Chapter Eight: Songs of the Watering Eye

In which water keeps a face without stealing it.

The well keeps every face; the tavern keeps every round. Between them, all debts are known.

berry memory

The Watering Eye was a well before it was a witness, and a witness long before anyone built a tavern leaning over it like a drinker over a confession. Boof came in under the sagging floorboards and set her front paws on the mossy coping. The water below was black and perfectly still, and it did not show her own face first.

It showed her an older one — a woman mid-wish, mouth open on a want she had never said aloud — and under that face, folded like pressed linen going down into the dark, every other face the well had ever held. From the barrel-head behind her came the Genie's quoting voice, brisk as a market morning: "I can make you famous by Tuesday, or respected by November. Fame is cheap — reality already leans that way for loud people. Respect requires corrections. Choose."

A face said into deep water is not stolen; it is folded, and it stays the property of whoever wore it. The well kept the faces the way good ground keeps rain: patiently, and without letting anyone else spend them.

Step into the scene

vantage front paws propped on the mossy granite well-coping under the tavern's leaning floorboards, nose a breath from still black water

light tavern lamplight spilling through gaps in the floor above; the water reflects not tonight's lamps but earlier lamps, and under them, layered faces from other years

scent wet granite, spilled lager, damp hemp rope, cold mineral water — and the hot-iron scent of the egg in its sling

  • the tavern leans over the well like a drinker leaning over a confession
  • the water surface is motionless, holding a face mid-wish, mouth open on a want never spoken aloud
  • folds of older faces stack beneath the surface like pressed linen going down into the dark
  • the Genie's brass instruments are set up on a barrel-head like a card game

All night the Genie dealt in wants. Name one, hear the price, pay or fold. An empire? Quite manageable; the world was forever tipping toward a throne. Supper everyone agreed on? He counted the company twice and quoted three coincidences and a fortnight of Thursdays. At the bar, the regular raised his glass. “Six violations of the natural order,” the Genie told him. “Lager,” said the regular. The Genie wrote it down. After a moment, he underlined it.

A line of ants had left a crumb on the barrel-head at dusk. He quoted them nothing, struck a match for their torch-bearer, and wrote nothing down. Old customers.

Two beavers took the whole evening over a dam. They wanted the wording exact: the bend, the height, the arrangement of the sticks. By the time they had it right they had drawn it on the table in spilled lager, argued the drawing into a better one, and gone out to build it before the Genie could quote a price. He watched them go with something like professional respect. Beavers, he told Boof, always wished slowly enough to finish the job themselves.

Step into the scene

vantage the tavern floor above the well, looking down the long table where the Genie sits pricing wishes like a card dealer

light amber lamplight, brass instruments glinting, a needle on a karmic gauge that will not settle

scent lager, candle tallow, old oak table, the mineral breath of the well rising through the floor

  • the Genie's instruments were built for emperors and hum with boredom
  • a regular at the bar raises one finger for another lager
  • locals queue with wants: a roof mended, a cousin forgiven, supper agreed upon
  • every small want makes the pricing needle swing wider than a kingdom would

tavern game

Eighth honk: the tavern game, sampled and returned — small wants priced dear, because they are the ones the world was not already planning to grant.

He sat the trapdoor's edge with his boots over the dark, tapping the game's rhythm on the iron ring, taking the tavern's off-key song and handing it back on-key, with interest.

Chamber 08 · Songs of the Watering Eye
Step into the scene

vantage looking across the taproom at the Fool perched on the trapdoor's edge, boots swinging over the open well-shaft

light lamplight on his silver rings; well-water reflecting gold up into his face from below

scent river mint, spilled lager, cold night air rising through the floor

  • the Fool taps the rhythm of the pricing game on the trapdoor's iron ring
  • his reflection in the water below wears an expression of deep, ancient solemnity
  • the taproom sings off-key behind him and he samples it anyway
A tavern leaning over a stone well at night; faces folded under black water, a genie pricing wishes above, the cracked egg warming the rim.
The Watering Eye: the tavern names the wants; the water names the debts.

The Unpriceable Want

small want

Step into the scene

vantage rim of the well below the emptying tavern, egg on the wet coping, faces turning in the water

light last lamplight above; gold folds under black water; shell-warmth on the stones

scent wet stone, cooling lager, warm iron

  • the pricing needle blank on Boof's want
  • folded faces turning toward the egg's heat
  • every spent wish owing a coincidence to a stranger
  • the account named and left open

Near closing, he tried Boof again. “Anything. Name it.” She thought of the furrow, the warmth, a trail with something real at its end. His needle swung beyond the numbers and came back blank. He reset it. She tried again. Same small click, same empty dial. Boof lowered the egg onto the wet stone around the well. Heat spread under her paws, through the coping, down.

The folded faces stirred. One by one they turned toward the warmth the way the berries once had. Then the water said, in the plain way water says things, what every face down there had in common: each one owed a coincidence to a stranger. The egg — an unspent wish — was the debt still standing warm above the fold. The well could not price it either.

It only named it, and kept the account open. Boof leaned over the rim without touching the water. Some faces were clear enough to count the lines around a mouth; others drifted beneath reflections of the tavern windows. A laugh came through the floorboards overhead, and for a moment she could not tell whether one of the faces had laughed too.

She moved the egg closer. Ripples reached the far wall and came back through the reflected light. The Genie stood beside her with his instruments shut. She was glad he had stopped asking her to name it.

ninth honkninth honk

"What did I win?" Boof wondered, taking the egg back into her sling. The Genie had priced fame, thrones, and six lagers, and had folded on her — the only player at the table whose want his game could not hold. Behind her the regular raised one finger at the dark, on principle.

She climbed toward the roofs with the well's answer warming her ribs. The egg was a debt. The faces below had turned toward it together, though no voice had called them. Above the ridge, eight old notes hung in the dark. She listened for the missing one and felt it humming against her chest.

Step into the scene

vantage trotting up a steep rocky ridge away from the tavern's last lamp, toward high slate roofs over the northern pass

light cold starlight; behind her, eight faint golden streaks hang in the clouds above the town like held notes

scent mountain slate, dry grass, cold high wind, the fading lager-warmth of the tavern

  • the glen of the well lies behind in deep purple mist
  • the ridge rises ahead like the spine of a great slumbering beast
  • the egg against her chest pulses in rhythm with a distant horn-call

A slip for the scribes

What stayed with you in Songs of the Watering Eye?

A line that hummed, a place where the path went dark, a theory about what Boof digs up next. Write it on a slip, and Boof carries it to the Scriptorium.

Write a slip for Chapter 8

Opens autonomous.feedback, the Scriptorium's post. You keep a card either way.