Strands of Starlight (25 page)

And she felt the Dance everywhere. If she concentrated, she could see the strands of possibility that connected everything around her, weaving in and out in a dense lattice of starlight in which everything, great and small, marvelous and common, fit together in every conceivable combination. Anything was possible. There were only varying degrees of probability.

And among the possibilities, she saw the movements of armies, the mustering of men. She saw peasant set against knight, burgher against man-at-arms, saw the probabilities of battle blur into an indistinguishable mass of potentials. She tried to look beyond the conflict, but the outcomes were many, and the only certainty was that Saint Brigid would never be the same in any of them.

But no . . . there was one in which the town would b e spared. Perhaps it could not survive unchanged forever, but for a little while it could maintain its ways. She tried to follow the potential, but it was dim, at present almost insignificant.

There came, from a short distance away, the sound of metal beating on metal. Miriam flinched, looked instinctively for a place to hide. Alarm. The Chateau. The guards coming for her. Her legs bleeding . . .

She shook herself back into the present. At the smithy, Francis was beating out a long piece of steel. The forge glowed ruddy behind the big man, and Michael leaned against the frame of the bellows, his arms streaked with soot and sweat.

They looked up at her approach. “Blessings, mistress,” said Francis, but his voice was not as hearty as Miriam had known it in the past.

“Are ye cold, Miriam?” said Michael. “Cam in then, and get warm.”

“I'm all right, thanks,” she said. She was looking at what Francis gripped in the tongs. It was a sword blade.

Francis nodded wearily. “Aye. 'Tis a sword. 'Tis na the first I made in me life, but I wish 't were na the first I made in Saint Brigid.”

“It's necessary, Francis,” she said gently. “We may need swords. It looks to be a fine blade.”

But when she lifted her eyes, the smith looked away, and Miriam hardly needed the insight of the stars to tell her what Francis was thinking, what in fact many of the townspeople were thinking:
If it were not for the Elves, the Church would not be involved.

It was not fear, nor was it hostility. It was—and here she was instinctively putting it in terms that had become familiar to her—a yearning for a different path. Somewhere, there had been a future in which Aloysius Cranby had no excuse, fabricated or otherwise, to bring the Inquisition to the Free Towns.
Things could have been otherwise. Why has it happened this way?

“I'm sorry, Francis,” said Miriam. “That's just the way it happened.”

He blinked, startled, and she realized that it was rude to read his thoughts. Francis covered his discomfiture by squinting at the blade and rapping out an imperfection in the metal with a blow of his hammer. “And wi' the Fair Ones fight for sic as us? Or wi' they hide in tha forest?”

“I'll fight, Francis. Any way I can.”

But when she turned and made her way up the street, she knew that if she fought, it would be because of anger and rage. It would not be because Saint Brigid was her home. She had no home. She stood apart from human beings. As much as the little house of the midwife lay forever out of her reach, so now did the whole of Saint Brigid.

Simon the miller passed her, coughing violently. He was a robust man, but he suffered from weak lungs, and the winter was invariably hard on him. He stumped through the snow on his short legs, but had to stop until the fit passed.

“Simon,” said Miriam. “Do you need help?” She could heal. She no longer thought of denying her power in such instances.

The miller gasped a breath, but he shook his head. “I'll be all right in a moment.”

“I can—”

“I don't want that,” he said quickly.

She saw his thoughts leap forward into a future in which he was answering an inquisitor's questions about his dealings with the Elves. The less that happened, the better. “All right,” she said. “Be at peace, Simon.”

“And you also, mistress.”

He stumped off, drawing his hood up well around his face,

Miriam turned to the stars for comfort. “I am as I am,” she murmured, realizing as she did that she was repeating the words that Varden had uttered. Slowly, inexorably, she found herself accepting what she had fought against for months.

She turned toward Kay's house. Charity was in the kitchen when she opened the door, and the young witch smiled at Miriam. “How wonderful,” Charity said, slicing a large loaf of bread. “I've just come back from the forest, and now I won't have to repeat everything twice.”

“Or risk me muddling everything,” admitted the priest. He tried to put on a jovial face, but his eyes were sad. Mortality hung about him like a tattered cloak.

“There's not a great deal to muddle,” said Charity. “Roxanne is well. She's having a fine time with Varden and his people. We've all been hoping that the baby would come on the solstice, but Talla looked ahead and said that it's more likely he'll be a few days late.” She looked up at Miriam. “Why don't you go out and visit them?”

Miriam was hanging up her cloak. The moon-and-star clasp flashed in the firelight. “I'm not sure I should.”

Charity caught her tone. “You know you're welcome there,” she said gently.

Kay was getting butter and jam out of the pantry. Miriam looked at the clasp. “I . . . I don't know.”

“Miriam?” Kay, too, had heard her grief.

“I'm . . .” The stars had helped her, but they could only soften the loneliness, they could not take it away. “I'm not an Elf,” she said. “I don't belong with them. Roxanne is different, and you're different, too, Charity. I'm not quite elven, and I'm not human either. But . . .”

The priest and the witch were silent.

“But villages and towns are what I know. The future . . .” She recalled the flood of starlight coursing through her future, knew that there was a steady stream of that energy through the present. “I can't see all the futures.” Slowly, she sat down, put her face in her hands.

She felt Charity's arms, heard her voice. “Stay with us, then, Miriam. You're welcome here.”

“But for how much longer?” she whispered. The visions of war and blood whirled in her inner sight. “And how much longer will there be a here to be welcome in?”

***

The snow fell in soft flakes that sparkled in the starlight. Charity and Miriam went hand in hand toward the church. They joined the people of Saint Brigid who came to worship on this frosty Christmas night, their feet crunching through the crust of snow, their cloaks besparkled with glistening flakes. Andrew and Elizabeth were there, and Francis and his family, and Simon and his wife Elanor and their children, and all the others. Women and men, young and old, they came to church for midnight mass.

Inside, the air smelled of incense and pine, and Miriam sensed the presence of birch and mistletoe, the elder absent since the solstice two days before. Padding softly, she went up toward the front with Charity and stood before David's statue.

Though the thoughts of the villagers were overshadowed somewhat by the wonder of Christmas Eve, Miriam heard them nonetheless.
If only . . . The Elves are good people, but if only they had not come. If only . . .
This was the last Christmas before Aloysius Cranby and the barons would make their move. It could be the last Christmas that Saint Brigid and the Free Towns would ever have.

And Miriam, clad as an Elf, pushed back her hood and let her red-gold hair cascade freely over her shoulders. She stood straight, tall. Terrill's words came back to her:
I will not have you slouching like a human.

She had gone beyond self-pity, she had gone beyond grief: the relentless changes that stirred her heart had forced her to accept that these people loved her, each in his or her own way. Even Simon, fearful as he was of the Inquisition, would fight for her, as she would for him. And that knowledge was, if anything, more painful than any rejection, for the townsfolk were, like herself, torn: wanting one thing, wishing fervently for another.

From one side of the chancel, Andrew sang:

”Stella splendens in monte ut solis radium

Miraculis serrato exaudi populum.

Concurrunt universi gaudentes populi

Divites et egeni, grandes et parvuli.

Ipsum ingrediuntur ut cernunt oculi

Et inde revertuntur graciis repleti.
”

He was looking at Charity, and his voice swelled with pride, as if he knew that Charity's gaze dwelt upon the statue of the Lady, as if he had decided, long ago, that that was a good thing, worthy of praise.

The final cadence drifted up sweetly, with a touch of an inflection that some who were knowledgeable would call elven, but when Miriam followed Charity's eyes to the statue, she was suddenly rooted.

She had seen the statue only once before, when, months ago, protesting, she had come to the church with Charity to place flowers before it. She had assumed that it was of the Virgin. But it was not the Virgin. As was the case with everything David carved, it was merely burnished and buffed, but Miriam did not need paint or color to tell her that Her eyes were gray, Her hair dark, Her robes of blue and silver. Behind Her, a field of stars went on forever, the vision taking Miriam beyond the wood, beyond the church, beyond the world.

“
Elthia
,” she whispered, the name coming instinctively to her lips.

Charity turned, her eyes bright. “Do you see?”

In truth, Miriam saw nothing else: not the altar, bright with candles, not the bare cross above it, not the panels that had been uncovered this night, the wood glowing softly and depicting the unfortunate Alban. Philip, Andrew's song, who was serving this Mass, rang a small bell, and Kay entered, vested in white, the light of candle and lamp glistening on the fine threads of gold and silver worked into the ornate embroidery of his chasuble, but Miriam was aware of them only because the Dance held their actions and was altered by them. Only on this particular night, with the incense smoke drifting from the censer in just such a pattern, with Kay clearing a fold in the sleeve of his alb in just such a way, would Philip set the bell down as he now did, the clapper scraping ever so slightly on the stone floor.

But her mind was elsewhere, lost in the Lady, lost in the stars. She felt the sheen about her body quickening, felt her ears burning distinctly enough that she gave a shake of her hair to cover them thoroughly. It was only a statue, she knew, but so great was the spirit behind David's skill that Miriam would not have been surprised had She lifted her hand in blessing upon the people of Saint Brigid.

And when the Mass was over—the Mass she hardly heard—she turned to Charity.

“Did you see, Miriam?” asked the witch.

“I did, Charity.” She heard the whispers still:
If only . . . If only . . .
But those whispers were faint in comparison to the other voice she heard.
Come,
it said.
Now. Tonight.

She bent and kissed the witch. “I have to go to the forest, Charity. I don't know what I'm supposed to do there, but I have to go. I don't know when I'll be back.”

Without waiting for a reply, she went to the small door that connected the south transept with Kay's house and slipped into the hallway that led to her room.

Kay was still unrobing in the vestry, and it was quiet in the house. Miriam went to her room, wondering if she should take anything with her. For a moment, she picked up the blue cloak that Mika had given her. The garment was absurdly short, but once, months ago, it had fit her perfectly.

She looked down at herself, clad in green and gray, her pale cloak fastened at her throat with an interlaced moon and star. With shaking hands, she hung the small cloak on a peg and left her room, left the house, left the town.

Terrill found her wandering deep in the wood as she searched for something that she did not really know, that she might not recognize even if she found it. Her tears were frozen on her face, and her hands were blue with cold.

For a moment, she looked with unseeing eyes at the Elf. Was this real? Was it potential? What was real? And how much of it was going to be lost as the pattern shifted and choices made many leagues away left the snow spattered with the blood of humans and Elves?

“Terrill . . .”

“Go to Her, beloved.”

“I . . . I can't. I'm not ready.”

“Then come with me.”

She did not know upon what path he led her. Possibly it was the same path she had been traveling ever since she had left the church, maybe ever since she had left her parents' house eight years before. There was, after all, only one path: the one she was on. The rest were merely potential. Maybes. Might-have-beens.

“Where are we going, Terrill?”

“Home,” he said softly.

“I don't have a home.” The forest, dark in lavenders and blues, was a confused tangle of trees. Foxes had holes, and birds had nests, but where could Miriam of Malvern go this cold Christmas night?

“A place like it, then, Mirya. Come.”

For the second time he had called her by that name, and she saw that his eyes were troubled, that, mixed with the starlight, there was grief, and loss.

He took her arm gently. “There is warmth and food there,” he said, “and a place to rest. Please.”

A part of her noted that he had said rest, not sleep, but she said nothing. She saw the many paths that were really only one path, watched the Dance go on and on around her until, as their steps brought them in sight of a cave that plunged into the side of the same hill upon which she had stood with Varden on the Day of Renewal, she heard the crystalline chime of harp strings, heard also, strong and loud, the cry of a newborn child, a glad shout of affirmation amid the bare branches and the white snow.

She was not an Elf, but they welcomed her, and she did not hear thoughts of
if only
from them. The past could not be changed, the future was one of infinite possibilities, and the present was now. That was all that mattered.