Taminy (25 page)

“And
then what?”

“And
then the Mistress of Nairnecirke began to wail ... and the Master set to
praying ... and Isha just stared at that crystal, smiling like she was
bewicked.”

“And
what did Taminy do?” Doireann gasped, half stumbling over a divot of earth.

“She
just smiled—her face all aglow from the stone. Oh, Doiry, it was the stuff of
chills. I swear I dreamed of it all night and into morning.”

“If
only they’d let me come,” whined Doireann. “Why did it have to be my night to
tend the stupid oil pots?”

They’d
reached the verge of the wood now, and hushed as if entering the Cirke. Trees
formed corridors, and leafy branches, vaults. Birds sang in lieu of choirs, and
leaves whispered prayers. The girls ignored all in their quiet haste; their
skirts swished no louder than the breeze, their footfalls beat no louder than
their hearts.

They
heard the waterfall before they could make out the murmur of voices. Pace
slowed, they crept to within earshot, screened by a puff of greenery, and knelt
to watch and listen.

“
... said naught about it this morning, but I’ve no illusions my mother will
allow it unless father presses.” Iseabal sat, cross-legged, upon a rock that
lay half-out of the water, shredding flower petals into her lap.

“Do
you want to go?” Taminy asked her. She was on a rock by the fall, looking for
all the world like a Cwen holding court. Aine thought there ought to be an
audience of squirrels and rabbits sitting in attendance.

Iseabal
was slow in answering. Her brow furrowed, she abandoned her task and rubbed her
palms together. “I want to learn the use of my ... my Gift. If I must go to
Halig-liath to do that, then I shall, but ...”

“But?”

“But
I’d rather learn from you.”

“Would
you?”

Iseabal
nodded. “Oh, yes. And so would Gwynet, I wager. Am I right, Gwyn?”

Aine
noticed, then, that the woodland Cwen had other courtiers. Gwynet and a second
young girl sat sprawled on the grassy stream bank between the older cailin with
books and whiteboards.

“Oh,
aye!” said the blonde gamin at once, and her companion looked up with wide eyes
and cried, “Oh, me too, Taminy! Me too!”

Why,
that was Niall Backstere’s youngest girl, Cluanie, Aine realized, gawping at
the mouse-hued mop of hair. Could her da have any idea-?

“It
could be slow learning,” Taminy said. “You can’t learn what I can’t teach.”

“But
I’ve learnt bushels already,” protested Cluanie. “My mam’s all but sung over
the perfumes I made her and she was mighty glad of that moonwort physic you
taught me. She’s been raw sick with this baby and all.”

“Herbals
are only a small part of the Art,” Taminy said. “The Osraed have the knowledge-”

“Not
the way you have it,” said Iseabal. “I know. Prentices study for years and all
they learn is how to make a dog chase his tail till he drops or how to
interpret a dream. But look ...” She put a hand in the water beside her rock
and gently moved her fingers.

Aine
frowned and looked at Doireann, who merely shrugged and dug her hands deeper
into the pockets of her skirt. It was when she glanced back at the pool that
she saw it—the quicksilver flash and dart of tiny, water-borne bodies as they
rushed to gather about Iseabal’s rock. Aine swallowed a gasp. Doireann clapped
one hand over her own mouth and brought the other one to her breast in a tight
fist.

The
two little girls on the bank jumped up and tumbled to the water’s edge,
squealing with delight. Taminy laughed too. “A useful trick for a fisherman,
Isha, but hardly earth-shattering.”

“It
is for
me
,” enthused Iseabal. “It’s
all earth-shattering. All of it. The world looks different to me today. The
whole, entire world!” She raised her hands, flinging them wide as if to embrace
that world and, suddenly, the air was full of birds, full of their songs, full
of the rhythm of their wings.

It
was Iseabal they flocked to, Iseabal they circled and wheeled about and
chittered to. And the little girls danced and Iseabal laughed and Aine’s heart
beat so hot and so fast she thought she would swoon. Beside her, Doireann
trembled and cowered and clutched her hands to her breast.

Then,
Taminy, Cwen of the Bebhinn Glade, stood up on her rock and raised her hands,
palms outward. The birds were gone faster than Aine could blink an eye. Back to
their trees they went, in a hush so profound, Aine was sure no Cirke had ever
known it.

“The
Gift is not for the drawing of birds,” Taminy said, and Aine felt a sudden
prickling at the back of her neck. “Nor is it for the gathering of fish.”

Gwynet
and Cluanie giggled and Taminy turned her face to the puff of greenery Aine and
Doireann had thought concealed them. “The Gift is for the drawing of spirits
and the gathering of souls ...Come out, Aine. Come out, Doireann. Come sit with
us and sing duans.”

Both
girls started up, bumping painfully in their haste and tumbling from their
sanctum. Finding Taminy’s eyes right on her, Doireann shrieked loudly enough to
wake the dead and hurled whatever she had been crushing to her heart in Taminy’s
direction. It was a good throw, and the lumpy wad landed nearly at Taminy’s
feet. As the girl lifted her skirts and bent to pick it up, Doireann shrieked a
second time and dashed back into the woods.

Heart
tripping over itself, Aine followed. She caught Doireann up at the edge of the
fields where she had crumpled into a forlorn heap, arms and face patterned with
pale scratches, tears streaking her face.

“She’s
a Wicke! She’s a Wicke! And she’s made poor Isha into a Wicke! Oh, I knew it! I
knew it!”

“Stop
babbling, Doiry!” Aine told her crossly. Her own body threatened to quiver
itself right into the ground, but she would never let the other girl see that,
or even suspect it. “Stop babbling and tell me what that was you threw at her.”

Doireann
hiccuped loudly and grasped Aine’s wrist, all but toppling her. “It was a
runebag.”

“A
what?”

Doireann
merely nodded frenetically, spilling hair into her eyes. “Daffodilly and
marigold, vervain and a piece of chalcedony scratched by emery.”

Aine
shook her head dumbly. “What good-?”

“To
drive away the wicked! To expose and expel them. Daffodilly and vervain and
chalcedony cut by emery all do that, so I thought why not put them together?”
She hiccuped again.

“Oh,”
said Aine, not knowing what else she could say. “And the marigold?”

Doireann
pulled herself to her feet, using Aine’s arm for support. “Repels Wicke. Did
you see how she tried to get away from it?”

Aine
sighed. “I think she picked it up.”

“No,
she didn’t! She lifted her skirts clear and bent to inyx it away. I saw her.”

“Doireann,
you’re wind-kissed. Besides, if what Osraed Saxan said is true, Iseabal and
Taminy may gather all the fish and fowl they want.”

Doireann
peered at her from beneath a jumble of dark curls. “Do you believe it?”

“Well,
it was brought from Pilgrimage by an Osraed.”

“Huh.
Osraed Wyth Arundel. You know Wyth. Were sweet on him, I recall. Are you ready
to believe he’s the voice of God?”

Aine
could only stand blinking. Wyth as the Voice of God, was rather a difficult
concept to grasp.

“And
she didn’t just speak of gathering fish and fowl, Aine-mac-Lorimer,” Doireann
continued, her eyes growing huge and dark. “She spoke of gathering souls. Of
collecting spirits. It’s our spirits she’s after, Aine. Our souls. You heard
her. Come out, she says. Come out and-and sing duans.” Her hand, clutching Aine’s
arm, shook as if palsied.

Aine
met her friend’s eyes and couldn’t help but shiver, herself, at the abject fear
in them. She opened her mouth to utter quashing, brave words, but a loud
shaking of shrubbery within the wood robbed her of them. Doireann set off,
wailing, across the fields, with Aine hard on her heels.

oOo

Aine-mac-Lorimer
and Doireann Spenser might not welcome her, Taminy reflected, but there were
others who did. The pleasure of the Apothecary would have been hard to miss,
even for one utterly without the Gift. Her eyes on the basket of herbs and
confections in Taminy’s hands, she sailed from behind her counter like a galley
under full sail, skirts and sleeves and aprons billowing about her ample bow.
One arm swung wide to embrace, the other went straight for the basket.

“God
love you, child! Look at that wealth of riches! Wyvis! Rennie! Taminy’s here!”

Taminy
smiled as the embrace landed around her shoulders. Already she could hear the
scuffle of feet on upstairs floorboards; the Apothecary’s two youngsters
presented themselves in their mother’s shop before that lady had retreated
behind her counter again to admire her new goods.

At
fourteen, Wyvis was showing every sign of being a winning young woman. The
gamin smile she now bestowed on Taminy would someday cause male hearts to
quiver. Her brother, Rennie, three years her senior, was a big-boned lad who
tended to favor his mother’s plumpness. He was, as his mother would say, “a
boisterer” at most times—a little loud, a little undisciplined—but in Taminy’s
presence, he seemed most tame; Nairne’s Mistress of Medicaments threw the two
of them together at every opportunity.

“Oh,
look what she’s brought us! Catamint, isn’t it? Ah, but the Beekeep will be
glad of this. He’s afraid his new queen will take her tribe elsewhere. But not
with a potion of this. Wherever did you find it? Catamint’s been so rare in
these parts of late.”

“Oh,
I’ve a place,” Taminy said, noncommittally.

“Well,
you shall have to take Rennie with you next time you go so you can bring back
more.”

“Me
too,” said Wyvis quickly. “I’ve heard it’s a truly fey place. That’s what
Cluanie said, anyway.”

“Cluanie’s
just a babe,” protested Rennie, peeking into the basket with veiled interest. “She
thinks there’re paeries in every tree and silkies in every puddle.”

“Well,
good for her, I say,” said the Apothecary. “Too few see paeries anywhere at
all. There’s good herbs and such in fey places—which you’d know if you’d listen
to Taminy, here. By the way, Mistress Liathach says thank you very kindly for
the Five-leaf plaster. I told her it was your recipe. She says her tooth is
much better and she’ll see Osraed Torridon about it on your advice. It scared
her to think of anyone touching it when it pained her so. She wanted me to ask
if you knew of a cure for the catarrh. She has weak lungs, you know.”

“You
wouldn’t think so if you’d heard her bray at her husband,” offered Rennie.

“Shush,
you! Such manners. What will Taminy think of you?”

But
Taminy was laughing. She fingered a leafy packet on the counter. “Tell her
vervain boiled with honey. Oh and, of course, one of your good herb steams.”

“Vervain?
Well, now, I’ve used that for a salve—heals up cuts and what-not quick as you
please—but, boiled with honey ... hm.” She pulled a box of paper and a graphus
from beneath the counter. “What are the dimensions?”

“Four
parts vervain elixir to one part honey. Mix two spoonfuls in boiled water.” The
basket empty, Taminy picked it up and settled it on her arm. “Well, I’m off to
the Webber’s now.”

Wyvis
and Rennie leapt at her in perfect unison.

“We’ll
go to the fey place soon, won’t we?” asked Wyvis.

“To
gather Mam’s herbs,” Rennie qualified the utterance, giving his younger sister
a sideways glance.

“Cirke-dag,
after worship?” Taminy suggested and garnered two eager nods and a wide smile
from the watching shopkeep.

Out
on the street moments later, Taminy closed her eyes and took a deep sip of the
late summer morning. It flew her to the far end of her time corridor again,
depositing her in a place that only looked the same. It came to her in a rush
so vivid she almost believed she could open her eyes and walk to the Cirke
manse and find in it the familiar, the lovely, the secure—her father, her
mother, her own room, the room where Iseabal now slept.

Oh,
if she could only do that ... well, what, then? Would she live things any
differently, given another chance? Would she lock herself in her room and close
her ears to the call of the Meri? Would she bid Iseabal deny that call? Or
Gwynet or any of the receptive spirits that now graced Nairne?

“Daeges-eage,
Taminy.”

Dragged
forward through time, Taminy opened her eyes to the here-and-now Nairne and a
trio of interested male faces.

“Daeges-eage,
Brys,” she murmured and nodded to the other boys, Scandy and Phelan. Odd, she
thought, the impression that had struck her when her eyes first touched them.
They had felt like stones: Brys, coldly metallic; Scandy, chalky and pale;
Phelan, malleable as clay. She shook the impression, waiting for them to speak.
But the self-assured Brys seemed ill-at-ease, hovering there before her with
his coterie. At once eager and reluctant, he shuffled and blinked and thrust
bold-coy glances at her.

“Em,”
he said finally. “Em, will you be in Sanctuary this Cirke-dag, Taminy?”

“Yes,
of course.”

“Oh,
good, then ...” He glanced at the others. “That is, I mean, I was hoping
perhaps you’d join me at the Backstere’s after for tea and cakes.”

Ice
hot, his voice, full of passionless want. She beheld him, there—so handsome and
golden, so like iron—and shivered in spite of the warmth of the day.

“Well,
I’ll tell you, Brys-a-Lach,” she said lightly, “that if you’d asked me that ten
minutes ago I’d’ve had no reason to say ‘no’ to it. But I’ve made my promises
for Cirke-dag already.”

Brys’s
mouth twitched, but his expression, otherwise, didn’t alter. Scandy, on the
other hand, looked almost smug, Phelan, merely stunned that a mere cailin could
refuse his awesome companion.