Anyone remember William? He has a friend. He's good at that.
William was eight years old when he met Ralph. The other boy was two years older, although slightly shorter, and spent a lot of time around the rivers, which was probably why William hadn’t met him sooner. On this particular day, the older boy was crouched barefoot in the mud on the riverbank nearest William’s family farm, untamed blond hair falling into his face as he stared into the swirling water. He was trying to contact an aquean, one of the semi-human creatures that lived in the stream; one of them had spoken to him a week or so ago, and he wanted to see if he could initiate contact.
“Aren’t you worried about getting that nice cloak of yours dirty?”
Ralph spun around, as if about to deliver a witty comeback, although in fact he had yet to think of one. There was a kid sitting there, grinning in a way that wasn’t insolent but seemed like it should have been. He was barefoot too, and appeared to have been wading in mud, since the hems of his breeches were filthy, although the rest of his clothing was clean; brown vest, white shirt unsullied by a single scrap of dirt. His black hair was offensively neat when compared to Ralph’s own mess, and there was a laugh in his blue eyes.
When Ralph failed to respond, the kid persisted. “Well, aren’t you?”
“Are you suggesting I’m a sissy?” Ralph looked him over suspiciously. Many of the other boys in the surrounding farms had accused him of this very thing because of all the time he spent staring into reflective waters. This kid, though, just looked affronted.
“Of course not. Why would I say something like that? But it’s an awfully nice cloak, and it seemed a shame to get it all muddy.” He sounded sincere, but there was still something in his expression, something that seemed like he was laughing at Ralph.
“Well…yeah.” The kid was right, in a way: it was a nice cloak, the way it cascaded long and red over his shoulders. He suspected that his parents had gotten it for him to make him look more heroic, but it was hard to do that when you were ankle-deep in mud, and he didn’t care all that much about keeping the cloak itself clean. He grabbed the edge and brought it up to his face. Yep, covered in what his mother often referred to as “unspeakable filth” (particularly when he forgot to wipe his feet). After a few moments’ contemplation, he let the offending hem drop into the river.
“So…what are you doing?” Ralph flinched; the mysterious kid was suddenly kneeling right next to him, staring eagerly into the water as if expecting to find some hidden truth there. It threw him off, the way the kid just seemed to assume that Ralph would talk to him. Sure, he hadn’t made any mocking comments about vanity or whatever yet, and he seemed genuinely interested in what Ralph was doing, but…
“Look, kid. I don’t even know you—”
“I’m William Chauncey. And you?”
“Uh, Ralph. Ralph Gibbs. But—”
“Oh, I’ve heard about you!” William tilted his head, apparently surprised. “I get the idea that people don’t like you much. I’m not really sure why.”
“Yeah, I know.” So nice to be reminded of that. Again. He was getting tired of having reasons to dwell on it. “Listen, Will—”
“William. I’m not a Will.” He sounded slightly offended, as if being “a Will” were something negative.
“Okay, William. If you’re here to make fun of me or something, you needn’t bother. I know what you’re going to say. Although…” Ralph paused. “What did you mean, you’ve heard about me? I would think everyone around here knows me by sight, by now. Not for any good reason, but even so…are you new around here or something?”
“No. I’ve lived here all my life, but I’ve never seen you before. I don’t spend a lot of time by the river.”
“But…you’re all muddy.”
“I was helping a dream toad.” William grinned. “She got stuck up a tree after she gave some ravens nightmares, and although I have nothing against the ravens most of the time, they can be awfully vindictive.”
“Dream toads talk to you?”
“Well, yes. They’re very social creatures.” He said this as if it was common knowledge. “Is that what you’re looking for, then? I know where a colony of them lives.”
“You do?” Ralph blinked, shook his head. “This is some kind of trick, isn’t it?”
“Er…no. Why should it be? You haven’t given me any reason to dislike you. Is there something I don’t know about?” William seemed honestly at a loss. But he’d heard about Ralph from the other kids around here, hadn’t he? He couldn’t have heard anything good.
“In case you’d missed it, I’m not very popular around here.”
“Oh, I know. But I don’t actually know you, so I don’t have any excuse not to like you. Except, of course, that you still haven’t told me why you’ve been staring into the river like that.” Pause. “That’s a joke,” he added hastily. “But I do want to know.”
“Er…” Ralph was running out of reasons not to trust the kid. Hang on, was that what he’d been doing? That seemed kind of self-destructive, now that he thought about it. William had appeared out of nowhere and started talking to him as if they’d known each other for years, and was worryingly persistent, but there was something about him Ralph liked. “I’ve been looking for aqueans. I met one recently and she said she’d talk to me again, but she hasn’t so far.”
“What’s an aquean?” If William leaned any closer to the water, he’d fall in.
Ralph laughed. “You’ve heard of dream toads but not aqueans?”
“I’m a land-based wizard,” William said defensively. “You can’t expect everyone to understand what you do just because you’re a waterworker.”
“A what? Wait, you’re a wizard?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be…older? Or more imposing? Or something? And I don’t see a wand.”
Now it was William’s turn to laugh, although it sounded not at all mocking. “I hear that a lot. But no, it seems I can be a wizard and a kid. And I’ve learned enough control by now that I don’t need a channelling object.”
“I’ve never met a wizard before.”
“I can tell.”
“But what was that about me being a waterworker? What does that even mean?”
“You’ve heard of wizards but not waterworkers?” Apparently William could get away with laughing at his own jokes. “A waterworker is someone with a natural talent for water-based magic. Usually it manifests as being able to communicate with water creatures, like your aqueans.” He turned to peer into Ralph’s eyes, a somewhat disconcerting gesture. “You didn’t know that?”
“No.” Ralph absently trailed one hand in the river. “I never thought of it as magic, anyway. It’s just…a thing I do.”
“Well, at least you know what your ‘thing’ is. ‘Wizard’ is a very broad term. I may never know the full extent of my abilities.” He frowned briefly, but his grin quickly returned. “So are you going to tell me what an aquean is or not?”
“Oh. Right.” Ralph tried to make his explanation as brief as possible: an aquean was a humanoid water-dweller, with a certain range of colour-changing ability and webbed hands and feet. They tended to be rather small, large-rat-sized, and rather aloof. No, they couldn’t change their size. Yes, their colours were limited to those naturally occurring in water. No, they didn’t change colour based on emotions, like chameleons. He wasn’t even sure they had emotions. The one he’d met had been very distant. He’d intended to keep his description of them short, but William appeared genuinely interested, and every time Ralph stopped William would prompt him to continue. He wasn’t really very knowledgeable about aqueans, though, and eventually he ran out of information. When he finished, William nodded and got to his feet. “Where are you going?”
“These aqueans of yours sound very interesting, of course, and I hold nothing against them,” he replied. “But I don’t see much of a point in pining after them. It’s all very well to talk with magical creatures—quite exciting, at times—but if you can’t convince them to do so, there’s nothing to be done. Have you been trying to find them since you talked to the first one?” He looked unsurprised when Ralph nodded. “Then there isn’t much point in spending any longer crouched here, I think. Still want to see some dream toads?”
“Of course!”
“Let’s do that, then. It’ll be much more interesting.” William reached out, and Ralph allowed the other boy to pull him to his feet. The wizard suddenly took off at a run, calling over his shoulder for Ralph to follow, which he did with great enthusiasm, his cloak streaming out behind him.
Something occurred to him. “Hey,” he yelled. “Would you be interested in a secondhand cloak?”
William let out another laugh. “Of course!”
And that, as far as they were concerned, settled it.
