My thanks as always go to my two special friends for their technical advice, get well soon my friend. To my Beta reader dustybin63 for his help and his ability to always point and laugh. Also my good friend, who did the final edit for me. It's these people that lend me something so precious, their time. Thank you all.
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As the day drew to a close and the sky's color changed, I managed to buy us some time, when I said. "Victoria, as you reminded us, you're only eight years old. The calling wouldn't pick you, it's way too early. So go to school, enjoy yourself and learn. You will need to learn water language so we will start that in a few days, nothing much just a few words per day. Eventually you and I, maybe your aunt Cindy or uncle Jason will get your knowledge to the point we will speak to you in water language for a full day a week."
Victoria smiled.
"I would hold off on that thought for now Victoria, there is more."
Her smile quickly dissipated and worry crossed her ever so young eyes.
"When I think you're good enough with our language I'm sending you away for a week to a friend of mine. She will only speak to you in water language through the whole week and you will learn one song that is very important to us all."
I adjusted my seating so I could hold her little hands in mine. She instantly knew I was being deadly serious.
"Only when my friend thinks you can sing that song to her satisfaction will we all come back here and you will stand at this very spot and sing Cal-un-den."
This time I stood, grabbed my daughter and lifted her into my arms, Robert followed us the few paces to the lock gates. I felt sad for my husband since he couldn't see Brenda Cooper. I could because technically, I had died here. Victoria could see her because of her youth. It was Brenda I walked us to. She had been listening to our entire conversation with a keen interest.
Adjusting my hold on my daughter I pointed to the lock gate and said. "You will stand on this very spot and sing Cal-un-den to her."
Brenda Cooper smiled, her hand came up and waved at Victoria. My daughter's smile was something that would put a dawn to shame right then. She even waved back at Brenda and nodded her head at both of us. I let her down once again and she almost skipped over to the lock gate and sat next to Brenda. I once again sat and leant into my husband, grabbing his hand.
After a few moments of watching them both talk to each other, we walked back into the house. Robert was smart enough, he knew what had just happened.
~Two Years Later~
While I was piping water into the storage tank of my boat, I paused to think. Not much else you can do in moments like these. Two things were a cast iron guarantee, if you walk away from the hose, the tank will magically fill up in seconds and then overflow, causing the deck to soak. Thus earning you half an hours work with a mop and bucket. Don't walk away and it feels like you're here until next Christmas waiting for it to fill to the top of the storage tank.
Stark choices, so I sat next to the hose and let my mind wander.
Even after all this time, Victoria's question still resonated in my thoughts. "Mom, will you teach me how to be Traveler?"
Two years ago I was happy, content even, and had a daughter that was enjoying being nothing more than an eight-year-old.
But that was two years ago.
I also found a stubbornness in my daughter that evening that I never knew she had. Yet when you take into consideration that she's the flesh of my flesh, she sure adopted a lot of my personality. Every word of appeasement on my part became stored in her head. Every word that passed my lips that strange and carefree evening, two years ago, became lodged in her thoughts. She could even recite them to me verbatim.
Even as I recount those thoughts, I still notice just how often in these last two years that she had indeed recited those very words to me so many times. She never expanded on those words, just looked directly at me and nailed my ass to the wall, using my very own words to do it.
The learning of our water language began the next day, when she walked up to me with a notebook and pencil in her hand. I told her to put them back in her school bag. It had started out as a couple of words a day. Within a couple of months, we were talking whole sentences, throw in a school summer holiday and then Christmas holidays, we were now up to speaking half the day before her head hurt from all the concentration she was giving it.
Even her own brother got in on the language act as well. It turned out that as quick as I was teaching Victoria, she would teach him as well. If anything, her age now was about the right time to learn a language. Young enough to absorb information and hungry enough for that information to retain it and go seeking more. By eighteen months of learning, she was just about holding her own between Cindy, Jason and me.
We would make sure, that the answers to the questions put to her couldn't be shortened to a simple yes or no. We would ask her what she had done at school, even what television programs she would be watching that night got thrown into the mix. Although she may have stumbled a little in the beginning but soon grasped that mantle and stood up to all three of us. Cindy had even mentioned that when I was away on Traveler business, Victoria would often call her and have at least an hour's conversation with her in water language.
By the end of year two, my cousin Cindy had asked me when I was going to be talking to the choir leader. It was also then that I looked closely at the calendar on the wall. Two years had come and gone.
