Taminy Read online

  “Huh!” Wyth snapped out of his blur-eyed reverie. “I’m sorry, I ... I was thinking of Meredydd and ... Taminy.”

  “Ah. Those two cailin offer much material for thought.”

  “Is it very strange for you, Osraed Bevol, to have her in your house? To sit with her at table? To-to speak with her face-to-face? You received your Kiss from her, your knowledge, your duan—and now, here she is-”

  Bevol shook his head. “Not the same.”

  “But Meredydd-”

  “Whom you love.”

  “Whom I love ...” He glanced up at the older man, feeling as if his soul sat naked in his eyes. “How do you reconcile it? In your mind—in your heart?”

  “How do you?”

  “I don’t. That’s just it. What I feel for the Meri must be pure. It must be. But what I felt for Meredydd—forgive me for saying it, Master Bevol—but I can’t think that was pure. There was so much of my self in it. So much of pride and envy and-and other things.”

  “Possessiveness,” said Bevol, then, “Desire?”

  Wyth sighed. “In a word.”

  “And you don’t desire the Meri?”

  Wyth recalled the night, the gleaming Something that would not be seen, that touched him and spoke to him, unspeaking. “What is the right answer? I ... yes. I desire the Meri, but-”

  “And well you should,” said Bevol, all but pouncing on the words. “Well you should. I shall be the first to admit that I desire Her. I hunger for Her touch, thirst for every drop of knowledge or wisdom or compassion—every drop of light She cares to bestow on me. Passion, Wyth. In a word. That’s the substance of the Covenant you are commissioned to protect. It would shock Ealad to hear me speak of passion and the Meri in one breath, but tell me if that is not what She demands of us. Eh? Am I wrong, Wyth? Is that not what She demanded of you?”

  Wyth’s face burned and his eyes swam with salt dew. “Yes. Oh, yes, but-but then, when I think of Meredydd-”

  Bevol leaned across the circle and laid a hand on his knee. “Meredydd will not exist again for another hundred years, Wyth—or more. Not as you knew her. The girl you knew exists only in your heart—in your mind.” He sat back and shook his head. “In all truth, she will never exist anywhere else, because when Meredydd-a-Lagan walks out of the Western Sea a century from now, she will be changed. Oh, you would know her, but she might not know herself. Skeet put it very aptly: What must it be like to be dumped back upon the earth after living in the Sea? What must it be like to have to walk, where before you have darted like a silkie?”

  Wyth pondered that long after Bevol had gone, his thoughts full of Taminy. It seemed an odd notion to have, and he hoped it was not, in some way, sacrilegious, but it occurred to Osraed Wyth Arundel that after a hundred years of swimming, one would find walking extremely difficult.

  oOo

  “Tell me again why you’ve no classes this afternoon.” Taminy was inspecting the Cirke spire with its gleaming stellate crown and Gwynet could not see her face.

  “Because Master Tynedale said he had a Council and trusted no one else with our lessons. So, we were free to do whatever.”

  Taminy chuckled. “Oh, guileless child! I know every word of that is true, and yet you still have such a cloud of guilt about you.”

  Gwynet scuffled in the dirt of the path and gave the Cirke an apologetic glance. “I come here to study and learn,” she said. “I promised Osraed Bevol I’d study hard today.”

  Taminy bent to look her in the eyes. “But Osraed Tynedale gave you a free afternoon, Gwyn. Take it.”

  Gwynet drew a dusty circle with her toe. “I never had a free afternoon. It feels guiltful.”

  Taminy straightened and made a clucking noise with her tongue. “Gwynet, you’re a little girl.”

  “Yes, mistress.”

  “But you don’t even know what that is, do you?”

  Gwynet squinted up at Taminy’s face, but her expression was lost in the bright sky. She said such odd things at times—like that, about not knowing what a little girl was.

  “Look,” said Taminy. “If we have a lesson today, will you feel less guiltful?”

  Gwynet’s heart gave a triple leap. “Oh, aye, Taminy. Oh, I would like tha’ greatly.”

  “All right. But first-” She turned her head toward the Cirke. “I’d like to visit the Cirke a bit. Look at the manse.”

  Gwynet blinked up at the large stone and timber building with its sloping walls and its frosted, stained and crystal windows. “You lived here,” she recalled and wondered at how long ago that was.

  “I did. And it seems not to have changed much, but for some new timbers and that window.” She pointed. “That window’s been replated. And of course, there are more graves now.”

  Gwynet’s heart cringed from the wistfulness in the older girl’s voice and quickly took her hand. “Will you show me, mistress?”

  Taminy favored her with a wonderful smile and led her on into the Cirke yard, past the Sanctuary and alongside the pretty stone manse with its great, wide porch and up-tilted eaves and dormer windows. It looked very different from the Sanctuary—newer, Gwynet thought.

  “Two hundred years newer,” said Taminy from beside her and Gwynet shivered to know that her thoughts had been heard.

  There was a breathlessness about Taminy as they walked about the house. She was all over it with her eyes, her lips parted as if to speak, though no words came out. When they’d come round to the front of the house, which was set at a right angle to the Sanctuary, the front door opened and someone stepped out onto the shadowy veranda. Taminy froze at the bottom of the steps and grasped the person with her gaze.

  For a moment, Gwynet was sure the older girl would cry out; she had the most anguished expression on her face. Why, she thought, she thinks it’s her da. The thought made her intensely sad.

  “Daeges-eage, cailin,” said a deep, warm-ember voice. “May I be of service?” The man came out to the top of the steps into dappled sunlight that gleamed, patchwork, in his honey-colored hair,

  Gwynet felt Taminy relax, and relaxed herself, gazing up at the man’s great height. She smiled.

  He returned the smile, shifting his eyes to Taminy. “Ah, wait now! You’re the young woman Osraed Bevol introduced at the Tell Fest. Taminy, isn’t it?”

  She nodded. “Yes, sir. It’s Taminy.”

  “Well, Taminy. I’m Cirkemaster Saxan. Welcome to Nairne.”

  “Thank you, Osraed, Gwynet and I were just ... looking about. Is it all right if we enter the Sanctuary?”

  “It’s always open, dear girl. You may enter it whenever you wish.” He studied her for a moment, then chuckled. “Imagine that Marnie, thinking you were Meredydd. You’re nothing like her to look at.”

  “Did you know her well?” Taminy asked.

  The Cirkemaster nodded. “Since she was born. My wife attended her birth. Our own daughter is only a few years older.”

  “Were they friends?”

  “When they were younger. But after Meredydd’s parents ... died, after she’d been up at Halig-liath awhile, that all changed. Everything changed for Meredydd then, and I can’t help but think ...” He paused, looking uncomfortable.

  “What, sir?” said Taminy gently, almost inaudibly. “What do you think?”

  “That perhaps Osraed Bevol shouldn’t have disturbed the natural order of things. Should have let Meredydd live a normal girl’s life. She wasn’t allowed to be as other girls, and they resented that and were suspicious of it. Poor Meredydd was outcaste. Not a girl in Nairne would befriend her. Not even, I’m ashamed to say, my own Iseabal. And it wasn’t Meredydd’s fault. None of it was Meredydd’s fault.”

  “But Osraed, how could she have lived a normal girl’s life with her Gift? Surely, that alone would set her apart? Wasn’t Osraed Bevol right to teach her how to use it?”

  “It might have been more merciful if he had taught her how not to use it.”

  “And would it be merciful to teach a bird how not
to fly? Or a child how not to walk and talk? No, sir. It’s beyond that, even. It would be as if you tried to teach someone—anyone—not to eat or breathe. It would be impossible.”

  The Cirkemaster studied Taminy all over again. “You seem to know much about Meredydd’s Gift.”

  “I know she had it. And I know, from what Osraed Bevol has told me, that it was natural as the color of her eyes. How can something given by Nature—which is the hand of God—be against Nature’s order? Wouldn’t it be truer to say that Meredydd’s Gift set her against man’s order of things?”

  The Cirkemaster crossed his arms and shifted his weight against a wooden porch column. “It would,” he said. “But look what it availed her. She sought to claim the Sea and the Sea claimed her.”

  It was not said unkindly, and looking up into his eyes, Gwynet saw wistfulness and wondered at it.

  “I can think of worse things,” said Taminy, “than to be claimed by the Sea.”

  They took their leave of the Cirkemaster then, for which Gwynet was grateful. She had felt so much and understood so little of what went on over her head.

  “Was that the Cirkemaster’s daughter?” she asked as they climbed the steps to the Sanctuary. “The girl in the doorway?”

  “Yes, I imagine it was. Iseabal, he called her—’dedicated to God,’—but she won’t be. They won’t let her be. She’ll be dedicated, instead, to her husband and her children and a nice, tidy business or craft. They’ll let her weave cloth, but not inyx. Never that.”

  Gwynet glanced at her friend questioningly. The words were spoken in quiet, measured tones, but another person might have shouted them, they were so unquiet with pain and anger.

  They sat side-by-side on the first bench before the altar.

  “Who’re you angry with, Taminy?”

  “No one. It’s no one man or woman’s fault. It’s the way of things. The way it’s always been.”

  “Perhaps,” reasoned Gwynet, “if the Meri had chosen a little girl to carry Her first message-?”

  Taminy shook her head. “There would have been none to listen. Had a girl pounded upon the gates of Mertuile and begged to see the Cyne, the guards would have scoffed at her, or worse. And if she had shown them the great crystal, they would have merely taken it from her and given it to the Cyne themselves to improve their own lot. No, Ochan got to the Cyne because he was the young, strong son of the Cyne’s Woodweard.”

  “But in the history it says Cyne Malcuim’s cwen, Mairghread, was a great spirit in the Land. Tha’ she in—, em, influ—”

  “Influenced?”

  “Aye! How she made great and wonderful things happen for the Land in th’ early days. How she studied under Ochan and fed the hungry and helped heal the sick and-and—”

  “Helped, Gwynet. Influenced. You notice it didn’t say that she healed the sick.” There was a hot green light burning in Taminy’s eyes. “And let me tell you that she did those things. She did heal. She did make things happen. She, herself. She was as much Osraed as Ochan, but history wouldn’t give the Tell of it. Caraid-land in those days, Gwynet, was as much Mairghread’s realm as it was Malcuim’s and as much Ochan’s as either. They ruled together, the three, but history’s eyes look over it, and history’s mouth talks around it.”

  She turned her face to the altar and was silent again, with one of those great, heavy silences that drained all the life out of a person.

  Gwynet leapt to draw her out of it. “I’d like to heal and Weave great and helpful things, mistress Taminy. And see wisdoms and speak what I see. I do pray you’ll teach me.”

  Taminy looked down at her hands, fingers spread over her knees. “I’m not sure I’m the right person to teach you those things. What I can’t do myself-”

  “Oh, there’s oceans of stuff you can teach me, Taminy! Like herbals and duans and how not to burn down the house.”

  The older girl chuckled. “All right. Let’s go walking and I’ll show you where the herbs grow hereabout.”

  “And teach me more the silent history?”

  Taminy smiled all the way to her eyes. “And teach you the silent history.”

  oOo

  Gwynet, for her years, was quite knowledgeable about herbs. Taminy was able to show her a number of sun-loving plants the dank reaches of Blaec-del had not favored, but she was pleasantly surprised with what the child had learned by eavesdropping and experimentation.

  “Well, everyone knows ’bout willow, of course. But I got to think that if willow was good for the head-ague and sassafras for t’other agues and the blood, well then, why not try a bit of both? So the next time I had a bit of pain, I tried tha’ and it seemed to work wonderful well. I even tried a cup on Mam Airdsgainne’s poor old joints. Worked so well, she forgot to gnaw on Ruhf’s customers when they come in.”

  Taminy smiled fondly at the golden child, watching her dabble pale toes in one of the rare pools in the Bebhinn’s swift-flowing stream. Her hair was bright as a newly minted ambre, but not nearly as bright as the mind it crowned.

  “This is a fey place, in’t it?” she asked.

  Taminy made herself more comfortable on her rock beside a gentle waterfall. “What makes you say that?”

  “Well ...” Gwynet swiveled her head all about to take in the dappled cup of greenery that surrounded her. “... part of it’s the herbals. Look how many of the best ones grow right here—fennel and sassafras and willow and even a little marshie-mallow down there in tha’ wee still spot. It’s like ... like a Wicke or an Osraed might’ve planted it all so they’d only have to come here and not wander all o’er the woods.”

  “Like we did?”

  “Well, aye.” Gwynet shot Taminy a roguish glance from beneath her golden curtain of hair. “It did come to me tha’ we might’ve come just here.”

  “Oh, but we had to come here right at the beginning of evening to watch the colors change. You see, it is a fey place, as you say.”

  “I’m right?” squeaked Gwynet. “Are there paeries and-and aelven folk?”

  Taminy laughed. Bless you, Gwynet. Bless you for seeing magic in all things. “The only aelven folk here are you and me. But once, not that long ago, a little girl named Meredydd came here and met the Gwenwyvar.”

  Gwynet jumped up, staring back into the pool with wide eyes. Only the rippling wake of her hastily withdrawn toes marked the crystalline surface.

  “The Gwenwyvar lives here? But I thought she were in tha’ pool above Blaec-del—the one Meredydd dunked me in to heal me.”

  “The Gwenwyvar lives ...” How to describe it to the child? “The Gwenwyvar lives wherever she needs to live. She abides in the Water of Life and appears in the aislinn mists to whatever soul the Meri wills.”

  Gwynet peered hard at the water. Already the shadows were moving—the light, changing—and the aquas, greens and browns of the pool’s depths were growing cooler, deeper.

  “Will I see her again?” she asked, voice wistful. “I only did see her the once, you know, and just for a moment, and I felt so strange, like waking from a dream—well, I thought I must’ve dreamed it, but Skeet and Osraed Bevol both say no.”

  “You may see her again,” Taminy told her. “She’s part of every Pilgrim’s journey.”

  “They all see her?”

  Taminy smiled wryly. “I didn’t say all see her. I said she’s a part of every Pilgrimage.”

  Gwynet shook her head, settling back on the soft summer grass.

  “Not every Prentice at Halig-liath has ... eyes that will see aislinn visions or Eibhilin beings. Some boys are rushed into the Academy because their parents or their Cirkemaster or the Chief of their House hopes they might have those Eyes ... or believes they ought to have them.”

  Gwynet squinted at the water-sparkles rippling away from her in the breeze. “Like Aelder Prentice Brys, you mean? He says he saw nothing on his Pilgrimage but some grimy ol’ Wicke in a stick shack who gabbled nonsense at him and give him a lump of clay. ‘What’m I to do with this,’ he
says, and she says, ‘Boy, it’s what you make of it.’” Gwynet nodded emphatically. “It’s what you make of it. Sounded wise to me. He thought it was fool-like.”

  “And what did he make of it? Did he say?”

  “Oh, he got a hole in the bottom of his shoe, he says an’ used it to patch tha’. It come out when he crossed the Bebhinn.”

  Taminy laughed. A clever young man, Aelder Prentice Brys. Clever, but not wise. She sighed soul-deep, then. Year after year they came to the Sea, bright-eyed and dreaming. And she would peek into their dreams and hear and see and touch the aislinn spirits they entertained there. Such spirits: Glory and Power and Wealth; Respect and Prestige; Beauty and Knowledge. And once in a long, long while, Love, Passion, Wisdom, a real and urgent Desire for Her.

  Taminy shook herself. No, nor for her—for the Meri, for the Animator.

  How few and far between those had been in the last hundred years, those earnest, hungering, thirsting souls; souls to whom a full cup was not a chalice overflowing with jewels, but enough Wisdom to be held in the palm of one hand. Jewels. Jewels like Gwynet or Bevol or—bless them—Calach and Tynedale, were rare. So rare.

  “He helps out in Osraed Tynedale’s class sometimes,” Gwynet was saying. “Aelder Brys, I mean. An’ he knows a powerful lot about—oh, everything. I think he could mouth the herbals in order and not miss a one, but ... he doesn’t seem to care. And Tam-tun, he’s another. He says he’d be in Seamaster’s school in Eada if he had to pick. But for his mam and da, you know.”

  Taminy nodded. “I know. It’s painful to have to follow someone else’s path in life, no matter what the circumstances. What about you, Gwynet? Do you care to be learning the Art?”

  Gwynet gazed up at her with the full force of a child’s amazement in her eyes. “Oh, Taminy-mistress! I do care to learn. And I can’t image at all how someone could not.” She puzzled for a moment then said, very gravely, “It was when Osraed Wyth come home. Prentice Aelbort took me to watch. And in he come with his face all light. And I thought, “Gwynet, tha’s for you. You must look for tha’ light and you must find it.’” Again that emphatic nod, as if she was making a pact with herself.