Wood Nymph and the Cranky Saint- Wizard of Yurt - 2 (17 page)

To my surprise, this question made them fal silent as our other questions had not. “We don’t realy know,” said an apprentice at last.

They must be afraid, I decided, that if a chaplain had come to accuse their master of consorting with a nymph, then two wizards must be here to accuse him of trying to make a quick profit. Before I could try to reassure them again, they al stood up hastily and their leader snatched up his blankets from the corner.

“Wel let you have this hut to yourselves,” he said. “Thank you again for accepting our hospitality and God bless you. Good night!’ Al five rushed out, leaving Evrard and me looking at each other.

Let’s get the horse blankets,” he said. “At first, when they started talking about their master having long discussions with the nymph, I was able to imagine al sorts of intriguing scenes, but I’m afraid it must in fact have been very dul and pure—if one could imagine the nymph being dul! I m glad / never had any foolish ideas about studying to be a hermit. Can you imagine what my hair would look like as shaved red stubble?”

“Peach fuzz,” I said. “On a particularly unappetizing peach.”

There was no door to the hut, but we settled down close to the opposite wal. The smal fire in the middle of the room had burned down to darkly glowing coals.

“It sounds as though making money off pilgrims as you lower them down the cliff,” Evrard said thoughtfuly, “may be shocking to religious sensibilities as wel as, of course, extremely dangerous.” He fel silent for several minutes and I had thought he had falen asleep, when he suddenly roled over with a great rustling of his blanket. “Daimbert, how did you manage to get involved in al this in the first place? What does a wizard have to do with chaplains and bishops and hermits?”

“In the school,” I said lightly, “they teach us about the supernatural power of demons and warn us against

using black magic. Doesn’t it make sense for a wizard to try the other side, to learn how to trick the supernatural power of good into helping us?” But Evrard, for once, was not wiling to be dismissed with a joke. “But how about you?” he demanded. “How did you become involved in the affairs of a Cranky Saint?”

“I sometimes wonder the same thing,” I said slowly. Although he was only a foot or so away, I could sense him more than see him. “Yurt is important to me. If there are problems in the kingdom, no matter what kind of problems, I want to see what I can do about them. You’ve only been here a couple of weeks, but you’l see.”

“So you’ve dedicated yourself, heart and soul, to this little kingdom?” His voice wasn’t exactly scornful, but it was close.

I hesitated a long moment before answering. The royal court, I was sure, would find this a riveting conversation. “No,” I said at last. “Not heart and soul. The only thing I belong to heart and soul is magic itself—and maybe not even that because, if I did, I’d probably be better at wizardry than I am. But freedom is useless unless it gives you the opportunity to choose, and I’ve chosen to try to help my friends in Yurt.”

“But why these people?”

“Because I love them.”

Evrard did not respond at once and after a moment’s silence, I rather hoped he would not. But then a coal settled with a hiss, sending up a brief shower of golden sparks, and with the silence between us broken, Evrard, irrepressible, spoke again. “But how did you, a wizard, ever become such good friends with a chaplain?”

“Joachim saved my life.”

“He did? When was this?”

“The first year I came to Yurt. I had an encounter with the other supernatural powers.”

“Oh, Daimbert, I’m sorry!” said Evrard, at once

highly contrite. “I didn’t know. But you hadn’t said anything about it and I never heard anybody mention it at the school.”

“They wouldn’t have.”

When the resulting pause seemed highly strained, I added, “I do hope you realize I have not become a

Eawn of organized religion. When I heard the duchess ad hired you, I was delighted at the thought of having a wizard to talk to, someone whom I thought I would be able to understand better than I could any priest, and who might even understand me.”

Silence fel again. Evrard did settle down at last and began to breathe deeply—doubtless dreaming of the wood nymph. I shifted, trying to find a less hard and bumpy patch of dirt on the nut floor, and puled the scratchy blanket up around my ears.

I was drifting on to sleep at last when, abruptly, I was brought back to ful consciousness by a distant, repeated cal. It could have been an owl, a real owl, it could have been the horned rabbits, or it could have been something far worse. I lay perfectly stil, but heard only Evrara’s peaceful breathing and the strangely ominous rustle of leaves. Talking to the wood nymph had removed the terrors of my predecessor’s cottage to a comfortable distance, but now they were back again in this dark hut, made worse by the winds of night and the slightly lighter rectangle that marked the open doorway. I listened for a long time, but the cal did not come again.

IV

We did not wake until wel into the morning. I sat up and looked across the hut to see Evrard just opening his eyes. He jumped up at once when he saw the sunlight outside. “It’s late. The wood nymph is going to wonder where we are.”

“And the apprentice hermits must be wondering when they’l be able to have their hut back.”

“Do you think their hospitality extends to breakfast?”

But we didn’t see the apprentices when we came out. We checked my net for horned rabbits, but it had caught nothing yet. I renewed the paralysis spel and Evrard dropped in some fresher herbs.

“Maybe the nymph wil have something today besides berries,” he said as we scrambled up beside the little waterfal toward the grove. “A doughnut and a cup of tea would be even nicer.”

“I doubt the nymph does her own baking,” I said. “For that matter, I wonder where the apprentices get their food.”

“From the store,” said the city-bred Evrard.

“Not out here,” I said with a laugh. “They must grow their own lettuce and we saw their goats, but I didn’t see a bake-oven.” Evrard suddenly pointed upward. “Who are they?”

I craned my neck to look. Tiny figures were descending the cliff, a short distance to our right. They seemed to be making their way down by handholds and toeholds. It made me dizzy just to look.

“Maybe,” I said, “the entrepreneurs have their first five pennies at last—or I’d guess even more, if they’re charging five apiece.”

“It’s going to take them a while to save enough to hire me if they can only manage pilgrims at this rate,” said Evrard.

I didn’t like to watch, but I couldn’t look away. There were three figures on the rock face, al robed in light gray. They descended slowly but steadily. In a few moments, the first, then the second and third, reached the ground.

“Maybe they didn’t want to go around by the road on foot because it’s so much further,” said Evrard.

“Wel, they’d certainly reach the valey floor the fastest way possible if they fel off the cliff.”

They walked toward us and I was able now to see

that the three men al had deep cowls puled over their heads and crosses embroidered on the shoulders of their robes. Pilgrims, I decided.

They saw us and stopped, apparently surprised to see two wizards in a holy hermit s grove.

“Bless you, my children,” said the pilgrim who appeared to be the oldest. Then al three seemed to forget us completely. “Do you have the bread and the little bottles?’ the old pilgrim asked the others.

“Right here,” said another. He puled from his pocket a large loaf like the one we had eaten last night.

‘Then let us proceed.” They walked purposefuly toward the shrine at the center of the grove.

“If the apprentices have to rely on occasional pilgrims for their bread,” Evrard commented, “maybe it’s just as wel we didn’t eat any more.” A gust of wind caught the pilgrims’ robes, lifting them and wrapping them around their ankles. One had to stop and untangle his legs, shod in tal riding boots, before proceeding. But I was looking forward to seeing the nymph again and was nearly as uninterested in the pilgrims as they were in us. I glanced up to see pale tiny clouds coming in a thin tmt steady flock across the slice of blue sky above us.

Even though we had just been there yesterday, the wood nymph s tree seemed very difficult to find. I had begun again to wonder if she was deliberately hiding from us, when at last Evrard pointed to a deep footprint in the soft earth. “That’s mine. I came down last night faster than I meant to.”

I said again the spel to cal the nymph and a tinkling laugh came from the tree above us. We caught a glimpse of violet eyes and a beckoning hand.

But when we started flying up toward her, the nymph darted away, leaping lightly through the air, catching branches just in time to break her fal, swinging through the canopy of the grove. Evrard and I flew after Tier, almost catching her a dozen times. But

every time, laughing and with her hair swirling around her, she dodged or spun away at the last second. Much less agile among the branches than she was, we kept getting leaves in the face just when we thought we had cornered her at last. But finaly she returned to her platform, and al of us dropped to the cushions, panting and laughing.

This morning she had strawberries and the same icy, invigorating water she had offered us the day before. Evrard did not mention that he would have preferred tea and doughtnuts. “Were you two sleepyheads this morning?” she asked, which made me look suspiciously at my cup, wondering if she had put something in it.

But I did not ask, deciding instead to find out at once what she knew about the Cranky Saint. She might have some idea why Eusebius wanted to leave. Although I remembered scarcely any of our conversation ofyesterday, I did remember the beginning. The sensation was that most of the rest had taken place years ago and had comfortably faded.

“Lady, I want to ask you something,” I said, putting down my cup almost ful, though I was thirsty. She bent gracefuly to offer me more berries. “Do you speak to the hermit of this grove and to Saint Eusebius?”

She looked away, out across the tops of the trees, and an expression passed across her face that might have been a frown. Evrard lifted his eyebrows at me questioningly, but I shook my head at nim.

The wood nymph looked back at us again, not quite smiling. “The hermit and I speak of mortality and of God.”

I opened my mouth to speak and changed my mind. But she took my silence itself as a response.

“Yes, I have wondered sometimes,” she said slowly, “what it would be like to be mortal. You humans are born and live for a period, trying to create something in this world to match your dreams, seeking to achieve

something you never quite reach. And when you become old and weary, you die. But then, the hermit has told me, you come face to face with God.” Joachim, I thought, ought to hear this.

‘You live for such a short period of time,” she added, “that your goals and dreams can never al be fulfiled. Does facing God make up for this?” I didn’t know what answer to give but, fortunately, she didn’t seem to expect one.

“I don’t think I was ever born,” she went on, so softly that I had to bend toward her to hear. “The world has changed and I have changed, but I do know I was here long before any humans first came to the valey.” Her head drooped forward and her long hair almost hid her features. “I have lived in the grove forever, or at least as long as I can remember. The trees are mine to tend, but even they grow old and die eventualy, in spite of my care. They take the only way that leads out of the ever-repeating cycle of life here on earth, but that way out is closed to me.” Her voice dropped even lower. “I know I don’t think of time the way you humans do, although the hermit has tried to explain it to me. You go from a world of time to a world of timelessness when your souls are set free by death. But I am not sure I even have a soul. The hermit has told me that I wil not meet God face to face, if I ever meet Him at al, until the end of infinite time, when the world itself shal end.” She lifted her head almost sharply and tossed her hair back over her shoulder, frowning at me in earnest. “I am immortal, but not with the immortality that the hermit tels me is reserved for mortal humans.

While the world lives, I live, and I revere the God whom Eusebius taught me created it. But according to the hermit, I shal not pass on to spiritual immortality, nor even become weary of living and find rest in death. The saints, including my old friend Eusebius, may appear over the seasons to the hermits here, and

even sometimes to other men, but they do not speak to me.”

This took care of my hope that she might know what the Cranky Saint actualy intended. “But—”

“But I have not become weary of the world,” she

(said in her normal cheerful tone without giving me a chance to speak. There was now not even a trace of a shadow in her expression. For someone who never had to contemplate her own death, it must be hard to be serious for very long. “There are always surprises here in the world, such as young wizards.’

“What was that al about?” Evrard asked me in an undertone, but I shook my head. I was even more convinced than I had been that there was no reason, whatever the bishop might think, to try to move the wood nymph out of the Holy Grove.

“Let me offer you some honey in which to dip the strawberries,” said the nymph.

I took a sip from the cup in my hand and wondered if the nympxi herself deliberately set out to forget some of the experiences of the uncounted milennia she had lived, either because they were unpleasant or just because there were too many of them. But if so, she managed to be selective in what she forgot, with an understanding of the magic involved that was certainly beyond me.

The conversation shifted at once to other topics and, nearly as quickly, I began to lose track of what we were discussing. The nymph’s conversation was as unexpected, yet as internaly consistent—and as difficult to remember—as the dreams one has when first drifting into sleep. The minutes could have been the seasons within a forest, each with its own events, but in retrospect al timeless and the same.