Meri (6 page)

“You are being unfair! The object of the Tell is to gain
wisdom and insight, not gratification. If you can’t be fair-minded and detached
from your aislinn, then you shouldn’t give them up to be Told.”

“I shouldn’t?” His eyes narrowed.

“No,” Meredydd continued, recklessly, “you shouldn’t. It’s
not fair to me—to any of us. Why have you done this? Twice, now, you’ve given
me your own dreams to interpret. Why? Why have you given them to
me
?”

Her voice rang shrilly in her ears, making her sound almost
hysterical, making her cringe.

Aelder Prentice Wyth retreated behind his workbench and took
up his books. “I can no longer tolerate having you in my class, Prentice
Meredydd. I shall seek to have you transferred to another class for Aislinn
Interpretation.”

He left without a backward glance, leaving Meredydd
standing, white-faced and shaking, before her peers. They goggled at her for a
moment, then rose silently in ones and twos and headed for the Refectory for
the midday meal. Only Lealbhallain stayed, waiting for her to move or speak.

Finally, she did. “Did I bring this on myself?”

Leal blinked his springleaf eyes. “No, Meredydd. You only
did what was asked of you. And you did it honestly. I don’t think your
interpretation was at all spurious. And I didn’t think you were grinning,
either—especially not mockingly.”

“Then what is wrong with me? I seem to be constantly in
trouble. This year has been so difficult. Everyone treats me...differently than
they used to. Osraed Ealad-hach is impatient with me; Aelder Wyth acts like he
hates me; the other Prentices look at me strangely and whisper like old
fishermen.”

“I don’t do that,” Lealbhallain assured her. “I don’t do any
of those things.”

Meredydd smiled at him. “No, you don’t. That’s because you
see me as a friend—a person—not as a girl. They all see me as a girl
now—inferior. A lot of people don’t think girls should be allowed to study the
Divine Art.”

Leal stood, seeming strangely unsteady. His chin came just
to her shoulder, but he tried to lift himself a little at the heels so as to
look at her more on a level. “It’s a hard thing to challenge tradition,
Meredydd. You’re a rare person—a rare girl to have such talent.”

She moved past him to her workbench, where she collected her
satchel of books. There was cat-sparkle in her eyes when she turned back to
look at him. “Am I? Am I that rare? Who’s to say there aren’t hundreds of girls
hiding their talents beneath their aprons? Look, Leal, if girls are so rarely
talented in the Art, why do we hear so often of some woman being charged as
Wicke?”

Lealbhallain blanched. “Oh, but that’s not the same thing,
surely!”

“Isn’t it?” She grimaced and made a dismissive gesture. “Well,
that’s as it may be. But why should it be such a strange thing for a female to
be Osraed? The Meri is female.”

“She’s not a
human
female,” remarked Leal.

Meredydd hung her satchel over one shoulder and turned to
face him, hands on hips. “And so?”

Lealbhallain blinked and his mouth popped open. “It doesn’t
seem strange to me,” he assured her after a moment of awkward silence. “I
believe in you, Meredydd. I believe you will make the most wonderful Osraed
ever.”

She put a hand on his shoulder and let the fondness she felt
for him show in her eyes. “How lucky I am to have such a loyal friend. Thank
you, Leal.”

He quivered strangely beneath her hand, like a fawn she had
once petted. His eyes held the same innocent panic. She laughed and patted the
shoulder.

“You need to eat,” she told him and steered him toward the
door.

They left the classroom and went back up the long flagged
corridor to the concourse. From there they wound down a flight of steps to the
high, wall-hugging gallery from which the Osraed watched their morning
exercises, and along it to the broad staircase that led down to Halig-liath’s
courtyard. The courtyard was robed magnificently in sunlight. Each cobble
gleamed warmly, welcoming the pliant feet of Prentices to their ageless, baked
surfaces. As they descended, Meredydd let the warmth in through her eyes and
tried to put aside the sense of helplessness that paced in tiny circles within
her breast.

After their meal, they would have Osraed Bevol for their
lessons on the heart and soul of the Art—the laying on of inyx and the Weaving
of Runes. It was Bevol who taught them the discipline of meditation and the
spirit of prayer. Who taught them how to use the tools of their craft—crystals,
herbs, vapors, aromatic incense—to focus their faculties. It was Bevol who
would lay her helplessness and frustration to rest.

The thought of her guardian made her feel immeasurably
better and she was about to turn to Lealbhallain with a light comment, when she
heard the whispers.

“She...Wicke...something to Wyth.” A soft chuckle followed,
oozing up from the hollow beneath the stone steps.

She knew, somehow, that she was the Wicke of the discussion,
knew, too, that she should hurry on, get to the Refectory where rumors that she
had called the Osraed Ealad-hach “Scir-loc” and had enraged Aelder Wyth so much
he had expelled her from his class would cause all heads to turn and all eyes
to stare.

She suddenly had no desire for food. She slowed and softened
her steps and strayed toward the stone balustrade. Beside her, Lealbhallain
glanced warily about.

“...wager it’s not a House of Pleasure that subtle and
crafty horse takes him to,” said Phelan’s voice, high and reedy. “I wager it’s
her
house.”

“Tha’s where my horse’d take me,” mumbled someone else.

“Mine would follow her to that blasted ruin of hers. The
grass there is hip tall and the earth is soft and warm and sweet with the
perfume of flowers.” It was Brys’s voice, low, musical, suggestive of things
Meredydd understood only instinctively. It tickled her spine, but not
pleasantly.

“That’s not all at Lagan that’s soft and warm and sweet,”
said Phelan, and she could here the sly grin in his voice. “Honey-suck-le.” He
chuckled, but it cracked and turned to a squeaky giggle.

“She goes there, you know,” said Brys.

“Everyone
knows
tha’,”
said the third boy. “She goes Cirke-dag in the month, ye know. The month they’re
killed.”

“On Cirke-dag,” repeated Brys. “I could follow her. I wonder
if I did...”

“You wonder what?” asked Phelan.

“G’on,” urged the other. “
Say
it.”

“I should be ashamed,” sighed Brys.

“You should, but say it anyway.”

“I just wondered if I could get her to lie down in that deep
grass on that warm earth and...”

“Aw, come on!”

“And show me what makes her tunic—”

There was silence, then a wild trio of giggles, gasps and
guffaws.

“She do billow mysterious!” wheezed the mumbler.

Meredydd’s face blazed, hot and red. Not even daring to
glance at Leal, she fled down the steps and across the square to the Refectory,
knowing she would now find the prying gazes there a cooling comfort and wishing
fervently that Brys would forget how to use his tongue.

o0o

“I will speak to Aelder Prentice Wyth, if you like.” The
Osraed Bevol studied Meredydd’s troubled face with patient eyes.

She shook her head and scuffed the toe of her sturdy leather
shoe through the pathside grass. “If anyone speaks to him, it should be me.”

“There are those who will say this is proof young women
should not be given the Divine Education. Especially not along side young,
impressionable men.”

Meredydd glanced up at him, her eyes bright. “Is it my fault
my body has
billowed
in this fashion that
Brys and his cronies find so amusing? Is it my fault, when the First Being has
written it into my physical nature?”

The Osraed smiled. “No,” he said, “not your fault. But many
would say it is your limitation, your weakness.”

She opened her mouth to say she had no limitations, but
blushed, realizing that was untrue. “How is it
my
weakness when it affects
them
?” She shook
her head. “My limitations have nothing to do with the shape of my body.”

“No? What have they to do with, then?”

She had to think about that. She thought about the dream,
about how she had translated it for Aelder Wyth. They had gone several yards
along the ridge toward home before she answered his question.

“Passions,” she said. “Attachments.”

“Ah. And what are these passions of yours, Meredydd? Are you
also curious about the shape of Brys’s garments?”

She was appalled and then amused. Accordingly, she blushed,
then laughed, then went silent. “You know, Osraed, better than anyone, what I
am passionate about. It makes me wonder...”

“Wonder what?”

“If I interpreted the aislinn properly. Perhaps it doesn’t
mean the same thing for Wyth that it does for me. After all, our spirits may
not speak at all the same symbolic language.”

Bevol’s brow wrinkled. “An Osraed cannot go about
interpreting aislinn with attachment. Purity of heart and mind is necessary to
the Art, but difficult to bring to it. This is why the Meri chooses so few to
serve Her.”

“She didn’t choose Wyth. Why did She not?”

“Only She knows the answer to that... and perhaps, Wyth,
himself. Perhaps this dream reveals much about him. But, it is really not your
affair. Wyth fulfills his role at Halig-liath. He imparts his knowledge to the
younger Prentices. He is eligible for Pilgrimage again this year at Solstice.
He is already scheduled to go in the last week of the Season. And perhaps the
Meri will choose him this time.”

Meredydd nodded, feeling a sudden, almost fond pity for the
Aelder Prentice. He had been a good teacher for the last two years, and she had
to allow he’d taught her much about the forms and intricacies of the Dream Tell
and the symbolic language of the human spirit. It must be only his own sense of
inadequacy, she told herself, that made him occasionally surly. She could well
imagine what it would feel like to be passed over for the station of Divine
Counselor when you had spent your entire life in pursuit of that goal. And, a
cold voice within told her, it is something you may come to know firsthand.

“If Her servants won’t accept a female as Osraed,” she asked
Bevol, “will the Meri?”

“The Meri isn’t human, Meredydd. She is another order of
creation altogether. She is as perfect a Being as can inhabit any form of
flesh, even Eibhilin flesh.”

Meredydd looked at him, eyes pleading. “You know the
futures, Master. Will I see her?”

“You know I cannot answer that. Let me answer something else
instead. It is a glorious afternoon. Let us have our lesson here on the way
home, eh?” He glanced at her aslant, his eyes robin’s-egg bright and sparkling.
Come away from that path
, they said.

She sighed. “Yes. That would be nice. What are we studying
today?”

“What is most worthy of study?”

“The First Being.”

“Do you really believe this?”

Meredydd stared at him, then glanced away, her eyes
skittering ahead down the path. What a question! Did she believe—? She thought.
It was a good question, especially in view of the lines her life had followed.
She could have become bitter about her parents; bitter and angry with any God
who could let them be extinguished while she was left behind alone. Well, not
alone, certainly. She glanced at Bevol again. He was still watching her.

“All my life I have been taught to believe there is a Spirit
in the Universe,” she said.

“That is no answer.”

“No.” She walked on, letting her gaze ripple over land and
sky, grass and tree, earth and cloud. “Yes. I believe. But I feel sometimes at
a loss to understand exactly What it is I believe in. It is difficult to know
Something so subtle. It’s not like knowing another person.”

“Isn’t it? Do you fancy that you know all there is to know about
me, anwyl? Do you know the essence of Bevol?”

She blushed. “Of course not. But envisioning the
invisible....”

“Takes more than good eyesight. It takes all the physical
senses, tuned to their purest pitch. And it takes more. It takes senses that
are just as subtle as that which they must be trained to sense. Do you recall
this verse? ‘When the conscious spirit commands the eye, the eye can see all
forms. When the conscious spirit commands the ear, the ear can hear all sounds.
When the conscious spirit commands the tongue, the tongue can savor all tastes.
When the conscious spirit commands the mind-—”

“The mind can think all thoughts,” Meredydd finished with
him. “Corah, Book One, verse Twenty. But how does the conscious spirit know of
the existence of the Spirit of the Universe when It cannot be seen?”

Osraed Bevol stopped in the middle of the sloping path and
pointed off to the side. “Bring me a pine cone from that tree.”

There were only the dried and brittle husks of cones lying
about the foot of the tree so Meredydd ducked beneath the low-hanging boughs
and plucked a fresh one from the first cluster she could reach. She returned to
the path and held the golden little cone out to him.

“Break it.”

She hesitated only a moment, then easily crushed the little
thing in her hands, exposing its interior. She looked to Bevol for comment.

“What do you see in it?”

“Very small nuts, Master. Pine kernels.”

“Break one of them, anwyl.”

She did that, biting with her fingernails into the tough,
pulpy husk, splitting the pine nut in twain.

“What do you see in it?” asked Bevol.

“Nothing at all, Master.”

“Anwyl, from that unseen essence of the seed that you hold
in your fingers comes this tall pine tree. Do you see that essence?”

“No, Master.”

“But you know it is there.”