Meri (28 page)

“I’ll follow,” he said. “Ye g’on with Owein.”

She was swept from the ground then, onto the horse’s back,
and clung there, squirrel-like, as the beast pounded back upstream—back the way
she had come.

What had seemed like endless miles to Meredydd on foot,
turned out to be only five or six. In fifteen minutes, Meredydd was dismounted
at the mill and being led into the cottage by the anxious father.

Little Taidgh lay upon the settle which had served as
Meredydd’s sick bed the day before. His eyes were closed, but beneath the lids,
they fluttered like hummingbirds in flight. His breath came in shallow pants
and his clammy, pallid skin sweated a cold, feverless sweat.

Sinking to her knees beside the settle, Meredydd took Meghan’s
place at her son’s side.

“Please,” Meghan whispered. “You must help him, mistress.”

“I may need hot water for herbs,” Meredydd told her.

“Yes. Yes, it’s on. What can we do?”

“Sit quietly and if I ask for something—”

“I’ll get it at once, mistress.” Meghan’s head bobbed
acquiescently.

Meredydd did not stop to amend her use of the title, but
rolled up her sleeves and settled back on her heels, eyes closed, head up,
turning inward down her own inner path. She murmured the Healer’s duan she had
practiced so often and used with nothing more urgent than cuts and bruises and
head-aches at risk.

Well, yes, there had been challenge in Flann’s child-bearing
sickness and more in Gwynet’s abused body—but this.... She could feel Meghan
and Owein’s eyes on her, expecting miracles, expecting magic.

She must ignore them. They must not exist here. Here there
was only Taidgh and Meredydd and the blue Healing power she must tap into.
Forcing her concentration deeper, she reached out inside herself, to every
warm, dark corner, and drew her energies up and out to curl like smoke in her
mind and flow like vapor to her fingertips. Then, she opened the Door, calling
on something above herself and beyond herself—calling on the Healing woven into
the fabric of the Universe.

The melody of the duan rose. And as it rose, Meredydd
reached out her hands and wrapped the child’s damp head with her fingers. She
heard Meghan gasp, but ignored the sound, keeping her attention firmly on
Taidgh. The activity in the small body was frenzied, frantic. It’s natural
rhythms were disturbed, distorted, racing hither and yon, tumbling out of
cadence. He was frightened—a tiny cowering presence within his own
being—wondering why it was so hard to breathe, why his heart hurt so and
pounded so.

Meredydd let one hand move down the boy’s trembling form to
his chest. She laid it, palm down, over his heart. The poor thing hopped like a
wild little rabbit, its meter stuttering and irregular. She continued the
movement of her right hand, checking his lungs, his bowels, his limbs. All were
clear of distress—all but his heart, tripping dangerously over itself, and much
too fast.

She broke from the duan. “Meghan,” she said quietly, her
voice still wreathed in the melody, “have you any foxglove?”

She could almost feel the blood drain from the woman’s face.
“Foxglove? Oh, mistress, I don’t know what you mean!”

“Foxglove,” repeated Meredydd and pictured the plant vividly
in her own mind. “Spike stem, flowers like bells or thimbles.”

Meghan nodded rapidly. “Wicke’s Thimbles! Yes! You need the
flowers? The leaves?”

“Just the flowers.”

Meghan scrambled to her feet.

“For now,” murmured Meredydd, “I’d like him to have some
allheal tea.” She opened her eyes. “Owein, could you—?”

“Aye, right away.”

He bolted for the kitchen and Meghan out the kitchen door,
leaving Meredydd to continue with her ministrations. The Heal Tell was only
half the Healweave. The other half was the healing itself. She put her hands
over Taidgh’s heart and settled back into the melody of the Weaver’s duan. Again,
she collected her own resources, then opened that mysterious Door above, using
the duan to call blue healing down out of another realm, another world—down
through the crown of her head, down to her heart, out to her fingertips. Under
her palms, the little heart quieted, steadied.

The tea was ready in minutes, steeped strong and smelling of
bark and earth. It wasn’t a pleasant beverage, but it had the property of
sending the drinker into a deep, refreshing sleep.

By the time Meghan was back with the foxglove, Taidgh’s eyes
had ceased their frantic movement and his breathing was deep and relaxed.
Meredydd took the foxglove from her as she sank to the floor beside her son and
asked Owein for a mortar and pestle.

They had them—a crude set of stone—but they were sufficient
for the task of pulping the thimble-like flowers and forcing them to give up
their healing essences. In the end, after twenty minutes of grinding, Meredydd
had about ten spoonsful of purplish liquid which she then boiled, adding water
and a little honey.

The resulting elixir she poured into a small earthen jar and
carried to the family parlor.

Meghan eyed the liquid a little doubtfully as Meredydd
poured some into a spoon.

“Must he have this? He’s peaceful enough now.”

“As long as he’s asleep, yes. But when the allheal wears
off, he’ll be little better off than before. You see, his heart has a bit of
a—a problem keeping the correct beat. When he gets over-excited, its rhythm
doesn’t play right. It skips here and there, flutters like a little bird. He
gets dizzy then, and faint and scared and that makes him have trouble
breathing. The essence of the foxglove flower will calm the heart and help it
keep its rhythm.” She administered the elixir, which Taidgh, tasting only the
sweetness of honey, swallowed with a dreamer’s smile.

“You must try to keep him calm, Meghan,” Meredydd told her. “The
scare he had when his heart began to flutter is what caused him to panic and
breathe hysterically. If it happens again, talk to him, sing to him, calm him
down and give him a spoonful of this elixir.”

Meghan’s eyes expanded, doubling in size. “You could tell
all that from the laying on of your hands?”

“It’s called Heal Tell,” Meredydd explained. “All Prentices
strive to master it.”

“And do they all glow like that?”

Meredydd blinked at her. “Glow?”

“Aye, mistress. When you laid your hands out on him you
glowed with a fire the color of a harvest moon, and the glow passed down your
arms and into Taidgh. I’ve never seen anything like it. Do all Prentices do
that?”

Meredydd was at a loss. She hadn’t realized she produced any
physical manifestations. Osraed Bevol had never mentioned any, although she
knew he projected an aura of sorts when he performed a runeweave. She had
always assumed that was something bestowed on him by the Meri.

“I don’t know,” she said, honestly. “I suppose, if I do,
they must also.”

“It was beautiful.” Meghan smiled beatifically and grasped
Meredydd’s hands, still wrapped about the jar of elixir. “You’re a saint to
help us so. You’ve saved our boy twice now. I thank you with all my heart,
Meredydd.” And she threw her arms around the Prentice’s neck.

In close embrace, Meredydd realized the full depth of
Meghan-a-Galchobar’s gratitude and she knew a purer heart would be difficult to
find anywhere in Caraid-land. Meghan was a jewel—the sort of jewel the
Gwenwyvar would cherish. It made her failure to keep to the Path easier to
bear, while fanning the embers of a peculiar sense of envy. Meghan might have
better fortune seeking the Meri than she.

Skeet arrived just after noon, limping and dragging both
their packs, looking completely done in. Meredydd had assured herself that
Taidgh-a-Galchobar was fine, his natural bodily rhythms solid and sure and
even. She spoke of leaving once the boy had awakened, but Skeet gave her a look
that all but wrung tears out of her and Meghan and Owein begged them to stay
another night.

Meredydd was on the verge of declining, when Skeet said
plaintively, “Mistress, if we g’on now, I’ll ne’er make it. I’m sheer worn out
and I’ve hurt my knee. Please, mistress, let’s stay.” His eyes were sober and
pleading.

She chafed inwardly. She had already spent too much time
here. Had already failed to pass the obviously critical test of obedience and
perseverance. What hope had she of seeing the Meri now? She had let herself be
distracted from her goal and now she might as well go home to Nairne in defeat.

But how could she not be distracted? she asked the ether.
How could she not respond to the Galchobar’s need—make some effort to heal Taidgh?
His life was in danger—could that be of less importance than her personal
quest? Did callousness go hand in hand with Osraed-hood? Or did kindness cancel
out disobedience?

Skeet continued to regard her solemnly, waiting for her
decision.

“You could stay here and I could go on alone.”

Skeet was scandalized. “Mistress! Ye’d hae me break faith wi’
Osraed Bevol? I promised him, by solemn oath, that I would stand by you as
Weard, that I’d not let you out of my sight. Ye cannot mean t’ ask me to break
my oath.”

Meredydd lowered her eyes and fidgeted with the sash of her
tunic. “I have already broken my own oath to Osraed Bevol. I will not be the
cause of you breaking yours as well.” She raised her head and smiled at their
hosts. “We’ll stay. Thank you for your kindness.”

Meghan and Owein exchanged pleased glances. “You honor our
home, Mistress Meredydd,” Owein told her. “It is you who do us the kindness.”

o0o

She dreamed. She dreamed of a Meredydd-a-Lagan who had not
yielded to the imperative need of a sick child. A Meredydd who had not become
distracted, who had gone on, secure in the honor of her pledge, to the Sea. She
dreamed of an Owein-a-Galchobar who had gone home empty-handed to a dismal mill
cottage on the Bebhinn. She dreamed of a Taidgh-a-Galchobar who died, his weak
little heart over-excited by his near fall from the millhouse and the chasing
of ducks.

She awoke, exhausted and confused, under the dark blanket of
early morning. Unable to sleep, she stoked the fire and moved to sit in the
deep window casement that overlooked the mill and the rushing Bebhinn. The
ethereal, phosphor glow of the water’s fleecy spume drew her into a meditative
state, so she prayed and contemplated the dark outside the window and the
luminescence of the whitewater and meditated, trying to find commune with her
own spirit.

Meghan woke her sometime after dawn. The cottage was
redolent with the fragrance of cinnamon-nutmeg baps baking in the brick oven
and tea on the fire. The sizzle of cooking eggs teased her ears and made her
hungry. She stretched stiff limbs and ruefully rubbed the spot on her forehead
that had leaned long against the windowpane.

“You didn’t sleep well,” accused Meghan with mock severity. “You
should have taken some of your own medicine. There was plenty of the allheal
tea left.”

Meredydd smiled sleepily. “It was all right, really. I
needed the time for my meditation.”

“There she is!” cried a piping voice. “There’s my Wicke
Lady!” Taidgh bounced across the parlor and up into the window embrasure to
throw his arms around Meredydd’s neck.

His mother gaped at him, her face going first red with
embarrassment, then white with fear. The fear spoke first.

“Taidgh! Don’t bounce so! And don’t call the Prentice
Meredydd that. She’s going to be an Osraed, not a Wicke. God’s pardon—why would
you say such a thing?”

“B’cause she used Wicky Thimbles to better my heart,” he
said ingenuously. “She’s my Wicke Lady.”

Meghan glanced at Meredydd. “No,
Taidgh, you mustn’t”

“It’s all right, really,” Meredydd assured her. “He means
nothing wicked by it.” She smiled warmly at Taidgh, who was admiring her braid.
“I will gladly be your Wicke Lady, Taidgh.”

He grinned, gap-tooth, and kissed her cheek.

The good-byes were more difficult this time, and Meredydd,
feeling at once full and bereft of the strong, warm sense of family, promised
to return if and when God allowed. Then, she and Skeet were sea-bound once
again—revictualed and even reclothed, they headed southwest along the Bebhinn.

The journey to the Sea was uneventful and pleasant, but for
Meredydd’s nagging conviction that her goal was now completely out of reach.
They spoke little; she kept that conviction and all other feelings to herself.
At least she meant to. But as they climbed the bank to detour what Meredydd
hoped would be the last canyon-cleft hill before they sighted the Sea, Skeet
broke the silence.

“What are you thinking, Meredydd?”

“I am not thinking at all,” she said. “I only walk...and
feel.”

“What are you feeling then?”

“I feel empty. I feel as if I have failed already.”

“And who have you failed?”

“Osraed Bevol, Halig-liath, Mam Lufu, the Gwenwyvar, the
Meri, God, myself.”

“Such a list! You didn’t fail Gwynet. You didn’t fail
Taidgh-a-Galchobar. You didn’t fail me. Are you so sure you failed all those
others?”

Meredydd made a swiping motion at the balmy air. “I promised
Osraed Bevol and the Gwenwyvar that I wouldn’t be distracted from my goal. And
yet—”

“Ah. Your goal.”

His voice had such an odd inflection that she glanced at him
sharply. He was gazing at the path before them, setting one foot before the
other, studiously.

“How grand a goal could it be if it caused you to fail that
little boy?” he asked. “You’ve wondered that, haven’t you?”

Her ire rose to a red-cheeked defense. “It’s the goal I was
purposed to pursue.”

“To get to the Sea at all cost?”

“To be accepted as Osraed! To be a tool in the Meri’s hands.

To become like my Master, Bevol.”

Skeet’s eyes swung over to meet hers, slyly, a little
coal-ember demon lurking in them. “To be like Bevol, eh?”