Spires of Spirit (5 page)

“Her anger,” said Varden, “is directed at you alone. There is nothing to cause her to attack your family.”

“Except revenge.”

“Elizabeth and your children have the protection of my people. They are beyond the reach and power of the Leather-woman. What, then, is your will, Andrew? Do you wish to end this matter now, and leave the Leather-woman to her fate? Or do you wish to continue?”

In the back of his mind, Andrew felt the beginnings of a headache—a sharp pain, then a dull throbbing—that rose and fell quickly, then departed. He sensed that it was not natural, that it came from somewhere outside of himself. “It's . . . it's too late now. I plastered her hut, I've spoken kindly to her, I've given her food. Even if I turned back, she'd still hate me, and she'd still work against me.”

Varden did not speak.

“So I'm going to have to go and meet her, one way or another, sooner or later. I can feel her around me, testing me. And look at this.” He pulled out the leather pouch, displayed the beryl. It was palpably shining, filled with a radiance as of sunlight. “It's been getting brighter,” he explained.

“It counters her working,” said Varden.

“For how long?”

Varden stood up slowly, went to Andrew. Extending his hands, he clasped them around Andrew's, around the beryl. For an instant, the carpenter stared into the Elf's starlit eyes, and then his vision blurred. He saw the stars, shining brightly, remote and yet close. He was floating in a night sky.

He saw a web again, as he had at the smith's house, but it was a different web now, and as he examined the strands, he felt certain that it had to do with the Leather-woman. He heard Varden's voice in his mind.

“Each life is many lifetimes,” came the words, softly, almost wearily. “I told you that before, and now this is what you see before you. Each weaving of the lattice you see is a choice in the Leather-woman's life: past, present, and future. The web is herself, all of her. Look back at the past, and see the tangled interactions that forced her along the paths she now travels. Look to the future, and see the possibilities she once had. There is a strand there that represents you, Andrew. See how it changes the pattern.”

“I can't interpret the change.”

“Nor can I. There are many possibilities that branch from that intersection.”

As Andrew looked, the stars brightened, and their light flowed into the strands. The pattern shifted subtly, and he saw that, although the Leather-woman's futures remained hazy, his own thread traced its way through the intersection and on into another maze of possibilities.

“There is nothing she can do to harm you,” said the Elf. “As she exerts her powers, so the stone alters the futures so that you are shielded.”

The room flashed back into existence around him, and he shook his head to clear it. Elizabeth's brow was furrowed, and she seemed half of a mind to rise and draw him away from their strange visitor, but he smiled thinly at her. “I'm all right.”

He turned back to Varden. “You're very sad. And very tired,” he said simply.

Varden released his hands and stood back, nodding. “You see clearly, Andrew. It is so. For a minute, though, you have seen with our eyes, and so you should understand our feelings. We see what is, and we also see what might have been. There were many futures that led to peaceful coexistence between my people and yours, and instead we have the present situation. The Leather-woman might have been loved, and yet she was not. Missed opportunities. Wrong choices. We see them all. We delight in the good that has happened, and we grieve for that which has been missed, ignored, lost.”

“But I saw the strands change, Varden. Why can't you—”

The Elf shook his head. “Our power is limited. Terribly limited. Still, though, we try as we can. That is why I made the stone you hold.”

“You . . . you
made
this?” Andrew stared at it.

“I did. I have watched the Leather-woman grow old, and I have watched her bitterness rage. To reach out among the patterns of her life and alter them without her consent is a course of action that is denied me. But if I could in some way aid one of her own kind who wished to help her, if I could protect him and guide him, then I would be acting within my constraints. My hand can set a seal on whatever you do, Andrew, but it is you who must do it.”

“Do . . . do what?”

“I do not know.”

The Elf stood in the firelight, his hands at his sides. The shimmer gleamed about him, the starlight shone in his eyes, but, for a moment, he seemed no more than a creature of the world, someone who was trying in his own, groping fashion to do good, who was baffled by the often vague and indefinite turns of events. Even the Elves could be unsure.

Andrew hefted the stone, slid it back into its pouch. “I'll do what I can. I can't promise anything.”

Varden bowed. “Nor are you asked to.”

***

Christmas drew nigh, and the Leather-woman kept to her miserable hut. Late at night—despite the cold, despite her hate—Andrew would sometimes go to the edge of town and drop a bundle of firewood at her door. The bundle would be gone come morning. Still, he imagined that he could hear her voice carried along by the wind from the mountains, an old, dry voice, rasping as it had from infancy:
I don't want your help. Far better it would be if I were dead.

No, he thought as he turned away one night, far better it would be had you not suffered as you have. Far better it would be had you not been born in a body that made you an object of laughter. Far better it would be if those about you had remembered compassion and common charity.

He trudged up the street, head bent, hood pulled well forward against the cold. It was but four days before the Nativity, and already, in defiance of the self-denial of Advent, the villagers were setting out their decorations: bunches of elder, mistletoe, and birch adorned the doors of many of the shops and houses.

He felt again the shade of a headache that touched and departed, felt the beryl inside his shirt flicker and glow as it altered chance and destiny to protect him. The Leather-woman was still seeking vengeance for the good he had done her, and yet he found himself casting about in his mind for something more he could do to bridge the abyss of fear and bitterness with which she had surrounded herself. It seemed impossible. No matter what he did, he stood condemned in her eyes.

The headache touched him again, and again the beryl glowed and turned it aside.

How foolish! How wonderfully useless!

Again, the headache.

She had food, and she had warmth. Maybe that was enough for now. Maybe, in the spring, when the weather was better and the land was smiling with green leaves and early flowers, maybe then he could reach out to her and have his hand accepted. An improbably occurrence, but then had Varden not said that anything was possible?

The headache strayed into him again, lingered for a moment . . .

He stopped, shook his head slightly. The beryl flared . . .

. . . and then his brain itself seemed to detonate, throwing him to his knees as a knife of pain buried itself in his skull. Hands to either side of his head, he gasped, for so great was the agony that he did not even have the strength to cry out. At his side, the beryl turned into a small star, shining even through cloth and leather . . .

. . . and suddenly the pain was gone.

Weak and shaking, he stood up, feeling sick, his vision blurry. But he gathered his strength and faced about, turning back in the direction of the mountains. It was going to be tonight. It had to be tonight.

He returned the way he had come, pushing through the dry heather and bracken at the edge of the village, scuffing through the crusty snow that had covered the rude path to the Leather-woman's hut. When he reached the door, he did not hesitate, but pounded loudly. “All right, Mother, I'm here!” he shouted.

But there was no answer. The door swung inward. Though the fire burned on the hearth and the air was thick with the smoke of herbs, the hut was unoccupied.

Andrew stepped back, puzzled. She had wanted him: of that he was sure? Where—?”

He turned. Out toward the mountains, where the foothills began amid bare rock and tumbled boulders, he saw a dim red light. It flickered, grew brighter. Nodding inwardly, he turned his steps toward it and followed a trail in the snow that led into the rocks.

The slope was steep, the stones beneath his feet jagged and uneven, the boulders so thickly strewn that at times there was barely enough room for him to squeeze through, and he found himself wondering how she had dragged herself along this path. Still, he continued, and as he did, the wind rose, shrieking through the rocks, howling among the tumbled boulders.

He had thought the night would be clear, but he saw now that it was clouding up. Already, the growing overcast was overtaking the full moon, but Andrew continued in the direction of the red light, now brighter still, and at last he rounded a turning to find a flat expanse of packed earth and bare rock surrounded by a ring of tall boulders. The wind had swept it clear of snow, and at the center burned a low fire.

Behind the fire stood the Leather-woman.

The flickering light set her shadow rising hugely behind her, dancing back and forth on the rocks. Her stick writhed in her hand, and her tattered shawl blew in the wind. For a moment, Andrew stayed within the cover of the stones, but the beryl glowed as he grasped it for reassurance, and he left his shelter, approached, and stood across the fire from the Leather-woman.

She did not speak at first, only eyed him up and down as though astonished at this common laboring man who had dared oppose her. “I warned you,” she said at last.”

“I know. It didn't do any good. I still care.”

“You're a fool.”

“Maybe.” He searched for words, hoping to find something that would make a difference to her. He came up with dust.

“Fools suffer for their foolishness.” She lifted her stick, but the beryl glowed in response. Andrew fingered the stone through its covering of cloth and leather and laughed nervously.

“Why don't you just accept the fact that someone wants to do you a good turn?” he said. “It doesn't cost you anything. I fixed your house, and I've given you food and wood. I've left you alone other than that. So, other than that, you can live as you want.”

She lowered her stick, grounding it. “Live as I want? What do you know about my living? You don't know how many nights I've huddled in my straw and prayed for death. I don't want life. Not like this. Keep your life.” Her voice cut through the wind like a file.

“But you ate my food, and you didn't tear out the plaster.”

“Yes . . . damn you. That's true. All of it. I pray for death, but I don't have the will to destroy myself. I thought for a while that I could . . . and then you came along with your damned gifts.”

“It could be different.”

“Could it? Can you take away the fear? Can you undo eighty years of hate, can you make me young again and take away my crippled leg and my harsh voice? Can you? Get to work then, Master Carpenter, you with your elven magic and your stone of protection.” Her eyes were cold even in the red light of the fire. There was no hope in them. Hope had fled long ago. “It'd go hard with you if you didn't have that beryl, I'll tell you.”

Slowly, Andrew removed the pouch from his shirt and slid the stone into his palm. It shimmered with the light of a thousand stars, patterns of life forming and reforming within it as though it were alive.

He looked at her suddenly. “Would it? When I saw you in the street months ago, I saw you for the first time. All my life you'd been the Leather-woman with her evil and her spells, and then, all of a sudden, you turned into a person, someone who ate and slept just like me, someone who felt cold and hunger and pain . . . just like me. I've been lonely too. Maybe not as lonely as you, but I know what it's like. Now you're looking at me, and maybe now you're seeing
me
for the first time. And maybe I'm not just an interfering young . . . scrapling. Maybe I'm Andrew, the carpenter. Maybe I'm someone who has some love to offer. Maybe I'm someone who wants to help. Maybe . . . maybe I'm someone who feels sorry for what happened to you and wants to try to make up for it.”

The beryl gleamed, starlight dancing through it. Andrew looked the Leather-woman in the face, saw, just for an instant, a flash of uncertainty. Maybe . . . maybe . . .

Before her thoughts could harden again, he spoke. “So I don't believe you when you say you'd strike me down if it weren't for this stone. I think you're willing to try once more.”

He could not tell for sure, but he wondered if her eyes were, perhaps, glistening. “I . . . I don't want anything,” she choked. “I just want to be left alone. I just want to die . . . and get it over with.”

“I won't leave you alone. I won't let you die. I'm not asking you anymore. I'm telling you. It's going to change. It must change.”

The beryl was suddenly ablaze with light. Gritting his teeth, shaking, he stretched his hand across the fire, offered the stone to her. “Here. Take it. It's yours . . . and it's you. Maybe you need it. Maybe it can give you something that I can't. But I don't believe that you'll hurt me if I don't have it. Take it.”

She reached out, hesitated.

“I trust you.”

The words galvanized her, and she snatched the stone and whirled half around, pressing it to her chest. It did not burn her, and, after a minute, she straightened as much as her bent frame would allow. She gazed down at the gleaming beryl, then lifted her eyes to Andrew.

Her mouth worked for a moment. “Why?” she managed. It was not a demand. It was, rather, sheer bewilderment.

“I told you. I trust you. I'm going home now, but if you need anything, come to me. Let's try to—” He choked and forced his jaw to stop trembling. “Let's try to be friends.”

He turned around and walked toward the trail. He did not look back. He kept himself from looking back. When he reached the edge of the clearing, he continued on down through the boulders and the scattered rocks. Afraid. Waiting.

Hoping . . .