Life Giver

by Lisa Lowell

  Rashel felt no such forgetfulness. She sought to distract herself by watching Nevai playing on the blanket, straining to lift himself and making the first efforts at crawling. She admired his determination. If only she could eventually do so herself. But no amount of hard work on her part would change the fact that she needed Yeolani, and he wasn’t coming as he promised.

  What will you do if he doesn’t return? Could she be angry that he had abandoned her? What do you do when the villagers figure it out? They would start up where they had left off at the auction. A shiver of fear ran down her spine. She still had the crystal that she didn’t dare touch. Her needs remained met, except for the plowing. She looked across the yard to the far field where the soil awaited, smooth and fine, needing the seed. Could she do that by herself? She had a horse now, but had she the skill and strength?

  And then the pit in her stomach grew heavier for no fathomable reason. She sensed fear and danger, but nothing in the bright spring morning had come to alarm her. It was all in her head. Trying to comfort herself, Rashel picked up the baby and held him close, rocking him and tickling him, hoping the giggles and the rosy, toothless smile would make her forget her premonition of danger.

  She was wrong. Norton tramped down the road toward the forest, carrying an ax and looking with covetous eyes at her farm. Without acknowledging him, as if she hadn’t noticed him passing by, she rose with the baby on her hip, plucked up the blanket, shook it out and turned toward the door.

  “Mistress Rashel,” Norton called. “Where is your man this fine morning? I’ve not seen him about.”

  She paused at the doorway and glared back at the man who stood in the gate, just inside her property with his ax glittering and sharp on his shoulder. He was a huge man, half-a-head taller than Yeolani and probably a third more in weight. Her memories of Yeolani seemed fuzzy as if a fog had entered her mind. Where was he? she asked herself again. If she lied to Norton and said Yeolani was in the forest, would Norton go seeking him? Probably, and that would not be good. She would lie in another direction.

  “He’s sharpening the plowshare,” she replied matter-of-factly and went in the door.

  “And how are you doing all by yourself?” Norton continued, taking a few more steps into the yard.

  “I’m not by myself, and I’m very busy,” she replied coldly. She had already let him know she held him in contempt. His obvious possessiveness of both herself and her farm was unwelcome. Norton had not liked her defiance last fall, and now the widower seemed to have picked up his efforts at gaining her affections once again. “I’ve got bread to work and seed to set for my garden. Good day.” And she shut the door on him.

  Rashel had just put Nevai down on the floor on his blanket when the door rudely opened, and she straightened up in fright. Norton stood in the doorway with the ax still waiting on his shoulder. “I don’t believe he is here,” the man growled. “He hasn’t been seen in weeks. He’s abandoned you. He won’t marry you. At best, you are a kept woman…”

  Rashel felt herself blushing, and a gasp escaped her despite her determination to remain cold. How could he make that accusation? That had been the main worry of the town elders; that she would have to prostitute herself in order to remain on her farm. She would never have done that. The thought repulsed her. She had told Yeolani that she would rather walk away into the forest and die than face such a fate. The townsfolk were not so understanding. They had insisted the farm would go to the man who could pay for it. She would have to marry whoever paid for her so that she would not pay for it on her back. They would not allow such a woman in Edgewood.

  “I am nothing of the sort,” she rounded on Norton. Where was her butcher knife? She located it with a flick of her eyes, but it was no closer than the crystal on the stone mantle. Could she reach the crystal without seeming to seek it out and alerting Norton to the magic of it? If Yeolani came to its call, would he come from the forest quickly enough to save her from Norton’s rude suggestions? Would he come at all? Rashel decided the crystal would be a better bet than her butcher knife and pretended to go toward the wood box to bring up the fire for her baking.

  Norton followed her, and she felt his rough, heavy hand on her waist. “Has he even made a woman of you? No, you’re still a maid. He’s a gelding, not worthy of such a fine creature as you.”

  Rashel rounded on him, her eyes snapping in anger. “You will remove your hand, sir,” she demanded, backing up one more step and feeling her heel connect with the hearthstones.

  She couldn’t back up anymore. Norton pinned her to the wall, his weight crushing against her, his rough hands groping up her legs under her skirts. “You’ll do, and any time I’m passing by, I’ll pay you with plowing of another type,” Norton growled as Rashel fought to get his hands away from her.

  Her mind erupted in panic, and she strained to scream, but Norton’s mouth was on hers, mashing his lips against her face, smothering her in his beard and his mass pressed against her. Desperately, she groped to her right, straining to reach the crystal on the hearth. She scrabbled for it, fingertips touching the cool shaft. She grasped it and, with waning strength, brought it stabbing down into Norton’s back like a dagger. The crystal wasn’t nearly sharp or long enough to kill him, but it did penetrate his flesh, and he bellowed in anger, wrapped his huge hands around her throat and squeezed, lifting her completely free of the floor. Somewhere far away, with the light before her eyes sparking and pinging, and the buzz of losing consciousness in her ears, Rashel heard the baby wailing. The dark pulled in toward a pinprick.

  Archer felt fire and light. Every particle of his body began to separate, drowned in the fog and marshes. The Siren’s breath filled his lungs, musty with swamp water. Drowning? While standing on land? Could he? The glare of bronze and reflections off the river blinded him, but he could not move or fight the Siren’s magic.

  Abruptly something else tugged him violently from behind like puppet strings. His guts roiled, and he could see only the light fading in from the sides. He felt like he’d been lifted off his feet by his neck and thrown through the air. The harshness of the movement after the Siren’s gentle burning threw him sprawling onto a hard, wooden floor, and he retched, gasping on all fours and coughing out bilge water from his lungs.

  He looked up and saw cabin walls. A baby’s wild protests almost masked grunting and struggling gasps. Archer turned and saw a brute of a man lifting a girl off the ground, half strangling her, half raping her, pinning and choking the life and light out of her. It didn’t take a moment, but it seemed eerily slow to his mind. Without thinking, Archer staggered to his feet, drew his bow, set the arrow, aimed carefully down the shaft for the point where the man’s arm met his chest, just under the armpit, and then drew the string to his cheek, breathed out the last of the swamp gasses, and released.

  His arrow flew true, and the grunt of air passed from both the girl as well as the rapist in the same sound as she landed shakily on her feet. The huge man sprawled dead on the floor. The shaft had pierced through his heart, and the wretched man didn’t even have the dignity to bleed. Archer looked from his victim to the girl and tried to make some sense of all he’d just experienced. He couldn’t connect the strands into a reasonable braid of a story. The girl held a bloody crystal in one hand that she now dropped and then scurried to pick up a baby who continued to cry, though more in anger than fear now that the stranger was down.

  “You came,” the girl commented with a tone he could not interpret. Relief? Disbelief? Irritation at his timing? Archer felt his legs trembling with reaction, and he staggered to a nearby bed. He had never killed a man, at least that he could remember, and he didn’t like how it felt. He wanted to vomit, but there was probably little left inside him. The Siren had taken everything.

  The young lady came and sat beside him wordlessly, still comforting the baby and rocking him until he stilled. Then she put the babe in the nearby cradle before she ever addressed what had happened.

  “I’m gla
d you came,” she reiterated.

  Archer nodded numbly since he felt like another spell might be creeping in on him, this one crafted of the girl’s sparkling eyes and sweet face. He didn’t know if he knew this girl, but she certainly made him feel more human than the Siren had.

  “Why haven’t you come earlier, when I didn’t really need you?” the girl asked.

  “I….I…I don’t…” Archer tried to explain, but words escaped him, and his voice sounded so harsh, full of mud and muck.

  “Yeolani, are you well?”

  Yeolani? Was that his name? He still couldn’t remember, but his hands trembled, and he felt like he might faint in a mix of relief and fear. He managed to shake his head no and then leaned forward to vomit a swamp on the girl’s floor.

  16

  Healing

  Rashel had hoped to never need this, but she reached for the white candle Yeolani had left her, and with her hands still trembling, she lit it with a taper from her fire, holding it high. As she waited, she looked around her house and realized that she would have to do a lot of explaining if this Honiea were to come. A baby given by fairies, a magician passed out on her bed, and a dead man with an arrow sticking out of his side. What would the Queen of Healing think on her arrival?

  The flash of light was exactly like the one that had brought Yeolani, except hers was lavender light, whereas his glow shown golden, like him. And the Queen of Healing stood in the cabin looking like she was any other villager come to deliver honey or buy some cheese. Rashel blew out the candle and put it back on her hearth and then turned back toward the magical visitor.

  The Queen of Healing surprised her: a commoner, not a queen, with a long braid of golden-brown hair and a dusting of freckles on her pale skin. She wore a brown smock bound with a bodice of linen and a stiff apron with several pockets, and she carried a haversack as if she traveled the road to get here rather than coming in a burst of lavender light.

  “Welcome,” she said hoarsely. “I’m Rashel. This is…”

  “I know who he is, my dear. Please don’t speak his name,” Honiea said, and to Rashel’s ears, the command seemed harsh. “Is the baby well?” the woman asked as she walked toward the bed, leaving her bag on the floor beside the dead body.

  “He’s just been frightened,” Rashel replied, surprised that the magician went first to Yeolani rather than Norton who lay with an obvious wound. Yeolani could have been asleep where she had managed to pull him onto her bed before she decided to use the candle. “We’ve all been frightened.”

  “You may call me Honiea,” the female magician began as she sat on the edge of the bed and picked up Yeolani’s flaccid hand. “Tell me everything that has happened.”

  Rashel gulped but did as she was ordered. She began at Norton’s attack and made an effort to explain how the crystal had called Yeolani and then how he came but had fainted dead away moments after rescuing her.

  Honiea bent and picked up the crystal which Rashel had discarded. As she touched the bloody shaft, Yeolani twitched, as if he were being transported again somewhere, but then settled. Honiea’s quick eyes caught the reaction, and she creased her brow in concern. “And how exactly did he meet you?”

  “About two months ago, Yeol…he came to town looking for help with his baby. I needed help to keep my farm. It was an exchange of skills. He would repair and run the farm with magic if I would take care of Nevai. He left me the crystal so I could call him if I needed his help, and it has worked thus far. But then Norton came…” her hand shook as she pointed toward the body, “and I had to call for help.”

  “I wonder where he’s been in those two months,” Honiea murmured. “He’s been sick, lost a lot of weight that he couldn’t afford to lose, but there’s something more. Something magical has…Well, let us see.” She set aside the crystal and knelt at the bedside and pressed her hand against Yeolani’s closed eyes. With Rashel looking on, Honiea felt uncomfortable as she focused on listening to the mind she sensed. She hoped to see into the past so she could make her repairs. She wouldn’t actually make the fixes until Rashel was gone.

  Meanwhile, with Yeolani’s shields down, much became clear to the Queen of Healing. She saw flashes of his work in a dark cavern and then him blowing into a storm, but she could not see the cause of his disquiet. Why had he left the cave so abruptly and unprepared? She witnessed pneumonia that had kept him feverish and burned his memories from him. She saw brief flashes of Everic’s family but little of the interactions there. The discovery of a compass as a Talisman surprised her. She thought without knowing who he was, he would not have continued Seeking. Honiea then followed his trek west, guided by the compass. She saw how he didn’t use magic to aid his survival. Then, when he reached the river, she witnessed his amazing encounter with the Siren.

  “Siren?” Honiea whispered aloud, and Rashel stirred restlessly as she looked on.

  “What’s a siren?” the girl asked.

  “I’m not sure. I’ve never heard the term, but he named it in his memories. It’s something he met made of magic and mist on the river, and it began to take him over. He was drowning in the swamp when your crystal pulled him here. That saved his life, I suspect. He has amnesia and has had it for a while. He doesn’t know who he is and might not even know he’s a magician, but the Siren knew and drew him in. He’s lucky to be alive.”

  Rashel nodded with a bit of understanding. “So, that’s why he didn’t come to do the planting,” she commented. “He forgot everything.”

  “He made arrangements to come again?” Honiea glanced up and for the first time truly looked at the young woman Yeolani had given Nevai to raise. “What type of arrangements?”

  “He had to be seen about the farm or the townsfolk would think he’d abandoned me and…and things like Norton thinking he could have his way with me would start happening again. Yeolani…sorry….he said he wouldn’t marry me. Instead, he let the townsfolk think that it was because he was devoted to Nevai’s mother, but I knew it was because he’s a magician. I thought he would come more regularly just to let the town think that I had a man about the farm and that I was off-limits, but then, if he has amnesia, he might have forgotten Nevai and me completely.”

  “So,” Honiea murmured mostly to herself, “you’re what prompted that conversation. He and I had a little chat after he left Nevai with you. He wanted to learn how to travel quickly because he had an obligation to you but didn’t dare stay long.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” Rashel sighed with frustration. “Did I do something wrong in calling him? In calling you? What is wrong with him? Can you cure him?”

  Honiea rose to her feet again to reassure her hostess. “You’ve done no wrong, and as I said, using the crystal to call him probably saved his life. He’s very new at being a magician, and he probably has been foolish in even giving Nevai to you, but he’s done nothing technically wrong. However, something is afflicting him, and I must break through that amnesia to help him. This will take some time. Do you have a chair?”

  Honiea sat at Yeolani’s side for several hours, and Rashel went about her chores, working her bread, setting her seeds, fixing a meal for three in hopes that there would be some change. She reluctantly went out to deal with the milk for the evening and forming her cheese. Once Rashel left the cabin, Honiea relaxed a bit. She had waited until that time when they would be alone to finally bring Yeolani out of his coma.

  “Good evening,” Honiea began in her most gentle voice, keeping the lanterns low in case his sickness remained sensitive to light. “Welcome back to the land of the living.”

  “Where am I?” Yeolani asked weakly.

  “I’m glad the question wasn’t who am I,” Honiea replied. “Do you remember who you are now?”

  Yeolani took a moment to consider. He looked around at his surroundings, at the simple bed and a screen to block the rest of the cabin from his sight, considering his options. “I am a magician who hasn’t hidden my name. Yeolani? After my mother a
nd father…I killed them, didn’t I?”

  “No, you tried to save them, but it was too late. Now, what do you remember doing last?”

  Yeolani rolled his eyes and considered the problem. “I remember light burning on the river and a siren. I…a compass. And a blizzard. It was so cold. I was someplace dark and cold.”

  “The cavern,” Honiea provided, making the connection to what she’d seen of the cave in his broken memories. “It’s under the plains, beside a lake and the single shaft of light. You were working underground on something. Do you remember that?”

  Taking the imagery she had seen earlier, Honiea shared it back into Yeolani’s mind so he could match it with the memories that came flooding back inside. “I left my boots, everything there and became a blizzard. I’m an idiot,” he groused. “That’s why I was so cold. What happened?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to help you fit back into a whole, not a scattered mess. Do you remember Vamilion and I discussing how you could learn to travel magically?”

  He again had to work to make the connections. “I remember being sick every time I tried Vamilion’s way. I was out looking for a Talisman that would help me travel.”

  “You found one, a compass?” prompted Honiea.

  Yeolani restlessly drew his fingers through his hair and down over his eyes, trying to concentrate, to remember. “Yes, at the base of the cliff. But it didn’t help me travel. I came as a blizzard. I found the compass and that family helped me. I used magic in front of them. They weren’t frightened, but I didn’t even realize I was doing it. They named me Archer…and the Siren, she drew me in using the compass.”