Phoenix and Ashes (35 page)

Only
then, with clean hands and face, did she sit down at the table, remove the
envelope from inside the copybook with hands that shook with excitement, and
opened the flap.

There
was a note inside, a very short note, in the same hand that had written her
name on the box. The paper had yellowed, the ink had browned, but the writing
was clear enough. The words hit her like blows, burned into her mind as if they
had been branded there.

My
dear daughter
, it began, and she bit back a cry to realize that the
writer, as she had not dared to hope, was her own long-dead mother.
My
friend Sarah would laugh at me if she knew I was doing this. She would say that
I am anticipating the worst. I would only say that since neither of us have the
gift of scrying into the future, one cannot anticipate anything, and I am
taking precautions. If you have found this, you have found my most important
legacy to you, my daughter, whom I knew would one day wield the power of a
Master of Fire. Sarah is neither a Master nor of your Element, and cannot teach
you most of what you need to know. It was hard for me to find a teacher; it may
be that by the time you find this, you already have determined you, too, will
not be able to find a Fire Master willing to teach a mere girl. In this book
you will find all that I know. If you have not already done so, go to Sarah,
the midwife some call our village witch, and ask her to help you, since I am
not there to do so myself. Be fearless and strong, and seize your birthright
with all the strength that is in you
.

And
that was all. Eleanor felt—

Disappointed.
Horribly, dreadfully disappointed. Where were the tender sentiments, the
assurances that she had been loved and cherished, and that wherever her mother
was, she
still
loved her daughter? Where were the gentle words of
encouragement from beyond the grave? This might just as well have been a note
from one of the tutors at Oxford, for all the warmth that was in it.

She
held the note in hands that shook, and felt like a little girl on what she
dreamed was Christmas morning who awakens to find that it is not the glorious
holiday, but just another day. She had always thought, always
assumed
,
that if she ever, ever found something for her from her long-lost mother, it
would be full of messages of love and devotion. This—this was more like
the old Roman matron’s cry to her son departing for the wars:
“Return with your shield, or on it.” Where was the love in that?

Maybe
she didn’t care about me after all. Maybe all she thought of me was that
I was someone to follow in her footsteps
.

She
felt bereft, as if something had been taken from her. And as she sat there, the
copybook still unopened, two huge tears gathered in her stinging eyes,
overflowed, and burned their way down her cheeks.

“Ah,
here
you are!” Sarah exclaimed from the parlor door. “What
on earth are you doing in here?”

She
turned, and Sarah started a little. “And why on earth are you
crying
?”
the witch exclaimed, looking astonished. “What’s happened?”
Eleanor sniffed back more tears, and held out the note and the unopened book.
“I—went up to the attic,” she said, around the enormous and
painful lump in her throat that threatened to choke her. “And I found
these.”

Sarah
made quick work of the note, her eyes widening and her face taking on an
expression of astonished pleasure. “Good
heavens
, girl,
don’t you realize what this is? It’s what I
can’t
teach you! This is wonderful! Why are you weeping like that?”

“She
didn’t—she didn’t—” Eleanor began to sob; she
couldn’t help it. The tears just started and wouldn’t stop.
“She never says she loved me—”

“Oh,
my dear—” Suddenly Sarah softened all over, in a way that Eleanor
had never seen her do before. She sat down on the chair next to Eleanor, and
took Eleanor into her arms. Unresisting, Eleanor sagged against her. “You
silly little goose,” she said fondly, holding Eleanor against her
shoulder, and wiping away Eleanor’s tears with the corner of her apron.
“Of course she didn’t. Why should she? She never expected you to
read that note! She always thought she would be there, teaching you herself! Can’t
you read how self-conscious her words are? How stiff?”

“Yes,
but—” Eleanor began.

“Well,
there you are, she was just being what
I
would have called
silly-cautious, and she knew I would have made fun of her if I’d known
she was writing that.” Sarah stroked her hair, her voice full of such
unshakeable conviction that Eleanor could not disbelieve. “She told you
every single day, several times a day, how much she loved you, first thing on
waking and last thing at night. I
heard
her. She showed you hundreds of
times more in a day. Why should she tell you in a note, when she thought she
would always be here to keep telling and showing you?”

Eleanor
managed to control her sobbing, and Sarah’s words penetrated her grief
somewhat. “But—why didn’t she think—”

“Now,
silly child,
look
at that note, why don’t you?” Sarah
said, half fondly, half scolding, giving Eleanor’s shoulders a little
shake. “In her best copper-plate handwriting, and phrased as formally and
stiff as an invitation to Lady Devlin to tea! Your mother was a simple village
girl, child! She loved to read, but
writing
things? For her, when you
wrote something, it was formal, stiff, and important! Well, except when you
were writing down recipes. I don’t think she ever wrote a letter in her
life, not even to me, her best friend! Your father might have written
her
a love-letter or two, but she certainly didn’t write any back! Do you
understand what I’m saying? She could no more have written anything
sentimental than—than commanded an Undine!”

The
words penetrated the fog of her distress—and more than that, they made
sense, perfect sense. Slowly the grief faded. “So she—”

“Yes,
you green-goose, she loved you more than her own life,” Sarah scolded.
“She loved you enough to spend
hours
writing down everything she
knew about Fire Mastery! And this from a woman who, I
know
for a
certain fact, would rather have scrubbed out the wash-house on hands and knees
than pick up a pen.” Put like that—

Eleanor
freed herself from Sarah’s motherly embrace, smiled wanly at her, and
wiped her eyes with her own apron-corner. “I suppose I am being
silly.”

Sarah
shook her head, fondly. “No, you
were
being perfectly natural.
If you go on weeping, though, you
will
be acting in a very silly and
selfish manner. Have you looked at the book yet?” Eleanor shook her head.

“Then
it can wait until you’ve had some supper.” As practical as ever,
Sarah drew her out into the kitchen where they put together mushrooms and eggs
and wild herbs that Sarah had brought with her, along with careful gleanings
from Alison’s stores. Only when both of them were finished, the dishes
and pans washed and put up, and everything tidy again, did Sarah go out to the
parlor and return with the book and the lamp.

“Let’s
have a good look at this, shall we?” she said, conversationally.

An
hour later, and Sarah was sitting there shaking her head, while Eleanor’s
head ached from trying to understand what was written in the pages of that
copybook.

“Now
I
know
I never want to be a Master,” Sarah said decisively.
“I like things plain! Plain as plain! I like earth to
be
Earth
and not—” she waved her hand helplessly, “Not Erda and Epona
and gnomes and fertility and not wrapped up in symbols and fables!” She
frowned. “I like things to be
one
thing and not like one of
those silly dolls you open up and find another, and another, and
another.”

Eleanor
blinked, her eyes sore, and rubbed both temples with the tips of her fingers.
“It’s going to take me a long time,” she admitted. “I
can—it’s like reaching for something on the top shelf that I
can’t see. I can barely touch it, make out the edge of it, but I know
it’s there, and if I can just reach a little further, I know I can grasp
it—”

“Well,
if
that
’s what your mother mastered, all I can say is that I had
no idea.” Sarah looked forlorn. “She seemed
so—ordinary.”

“It
was all inside her,” Eleanor mused, shutting the book with a feeling that
if she looked too much longer at those words they would start dancing about in
her mind. “I wonder where she learned it all? She doesn’t say. She
must have found
some
great Master to learn from, but who?”

Sarah
sat back in her chair and reached for her teacup. “Now that is a good
question.
I
don’t know who the Masters are, for the most part.
They like to keep it that way, so people don’t have a chance to let
things slip. Other Masters know, of course, but that’s all within their
own circle.” She frowned. “And another thing; the Masters
in
that circle are almost always men. Hmm…”

“You
think she must have found a lady Master of Fire? A secret one?” Eleanor
asked eagerly.

“Or
one found her. There is that old saying that when the student is ready, a
teacher will find her.” Sarah nodded. “And there’s no telling
who it would have been; she was from Stratford-on-Avon, so it wouldn’t be
anyone I could point a finger at. Stratford’s always produced its share
of odd ones and wizards, and it’s not so much of a city that a Master
would feel uncomfortable there. Not like London or Glasgow or
Manchester.” She licked her lips. “The more I think on it, the more
that makes sense. I remember her telling me that the magic ran in her family,
but deep; her grandsire was a Master, but not her father. Huh. Maybe
‘twas her grandsire found her the Fire Master.”

“Well,
whoever
it was, he or she was like a university don,” Eleanor
replied ruefully. “This—this is—oh!”

An
idea had suddenly occurred to her, and she sat up straight. “What?
What?” Sarah asked sharply.

“I
just realized that I recognize this!” she said “From the medieval
history I was studying for the examinations to get into Oxford. This is
alchemy
—alchemy
and medieval mysticism! The ‘how many angels can dance on the head of a
pin’ sort of thing! Maybe it was some sort of don she was studying with—”

“Well,
it’s like no way that
I
was taught or even heard of, but if it
works well enough for you, that is what counts.” Sarah stood up to go,
and hesitated. “Do you think that book should stay here?”

“No,”
Eleanor told her instantly. “I want to take no chances that
she
might find it. I was going to ask you to take it with you and keep it. Besides,
if what mother learned is based on alchemy and that sort of thing, there are
books in the library here that can help me, that have been here all along. If
Alison sees me studying one of those, she’ll just assume I’m in
desperate want of something to read.”

Sarah
gathered up the old book and tucked it under her shawl. “I think
that’s wise, very wise. Well,
my
day began before dawn, so if
Alison doesn’t come back, I will see you on the morrow.”

“Thank
you, Sarah,” Eleanor said, getting to her feet and letting her mentor out
the kitchen door. “Thank you
very
much.”

She
should have been tired, but somehow she wasn’t, and she decided to go to
the library with the lamp and see if she couldn’t find the books she
thought that she remembered.

There
were a lot of odd books in this room, things that certainly hadn’t
matched with any of her father’s interests, and that up until now, she
hadn’t associated with her mother, either. Old things, that didn’t
even have titles imprinted on the spines, much less an author’s name. But
sure enough, when she took them down, she found that there were several on
Natural
Philosophy and Alchemie, Ye Historic and Practice of Alchemie
, and that when
she looked inside the front cover, there was a name in crabbed and faded
handwriting utterly unlike her mother’s, and a date—the earliest
she found was 1845, and the oldest, 1880. The first name was clear
enough—“Valeria,” which did sound like a woman—but the
second was indecipherable.

So
I’ll probably never know if these were Mother’s books given to her
by her teacher, or things picked up at a jumble sale. Still, they might prove
useful, if her mother’s teaching was based on creaky old mysticism, and not
the practical approach that Sarah preferred
.

She
rearranged the rest of the books to keep it from looking as if she had taken
anything. No use in alerting Alison or the girls to the fact that she was
reading
all
of the books on alchemy. If they found her reading one,
they’d assume it was a fluke.

You
know, in all of the time they’ve been here, and the things they’ve
let slip about their own magic, I don’t think they’ve ever said
anything that sounded like the things in mother’s workbook. I don’t
think they
were
taught the same sort of way she was. Well, that was
all to the good
.

She
took the books up to her room and after some thought, distributed them around
the room in ways that made it look as if she was doing anything
but
reading them. One went under the too-short leg of a wobbly dresser, one could
be placed to hold open the shutter—the rest she placed here and there,
anywhere that looked as if she didn’t care what happened to them, as if a
brick or a stone could have served the same function. That way, if anyone
noticed that they were all about alchemy she could say that she had taken the
books she thought no one would ever want to read.