This, she knew, was only a lull. Her life was not meant to be lived in pastoral contentment, much as she might wish it. No, there was more for her and she half anticipated, half agonized over its coming. For it would come. If Balat noticed her restiveness, he said nothing. More and more, she knew, they were separating. No longer the young, adoring student and the patient, attentive teacher. It was as if Grace had surpassed him—although she could never hope to know all he knew—and as she shot forward, he fell further and further back. It was a sad process but a natural one. And neither one of them would—or could—stop it. They both accepted it wordlessly, in whatever ways they must.
Grace’s way was to keep to her summer duties and summer routines, regardless of the strange tautness that pulled in her. She roamed the countryside around the forest and gleaned herbs for Balat and kept their home clean and comfortable; she tended to the ills of the colony and blessed their fields; and she spent more and more time in her cliff top cave.
The steps she’d carved out were now deep and stable from use and she could climb to her high perch in record time. Now anytime she felt the need, she could rise above the ground and set her life in perspective from her eagle’s view. She seemed to feel that need ever more often as the taut cord in her tightened.
One day she made specific plans to stay overnight in her aerie. She packed some fruit and bread in her pack and assured herself that Balat had all he needed within reach.
“Are you sure you feel comfortable enough with being alone that long?” she asked him more than once.
Balat’s watery old eyes sparkled at her. “I was alone more years than not before I found you.”
“Yes, I know, but—”
“Go,” Balat said. “I’ll be fine.”
And although nothing could keep her from worrying, she knew he was right. His time was not yet.
“If you should need me—” she began.
“I’ll know how to find you. Go.”
And she did.
Midsummer was full on the land. The air was scented with the smells of long-bloomed flowers and overripe fruit, and filled with the sounds of busy insects. As Grace walked, she could feel the humidity gathering and she guessed it would not be long before clouds erupted from the heights. It was a time of fullness, of richness, the bounty before the cold.
She climbed to her cave and settled in, cloaked in a feeling of peace and well-earned serenity. For the first time in many days she felt an absence of that tension that had been dogging her. She thanked the Goddess for that reprieve.
“This day, this time, is just for me,” she explained. “No one else—just me.”
And the Goddess understood.
She ate sparingly and napped on the warm lip of the cave, awoke and watched a hawk hunt in the distance. She had been right—great, bilious clouds were forming to the southwest, piling one atop another as if they vied with each other to reach furthest upward. Very soon as she watched, she saw the tops of the clouds flatten and shear off, dragged out by the high altitude steering winds. And now she could see which way the clouds would move—toward her.
Already some of the clouds were heavy-bottomed and dark with the weight of rain. Soon one ripped open and from its belly the rain ran in a gray, tattered curtain. Within the cloud itself, lightning flashed mutely, then moments later the thunder rumbled in from the distance. From her perch it was a show of nature more beautiful than Grace had seen.
To the far west, the sun was setting. What few, smaller clouds there were on that horizon were still round and harmless-looking; not the angry, anvil shapes of the storm clouds. These gentler cousins picked up the sun’s dying colors and flushed pink and rose, lavender and lilac. They rode the rays of the setting sun like lost sheep hurrying home. As the sun sank lower, they seemed to go with it, more interested in sleep than a show of temper.
Grace looked southwestward again, and caught her breath. The storm there had mounted intensely just in those few moments that she had looked away. Dark rain spilled from all the clouds now, rain stained blood red by the dying sun. The clouds lumbered angrily along the path their steering winds demanded, heavy and reluctant and whipped by stinging gusts that tore at their sides. Grace was fascinated by the drama, as if she watched feral animals in a violent confrontation, and had no idea whose strength might win out. It was as if the clouds, heavy and redolent with rain, were determined to brood in their place on the horizon but the winds would not allow it. Ripping, tearing, pushing, pounding, the winds battered the clouds into sluggish movement and the clouds lumbered resentfully across the basin.
Soon the first tendrils of wind reached Grace, wrapping around her and swirling the sand in her cave. Slowly, slowly, the behemoths of the storm were being herded up the basin toward her cliff. The lead winds began to hurtle up the rift, buffeting trees and flattening grasses as they came. Already Grace could see the evidence of their cast off vortices as they spun off in loops of destruction.
Grace got to her feet. The energy of the storm beckoned her and she stood at the lip of the cave where she could be fully open to it. The winds whipped around her, plucking at her lightweight clothing, tangling her hair. She breathed in the forces that buffeted her and felt the vibrancy of the storm seep into all the cells of her body. She felt the lifespring of the wind, the spark of animation that drove it, and that spark now flashed in her.
Something broke inside of her. She felt a jolt in her spirit sense and recognized an openness that was not there before. Wonderingly, she was reminded of a stream, half-blocked by a stick of wood, when that wood is suddenly dislodged and swept aside and the stream bounds joyfully into a clear, strong flow. She felt that unhindered flow race through her, energetic and free. Her blood sang and her body pulsed. The feeling was kinetic, climactic.
The wind howled up the rift, slamming into the cliff face and screaming past her. Its force pushed her back but she planted her feet and stood strong against it, not actually resisting. Instead she opened to it, diverting it only in that it channeled through her so that its energy flowed into her. Again she was reminded of the stream, or perhaps of a hollow reed, through which the creative force was conducted. For that moment, she was that hollow reed and the great, violent, awesome forces of the storm—of the Goddess—ran through her like a river. She breathed it in through all her pores and felt it race through her body, and through her firmly planted feet it entered the ground beneath her. She was a lightning rod of power, a conductor for that fearful strength. Again and again it plunged through her and with each wave she felt herself more and more a part of the life flow.
The clouds now reared their dark, glowering heads above her. Their great bulk blackened the sky and the only light was the ominous flashing within their depths. The thunder crashed now in sudden, deafening explosions of sound, shaking the very ground with its force. Any living being for leagues around ran from it in terror.
All but Grace. She stood still, tall, taut, and let the storm play her as it would a string. The wind howled and tore at her; the rain pelted her, plastering her hair and clothes to her slim, trembling body. Blinded by wind and rain, she was almost oblivious to the dark, giant force that reared above her except for knowing that its energy flowed into her and through her into the earth. She was a pillar between earth and sky, the pathway that connected the two, and she gloried in that task. For a brief moment in time, she touched both and felt the electricity that arced between them. For that moment, she was at the center of all creation.
Thunder boomed behind her and she was startled out of her revelation. Blinking against the rain, glancing about as if waking from a dream, she realized that the fury of the storm had passed. Rain sheeted down out of the sky but the greatest part of the black cloud mass had passed over and with it, the bulk of the winds. As quickly as the power of the storm had crackled through her, it was gone now and the last reservoir of energy seeped out of her. She steadied herself against rock, wet and exhausted, and then carefully made her way into the
sheltered back of the cave. Drained but serene, she sank down on her pack and before the rain had ceased she was asleep.
She flew as she slept. She rode the high breezes on eagle’s wings and saw all across the land. From her great height, she could follow the storm that lumbered, growling, away into the night. It flashed intermittently and the low rumbles of its thunder came back to her as only deep vibrations across the distance. From very high up, the storm now seemed very small.
She flew across the rift, across the cliff top that held her small cave, across the dark forest. Guided by thoughts that had no words to them, she went to Balat’s cabin and looked within. The old man slept peacefully on his pallet near the hearth. She saw the shallow rise and fall of his thin chest and she knew he slept dreamlessly. She went on.
Rising up to a spectacular height, she noted how the edges of the dark forest curved and merged with the black night sky. Only a few faint stars scattered their light on the world. She soared along, aimless, serene. There was nothing that she needed to do but float.
Her eye caught on something bright in the darkness. She did not really want to look closely at it; her diffuse peacefulness was too nice to pull away from. But the white thing glittered at her and played at the edge of her awareness. What was it?
She focused on it, and felt a chill upon her bodiless spirit. It was those mountains, the highest, snow-covered tip of those mountains she had seen on her ramblings. They beckoned her and she was afraid. What were they to her? What did they hold for her? She asked the questions but had no desire to know the answers. Not yet, she told the spirit of the black night; not yet. And somewhere she knew she had won her reprieve.
Chilled by the mysterious encounter, she retreated back to her cave, past Balat’s cabin, past the forest into her tired, aching body. Slipping back into her husk of flesh, she roused groggily, turned onto her side and slept again.
When she returned to the colony, it was to find Balat out soaking up the sun and the forest alive with the sounds of activity. The people had begun preparing for the harvest.
“So soon,” Grace noted as she took a chair beside Balat and showed him the treasures she had brought him.
“The heat ripens things more quickly,” he said. “It should also make for more harvest of the plants and herbs I need. What did you find for me this time?”
“Mint,” she said, and pulled a large leafy plant from her pack. He was delighted, as she knew he would be.
“Now the children won’t fuss so over the taste of my medicines.” He took the plant. “What else?”
Grace laughed at him. “You are the child,” she teased. But she brought out another rock succulent.
“Ah,” he beamed. “I can make more salve, now. What else?”
Item by item they played their game until Grace’s pack was empty. Balat sat pleased, his lap full of greens, his mind already turning to recipes.
“What?” Grace asked, “no news for me?”
“No.” Balat shook his head, hardly listening. Then he blinked at her. “Yes. Lylah was here looking for you. She would like you to come see her.”
“Was it something important?” Grace emptied the last grains of dirt from her pack.
“She didn’t say so.”
“I’ll go tomorrow. I’m hungry now. What do we have for dinner, or did you eat everything I had prepared?”
“No, I did not,” he said in a playfully wounded voice. “I left the red tubers and we have milk.”
“Ug.” Grace hated red tubers and milk, and well Balat knew that. She glared at the old man, knowing full well he was joking. “Then I guess it’s red tubers and mushrooms.” Balat hated mushrooms. He made a face that showed plainly his opinion of the menu, and they both broke into laughter.
“Help me carry my plants inside,” he bargained with her, “and I will make dinner.”
“Done.”
The next morning, Grace helped Balat around the cabin—and fixed his breakfast—before she made her way through the forest to Lylah’s cabin. Lylah was not one of Grace’s favorite patients. She was a moody, middle-aged woman who complained more often than not. Life was a struggle for her. Her children were ungrateful, her husband was uncommunicative and her work was always harder than anyone else’s, or at least it seemed so to her. Grace was in no hurry to minister to the woman, although even as she recognized that, she prayed to the Goddess for tolerance.
The little cabin Lylah shared with her husband, Mot, seemed cheerless in the morning shade of the forest. Grace saw no smoke rising from the chimney, no motion around the yard. She stepped to the door and knocked.
“Who is it?” Lylah’s voice challenged. She sounded querulous.
“It’s Grace. Balat said you wanted to see me.”
Even alerted to Lylah’s unpleasant mood by her voice through the door, Grace was not expecting the sight that met her eyes when Lylah opened the door. The woman was distraught. Her face was red and blotched from crying, and her mouth was pulled down into an anguished line. She clutched a rag in her hands, half damp from tears, and worried it constantly. When she met Grace’s eyes, she burst into a new spate of crying.
“Lylah!” Grace said, “What is it? What’s wrong?” She could not wish such pain on even the most difficult person, and she propelled Lylah backwards into the cabin and closed the door behind them. “Come sit down, and tell me what’s wrong.”
“I-I’m not a young woman,” Lylah stammered through her tears. Sitting facing Grace, she now found it difficult to meet the younger woman’s eyes and she wrung her cloth and looked distractedly around the room. “I already have so much to do, and Mot doesn’t help me, you know, and my oth—my children—don’t—don’t appreciate what I’ve done. They never come to see if I need help. They act as if they don’t even have a mother most of the time, and—”
“Lylah,” Grace broke in on the start of a familiar reverie. “What is the reason you called for me? It’s not this problem with your children or with Mot. What is it that’s upsetting you?”
Lylah looked crushed and tears welled out of her eyes. “Even you don’t care—!”
“Lylah.” Grace shook the woman’s shoulders once, firmly. “If I didn’t care I wouldn’t be here. You called me for one reason only. What is that reason?”
Chastised, Lylah dabbed at her eyes. She tried to form words calmly but in the end they wailed out of her in a high keening voice.
“I’m pregnant!”
And she burst into tears.
Grace sat back and stared at the woman. Pregnant? At her age? The woman should have been years past childbearing.
“Are you sure?” Grace asked.
“Yes, I’m sure,” Lylah wailed. “I’ve had five others; I know the signs.”
Ignoring the hurt tone of voice, Grace jumped ahead. “Have you been having your courses all along until now? Did you know you could still bear?”
Lylah shook her head and the tears ran zigzag paths down her cheeks. “No. I haven’t had courses for months—years. Oh, I’d spot now and then, but nothing like when I was younger.” She faced Grace for the first time. “But I know I am. I’m sick in the mornings and my back aches and I’ve lost what little waist I had.” She sat forward on her chair, and pinned Grace with her eyes. “Grace, I can’t have a baby now! Help me!” And she dissolved into tears again.
Grace’s mind jumped immediately to all possible considerations. She could abort the pregnancy—she and Balat had the medicines. The woman was older than was safe for childbearing, but wasn’t this—all—pregnancy a gift from the Goddess? How could Grace presume to destroy what the Goddess had created? Yet the woman was obviously not pleased at the prospect of renewed motherhood; how nurturing a mother would she be to an unwanted child? But perhaps this child would be the one who would teach the woman self-direction and self-responsibility. But how could Grace know that? How could she make any kind of determination? The possibilities whirled through her mind, advantages, disadvantages, questions and judgmen
ts.
“Will you help me, Grace?” Lylah asked again, breaking into Grace’s thoughts. “This is just too much for me to bear. I can’t have a child now. I just can’t!”
Stalling, Grace asked. “What about Mot? Does he know? What are his thoughts?”
“He knows,” Lylah sniffed. “I told him. He didn’t say anything but he looked stricken. He doesn’t even speak to me; how can he possibly relate to a child? He doesn’t want it, either.”
Grace sat back. “You might change your mind, in time. You might grow to accept—”
“No!” Lylah wailed. “I won’t! I don’t want it!” She leaned closer to Grace, tears streaming, voice trembling. “I’m almost afraid I’ll die,” she said in a choked whisper.
Grace was silent for a moment, thinking, planning, arguing with herself. The cabin was still except for the sound of Lylah’s whimpering.
“I will attend to it,” Grace said finally.
Lylah brightened. “Then you’ll help me?”
“I didn’t say that,” Grace returned quickly. She rose from her chair. “I will—ask the Goddess for guidance. This is a very grave matter, and I have no right to impose my will—or yours—on the Goddess.” She stared down at Lylah, knowing she could give the woman no false assurances. “I do not know what the answer will be. But I will attend to it.”
“But—”
“How far along are you?”
Lylah thought back. “Less than three moons.”
Grace nodded. “We have some time at least. Not much, but some. I will attend to it and bring you an answer back.” She went to the door. “In the meantime I want you to take care of yourself. Eat healthful foods. You will need your strength regardless of what the answer is.”
“A-all right.” Lylah was calmed by Grace’s clear sense of purpose, if not her words. “But, please ... pray for me.”
Grace gave her a small smile. “I will. Be at peace. Whatever must be, will be. We must have faith in that.”
“Yes,” Lylah said, but Grace heard no conviction in her voice.
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