|
|||||||
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
|||||||
Brethinn awoke one morning, after she had been at the temple for several months, to a thump on the door. Groggily, she stumbled out of bed and pulled on her robe. Pulling open the thick wooden door, she blinked sleepily out into the hallway.
"Hello!" chirped a bright voice.
Brethinn blinked again. She looked at the window and saw that the sky was still dark, though the horizon was beginning to gray. It was still several hours before dawn. She looked back at the short, dark-haired girl that stood in the hall with a grin and a candle. Brethinn blinked again.
"I said, ‘hello,’" repeated the girl.
"What do you want?" asked Brethinn.
"My, we’re cheerful a-mornin’." The dark-haired girl brushed past Brethinn and glanced around the room. "How nice."
"What…" began Brethinn, her mind feeling sludgy from sleep. Then realization dawned. "Are you moving in?"
"My, we’re cheerful and quick-minded," said the girl blandly. "Yes, it seems that we’re to be roommates. Does that sit well with you?"
"Do I have a choice?" asked Brethinn.
"No," said the girl with a small grin, "but it would be easier on us both if you didn’t mind." She set the candle down and plopped down on the empty bed. "Oh, fluffy. One would almost think there was a mattress on this bed." Her voice dripped with sarcasm.
"I guess it’s all right," said Brethinn. She was beginning to feel wakefulness creep over her body. She yawned. "Why so early?"
"My parents wanted to get a jump on things. Before morning prayers, yes?" She rolled over and propped her head on her elbow. "My name’s Gabril Jerot. What’s yours?"
"Brethinn Fenneson," said Brethinn. "So what are you in for?"
"In for?" asked Gabril, puzzled.
"Why did you come here?" asked Brethinn.
"Why, to be a priestess, as you did, yes?" Gabril looked up, innocently.
"Yes," said Brethinn, slowly. "Yes, I did."
As the months changed to years, Brethinn and Gabril passed through several phases of uneasy tolerance and camaraderie. Visits from Tobien, however, remained secret, and were changed from early evening to late night, after Gabril was safely curled into a rumbling fetal ball of sleep. The girls ate meals together, giggled together after dark, and gossiped about their friends and teachers. Eventually, Brethinn could keep Tobien secret no longer, and Gabril soon had weekly information from home, as well. One day, over tea, Brethinn learned that Gabril was doing penance at the temple, too.
She was the daughter of a wealthy merchant who hoped to buy his way into the nobility. Her family was very religious, but they rarely came to the temple. Instead, Gabril’s father had built a chapel next to his manor and given a healthy donation to the temple to convince the elders that his piety merited a personal priest. Gabril said that one would find her father had much need for his own priest if one looked closely at some of his business deals. She was destined to marry another rich merchant’s get, but had ruined her father’s plans by falling in love with a stable-boy and tumbling him in the hayloft.
"Something from a bard’s tale, yes?" Gabril laughed sardonically. "Trite as it is, it’s surely true, and tainted goods’ll not get father what he wants." Brethinn laughed. "Don’t laugh, Bret," said Gabril, scowling. Brethinn sobered, and her friend continued. "Father decided that I had always wanted to dedicate my life to Stephnos, and turned my dowry to my sister, Dianni. Perhaps she will attract a noble’s son. I am yet another gift to the temple to earn my father a good place in death."
"And for you?"
"And for me, though that is not father’s objective. This earns me father’s forgiveness, yes?" She looked around. "It’s not so bad a life, is it? Stephnos is not so harsh a master, and neither his priests. Father Naldo seems to be helping you to your destiny. Hopefully, somewhere here is a priest to blaze a path for me." She looked up from her teacup to her friend, and grinned. "Hopefully, he’ll be younger and better-looking than yours."
Brethinn giggled. "That’s not fair," she protested. "I like Father Naldo, but he’s old. How can I spend time with the young, good-looking priests without the excuse of needing a patron?"
Gabril frowned. "What about Tobien?" Her face went suddenly blank of expression.
"What about him?" asked Brethinn. "He’s not a priest."
"But he is young and good-looking," said Gabril.
"Tobien?" asked Brethinn. "He’s a brother to me!"
The dark-haired girl gave Brethinn a look of appraisal, then shook her head in wonder. "Sometimes I forget the difference in our ages, yes? You are not old enough to want a man, young and handsome priest or no. Stay with Father Naldo."
"I am not too young," snapped Brethinn. "I am almost eleven years old."
"And I am almost fourteen," said Gabril calmly. "You don’t know yet how to love."
"What do you mean?" asked Brethinn.
Gabril stood and sashayed across the room. "You’re still a virgin," she said, almost as an accusation. "You don’t know how to please a man. You don’t know how to need a man." Gabril put a hand on her chest and then pointed at Brethinn. "You aren’t a woman, yet. You recognize beauty in a man, like you recognize beauty in a sunset. It stirs nothing in you but an acknowledgement of beauty."
"What does this have to do with Tobien?" asked Brethinn.
"That’s exactly your problem, yes?" said Gabril, shaking her head. She twirled in her dress, then sighed. "There are things that you don’t yet understand, things that lie right under your nose, that you should snatch up like gold in the streets."
"What?" asked Brethinn.
"Best let it lie, if you don’t understand," said Gabril. "These things will come with time."
Brethinn glared at Gabril for a moment. "So when we first met, and you said you were here to be a priestess, you lied?"
Gabril shook her head. "There are lies and there are lies, yes? I am here to be a priestess, that’s just not the main reason, you see? It is a partial truth."
After a few lessons, Brethinn was proud to demonstrate to Tobien her mastery of the white lie. Gabril seemed to act oddly towards Tobien, the next time he visited, teasing him unmercifully and becoming curiously obsessed with the wall or her hair whenever he talked to her. Tobien, however, seemed oblivious to her change in behavior. Instead, he laughed at Brethinn’s new loophole for her tender conscience and praised her skill at avoiding his questions by telling almost the truth but not quite. She knew that she was not nearly as skilled as he told her she was, but the praise warmed her. When she left the temple to travel, she knew she would miss them both, and hoped that she wouldn’t have to be gone too long.
The old woman pauses and reaches over to the bookshelf, pulling down the largest book. It is well-worn, singed and stained, looking as though it has been through a war. The woman runs a hand lovingly across the tattered cover and smiles. She speaks again to the fire. "Where my mind fails me…" she laughs softly, remembering another time. "I could always count on Ka…" She opens the book and begins to read.
Prayers and Hymns
Morning
Evening
Hymn
The old woman laughs as she finishes the simple prayers and hymn from the face-page of the old tome. "I remember when I first taught Ka those children’s prayers—a time when she needed prodding to speak to the Tong. How things change…" Brethinn shakes her white-haired head and continues to read.
My name is Kalrany Jasterfeld, but most people call me Ka. My father is Togath Jasterfeld, the town thatcher. We live in Jansen Field, next-door to the inn of Harad Dordan. My mother, Sorein, is a good friend of Jesla Dordan, Harad’s wife. It was Mistress Dordan who got me into books. The inn has so many of them, and I was allowed to borrow any books I wanted after I helped teach Jesla’s youngest son, Mickil, to read and write much better. He was too rambunctious to pay attention to his mother, and the Mistress had to help her husband with the inn, so she didn’t have the time. He knows his letters well enough now, but I still spend a lot of my time in the inn’s reading room, when I can.
Sometimes, though, on sunny days, I go fishing. There’s a small stream that cuts up through the north part of the town, right behind the inn. My Da tried to teach me to fish, but I am only fair at it. Most of the time, when I go fishing, I spend my time thinking. I think thinking is what gets me in trouble, so to speak. I watch things, and try to figure out how they work. Not like bridges or pulleys, I mean, but nature.
One evening, in the gray dusk before full night, and I was getting up to walk the few minutes home, when I saw something glowing in the stream-caves of the mountains a few miles to the side of the path. Sometimes glowfish swim downstream that far, but it’s not often, and they are really hard to catch at full night--usually the only time you notice them. Being near the end of twilight, there was just enough time for me to try to catch one more fish before I had to be home.
As I reeled it in, I noticed that the fish wasn’t glowing from the inside, but from a thin coating of powder in its scales. As I stared at that powder, trying to figure it out, I realized that it was like the liquid inside the fireflies that were out already. Then, all of a sudden, while I was looking at the powder on my knife blade, the entire knife started glowing.
I was a bit startled, but as I sat there, puzzling, it all seemed reasonable. There are so many things that we take for granted in the world, why not energy? If we can just draw on the energy in the earth and direct it, we can use it for almost anything. Focusing that energy takes a lot of patience and concentration, things of which I have no lack. I doubt Mir could reap the same results if she tried. She is too impatient…she does things without thinking, sometimes. She relies on reflex. I puzzled over this new revelation for quite some time, before I realized how dark it had become. I used the light of the knife to walk home that night.
I never told my parents what happened. They don’t believe in any of that ‘magic’ stuff. I never explained to anyone what I had done, though I did buy this journal and I wrote down what I did. No one has ever seen that journal, and I won’t show it to anyone, not even Mir.
Mir, or you may know her as Miriamele Lewsmon, daughter of Lord Bale, is a friend of mine. We weren’t always friends, though. I have known her all of my life--after all, her father’s castle is just across the square, overlooking most of Jansen Field. We used to dislike each other because she liked to tease me for all my learning and reading. In general, she liked to act childish when she played with the boys, which was all the time. Not until her father talked to mine, and arranged for me to help her with reading and writing and all, did we start to become friends. She didn’t like the arrangement, and neither did I, so, at first, we spent a couple of long months spending time together, pouting in a mire of mutual dislike. However, things got better as she improved at her studies.
True, she still likes to play games with the boys, much to Yenta’s chagrin, but she also likes to read a book a bit now and then, and is getting better with writing, and we get along. I also have changed, and I have ‘fun’ now and then. Not that I get in trouble, but we have played a prank or two on a few people in town. My favorite one was when we stole Tinosh Kopen’s fresh gooseberry pie from her window, and got Thorn Horrance and his cousin Edmond Jarter in trouble for it. Actually, it was more like Mir talked me into stealing the pie, since she would have gotten in trouble...again...if there had been any chance of her doing the stealing. Since she had been talking to Mistress Kopen the entire time, the boys were the ones who got into trouble...
Mir and I actually managed to have a lot of fun in Jansen Field. I know that she didn’t like the fact that my little brother had started to like her, but I thought that it was funny. Abram liked to follow her and the older boys around when they played their pranks, so she never thought anything of the fact that he spent so much time with her. She was usually helping him defend himself against the older kids. But after I started tutoring Mir, he tried to come around and ‘watch us’ study. I know Mir didn’t like that, especially when he proved to be better at learning than she was, in the beginning. I had tried to teach him some, but he had never really cared before. Now, with Mir there, he took an active interest in learning. Mir never new how much better than him she ended up being, though. After the first few times of trying to study with Abram around, which I know is nearly impossible, we changed from studying in the back of the house, often even sitting outside, to the top of the Lewsmon’s tower. Abram was a bit scared of Mir’s father and was shy of going in her house. We managed to escape my brother on the tower.
I never minded the change. The top of the tower was very quiet so I could read while Mir worked. That was nice. Our new study area was also very secluded. That I liked as well. One day, there was a nice, stiff breeze, and Mir had to concentrate or the wind would lose her page. I was just goofing around, but I figured out how to play with the wind a bit. Not too much, just kick up a few leaves and carry them across the balcony. That day, I thought I would have some fun with Mir. I watched her jump as she lost her place when the small gust hit the book.
"You know, you shouldn’t daydream when it’s windy. We could just go in the library to study." I told her. That was a threat that really got to her. She thought that she had won some kind of argument by getting us up on the roof. She never noticed that I like to sit in windowsills when I am indoors studying. Not wanting to be forced inside, she didn’t say anything but glared at me accusingly, instead. She didn’t know how I had caused the wind, but she was sure that it was me.
I think that was the first time I ever used my magic around her. I was glad that it worked, because it annoyed her a bit. But I never used my magic for anything that she could ever use to prove that it really was my fault. Actually, she did figure out that I could do something, because one time I used my magic to pull a trick on grouchy ol’ Justlin Pike, a merchant that sometimes came through on his way down south. He had said something to Mir that had gotten her all upset and she had wanted to do something to get him back. Unfortunately, she couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t get her into big trouble with her father. I solved that problem. Justlin had a bunch of maps and manuscripts and such that he was very proud have. Needless to say, a bit of wind can make anything that organized a bit of a mess. The mess wasn’t that bad, since I can’t do that much, but it did take some time to clean up. After that, Mir didn’t know what I did, exactly, but she knew it really was me. She looked at me, astonished. I just looked back, not offering any explanation, and smiling smugly.
"I don’t care how you just did that," she said, finally. "Just don’t use it against me."
That was fine. I didn’t want her telling anyone about my magic. As far as I knew, she was the only one who knew anything, so it was a good agreement to make as long as she kept quiet about our agreement. All in all, we had several agreements going. She got me to agree to count our "practicing" as study time. She tried to teach me how to juggle, but I didn’t have the fingers for it. I tried to teach her to fish, but she didn’t have the patience. She did like to get away from studying, though. She even tried to teach me how to use her father’s bows and arrows, with which I became somewhat passable. She showed me some of her movements with the sword, but I didn’t even try that. I could barely lift it, let alone swing it with a force strong enough to threaten anyone. Instead, she tried to teach me how to use a quarterstaff. That I could do, to my surprise…hers, too, I think.
Jaslou spent most of his time working with Mir and the bow, but he was willing to teach me a few things with the quarterstaff -- at least enough to keep my balance. There was no magic involved in that -- just practice. I had to admit to myself, though never to Mir, I could understand why she loved to practice. It was fun.
Yet, neither her father nor my Da ever knew that we did anything... Mir’s progress was steady enough to be passable, and we (Mir) stopped getting in trouble after about the first two or three weeks. That was when we started working all the agreements out.
Looking back on everything, I am amazed we got any studying done at all…
Brethinn trails off in her reading and stares into the fire, unheeding of the crowd of eager listeners gathered around. She begins to speak from memory instead of the book, though she occasionally flips pages to keep track.
"I wandered though Jengal for several months, performing this or that ceremony in now-nameless villages for so many faceless people. For a while, I enjoyed travel, but soon, I grew tired of it and wondered if I would ever be able to return home and become a stuffy, stagnant Elder. I had a long journey ahead—longer than I could have imagined, then. And it all began in Jansen Field…"