“Where is it?” I say when a few more minutes pass without any change in the dull gray scenery.
“I’m not sure,” Tawni says.
“You said it was close.”
“It’s hard to judge distance on this map. Everything looks so close when there are really miles between.”
“We’ve walked for at least eight miles,” I point out.
Tawni shrugs and keeps walking. Having no other choice, I do the same. That’s when I hear it.
At first a soft tinkle, the noise becomes louder, a swishing—and then a gurgle. Water, has to be. Tawni looks at me and we both smile. The map was right!
For only the second time since we entered this godforsaken tunnel, the monotony is broken as the passage opens up to our left. The right wall remains straight and solid, but to the left there is an empty darkness. I feel cool air waft against my face, ruffling my hair. At our feet is water, lapping against the edge of the tunnel floor.
We go a little crazy. Or maybe just I do. Letting out a Whoop! I sling down my pack and thrust my cupped hands into the cool liquid. First I throw a handful into my face. My breath catches as the icy water splashes over my skin. But I don’t shiver—it feels wonderful. It’s like the water is healing me, rejuvenating more than just my skin: refreshing my soul. The wet drips off my chin and dribbles down my neck and beneath the neckline of my tunic. It feels so good I can’t help myself.
With no room in my mind left for embarrassment, or modesty, I pull my tunic over my head and toss it aside, leaving just my undergarments. Oh, and my shoes, too, which I pull off, along with my socks. I leave my flashlight angled on a rock so I can see.
I splash into the knee-deep water, relishing the soft caress of the cooling elixir. The lake bed is covered with long, smooth rocks that massage my sore feet. As I scoop water onto my arms, stomach, and legs, I remember a story my grandmother used to tell me about the Fountain of Youth, a pool of water with life-extending power. The cool touch of this pool feels equally potent, and I half-expect to see myself growing shorter, shrinking to reveal a younger me, the size of my half-pint sister perhaps.
I don’t shrink, but I am cleansed. When I turn around, Tawni is grinning. She tosses me a sliver of soap, which I manage to juggle and then catch. As I use it to wash my body, she methodically uncaps each canteen and fills them. She is the responsible one.
Seeing her with the canteens reminds me of the hungry thirst in my throat. I finish with the soap and hand it to Tawni to use. She is already undressed and daintily steps into the pool, looking as graceful as a dancer, particularly when compared to my own clumsy entrance.
I turn around and splash some more water on my face.
“Where’d you get that scar on your back?” Tawni asks.
Looking over my shoulder, trying to gaze at my back, I say, “What scar?”
She moves closer, places a hand on my back, and I shiver, suddenly feeling cold. Her fingers linger somewhere near the center of my back, where I can’t possibly see, just below my undergarments. “Curious,” she says absently.
“What is it?”
“It’s a crescent-shaped scar, small, but slightly raised off your skin. It looks like a recent scar…”
“Maybe I got it in the tunnels somewhere—or from Rivet,” I say, but I know that’s not right—there would have been blood, and someone would have noticed the wound seeping through my tunic.
“No, it’s not that fresh. Just looks like it’s from something that happened in the last few years. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it looks just like…”
I turn to face my friend, taking in her quizzical expression in an instant. “Like what?” I ask when she doesn’t finish her statement.
“Nothing, I don’t know what I was thinking,” she says unconvincingly.
“You were going to say ‘Tristan’s scar’, weren’t you?” I laugh. “You’re nuts, you know that?”
She laughs high and musical. “And you’re not?”
I grin at her and cup my hands, once more using them as a scoop to lift a portion of water to my face. As I open my mouth to receive the glorious liquid, I see Tawni’s face change from mirthful to one of confusion. It looks like she’s playing with something in her mouth, moving her tongue around, side to side. Her eyebrows are lowered. I plunge the water into my mouth, delighting in the slick feel as it slips over my tongue, down my gullet.
“Ahh,” I murmur softly, just before Tawni grabs my arm. Her eyes are wide—she is scared. “What?” I say.
“Spit it out!” Tawni shrieks. Now I am the confused one. “Spit it out!” she says again, reaching around and thumping me on the back.
“I can’t,” I say over her shoulder. “I’ve already swallowed it.”
Tawni releases me and says, “No, no, no, no…this is not good.”
That’s when I taste it. Something’s not right about the water. Like Tawni, I make a face, swish some spit around in my mouth. Overall, the water was refreshing, delicious even, but the aftertaste is not good. The water is…. “Contaminated?” I say.
Tawni nods slowly. “I think so.”
Not good.
As kids, all moon dwellers are taught to look for the signs of contaminated water. Strange coloring, frothy film on the top, a unique odor, strange taste: All are possible clues that the water is not good to drink. At home we used a testing agent every four hours to check our water. If the water turns blue when combined with the agent, it is okay. If it turns green or brown, your water is bad. Even if we had the stuff we needed to test the water, it is too late. We’ve drunk it.
I peer into the water. It looks okay. No film, no discoloring, no malodor. The nasty aftertaste might just be a result of trace metals in the water, picked up somewhere along its winding path through the depths. I doubt we’re that lucky.
“What do you think it is?” I ask. There are a lot of dangers associated with drinking bad water. In mild cases, you might just get a bad case of diarrhea or perhaps light vomiting, but there are many worse diseases and viruses that can be picked up, too. Like…
“Bat Flu,” Tawni says.
“What? No. I doubt it. Can’t be. Why do you think that?” Bat Flu is the worst of the worst. Infected bats release their infected droppings into a water source, which then becomes infected. The symptoms of Bat Flu are numerous and awfuclass="underline" severe stomach cramps; cold sweats and hot flashes in conjunction with high fever; mind-numbing headaches; relentless muscle aches; hallucinations; and in many cases, death. There was a mild outbreak at my school in Year Three. Four kids, a dog, and one of their parents got the Flu. The only one that survived was the dog.
Tawni steps out of the water, leaving a trail of drips behind her. She picks up the flashlight and shines it across the pool. I follow the yellow light until it stops on the far wall, which is pockmarked with dozens of small caves. Bat caves. “That’s why,” she says.
I feel a surge of bile in my throat as I see piles of dark bat poo littered at the tunnel mouths. Each time the bats emerge from the caves, they will knock the piles into the water with the flap of their wings. Evidently, they’re sleeping now—the caves are silent.
I choke down the bitter, acidic taste in my mouth and say, “But this is a key watering hole for an inter-Realm thoroughfare. It’s even on the map.” My words don’t change anything. The water is likely contaminated. I don’t want to be in denial. I just need to deal with what has happened as best I can. My mother always told me to “face the truth with grim determination and a smile on your face.” I’m not sure about the smile. “Okay, let’s assume it’s contaminated. We need to vomit it out, Tawni. Now!”
Without watching to see what Tawni does, I stick two fingers down my throat, gagging immediately, the stomach fire rising so fast I can barely get my hand out of my mouth before I spew all over myself. I retch, gag, cough twice, spit as much of the vile liquid from my mouth as possible. At my feet, my own vomit is floating around my ankles. At my side, Tawni is throwing up, too.