Boss knelt down at the ledge over the canal, frowning at the water below. He had good reason to frown because the water was a mix of glowing, rainbow colors, which was something that water was not supposed to look like. Peggy, Roy and the Head Magus stood watch behind him.
“I see, I see,” Boss said. “This really is an emergency.”
With a soft grunt, he straightened up and did a few twists to pop his spine.
“So? How in the world did the canal turn from a river of regular, crystal clear water into a stream of liquid rainbow?” he asked. “I can tell it’s not a magic spell. If it was, you’d have taken care of it already yourself, Head Magus.”
“Do you really need to ask?” asked the lady in the white dress and witch’s hat. “I’m sure you must have figured it out already, being a former detective’s assistant and all.”
“It looked like pollution from an alchemist’s workshop, but I just wanted to be sure,” said the coffee shop owner.
“You’d be half-right,” said the Head Magus. “A delivery wagon carrying supplies for an alchemist hit a bump in the road, got thrown off-balance and completely flipped into the canal. The driver’s okay. Some magicians were close by, saw what happened, and stopped him from falling in. But they were too late to stop the wagon from hitting the water. A bunch of bottles must have broken and spilled everything out, which got mixed together and then leaked out into the water.”
“And that started chain reaction that turned the whole water system into a sloshy rainbow mess,” Boss finished. “This stuff didn’t get into our drinking water, did it? I don’t really like the idea of anyone guzzling rainbow down their throats. This stuff looks absolutely poisonous.”
The Head Magus shook her head.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “As soon as word about the accident reached us, we sealed off all the drinking wells. But just in case, we sent out an alert, warning everyone not to use their sinks and stuff until we checked everything out. Tom’s doing that right now, going door to door.”
“Right,” Boss said, nodding. “I get what’s going on now. But what do you want me to do about it? I may be a Four-Star spell caster, but it's not like I can clean the whole canal with just a snap of my finger."
"We need all the help we can get," said the Head Magus. "At this point, I'd be okay having a total newbie on board."
"That bad, huh?" said Boss. "Alright, I'll help. It'd be bad for all of us too if the canal doesn’t get cleaned up fast. What's the game plan?"
The Head Magus cleared her throat and put her serious business face on. Cue the epic music soundtrack.
"Ahem! Once we've got as much people on board as we can, we'll split to different sections of the canal. On my signal, we will all cast the best cleaning magic spell we got, no skimping on magic power. We'll have alchemists join us to throw whatever they could cook up on short notice into the canal too.”
But despite the town’s top magician’s inspiring bravado, things did not go the way she had hoped.
As soon as the Head Magus fired a flare into the air that made a loud pop noise, all over town, people of all shapes, sizes and costume fashion senses gathered along the canal and shot lasers out of wands, staffs, bracelets, necklaces, fingers, mouths, and eyes. Some people in lab coats threw glowing crystal balls, gemstones, and weird clumps of machinery into the rainbow water that exploded with brilliant showers of blue sparks. The light spread and replaced the milky rainbow with crystal clear water, but only for a moment. A blink of an eye later, its rainbow hue returned as bright and thick as before.
The collection of magicians went at it for a good five minutes before the Head Magus finally called for everyone to stop. Many collapsed on their knees, gasping for breath and sweating buckets as if they had just finished running a miles-long marathon.
“This is going nowhere,” she said breathlessly. She threw off her hat and wiped sweat off her brow with her forearm. "Actually, I think we might even be making it worse. It could be my imagination, but I thought I saw a bunch of faces in that rainbow water laughing at us."
Peggy came over with a tray of cold drinks she bought from a nearby eatery. She wanted to help out with the clean-up too, but she didn’t know any kind of magic spell for that. Being the only one made her feel a little left-out, so she wanted to do at least something for the others.
“Thanks, Peggy,” Boss said when Peggy handed a glass to him. “You can go on home, if you’d like. I think we’re all done for the day.”
“What about you?” asked Peggy.
“I’ll be sticking around a little longer,” the vampire answered. “Me being a Four-Star spell caster means I have more magic know-how than most, so the Head Magus will probably want me in the meeting to think up a new plan to clean up the canal.”
“Think you’ll come up with something?” asked Peggy.
Boss flashed a wry smile and replied, “Maybe. But don’t worry. If worse comes to worse, I’ll try reach out to my mom to take care of it. We should be fine in the meanwhile.”
“If you say so,” said Peggy.
With nothing left for her to do, Peggy left the others behind and started to make her way home. Roy also stayed behind to keep helping out. As she traveled through the streets of Featherkeep, she could feel that the earlier somber but peaceful air had been replaced by a sense of anxiety. People were worried, and why wouldn’t they be? Something bad had happened to their water which is really important to their lives, and that’s scary. Peggy, herself, felt dread while thinking about what could happen to the town if nothing could be done about the canal.
She turned a corner, sighing, and then went, “Oof!”
“Eek!” shrieked the little girl who bumped into Peggy. She fell and landed on her bottom.
“Oh, I’m sorry! Are you okay?” Peggy asked the little girl. She reached out a helping hand, but the little girl was already picking herself up.
“I’m fine! I’m fine!” she said. “You don’t need to worry.”
“Uh . . . I’m over here,” said Peggy.
The little girl had been talking to her reflection on a shop window. Her eyes flew wide when she realized she was facing the wrong way and turned around saying, “Sorry about that.” She spoke to a lamppost.
Peggy put a hand to her hip, frowned and stared at the little girl apologizing to the street light.
The girl was human with short, brown hair and jungle green eyes. Her height was just a little over half Peggy’s, and she wore a shirt as blue as the ocean with long, flowing sleeves. Matching the shirt, the girl had on a long skirt with different layers of blue, starting from dark to regular, to light, and then to practically white at the hem. A pair of light blue sandals poked out. The girl also had a necklace and bracelet made of big, blue oval stone beads with the same white waves as the ones stitched to the cuffs of her shirt sleeves.
“Say,” said Peggy, “just wondering, but do you normally wear glasses?”
The girl gasped and gaped in wonderment and surprise. “How’d you know?”
She was back to talking to her reflection on the window.
“Lucky guess,” said Peggy. “What happened?”
“I accidentally tripped and then my glasses fell off,” the little girl explained. “I heard it go tap-tap-tap and then sploosh!”
“Sploosh?” Peggy had a bad feeling about this. “Were you by the canal when that happened?”
The little girl nodded.
Oh boy, Peggy thought.
“The guard rails stopped me from falling in,” the little girl said. “But I can’t see a thing without my glasses. And I need to get back to the temple fast.”
“Temple? What temple?” asked Peggy.
The little girl had funny look on her face.
“Can’t you tell just by looking at my outfit?” she asked. She spread her arms apart and did a twirl. Both her loose sleeves and her skirt trailed in the wind. “I’m a water shaman, so of course I’m talking about the Water Temple.”
Peggy blinked.
“What’s a water shaman?” she asked.
The little girl’s jaw dropped.
Shocked, she cried out, “You don’t know what a water shaman is?”
“I’m from far away,” Peggy said.
“You must be from really, REALLY far away if you’ve never heard of a water shaman,” said the little girl. “Ahem!”
She straightened up and put on an air of importance. But the little girl’s efforts only made her look both cute and funny because she was still talking to herself on the shop window.
“Listen up!” she commanded. “A shaman’s job is really, really important. We’re in charge of keeping the world in balance. We do dances, play music and a bunch of other stuff to fix the world so bad things don’t happen to people. There are four kinds of shamans, fire shamans, wind shamans, earth shamans, and water shamans like me! And each kind of shaman has its own temple. Since I’m a water shaman, I belong to the Water Temple.”
“And you need to go back to this Water Temple?” Peggy asked.
The little girl nodded.
“The grownups will get mad if I’m out too long,” she said. “So I really must be going now. I’m sorry for bumping into you. Bye!”
She turned and started running.
“Wait!” Peggy cried out. “Watch out for the - !”
The little girl conked her head and cried out, “Ow!”
“- street light. Are you okay?”
Teary-eyed with her hands cupped over her nose, the little girl shook her head.
“Oh, geez,” Peggy groaned. She grimaced at the sight of red seeping out between the little girl’s fingers. “Your nose is bleeding!”
The little water shaman also had a big, deeply pink spot on her forehead.
Unable to leave the girl in that state, Peggy sighed and told the girl to hold still.
“I’ll fix you right up,” she said.
Now how did it go again? She wondered. While recalling what she read in a book, she clapped her hands together and focused. Under her breath, she whispered the magic incantation word for word as she had memorized them until she could feel something warm and grainy in her palms. And then she threw her hands in the air and sparkly red dust flew out.
The little girl closed her eyes as the red dust was draped over her. When the dust disappeared, so did the swelling on her forehead and the blood from her nose.
“Better?” asked Peggy.
The little girl nodded and replied, “Loads. Thank you!”
“You’re welcome,” Peggy said, flashing a smile.
“Anyway, I’m really sorry for the trouble,” said the little girl, “but I must get going now.”
The little girl turned to leave, but Peggy put a restraining hand on her shoulder and said, “Hold it. You can’t see anything right now without your glasses, right? How do you expect to find your way home like that?”
“But-!” The little girl protested, but Peggy cut her off.
“No buts,” said Peggy. “Come on. I’ll take you to the town guards. They’ll help you get home. If I remember right, there should be a station close by.”
Hand in hand, Peggy and the little girl traveled down the streets and headed to a guard station. Along the way, Peggy noticed how empty the town had become despite still being daytime. But she just chalked it up to everyone going home early because of the canal mess and thought no more of it. She never realized that someone watching her and the little girl from a rooftop far away had something to do with the magically empty streets.
On their way to the guard station, they just happened to come across a section of the canal. That was when the little girl suddenly stopped and asked Peggy, “Hey, is something wrong with the water here? My bracelet and necklace are both tingling, and that only happens if something bad happened.”
She held up her wrist for Peggy to see the stone beads of her bracelet glowing and shaking. The beads even made that buzzing sound like a vibrating smartphone.
Peggy wasn’t sure if she should tell the little girl about the accident, but ultimately did when it became clear the girl wasn’t going to let it go.
“That’s terrible!” The little girl cried out in dismay after Peggy’s brief overview about the rainbow canal. “You must be really worried, then.”
“A little,” Peggy admitted. She would be lying if she said she was not. The others said that the drinking water was still safe, but there’s no telling how long it’ll last or if it’ll stay safe while the canal remained all rainbow.
“In that case, I’ll do something about it,” the little girl volunteered.
“You?” Peggy looked at the girl doubtfully.
“Yeah, me,” said the little girl. “I’m a water shaman, after all. It’s my job to take care of messes like this. Just watch! I’ll have that nasty stuff cleared out lickity-split!”
She let go of Peggy’s hand and then turned to face the canal.
“Hey, it’s dangerous,” Peggy said. “Don’t get too close to the canal.”
“I won’t,” the little girl promised. And then she muttered, “Over here should be close enough anyway.”
To be honest, Peggy didn’t believe the girl could do anything about the canal. Water shaman or not, how could a single kid do something a whole bunch of grownups could not? But she figured it wouldn’t hurt to let the girl at least try as long as it’s not dangerous.
Peggy would soon realize she sorely underestimated the child.
CLAP! Went the little girl’s hands. Wait one second . . . two seconds . . . three seconds . . . CLAP! And then repeat one more time.
From the mayor’s office where a very important meeting was taking place, a certain vampire who owned a coffee shop noticed the room suddenly get darker and looked up. He glanced out the window, saw the sky had gone dark as if night had fallen and pulled out his pocket watch to check the time.
It was still half past Two in the afternoon, way too early for the sun to set.
“Who turned off the sun?” the coffee shop Owner wondered.
With darkness shrouding the entire town, the only sources of light came from the little girl’s bead necklace and bracelet, which shined bright blue. Her hair and eyes, as well, changed color to blue and glowed like lanterns.
And then she began to sing.
She sung words that Peggy never heard before, in a melody that sounded like something out of the Middle Ages. It was serene, peaceful, and with the added light show, absolutely mystical. And as if the magical lights from the girl’s jewelry and hair was not enough to make things magical, voices out of nowhere, from people unseen, joined the little girl in chorus. They ranged from children as young as the girl herself to full grown men and women. And they could be heard from all corners of the town.
Peggy watched in awe as blue light replaced the rainbow colors of the canal water below and spread out to every inch of the man-made river. The shining illumination looked almost like a giant curtain drawn between the two sides of the town.
When the little girl was done singing and the voices faded away, the light disappeared from the canal to reveal pristine, clean water that sparkled against returning daylight. And it stayed that way, unlike when the grownups threw whatever magic spell they could think of into it.
As the little girl’s hair and eyes turned back to their original colors, she beamed at Peggy and spoke proudly, “There! No need to worry anymore. The water here’s as clean as it was at the beginning of Time!”
“I can see that,” Peggy said. Looking at the water now, she had no choice but to take the little girl’s word for it.
Suddenly, something dropped down from the sky and landed perfectly over the little girl’s face. It was a pair of big, round glasses with thick, black frames.
“Oh!” the little girl cried out. She blinked once and then twice before touching the side of the glasses with her fingers. “My glasses. I can see again.”
Peggy gaped at the girl, wondering just where those glasses fell from. But then -
“Lady Undine! Lady Undine, where are you?”
Everything was tranquil and peaceful with no noise except for the sloshing of canal water. But that tranquility was disturbed by a lady’s voice calling out for someone. Peggy looked around for the source of the voice and found a curtain of blue light still remained a few feet away down the road.
“Lady Undine!”
“Oh!” The little girl cried out. She seemed to recognize the voice. “Hey! I’m over here!”
She faced the curtain of light and waved her hand over her head while shouting. But whoever was behind the curtain of light just continued to call out for this Undine person. Clearly, she could not hear the little girl.
The little girl dropped her hand down and then turned around.
“That’s someone I know from the temple,” she explained to Peggy. “It was nice meeting you, but now it’s really time for me to go home.”
“Got it,” said Peggy. “It was nice meeting you too.”
“Thanks again for all your help,” the little girl said.
“That should be my line,” said Peggy. “Try not to lose your glasses again.”
“I will! Bye!”
After bidding Peggy farewell, the little girl turned around and ran straight into the curtain of light. Once she was swallowed inside, the curtain burst into tiny sparks, like mini-fireworks and disappeared.
Peggy watched as the last signs of the little girl to disappear before she turned around to walk away.
But then she froze and wondered aloud to herself, “Huh? Where did all these people come from?”
Only a few seconds ago, there was no one around. But now there were people out and about as if they had always been there. Many were crowding the stone railing, whispering to one another while pointing at the canal below, both pleased and confused by the canal’s sudden cleanliness.
The Head Magus and the coffee shop Owner soon showed up, and when they spotted Peggy standing by the canal in her lonesome, they rushed over to ask her what happened.
When she was done telling her story, the Head Magus looked at her in disbelief.
“You’re telling me that a little girl pulled off something nearly a hundred grownups could not?” she said.
“Well, she is a water shaman, according to her,” Peggy said.
Boss cut in and said, “Peggy, we had five full grown water shamans with us, and they couldn’t do a thing, and that was with an army's worth of backup. The only shaman I can think of who could do something like this by themselves would be a shaman called the Undine, the most powerful of all water shamans.”
“But the Undine’s back at the Water Temple, so that’s impossible,” said the Head Magus.
“How come?” asked Peggy. “Where is the Water Temple?”
“It’s up north, the Head Magus replied, “several days away, even by flying. And there's no magical gateways connecting this town and the Water Temple, so there’s just no way the Undine could be here.”
I can think of one way, the coffee shop Owner thought. But I'll just keep that to myself.
He looked up, but whoever was watching the whole thing from the rooftops had long since gone away.
Although a really, really, REALLY crazy story, Peggy was likely telling the truth and a single child really did clean the whole canal’s water with a song. That little girl must definitely be the Undine, thought the coffee shop Owner. And in his experience, whenever crazy stuff like that happens, it's often connected to a single person that the vampire knew really, really well.
**********
Far, far away from the town of Featherkeep, beyond even the borders of the kingdom, there was a grand temple, a structure so huge that it housed its own city made of blue stone, which made clear its connection to water. Somewhere in that temple-slash-city, there was a lady in a blue dress looking for someone named Undine.
"Lady Undine!" the lady said for the umpteenth time. "Where are you?"
She was close to giving up hope of finding this Undine when suddenly, a voice called out to her from behind. The lady turned around to see a little girl running towards her. This little girl wore the same kind of dress and also had on a pair of big, round glasses.
"Great Waters of Life!" the lady cried out. Great relief washed over her and she quickly ran over to meet the girl. "Lady Undine! Where have you been? What happened to you?"
"You'll never believe it," the little girl replied back. And then she started telling the lady a story which began with meeting a T-Rex dinosaur that popped out of nowhere and screamed, "Merry Rex-Mas!"
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