The man continued to talk, obviously wanting her to eat. The woman watched anxiously from over his shoulder. When Grace refused to respond, the woman edged closer and stirred the bowl’s contents with a shallow spoon of horn. She dipped the spoon full, then moved it toward Grace. The girl clamped her mouth shut tightly, fear in her eyes.
Defeated, the woman dropped the spoon back into the bowl and walked away. Talking agitatedly over her shoulder, she wrapped a shawl around her head and went to the door. Her words seemed lost on the man as he sat and watched Grace. The woman made a final statement, waited expectantly but got no answer from anyone, and finally banged out the door.
The man winced a bit at the woman’s peeved exit, and smiled at Grace as if they shared a joke. Grace’s mouth dimpled slightly in an instinctive response, but when the man’s eyes widened with pleased surprise, she shrank further from him. The smile disappeared and she wore her frightened look again. The man sighed.
He began to talk, more to himself than Grace, she realized, and toyed absently with the horn spoon. The warm aroma of hearty soup drifted to her, and she swallowed painfully. The man did not seem to notice. He talked on, then almost as an afterthought raised the spoon to his lips and sipped the steaming broth. The first taste was hot, and he blew on the remainder in the spoon to cool it. Then, closing his eyes, he downed the whole spoonful. His throat worked slowly, savoring the taste. Grace could almost feel the soup warming as it went down. Her mouth watered.
The man’s eyes opened, and fastened on Grace. She dragged her eyes from the movement of his throat, and reluctantly met his look. She was so hungry! Her eyes pleaded like those of a trapped animal, and from somewhere out of the blackness of her past she remembered the same look in the eyes of a bird she had killed, a bird she had commended to the Goddess even as she had broken its neck. Trembling shook her and she felt near to tears, yet too drained to cry. She closed her eyes and felt her mind whirl.
Eat.
Her eyes popped open, but even as the sound echoed away in her mind, she knew the man had not spoken. He sat as he had been, watching, waiting, hopeful. She swallowed tightly and her eyes drifted shut again. She was so tired.
Eat.
This time she had no strength to be surprised. She wondered whose voice that was, then realized somewhere that it wasn’t really even a voice. It was not a word so much as a feeling—a push from somewhere else. It was a command. She struggled against it, but it would not be deflected. It insisted that she eat. She wondered weakly if wizards could do that—put commands into peoples’ minds. She thought only the Goddess could speak to people like that.
The Goddess—she opened her eyes. The man sat as still as before, only waiting. His eyes seemed concerned, caring. She was so tired, too tired to decide what to do. If it were the Goddess speaking to her, could the man be a wizard, and would he poison her? Would the Goddess allow that? Would She not? But then, what did it matter—the Goddess’ will would be done, no matter what Grace did. If it were for Grace to die, then she would die. If she was afraid to trust in the Goddess’ love, she was confident she could trust in Her power. What would be would be.
Fighting exhaustion, Grace pushed against the wall behind her and sat up straighter. She met the man’s eyes, then dropped her gaze to the bowl.
“Please,” she said. “I’m hungry.”
Unsure at first, the man knit his brows and tried to understand the girl’s strange language. She seemed to have given up, somehow, surrendered. He wondered what her battle was.
“Please.” She lifted a weak hand toward the bowl.
Still wondering, he ladled up a spoonful of soup. Her eyes followed it. He scraped the bottom of the spoon along the bowl rim, then raised it toward her cautiously, expecting denial. As the spoon neared her lips, she closed her eyes in complete submission.
“Thank you,” she said, and took the food into her mouth.
When she awoke later, the cabin had lost its shadowy grayness and was bathed in a warm, orange glow. She lay without moving and deliberately examined everything within her sight. The near wall, erected of stacked logs she saw now, seemed draped with articles of clothing, either hanging sorrowfully from pegs or piled along the floor. The corner opposite her cradled the table and chairs, and she noted with instant but fleeting alarm that the old man sat there busy with some small task. He did not know she was awake. She watched him briefly, then let her eyes slide past to the rest of the cabin within view. There were rocks on the floor near the door—large, angular rocks—and those strange markings on the wall. From beyond the wall that bracketed her bed, she could see the wavering shimmer of firelight, and she heard the contented crackle of flame devouring fuel. The cabin, although strange, was yet very homelike; she hadn’t thought wizards would live so.
Dragging her eyes back across the cabin to the table, she found the man watching her. Her instinct was to pull back away, but there seemed no point. She had eaten his soup; she had slept soundly in his bed. If his intentions had been harmful, she would be dead by now. She thought again of the omnipotent command of the Goddess that she eat. She felt sure that it was the Goddess who impelled her so strongly, so the Goddess had not abandoned her after all. For a moment, Grace felt a glow of wonder and joy; she had received directly from the Goddess. She has been given a gift—not the gift of the dream, as some had, but a gift all the same. She felt a flush of gratitude like a warm, familiar wrap she had not worn for a long time.
The man moved, breaking into her thoughts. He pushed himself up from the table and walked out of Grace’s line of sight, returning a moment later with another bowl of soup. This time, rather than offering the meal to her himself, he pulled a low stool to her bedside and set the bowl there with a spoon. As Grace watched him warily, he went again to the table and took up a large knife. The shadow it threw on the wall in the firelight was long and evil looking, serrated by the rolling curves of the log wall. Before Grace could think to cringe, the man carried the knife around the corner toward the fire, and came back with only two thick slabs of rough-milled brown bread. Those, too, he set on the stool beside Grace. Finally, he brought a small cup of clear, fresh water. With a look at Grace, he shuffled back to his table and returned to his small industry.
She watched him for a moment, but he seemed to have already forgotten her. His hands moved deftly for one so old, twisting and wrapping some small object in an indefinite way. He was clearly doing something familiar to him, yet important enough to require all his concentration. She wondered what it was.
The now recognizable aroma of the soup brought her attention back. Steam wafted above the rim of the bowl. She hesitated, but then shrugged to herself. It seemed pointless, now, to resist. She pushed herself into a sitting position but swayed dizzily as light and shadowed forms danced crazily in her head. She did not see the man stop and watch her anxiously. By the time her vision cleared, he was again—still—busy at his work, and she reached for the bowl. Her hand shook slightly as she spooned up the first taste and a bit of the soup dribbled down her chin. Even that felt good, the warmth on her skin, the act of wiping it away with the back of her hand. She felt as if she lived again after having died. It was a solemn, grateful feeling.
She ate contentedly, her attention on the food or momentarily on the man as he worked. There was companionable silence between them. Occasionally Grace heard the muted buffeting of wind outside the cabin, and then the firelight would cant and wave along the wall. For the first time in a long time she felt peaceful.
She made short work of the meal, and was surprised when it was gone. She scraped the last of the soup from the bowl and licked breadcrumbs off her fingers. When all the crockery was empty, she lay down again and watched the man. He seemed oblivious to the fact that she had finished eating, or that she stared at him. He held a small bundle in his gnarled hand, and alternately wound thread around it or put small bits of feather or cloth to it. The shape of the thing was longer than it was wide, rounded slightly, and w
ith a head-like knob on one end. She couldn’t imagine what it could be.
When the man suddenly sat back in his chair, apparently satisfied, Grace peered across the table in an effort to see the thing clearly, but too many objects littered her view. She ducked her head one way, then another, but it did no good. She still couldn’t make out what the object was supposed to be. He held it lovingly and examined it as any artisan would his best piece of work. Grace wanted very much to know what it was.
He brought it to her. At first panicked when he came and sat at her bedside, Grace fought her own fears enough to shift nervous eyes from the old one’s face to his creation. It was lovely. She saw, as the man held it for her gingerly between thumb and forefinger, that it was a bird. The odd bits of feather she had seen him apply were held and smoothed by the evenly wound threads; the thread across the scrap of cloth at its breast defined the barring of what would have been the closely interlocking feathers of a real bird. Its face was clean of line and almost simple; slitted eyes on the front of the face seemed intelligent but unyielding. It was a strong bird, powerful and knowing. It was a bird such as the Goddess would create.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered. It no longer mattered if the man understood or not; the Goddess heard all languages.
Pleased at the tone of her voice, the man smiled and said, “Owl.”
Suddenly self-conscious again, Grace shifted her eyes from the bird to the man. She licked dry lips. “Owl?” She said the word haltingly. It felt strange on her tongue.
“Owl.” He repeated the word and pushed the figure at her. A rash of other strange words followed, none of which she understood, but his intent was clear. He wanted her to have the bird.
Haltingly, afraid of reprisal, she took the little bird in her fingers. The man released it cheerfully.
“Thank you,” she said. She smiled shyly at him. “Owl.”
“Owl.” He grinned broadly, and she saw for the first time the gap where a tooth was missing from his lower jaw. It endeared him to her somehow—no wizard would look so forlorn—and she giggled nervously. He caught her contentment and laughed. Neither knew what the other laughed at, but they laughed together. It felt good.
“Balat,” he said, and tapped his chest with a blunt finger.
Grace tackled the unfamiliar word valiantly. “Bal-at,” she faltered.
He grinned. It was good enough. He pointed to her now, questioning with his eyes.
Grace,” she said.
“Grace?” he queried.
“Yes,” she nodded fiercely. “My name is Grace.”
Grace slept that night better than she had since she could remember—not as deeply as the dark, black sleep of her sick time, but not as fearful and restless as when she first regained awareness. With the small sounds of Balat stirring about the cabin, with the dancing firelight on the log walls and with her companion, Owl, she slept the sleep of someone at peace, content.
Only once did she dream. It was an odd dream, like something the Goddess might send. She dreamed that she stirred and awakened in this same bed, and that the glow from the fire had died down to a misty, ethereal yellow-gray. Her eyes searched the palpable dimness, but could not find Balat. Undisturbed, she opened her clenched hand and found Owl there where she had slept with it, close against her body, its white, round face ghostly in the near-dark. She traced the line of its form with a finger, smoothing the feathers on its breast. It almost seemed as if a vital spark of the Goddess lived within its wooden skin. It comforted her.
Drowsy and content, she cast one more look about the cabin before settling to sleep again, but that one look caught at eyes staring back at her. High in the corner above Balat’s table, half shrouded in shadows, something squatted and stared fixedly at her with black, lidless eyes ringed with yellow. In the dying firelight, Grace had to struggle to see clearly; the shadows wavered and moved across the face of the thing. It stared without blinking, like some predator or evil thing might do. She lay very still in the bed, afraid it was some demon. She would have liked to call out to Balat, but her throat felt tight and she was afraid any sound she made would be too ineffective to wake the man and would anger the demon and bring it down upon her. Unknowingly, she clutched Owl in her fist, her fingernails pressing painfully into the heel of her hand. Then, for a moment the fire blazed up—she heard a sound like logs shifting—and the thing was lit with a shaft of living fire and she saw that its face was white, flat, and then it languidly closed its eyes into no more than slits. Owl! Shivering with a sudden chill, she tore her eyes from the thing and looked down at Owl, still lying lifelessly in her hand. The face was the same. She looked back at the demon-thing where it huddled in the high corner and watched it, eyes still slitted, as it suddenly shook and ruffled its feathers and puffed itself up into a ball, almost twice the size as when she first saw it. She drew back into her blankets, afraid of what it might do next, but it seemed content enough to sit, eyes closed, making small clicking sounds with its beak as it deflated somewhat and settled back on its perch. As abruptly as she had noticed its first, fierce staring at her, now it seemed completely uninterested. Before Grace’s bewildered eyes, it hunched and grew still, and as the fire shifted again, logs falling in among themselves, the light died down and the corner went black and Grace could see nothing at all.
She lay silent and still for a long time, staring into the dark corner, but the thing had disappeared into the blackness. When at last she found her eyelids drooping in exhaustion, she fought back valiantly, willing herself to stay awake, but her need for sleep won out over her unease. Finally, resigned, she fell back into sleep.
When she awoke at dawn, it was to a warmly firelit cabin, Balat moving about as he prepared the morning meal for them. Grace stretched languidly, feeling completely refreshed, and then with a start remembered the dream. Her eyes flew to the high corner but nothing crouched there. The shelf of the wooden beam was empty even of shadows. She inspected Owl, but it was the same small, lifeless figure it had always been. No magic breath of life sprang from it.
Balat brought a bowl to her, half-filled with a thick, hot cereal, capped by a thick slab of bread smeared with honey. As was his pattern now, he set the bowl on the low stool and went to get a cup of fresh water for her as well. Setting the cup beside the bowl, his old eyes smiled at her—and shifted to something behind her. With a shiver of unease like the feeling around her dream, she hesitated, then turned and looked behind her.
Perched on the rough board that backed her bed was the ghost-thing of her dream. It sat not three handspans from her, its large, yellow eyes staring, blinking lazily. Grace shrank back in fear, her head connecting with the wall behind her with a painful crack. Immediately Balat was at her side, drawing her away from the wall, cradling her head in his big, gentle hands. While Grace acquiesced to his ministrations, she kept her eyes fearfully on the dream-thing, and flinched when it craned its neck to get a better look at her.
“Owl,” Balat said. His fingers, light on the back of her head, had found a small lump rising, but no serious damage. He recognized the source of her fear and laid one finger to the ghost-things’ breast, stroking the barred feathers. “Owl,” he repeated. His voice was coaxing, reassuring.
Grace stared in confusion at the dream-thing. It did look like her tiny figure. Daring to tear her eyes from it for a quick moment, she looked closely at Owl, her wooden bird, and she saw again the similarity. Having brought the wooden owl out for inspection, she saw the live owl widen its eyes and bob its head with agitated interest, and she shrank back toward Balat for protection.
He chuckled good-naturedly. While Grace watched, he stretched his forearm out before the ghost-owl, and it obediently climbed onto his arm, large knife-sharp talons gripping the thick material of Balat’s sleeve. The bird half-closed its huge eyes and clicked its beak in that weird, dream-sound way and seemed to take no more notice of Grace at all. She recognized all the things about it that had seemed fearful at night, but now seemed
only very strange.
Grace looked to Balat for some sort of explanation. Still stroking the bird’s downy breast feathers, he spoke slowly to her in his strange language. He gestured to the bird on his arm, to her head, to the scratches and bruises on her bare arm, then to his work table and finally to the wooden owl in her hand. The only word she understood was “owl,” but she somehow thought she felt the explanation. Perhaps the bird on his arm was a magical being, and he had evoked its power, through the wooden image, to give strength to her healing. She had seen the Goddess’ work through animals before. Somewhere, even in the back of her mind where her past seemed dreamlike and unclear, she felt that she had interacted with the Goddess through some other birds in some other place, sometime before. The memory refused to take form, but she felt it nonetheless. The emotions of the memory released her from her fear of the owl. She nodded to Balat.
“Owl,” she said, pointing to the bird on his arm, and, “owl,” holding the small wooden figure. Then she touched a yellowing bruise on her own arm. The grotesque color spoke of healing.
Balat seemed pleased. He reaffirmed her understanding. “Owl,” he said, stroking the bird, and, “owl,” to her small toy. Then, pointing again at the live bird, said, “Hava.”
“Hava?” she questioned.
Balat nodded. He pointed in sequence to himself, to her and to the owl, saying, “Balat, Grace, Hava,” and she understood. In question, she held up the owl figure in her hand. Balat shook his head—he had no personal name for the wooden bird—and pointed to her.
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