Spiral Path (Night Calls Series Book 3) (2 page)

Elizabeth was much calmer, now, as if nothing strange had
happened. She made cooing noises as I wiped her clean and bundled her into a
soft diaper and a warm flannel gown with a draw at the feet. My little sister
looked just like one of the baby dolls with china hands and head. She’d have the
Sorensson trademark, the soft, pale curls of childhood. I knew that Elizabeth
would start growing dark hair around five or six—although I wasn’t going to
volunteer that. Once we had her in her christening gown, her pale gold hair dry
and fluffy, she’d be a beautiful baby.

Had Marta felt what had happened, or had she only noticed my
distress? I decided not to say anything until we were alone. My mother wanted a
daughter who could be a normal little girl—at least for a time—and I didn’t
want to spoil the first few years for her
.

Marta revived my mother, and helped her freshen up with a
clean sleeping gown. My cousin even stripped off the birthing sheets and put
fresh linens on the bed. No need to get them both upstairs—we’d move them and
burn the straw mattress later. I brought the baby over and placed her in Momma’s
waiting arms. “You have another daughter, Momma,” I told her.

“Elizabeth,” was Momma’s response, her eyes full of her joy.
“We decided on Elizabeth if it was a girl.”

I hurried to the kitchen to announce the news. This brought
both Papa and Aunt Dagmar to the new parlor to see the baby. Papa, as always,
turned to Momma first, kissing her cheek, his sky blue gaze only for her.
Glowing, Momma showed off the latest addition to the family.

I helped Marta bundle away the sheets and my apron to the
kitchen, where we plunged them into a basin of ice cold water. I thought about
shouting up to the boys, but decided to let Papa tell them. A new sister was
interesting, but probably not as interesting as a new brother.

After we’d made sure there were no iron stains from blood
separating on the sheets, I turned to Marta. “You felt that?” I asked as we
dumped the wrung linen into a second basin.

“Oh, yes,” Marta said. “Perhaps not as strongly as you did,
since you were touching her, but I felt it!”

“Why? It means she’s a seer at the least, doesn’t it?” I
went on.

“It suggests that her primary gift will be seeing,” Marta
answered, stirring the sheets with a pole. “I hadn’t told you about that little
trick of nature, because you haven’t helped deliver a baby practitioner. I
apologize. Until now, you were the only one of Garda and Eldon’s children to
have talent—the only Schell in this generation with magic, and the first born
to great power in three generations.”

“Our blood has thinned—that’s what some say,” I muttered,
squeezing out Momma’s nightgown.

“I don’t think so.” It was quite definite. “More like
concentrating itself, Allie. Why only the daughters this time, I have no idea.
But I predict that your brothers also carry the potential.”

We stirred for a while, checking the bloodstains and rubbing
cloth together to get rid of as much as we could. Bleaching was difficult in
winter, since a day of sunshine was a rare event. We would use soap after we
got the stains out.

“What did it mean?” I finally said aloud.

At first my cousin was silent. I worked at keeping my mouth
shut. “I would guess one of two things,” Marta finally said. “What we saw was
either an earthquake, or a volcano exploding. But it didn’t feel like it was . . .
now. It felt like an echo.”

“Was it an echo from the past or future?” I stopped stirring,
overwhelmed by alarm. I twisted so I could see her face. “Could it happen here?”

“Could a volcano erupt here?” Marta gave me one of her crooked
smiles. “There have been volcanoes on this continent in the past, and there
will be such explosions in the future. We are more likely to have an
earthquake, right here.” She actually shivered, and I didn’t think it was from
the cold water. “A seer on the Silk Road once passed along the vision of an
earthquake. The ground cracked open, and heaved like the swell of the ocean.”

“I wonder if we would have known about this so soon, if
Elizabeth hadn’t arrived,” I murmured into the washbasin. For a moment, the
water surged and glimmered, flowing like lava. I stirred the brightness, and
the glittering image was gone. It appeared that the glimmer had also taken out
the last stains.

Perhaps I should check my great-grandmother’s
Denizens of the Night
before I troubled
Marta with this little glimmer vision.

“It depends on how far away it is in time and space,” Marta
said, her voice calling me back. “If we get more information about it soon,
then soon it will come. If we don’t get anything for a season or two, it may be
years away. We watch, and we wait.” She started twisting the sheet, and I moved
to help her.

Aunt Dagmar returned in time to hang a clothesline for us,
and we draped the bed linen and nightgown near the kitchen fire. My aunt warmed
some milk for cocoa, and we three had a celebratory cup.

As I sat on a huge pillow before the fire in the main room,
I looked around and made sure Aunt Dagmar had retired to the stillroom, and
then turned to Marta.

“Does that sort of thing always happen when a new
practitioner is born?”

Marta gave me a weary glance from her chair, and she didn’t
stop her slow rocking. “Not necessarily a vision, but something, yes. The
people delivering the baby know, and maybe a few miles beyond.”

“Do you think Cory heard Elizabeth?” I asked, referring to
Momma’s cousin Corrado, a practitioner who lived ten days away, in the orchard
country.

A faint smile, a slight shake of the head— “I would say not,”
was the reply. “It usually doesn’t travel far—a protection thing, I think.
Family will protect a new practitioner, but there are others who might want to
kill it.” At my lifted eyebrows, she added: “Competition, Allie. Or there are
darker users of the Arts. They might want a child of power for other reasons,
as you well know.”

No one had ever mentioned this to me before. “What else can
happen at a birth?”

“Usually a child reveals a hint of whichever element is
their strongest. A thunderstorm might erupt when Water is dominant or high
winds for Air masters.”

It was a vision, not an explosion. Visions
were . . . Air? “So Elizabeth is of Air? That means . . .
she can do more things with Air?”

“Most seers are of Air.” Marta sipped again. “It means that
she will be able to master all powers associated with Air. Even if she’s not
good at all of them, she’ll be able to use them in a pinch.” Marta glanced at
me. “Air and Fire are usually men’s powers, so she will be unusual in that.”

“Do you have an element?” I squirmed around to face her as I
spoke, because talking about a practitioner’s element was very personal
business. I’d never dared ask her that before. There was always something else
to discuss, things that seemed more important. But my Grandmother’s book hadn’t
mentioned much about this . . . yet.

Of course, I suspected the book actually hid pages from me,
until I was ready for the knowledge.

I hadn’t asked about the book’s changing page count, either.

Marta dimpled. The crease was startling against her tanned
skin and white temples. “Six animals gave birth when I was born. Earth is
surely my element, if anything is.”

I thought about it, and decided it seemed appropriate. “Marta,
you delivered me, didn’t you?”

“I have been present for every one of your momma’s
confinements.”

“You never told me any such thing happened when I was born.
In fact, people seemed surprised when I started seeing things and hearing
werewolves and all.” I poured myself a tiny bit of cocoa from the copper pan
sitting by the fire. “What’s my element?”

My cousin paused to drain her mug. “I don’t know.”

I blinked at her. “Nothing strange happened when I was born?”

This time, Marta’s smile was only slightly twisted, that
smile that meant more than one thing. Her gaze was riveted to the firepit
before us. “I didn’t say that. I just don’t know which element, if any, is your
strongest talent.”

“What happened when I was born?”

Marta stared into the glowing coals of the fading fire. “You
rushed out of your mother’s womb, and in the moment between your birth and your
first cry . . . the world took a sudden breath.”

I sat there a while, and then said: “I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I, Alfreda. It was as if all creation gasped at
the sight of you. I have no idea what it means.” She finally looked my way. “Your
momma labored long with you, and you were born with the dawn. That night, the
northern lights were dancing among the stars, and we don’t see them often, down
here. I’d never seen them in summertime. Sheer curtains of vivid pink, sky
blue, the deep blue of a butterfly wing, veils of pale green and white . . .
someday, we’ll find out if you can see the memories of another practitioner. I’ll
show you, then. It was worth seeing.”

Marta leaned over and grabbed a folded towel. She seized the
handle of the pan and poured herself the last of the cocoa. “How is your
spinning coming?”

I blinked at the turn in the conversation. “Even with all
the excitement, I finished nine more full skeins today.” Marta smiled her
pleasure. “I think I can finish in maybe three days.”

“Good,” Marta said. “Let’s get some sleep while we can.
Morning will come early, with a new little one in the house.” She rose slowly
and took the cocoa pan back into the kitchen.

I banked the fire for the night, and made sure that the
finished wool skeins were far from the fireplace, and that the great wool wheel
was lashed tight so it would not spin on its own. The dead would rise at the
sound, I promise you, a sound like the rush of a mighty wind. Then I headed for
the back stair to join Marta in my old room.

There was no time to waste with the spinning. Momma squawked
about how much time my study of the Mysteries took from my chores when I still
lived home in Sun-Return. But truth was I had gotten a great deal of work done.
All the wool should have been spun by now, and the flax wheel humming. But wool
remained to be spun, the flax untouched.

I was trying to make up for it now. We’d been in Sun-Return three
days, and I had already spun nearly forty skeins of wool, all high-quality
twist. I’d had to re-learn my mother’s wheel, and being left-handed had not
hurt me. Once I’d learned control of the speed of the wheel with my right hand,
my left hand did everything else.

Truth to tell, I still hated plain sewing. But quilts and
fancy work I could do. Fortunately for me, there was a greater demand for
complicated weaving and embroidery. And a big demand for wool thread as thin as
a British mill could spin.

What Momma needed was a daughter with my talent for dyes and
fancy work, and no hint of the Gift that clung to our family tree. Momma hated
the fact that I had power—so much power I was tingling with it by my eleventh
birthday. I knew she hoped this child would be free of power.

Not likely. But there would be breathing room for Momma, who
needed some years spent with a daughter who wouldn’t be charging off into the
woods every other minute. I didn’t think Elizabeth would be the same kind of
practitioner as I was shaping up to be.

Whether that was a good or bad thing remained to be seen.

o0o

“Wake up! Please wake up!”

The voice was insistent, the hands tugging at my arm strong
and smooth as glass. It was the oddest dream I’d had in weeks, so vivid I could
smell lavender. I shook my head to clear it of sleep, and found myself looking
up at a dainty young girl with flaxen-colored hair and huge dark blue eyes. She
wore soft, indistinct clothing and a scarf tied over her loose hair, as if she’d
roused from sleep herself.

“It’s Sister! It’s her time, and she’s having trouble!
Please come! You must help Sister!”

Well, you know how it is, in a dream. You don’t question
anything, you don’t wonder why things are happening—you just follow along until
something tosses you out of the dream. Somehow I found my clothes, and then my
stork scissors and several packets of herbs. The girl didn’t want me to pause for
anything, but I wasn’t running out the door without scissors and embroidery
thread, at the least. I put on the old shirt I’d been wearing when I’d been
kidnapped by the Hudsons. Why did I choose that old thing?

I could not remember ever having such a detailed dream. I
could still smell lavender.

I realized as I followed her that I had no idea where I was,
nor where I was going. Somewhere off in the forest I heard the unique bird
call, like a flute trilling, that told me my Good Friend, the spirit that had
chosen me as its companion, was somewhere beneath the shadowy trees.

“How far are we going?” I said aloud. Was there something
uncertain in that song . . . something like an alarm?

“Not far,” the girl assured me as she reached for my arm
once more. Half pulling, half coaxing, she led me through the darkness as if
she had cat eyes. I could smell wood smoke and old snow, the cold fecund
promise of spring just around the bend, but I could see almost nothing. A
blanket of stars showed a clear night, but the moon either had already set, or
was dark.

Ahead a pinprick of light promised our destination. The
cabin rose out of the forest as if it had popped up like a mushroom, the trees
crowding it against a stone outcrop. It looked as if the family had built their
home against an opening in the rock. Not a bad idea—a cave would be an even
temperature all year round, and fireproof.

“This way.” The girl threw open the door and rushed in; I
followed without question. When a baby is due, you don’t ask questions, you just
go. I suddenly realized I hadn’t even asked my guide’s name.

“I found her! Sister, I found her!” The girl hurried past
looming, shrouded shapes of furniture and into the back room, and I pushed to
catch up.