Taminy (2 page)

She
would not be cold, the watching Being knew, for heat radiated from her pied
body, leaking, along with the light, from patches where flesh had come away
with cloth.

Ah, I remember. How well I remember.

With
hands that no longer trembled, the girl continued her task, shedding what was
left of her outer self, shaking her hair to free the flame hidden within the
drab chestnut strands, until finally she was bare of flesh, blazing and
lustrous like a tiny sun—like a star.

The
Watcher recalled Her own moment, a hundred years past—Her moment of terror and
wonder. She’d shed the husk to find, within, a Jewel—a becoming vessel for the
Star of the Sea, a fitting home for the Meri.

Joy
, She sent the girl.
And peace
.

When
the last scrap of slough had dropped, when the once-girl had surveyed her new
body with eyes garnet-bright with wonder, she raised those eyes to the Sea and
found the Meri’s green-white flame beneath the waves. It filled the water with
glory and washed, like translucent milk, upon the shore. The girl stepped down
to the waterline, letting the Sea lap at her gleaming toes. She waited calmly
now, her eyes sparkled, expectant.

The
Meri rose, then, from water that seethed and roiled, shedding emerald fire on
froth and foam, sending it in questing trails to the shore to kiss the toes of
the gleaming Pilgrim.

“Beautiful
Sister.”

Her
voice came from nowhere and everywhere, and filled the cloudless sky and
covered the milky waters. “I have waited long.”

The
girl of gold opened her mouth, found her voice, and though a thousand questions
burned in her breast (the Meri knew), said only, “I have traveled far.”

“I
have traveled with you, Sister.” The Meri lay a welcoming carpet of brilliance
before her golden twin. “Come home, Sister. Come home. This is that for which
you have been created. Not to be Osraed, but to be the Mother of Osraed. Not to
carry the torch of Wisdom, but to light it.”

The
girl bled a great sense of unworthiness through the touching streams of gold
and green. She was disobedient, inattentive, stubborn—

“You
are kindness; you are compassion; you are obedience tempered with love; you are
justice tempered with mercy; you are strength of purpose; you are faith and
reason. You will be the Mother not of the bodies of Osraed, but of their
spirits—the Channel of the Knowledge of the First Being. For this you have
proved worthy.” The Meri extended radiant “arms.” She laughed again, filling
sea and sky and shore with Her voice. “Come into the water, Sister, and do you
get wet.”

The
girl laughed too, then, and raised her own arms of Light and stepped from the
shore into the milky Sea. The Meri met her in the surf and embraced her,
drawing her down beneath the waves. She felt the girl’s wonder that she could
breathe here just as she had above in the air—was amused by her realization
that she no longer needed to breathe. For a moment they floated, wrapped in
luminescence—the girl’s gold, the Her own green. Great emerald eyes locked with
eyes like garnets.

Now, Sister
, said the Meri without
sound.
Now, hold the knowledge of all that
has been.

The
banners of their individual radiance mingled—green and gold—and the girl from
the shore ceased to be Meredydd-a-Lagan and began to be Something Else. When at
last the brilliance separated—the gold and the green—the two which had been One
floated apart, still touching. Emerald eyes caressed eyes like garnets.

The Lover and the Beloved have been made one
in Thee.

The
Meri smiled a smile that could be felt and heard, if not seen.
And I had wondered what that verse meant.

Now you know.

Now We know.

The
green radiance withdrew, separating completely from the gold.

Farewell, Sister Meredydd.

Farewell, Taminy.

Toward
shore, she went, the green luminescence fading from her as she neared the
beach, dying as she stepped out onto the sand—merely a glimmer now, only
moonlight on wet skin and pale hair. There was a boy there, sitting beside a
fire. Waiting, with his eyes on the milky gold water. Beside him sat a little
girl with moonlit hair, and beside her was a man—a copper-bearded Osraed—holding
out a robe.

Taminy-a-Cuinn
took a deep breath of winy sea air and laughed. “Ah, Osraed Bevol! I have not
breathed for a hundred years!”

One walks upon the Shore;
One glides beneath the Sea.
In the water meet the twain
Who never met and meet again.
In the water they combine
The human soul and the Divine.
Humanity is glorified,
Divinity personified—
The dance of glory to and from
One to return, One to become.
One glides beneath the Sea;
One walks upon the Shore.

—The Meri Song
Book of the New Covenant

There was no moon. Yet there was light—laid out upon the
surface of the water like a stole of palest green. No, not on the water,
beneath it—within it—as if the very nature of water had been transmuted.

The
old man writhed upon his couch, struggling to turn his head away from the
vision, desperate to close his eyes to the dream, but dream eyes are forever
open. That brilliance—he had seen it before with physical gaze, a young man,
then, at the end of a long Pilgrimage. But on this shore stood a girl, waiting
for a favor from the Divine, a favor to which she had no right.

Usurper!
She lingered to commit heresy.

The
radiance of the water grew and held out ethereal arms to the one who waited.
They stretched toward the shore, wave-borne, beckoning. The girl moved closer
to the water, closer, until it kissed her toes, until her face caught the
brilliance of the waves and reflected it back, mirror bright. Her dark eyes
glittered with it. Even her hair, blending into the mahogany night, was woven
with emerald threads.

The
Inhabitant of the waters called and the girl answered, stepping into the waves’
embrace.

To your death
! cried the old man’s soul,
shivering.
To your death,
Meredydd-a-Lagan
!

But
the girl did not die. Transformed she seemed to him—not flesh upon bone, but
light upon light. She melted into the liquid glory, her hair fanning out on the
waves in banners like sunbeams. The spectral luminescence that wrapped her was
mottled now—pale green, dappled with amber, the hues fusing to a whorl where they
pulsed and wheeled.

Through
eyes that would not close, the old man watched as the amber and green whirl
clotted and sundered, drawing at last apart. An eternity the waves lapped,
muted, at the shore, trailing gleaming foam along the colorless sand. Then the
girl reappeared, rising from the Sea, dripping glory from her naked body. Clad
only in the glittering jewels of salt spray, she waded ashore, a luminous green
stain spreading in her wake.

Her
brow! He must glimpse her brow. Did it bear the Kiss? Had the Meri accepted
her? He strained incorporeal senses toward the girl and found himself gazing
into her face. The face of a stranger.

The
Sea ceased its whispering as the girl stepped ashore, blinking eyes the color
of the waves she quit, shaking back a mane of flax.

He
knew her, yes, he was certain of it. But he could recall no name, no
circumstance. Dread gripped him in cold claws and shook him.

Fear her
, it whispered.
Fear that hideous beauty. You thought
Meredydd-a-Lagan a Wicke; meet this, the Cwen of Wicke.

The
old man whimpered in his sleep. A cool hand came to caress his brow and his
wife’s voice petted his ears.

“Ealad
... Ealad, do you dream?”

I die
, he wanted to answer, but had no
voice. Instead, he nodded.

“Poor
soul,” she murmured, stroking the sweat from his face. “I wish I could lift
your burden.”

The
Osraed Ealad-hach took his wife’s hand and pressed it between his own. If all
women were like this woman, he would dream only pleasantly of things that
augured well.

oOo

“Bevol
is here.” Osraed Calach glanced over from his workbench in the sun-strewn
chamber, pen poised above his papers. “He’s taking his first year class back as
of this morning.”

“And
so?” Ealad-hach did not return the glance. He pulled his Rune-journal from the
shelf over his bench and pointedly stuck his nose into it.

“I
hoped perhaps he was ready to recommence his Council duties. It’s been weeks
since ...”

He
left it unsaid: Since Meredydd-a-Lagan walked into the sea and drowned.

Ealad-hach
turned the chill that coursed down his back into a gesture of disdain. The
Rune-journal snapped shut. “Would you appear among your fellows in the face of
such disgrace?”

“I
do not think he takes it as disgrace, Ealad, but as loss,” said Calach
reprovingly.

“Pah!
He doesn’t even seem to take it as that! All that talk of transformation. The
girl drowned and it’s unhinged his mind.”

Calach
put his pen aside. “I don’t believe Bevol’s mind is unhinged, Ealad.”

“Then
what? Do you believe his claim that Meredydd-a-Lagan was transmuted into an
Eibhilin being? Perhaps to become a member of some mythic honor guard,
escorting the Meri about the Sea?”

“It
is possible.”

“Bevol
saw exactly what he wanted to see. The fact of the matter is that that smug
girl-child went into the water and did not come out. Presumptuous creature! If
she was transformed, it was a sea snake she became.”

“There
is no such animal, Ealad-hach. I am surprised at you—a scientist—uttering such
complete nonsense.” The Osraed Bevol stood just inside the doorway, arms folded
across his velvet-clad chest, sunlight glittering warmly in the silver-copper
haze of hair that floated, cloud-like about his head and shoulders.

Ealad-hach
rounded on him, ready to snap, wishing he would make some noise when entering a
room. Their eyes met in what once would have sparked a clash of wills, but
Ealad-hach had no will but to dissemble. Bevol’s eyes were too knowing, as if
he could see into his crony’s darkest corners and snatch out what hid there.

Don’t look at me
, thought Ealad-hach.
Don’t tug so at my thoughts; I will spill
them. I will spew out that damned dream.

Bevol,
perversely, persisted. “I really ought to take offense that you so baldly
accuse me of falsehood. I ought to call for the Council to settle it once and
for all time.”

“I
do not accuse you of falsehood, Bevol,” objected Ealad-hach. “Merely of the
wishful interpretation of events.”

“I
am not interpreting anything. Since my return I have done nothing but tell you
what I saw up to the time that Meredydd entered the Sea. That she was
transformed is the unambiguous truth. That the waters were splendid with the
Eibhilin light of the Meri is also undeniably true. Now, if you would know more
than that, call upon the Meri to send you an aislinn vision ... if She has not
done so already.”

Ealad-hach
felt the blood drain from his head and fancied he could hear it trickling
through his ears.

“Has
the Meri sent a vision to you, Ealad-hach?”

He
could not lie. Why should he lie? He had no reason. “I have dreamed,” he
admitted. “I have dreamed of a great danger to Caraid-land.”

Calach
stirred uneasily. “And have said nothing?”

Ealad-hach
aimed an arch glance down his well-proportioned nose. “I have not yet
interpreted the aislinn images. I had thought to wait for the return of
Prentice Wyth. His knowledge of the Dream Tell coupled with the knowledge he
will receive from the Meri-”

“If
She accepts him this time,” interjected Bevol.

“Yes,
if She accepts him, of course.”

“Why
didn’t you bring your dreams to us?” asked Calach, sounding stung.

“I
doubted Bevol could be objective, given the tenor of the vision, and besides,
his grief-”

“I’m
not grieving, Ealad. And don’t pretend you hadn’t noticed that. Meredydd is not
dead. And how objective do you expect Wyth Arundel will be when he is still in
love with her?”

Ealad-hach
pulled out his chair with a long, ear-shredding scrape, and set himself in it.
Barely soon enough, his legs wavered so, his soul shuddered so. “Love had
nothing to do with it, Bevol. Your Prentice wove a bonding on him. She played
his body. Don’t imagine she laid hands on his soul.”

“Ah,
but she did,” Bevol answered him. “She laid hands all over his soul while
trying to push him away. The boy was needy, Ealad. He was starving for love,
for approval. If anyone tried to weave a bonding, it wasn’t Meredydd. Your star
pupil wanted her strength to lean on. You may thank her she didn’t let him, but
got him standing on his own feet, looking to his own approval. He was heartsick
when he left here on Pilgrimage, but he was his own man.”

Bevol
waited a moment, then, receiving no reply from Ealad-hach, made a dismissive
gesture. “Beside the point, all that. What are you waiting for, Ealad? Tell us
your dream as is your duty. There are other Osraed besides myself well-versed
in the Aislinn Tell. Share your vision with them, if I won’t do. What are you
hiding?”

Osraed
Ealad-hach thought the returning blood would burst from the top of his head in
a narwhal spout. “I hide nothing. Nothing! And I shall not justify myself to
you, Bevol-a-Gled.”

He
had to pass Bevol to leave the room and did it with as much haste as he could
muster. When he had gone, the two remaining kept silence, until his wake had
settled. Then Osraed Calach took up his pen once more.

“I
have also dreamed,” he said.

“And
what have you dreamed, old friend?”