She sang on, not feeling where the end of the song might be. She vaguely thought that she might not be able to stop. She might be here still with her mouth open when the water poured inside her and she filled with it. This was not a frightening thought. Nothing was frightening when the song was in her. There was nothing, nothing, nothing to fear.
And then she stopped. Just like that. Her lips paused and nothing more came through them and she knew she was finished. The water continued to flow, growing even stronger. She stepped back from it, awed-now that she could see her work with clear eyes-at the wonder of water in this place. She could taste it in the air. The tang of it was sharp and cold, as if she were standing beside a mountain stream, a rising mountain stream.
She turned around and waded toward the merchants with all the grace she could manage. She was panting hard as she reached the rim, but she did not give them time to study her. "Back away from the edge," she commanded. "Back away! Drop to your knees and bow."
The men looked startled, scared even, but one after another did as she commanded. Several had to dismount, but they did so quickly. Soon the entire company around her-merchants, nobles, laborers, and the ragged children-pressed their knees to the ground, waiting, jittery, caught between obeying her and their desire to watch the water rise. The Numrek contingent stood straight backed, their weapons in hand, looking as if they were ready to attack the merchants, slaughtering them. Not today, Corinn thought.
She stood gathering her breath, holding the moment, using it. Aaden still sat on his horse. She glanced at him long enough to smile away his concern. In a gesture meant only for him, she rolled her eyes, as if acknowledging the silliness of it all. The gesture almost knocked her off balance. She indicated that he should dismount and stand beside her. Then she turned her attention to the bowed heads.
"Are you true to me?" Corinn asked.
"Of course," Elder Anath said.
"Why?"
"You are our queen."
"Are you the only one who thinks so?"
The others spoke then, praising her, talking over one another, some bending forward like worshippers. It was what she wanted, but the sight of them annoyed her also. They were scared now, cowards. "Do not ask how I have done this thing, but see that it was I alone who did it. Tell the truth when you speak of this. The water will rise and rise and never stop as long as this is my wish. It will fill the tank and will replenish itself as you open the gates and feed the fields. This heart spring belongs to all Bocoum. Don't let me learn that any of you have called it your own or deprived others of it. You may look up now."
Corinn's gaze moved from one person to the next, pausing at each one, speaking to them all-old and young, rich and poor-with the same authority. Before, there might have been much to read in the hidden thoughts and emotions behind the various faces. Now, though, they all looked the same. Sinper Ou shared the same slack-mouthed expression as the boy standing a little distance behind him. Elder Anath had a face of wet clay, upon which she could write what she wished.
"I am not just the mother of this child. I am the mother of Acacia. Say that. Say that I am the mother of Acacia."