Silver Eve (5 page)

I shook my head. “Nay, look.” I brushed the edge of one wing so it stretched out long in reflex. But then I too frowned. Something else I'd never seen: the bird's feathers were singed as if by a hot blade—a dark straight line sheared the tips, a harsh scent of metal still potent.

We banked the little fowl with handfuls of grass and moss for cover and left him there. “There's no medicine for this,” I told her. “A burned wing will refeather. But he is far from his home, and that is something we must let the bird find on his own.” She skipped off, pleased enough to have saved him. I walked on, wondering.

A waterbird that drowned; wings clipped by strange fire. This was way beyond the violent reach of Troths.

Something dark was coming to our little world.

A day and night and day again, a plain landscape with food scarcer to forage. The last green tints dissolved into brown, and I was left with a few lone skyhawks. Then the skyhawks dropped away, and out of the dullness appeared something else altogether:

Rood Marsh.

I had to stop first and simply stare at the dense stand of reeds that confronted me, jutting up from the mud, twice a man's height. They spread far to the north and west, breaking the landscape. I scouted along its border. Trails were cut into the marsh; most were abandoned after a few paces. One opening, though, pushed farther, cutting a narrow trough that disappeared into a wet dimness. It seemed a better start than simply plunging in. The marsh seemed to think so too. There was a shuffling of canes in the faint breeze, their humid breath on my cheeks. An applause of sorts, a welcome.

I opened my satchel, took out the water flask and the last bits of dried meat and carrots I'd saved, and placed them on the edge of the grass as a gift for whatever creature might pass by. Nothing left for me except the keepsakes, the minion, and the poisons. I closed my eyes, lifted my face for a last drenching of sun, and smiled.

Then I shifted my pack and walked in.

The path followed the only solid ground. Other trails were cut here and there, and at first I paused to peer into each dark winding, to finger the pale brown wands. But then the trails fell away, leaving only one narrow gap between towering walls. I trekked on. It turned silent, save for the whispers. There were no shadows, just gray light. Minutes passed, perhaps hours. Eagerness dwindled against monotony. I imagined Raif with me; I imagined Lark. I imagined journeys I'd not have to make alone.

Somewhere I remembered I was thirsty. By habit I broke off a stem to suck out the moisture—a worthless puddle-taste of rotting leaves. Without thinking, I turned and began walking back the way I came, then stopped, snorting. How foolish—I'd been too safe by staying on the path; Healer instinct would march me straight out of the marsh. I could feel it even then: the tug for water, for the little necessities I'd left behind on the grass. I'd have to fight myself to stay.

And so I did it fast, the only thing I could think to make myself hopelessly lost, before I could reason my way into returning: I shut my eyes and spun in circles until I was wildly dizzy…and then crashed into the reeds. Hands out, pushing at the forest of stems, I slogged ten steps, twenty, as many as I could before my eyes sprang open.

I was shin-deep in mud. There was another trail in front of me, so I took it and ran a little ways, then broke through the walls again.
No paths!
I had to go deeper.

Reeds caught and tore, feathering down their fluffy crowns like snow. I stumbled upon a third path, crossed it, and farther on crossed another.
“Stop!”
I hissed fiercely.
“Stop finding me!”
Who had been through here? There was nary a reason to come this far—no one would willingly choose this way to travel. And yet ahead was a rudely made footbridge laid over a deep puddle. I swore at it, turned, and went knee-deep into green-slick muck. I stumbled up, slashing at the canes. I crossed more paths and more until I raged at this invisible crowd of explorers, feet stamping, splattering mud into mud.

“Claim me!” I shouted to the marsh. “Go on.
Claim
me!”

I waited. There was the faint brush of applause.

I turned and ran again. Broken stems, shards of reeds flaking and sticking.
Deeper, Evie. Deeper.
And then I tripped flat onto the stinking ground. Panting and spitting, I raised my head, wiped the slime to look at what had sent me sprawling.

There was the footbridge again, and the path. The
only
path. All the others I'd made myself, circling and recircling. Healer instinct—I kept coming back.

A bitter, ugly little noise curled from my throat. I was not lost but found; I could not shake any trail, any opportunity to return. I pushed myself up, not bothering anymore to smear the mess away, and sat down on the bridge. I pulled the satchel around front, untied it, and took out the yew, determined. There was no more applause from the crowd of reeds, but whispers of disappointment. I growled at them, and they sighed back, hollow and forlorn. I yelled out, “You don't understand: I
want
this! Raif is gone!” My voice was as forlorn as the reeds: “You like this solitude. But it is not for me, this being alone.”

But then I was no longer alone.

It made no secret of its approach. It was simply coming, an uneven tread of foot on mud and straw, limping, gaining. Intruding. Annoyed, I slammed the yew back in my bag and stood up to confront.

Not more than a minute and then the louder whisper of reeds rustled in passing—

An old man stepped into view.

NOT JUST AN
old man. A terribly old man. Stooped and scrawny and ugly. He wore a robe wrapped nearly twice around and tied with a bit of leather. Whether he wore leggings underneath, I could not tell. And, as if that were not enough, he was made more absurd by the sky-blue dunce cap stuck on his greasy head.

The old man had stopped short, a little surprised by me—black with filth, arms akimbo, blocking the path. But then he limped forward, pulled off his cap, and held it out all meek and cringing.

“A penny a fortune, mud poppet.”

I stared for a moment in disbelief. Then I burst out laughing.

“One penny,” he wheedled. “You will know your future.”

“Here, in the midst of nothing you want to barter! What are you? A seer?”

He smiled, a mouth of darkly yellowed teeth. “Some call me so. I am named Harker.”

“Well, then, Master Harker—”

“
Not
Master,” he said sharply.

“Harker, then. If you are a true seer you would know I have no future.”

He peered at me. “And if you were a seer you might know differently.”

“You are not here for fortunes. I can divine
that
much.” Humor was gone. “Why do you follow me?”

“Follow! 'Tis a path,” he said with that hideous grin, evading. “Why are you the only one to walk it?”

“There is no reason for you to come this way.”

“And you have reason where I have none?”

“More reason than you.”

The old man inched closer. “ 'Tis not reason that brings you here. You push reason away.”

“You cannot say that. You do not know me.” We were speaking coyly, both of us, like a little game. I did not like it. And I was sorely disappointed—I'd been so close to an ending.

“Ah, but I do know you,” he said solemnly. “You are the Healer.”

I sniffed. “There are many Healers about. That was but a guess.”

“No. You are
the
Healer. The one of ones.”

“And you are the riddle maker.” I turned and pointed at the bridge. “Go on. I will wait until you are past. Go on your way.”

He did not move. “You dictate? You make a choice for me?”

“I only let you go first.”

“Nay, you pointed with your finger. You choose my direction. If I step past you it is because you directed.”

“You make your own fate, Harker. You are the seer.”

That made him suddenly sad. “True.” He nodded slowly, no grin now. “If I follow your pointing finger it is because I choose to follow. But…what if you pushed me forward? Then is it my choice? Or is this where one's fate takes a turn by another's choosing?”

That he was more than a little mad was clear. I sat back down on the footbridge, leaving him room. “You do what you wish. But I hope you will go.”

Harker shuffled very close. I watched his feet in their broken leather sandals—all trussed with cords of hide and plant. “Your cousin will make a choice for you,” he announced.

“Cousin!” I looked up. “You know my cousin? How?”

He only eyed me slyly and held out his cap.

“That is no fortune.” I pushed his hat from me, looked away again. Better to wait for him to tire of this play.

“I hope,” he said very slowly, “that she chooses well.”

I laid my chin in my hands and studiously ignored him. But it shook me that he used those words.
She did choose well, Seer, but for naught.

“Nay.” Harker answered my thought as if he'd heard me. He leaned close. I could smell on him the filth and disease gathered from a long time of wandering, but I also smelled a wiry, tenacious strength. The opposites battled one another—he would live out countless years but be riddled with pain. A sad existence.

He hissed in my ear: “Nay, Evie Carew, the one Healer. I do not speak of your dead man. I speak of what's yet to come.”

I jerked my head up, mouth open. “How do you know my thought? My name?”

“For one who wanted no fortune you have now asked for three!” He grinned. “Three questions and not one penny?
There.
” He stuck his cap almost under my nose. “Spare my fee.”

“I have no penny,” I said.

“Thief!” Harker shouted. I jumped a little, but he jumped farther. “You'll beg me. You'll all beg me!” He started off up the bridge where I'd pointed. It wasn't really a walk, but more like a puppet's dance with that limp—his feet on tiptoe, barely touching down, making the stands of rushes whisper as he passed.

I sat hunched for a while longer, upset that he'd interrupted my efforts but more disturbed that he knew me, that he knew Lark. And he'd said Lark would choose for me—something yet to come.

“She chose Raif,” I whispered after him. “Lark already chose Raif for me. What more can she do than that?”

Oh, that I was like my cousin! Lark would have waited long for the seer to disappear and be soothed once more by the quiet and solitude. But I was left with my intentions in ruins, curiosity running like tendrils of ghisane, reaching to clutch at the speculations of this old man. Thorny, dark, incessant. What he meant I had to learn.

It was not long, then, before I picked myself up and started after him.

There is a secret in the middle of Rood Marsh.

It was an island in the sea of mud and towering reed: a broad scape, unaffected by drought, of bright green grass and clover, with a stream of clear water bubbling from a spurt in a choke of rock, and three trees: apple, beech, and willow. A border of brambleberries and cattails and woodbine defined one edge; borage and thyme grew wild at another. A tiny hut was built from timber and thatched with the reeds. And two goats and their kid roamed freely, grazing under a sky that was clear of the marsh gray.

The old man, Harker, sat by the stream on a large flat stone and watched the water.

I walked straight to him, surprised. “Is this your home?”

“I have no home,” he said without moving.

“Others must come, then. The wilderness is well tended. There is all one needs to thrive here.”

“Few bother the marsh. A herder from Bullbarr left the goats, and returns to cull the flock. Mostly it sits unknown. But those who find it can find peace.” He turned his head to look at me. “You will not find peace.”

I frowned. He'd been speaking lucidly. Now he was back to coy innuendos, and I was too easy a target.

“Why do you know my name? Why do you say I will not find peace?”

“Because you run from one reason and not the other.”

“Harker!” I stamped my foot.

“You must pay me for your fortune, Healer.”

“Please, I have no—”

“I give away no news for free.” It was a loud, a bitter declaration. The old man choked a little upon saying it, and added, harsher, “I
cannot
be tempted. Never again.”

I turned away, frustrated, but then spun back. “Seer that you are, you must know I have no coins. So you must content yourself with something else.”

He waited. I said, “You have blisters on your hands. I can heal them.”

Maybe he'd known I'd reach this stage of barter, but not this particular offer—there was an eager spark in his eyes. He dismissed it quickly, though, with a sharp little bark: “Do you think so?”

“Hold them out,” I insisted.

He did. I kneeled down at his feet and took up his hands. They were worn and spotted and gnarled, made horrible by red-rimmed blisters, and he shivered under the inspection. I had expected to smear some of the heliotrope, or mix a poultice from the goat's milk and borage. I could shape an arch of the blackberry bushes and have the seer crawl beneath three times—such were medicines for skin boils. But what Harker suffered was nothing I could repair. This was pain that goaded and punished.

I said to him, “These wounds are magic-made. You gave or held something that you should not.” Then I ducked a little so I could catch his eye and speak straight. “You were burned because of a mistake you made.”

His returning stare was bleak. “How long have you suffered these?” I asked.

“I am old. These are not.”

I looked again at the blisters, wondering what ill he'd done to carry such a reminder. “Well, I'm sorry. I cannot heal such wounds.”

He jerked his hands away with a sly little smile. “Are you sorry for me or for yourself?” And then he was chuckling at my frown. “You still want to know what I can tell you.”

“Yes.” I tugged my satchel closer and dug in, pulling out the vial of heliotrope buds and offering it. “Here. You may have these. Roll one around in your mouth 'til it is fully dissolved before you swallow. One at a time
only.
'Twill bring you a full night's sleep at least. Make them last.”

Harker took the vial. One of his blisters brushed my skin; it burned cold. He put the little jar into the folds of his robe—some pocket hidden within—and said, “You give the heliotrope; you give me your own escape. Why not the jar of minion? You are shrewd, Healer.”

I pressed the satchel against my cloak. “The minion is too precious to trade.” I said it firmly, disconcerted that he knew I carried minion and that I wanted the heliotrope for my own end. He was the shrewd one.

“True,” he was answering. “But that is not why. Still, a penny's worth of sleep for a penny's worth of fortune.” Harker pushed himself up from the stone; I saw how it hurt to use his hands. A constant suffering. “Stand away from me, Evie Carew. Step into the stream.”

I knew what he meant. Running water held no intent, no spells good or bad. It was a fair place to wait, fair of him to ask. I stepped back into the cool shallows and felt the pebbled bed loosen around my toes and disperse. I held my breath, held in my eagerness for his words.

Harker too stepped back. He lifted his face to catch the dying sun full on it, his scrawny little frame stiffening. And he waited. But he was not drawing his words from the sky, rather waiting for them to form within him and bubble up.

And then he spoke, stilted, reading from a page that did not exist:

Moonlight on water brings Nature's daughter,

Swift-bred terror and sorrow of slaughter.

Silver and sickle, the healing hand,

Find the shell's song; bring rain upon land.

I waited, then burst out: “That is no fortune. That is a verse of poem.”

“Nonetheless it belongs to you.”

“But it means nothing to me!” I came out of the water, shaking the wet from my sandals. “Can you not say that I will die here? That the marsh will swallow me—something that makes sense?”

“Those would be the things that do not make sense, for that will not happen.”

“Why not? Because you speak some fanciful words? Because I gave you my heliotrope? If this is not your home, then I will make it mine. I will stay here, grow old here. Tend the goats.” I'd made that up. I was disappointed he'd given me no clear fortune, annoyed that my own choices were so simply negated.

But he laughed at me. “You will not, the one Healer, any more than you will take your own life with an herb. You toy with your little idea of death, thinking you are sad to be left alone. You blame your gift of healing for your hesitation, but that is not why you hold on to life. You do not see—”

“Don't say that! You know nothing of me!”

“I will say it. It is you who know nothing, silly girl. This is not your time. You are needed.”

“Needed?” How dare he talk of changed fate, so smugly dangled like bait! “How am I needed?”

Harker walked back toward me and inspected me for a minute. “You are not shy like your cousin,” he said. “You are hardly timid. Yet you share some of her stubbornness, and maybe more. Not unlike the others.”

“What others?”

“Your cousin told you nothing of her journey!” The seer announced this with delight, but immediately contorted in agony. He swerved, swore, and spun around, crying to the space around us, “I do not have to tell! I do not have to tell!” And in the next breath he cringed, hissing to himself: “Your fault, so your duty to bear…” The protests grew to indistinct whines and faded. Then the seer shook himself, recovered, then looked at me coyly again. “She told you nothing, Healer, which makes you most ignorant. Unfortunate for one so curious.”