They led her to the mountains.
CHAPTER 18
Greer awoke, anxious, confused. It was already late morning. The sun streamed down into the clearing, harsh and brilliant. Before her, a small pile of ashes stirred in the breeze. Beyond that, the mountains glittered.
She rose and stretched, her senses reaching. The almost inaudible whisper of a stream came to her and she followed the sound to the tiny rivulet that seeped from the hillside. Kneeling beside it, she whispered a years-old prayer of honor and gratitude and touched the water to her lips.
From the height of the wooded crest, the world sprawled before her. The forest extended out in a dark carpet for most of the distance she could see, but beyond that were some barer lowlands and, to the southeast, the mountains. She would go there—eventually. First she had something to see to.
She moved quietly through the trees, letting old, forgotten memories and buried instincts guide her. She paused often, questing, sensing for the way to go. Finally it would come and she would move on. Remembrances in the shape of eerie feelings and isolated emotions touched her; certain places struck her awareness and she went slowly through them to gather up all the tattered remnants of a past time.
Slowly, carefully, she neared the familiar clearing and stepped into it. Memories inhabited it like ghosts. Her eyes jumped to the tree stump with its axe-sliced chopping surface, to the simple wooden bench in the sun, to the place where the firewood used to be stacked.
And beyond them all, the cabin.
She moved closer. The door, she saw, was ajar, and for a moment the thought flashed in her that someone else lived there now but just as quickly she realized that the door only sagged open because one of the leather hinges was rotted through. She stepped up to it and pushed it open. The cabin was dark and musty inside. She went in.
There was little left. The modest, useful things were gone: the table, the stools, the crockery. The cot in the back corner lay bare of its ticking, only the rough wood left. The metal pots were gone, and all the medicines.
But on the floor near the wall, his crystals and stones still sat as if he might come back for them any moment. The odd markings still showed faintly on the rough walls. Impulsively she glanced up at the high, shadowy corner but no silent face returned her look. She turned to go.
Something caught the corner of her eye. Crossing the bare room, she peered back at the furthest wall beyond her cot. There, hung on its stained leather strap, was her owl charm—Dya. She carefully retrieved it from the peg and turned the little form in her hand. The string was discolored, the carefully applied feathers were matted and stained but the face was the same—clear, knowing, silent. She smiled briefly at the charm, then put it back in its solitary place. This time she left the cabin.
She started away from the colony by a little-used trail she remembered. She had used it some times when she had wanted to slip away unseen. It circled behind another cabin; she searched her memory for the occupant. Ah, yes, now she remembered: the weaver.
As if her questing attentiveness had called out to him, he stepped out on the trail in front of her. He eyed her curiously, not recognizing her woman’s face or ragged clothes.
“Jeh,” she said softly. The word felt foreign on her tongue after so long. She smiled.
“By the Goddess—” he inhaled sharply. “Is it you? Come back to us?”
She drew herself up in a way that would become characteristic of her. Now it felt odd. “I am Greer,” she told him solemnly. “I go where the Goddess directs me.” She gestured around her with one hand. “I—wanted to see, again, before I …” There were no words to explain.
He needed none. He stepped close, his eyes searching hers. They found what they sought and he was awed. He reached out and took her hand tentatively in his.
“You are the one,” he whispered. “The one I dreamed about.”
Greer met his eyes. “Yes.”
Before she could stop him, he sank to his knees before her. “Lady Priestess,” he said. “What may I do? How—”
“Rise up,” she told him. When he seemed reluctant, she pulled on his hand. “No; rise up. I need no obeisance, Jeh. I am only Her vessel. Save your worship for Her.”
On his feet again, Jeh seemed uncertain. “But—Greer. Surely there is some way I could do Her honor by you.”
A thought came to Greer. She looked down at her dirty, ragged clothes. “You honor Her most beautifully with your weaving, Jeh. Could you give me something to wear—a robe, even a simple shift? I would ask that of you.”
Jeh smiled. “Of course. Come in.”
Inside his cabin seemed much as she remembered it: the loom, the beautiful tapestries. While he went to a large wooden chest, she glanced around at the vivid memories.
“Where is Beth?”
“In the fields, of course,” he laughed.
“Of course.” Greer smiled. “It is spring.”
Jeh turned from the chest to speak to her and his eyes saw again the dream image of her. He was overcome by waves of adoration, so much so that his knees threatened to buckle again.
“Yes?” she said and went to him quickly to forestall the act. “You have something I could wear?”
He remembered himself and pulled out the robe he had found. Although it was no longer new, the stark black and white with the slash of red still blazed.
“I—took this from your cabin when—when ...”
Greer looked at it fondly, remembering, but did not touch it.
“I can’t wear that, Jeh,” she said gently. “That belongs here with your people.” She searched the trunk with her eyes. “What about that one? The brown.”
Jeh laid the robe of magic carefully aside and pulled out the brown one she’d indicated.
“This? But this is nothing, just for utility. It has no pattern, no color.”
Greer took the light robe from him and held it up. The brown of the dyed threads looked golden in one light, dulled into a hazel-green in another. The color seemed drab enough, but it changed ever so subtly.
“This one,” she pronounced. Then, to Jeh, “If I may?”
“Of course. If that is what you wish.” He glanced back at the vibrant priestess’ robe.
“It is.” She touched the faded rags she was wearing and looked around. “I am so dirty. Do you have water, Jeh? So I might wash?”
“I’ll get some.” He started outside. “Rest, if you like, or help yourself to food. You may have anything.”
She gave him a smile of gratitude. “Just water.”
When she had bathed and replaced her rags with the new simple robe, she felt much more human. Jeh had plied her with questions about where she’d been and where she would go, but to most of his questions she had no answers.
“I’ve been where I needed to go and I will go where I need to be; I can’t tell you more than that.” She thanked him for his kindness and made ready to go.
“Alone? With nothing?” he asked.
“I have traveled this way for—I don’t know—years. I carry what I need inside of me.”
But he wouldn’t have it. Finally, remembering, he found something in a hidden spot. Taking her hand, he opened it and lay a knife on her palm.
“Do you remember this?” he asked.
Greer stared at it and all sorts of feelings poured into her. Days of foraging, digging root plants, pictures drawn in sand. All of his care—his teaching, his protection, his nurturing—imbued the knife. Touching it, she could almost sense him there with her.
“Balat,” she whispered brokenly and stroked the knife like one would a beloved friend.
“He died at the same time you—”
“I know. I saw, before I left.” She raised shining eyes to Jeh. “Thank you. I am glad you keep his memory and his position. You do honor to us both.” She slid the knife into the sash at her waist. “Now I must go.”
Jeh walked with her to the path. “If people … want to find you, see you, how should I tell them to g
o?”
“There is no need.” She shook her head. “Those who have need of me will find me. Take care, Jeh.”
And she took up her solitary path again.
She could not always see the white tips of the mountains but she moved unerringly toward them. The places she traveled had a vague familiarity to her, hardly perceptible, haunting. Occasionally she would come to a place that touched old, childborne emotions in her and she would stop and look around. Inevitably when she had turned a half circle and looked back at the way she had come, that perspective brought memories of pain and fear and confusion. In the wake of the sensations, she would sit quietly for a time, knees up, head down, a strange sadness filling her, and she would sit so until the full tide of the feeling had crested and ebbed. Only then would she go on.
At night she felt a great aloneness, as if even the Goddess had turned elsewhere. She dreamed no dreams, saw no visions. Balat’s knife lay cold and lifeless against her ribs. She felt alone—and empty. Once the isolation was so great, she cried with it, yet even tears would not come. She felt as if all her fluids, her organs, her lifeblood had been sucked from her and she was only an empty shell that walked, day after day. She felt no connection to anything—empty, alone, adrift.
“Dear Goddess,” she prayed one long, sleepless night to a vacuous sky, “I await You. I am Your vessel, empty and cold. I wait for You to flow into me, to fill me. I—I am ready.”
And still nothing happened.
She walked on.
CHAPTER 19
It was going to be another brilliant spring day. The woman carried her bucket from the half-underground sodhouse to the spring for filling and gloried in the day. The sky was a turquoise so brilliant it rivaled the stones she occasionally found and the trees along the stream were bursting with new green leaves and twittering birds. As her bucket filled with clear, sweet water, she prayed silent thanks.
“Hannah,” another woman called from the path. “Cybele is at your house. She has little Lato with her. He’s fussing again.”
“All right.” Hannah waited another moment as the water rose to the brim of her bucket, then pulled it, dripping, from the stream. The other woman stood ready to take her place at the shallow streamside.
“Cybele has no sense for her son,” the woman Rhea said. “She doesn’t have any awareness for him.”
“Not yet,” Hannah agreed, shaking the last drops from the bottom of her bucket. “But he is less than a moon old. She will develop more feeling for him in time. I’ve seen new mothers do that.”
“I hope so,” Rhea clucked. She shook her head, changing the subject. “You have always had that sense, even though you’ve borne no children. You must have been born a mother.”
Hannah laughed, a soft, sweet sound. “Perhaps I was. The Goddess gives Her gifts where She will.”
“Yes, I have seen that often enough. But don’t you—”
“I don’t want to keep Cybele waiting,” Hannah broke in. That much was truth, although she also did not want to fend off Rhea’s questions yet again. Hannah had no answer for the other woman. If she bore children it would be in the Goddess’ time; if she married, that would also be in the Goddess’ time. Whatever path opened to her, she would know only when she stood at its threshold.
She thrust aside the unspoken, yet familiar, exchange and turned her attention to Cybele. As she neared her own home, she could see the new mother standing there, Lato crying in her arms. Cybele jostled the child to quiet him, blind to the fact that her bobbling of him was more a vexation than a balm to his fussiness. Hannah sighed and sent a silent plea to the Goddess: please don’t let her be too long in bonding with her child.
“Good morning, Cybele,” she called cheerfully. At her voice, Lato seemed to catch his crying, then it resumed.
“Oh, Hannah!” Cybele moaned. “He’s impossible today! I’ve tried everything!” Cybele held the baby away from her as if Hannah might take him but the healer woman only glanced down at Lato as she walked to her door, bucket in hand.
“Come inside. I’ve just gotten water and I’ll make some tea. Come on.”
Cybele ducked inside the low doorframe behind Hannah, her child still held away from her like an unappealing bundle. Hannah set her bucket down on the hard-packed dirt floor, then opened the back door to allow light and air easy draw through the small, dark sodhouse. While Cybele stood expectantly in the middle of the room, Hannah ladled water into a pot in the fireplace and began to prepare mugs of tea.
“He hasn’t stopped crying all morning,” Cybele complained, still trying to make Lato available to Hannah. To her chagrin, the healer seemed eternally busy and Hannah’s back was all that was offered her.
“Sit down,” Hannah said. “We’ll see what we can do. I haven’t had a thing to eat yet.” She puttered over the mugs. “Has Lato eaten yet this morning?”
“Yes, I gave him suck before I even got out of bed.”
“And he ate well?”
“Yes.” Cybele wrinkled her nose at her son. “Then he began to cry and hasn’t stopped since.”
“Show me what you did with him this morning.”
Cybele turned surprised eyes on Hannah. “Show you what I—how I nursed him?”
“Yes.” Hannah was too busy ladling hot water into mugs to notice Cybele’s baffled expression.
“Well, I—Diehl brought Lato to me and I gave him my breast ...”
“Don’t tell me.” Hannah stirred the tea. “Show me.”
Still puzzled, Cybele shrugged and did as the healer asked. She opened her shift and put Lato to her nipple. The infant screamed and waved tiny fists.
“See how he is?” Cybele said in exasperation.
Hannah kept stirring. “What was it like this morning? What were you thinking of? What thoughts did you have?”
Cybele snorted. “This morning I was thinking how beautiful he was. But that was before—”
“Tell me what you thought. Tell me exactly what went through your mind. Pretend it’s still this morning. You thought he was beautiful, and ...?”
Cybele touched the tiny red face at her breast, her brows knitted, but the tip of her finger gentle on his cheek. “He is so tiny, such a perfect little miniature. He looks like Diehl. He still amazes me; I don’t understand how I could carry him for nine months and not know him, not realize that he is a complete, tiny, real person. He is so perfect. See his tiny little ears? And his nose?” With each feature she mentioned, she stroked that part of her son with a light, loving fingertip. He fussed at first but she bent and kissed his forehead and that seemed to soothe him somewhat. At Cybele’s back, Hannah sipped her mug of tea and watched the exchange.
“What else did you think this morning?” she asked softly.
“Oh,” Cybele sighed, “just that I could see the spark of the Goddess in those eyes. His eyes are so dark, almost black, but they shine so. My little Lato, don’t screw your face up so; I can’t see your eyes. Open your eyes, baby, so I can see you. Lato?”
As she spoke, she caressed the tiny, knotted brows with a smoothing touch. Lato fussed, but halfheartedly. His waving fists seemed only tokens of impossibility.
“And did he open his eyes for you this morning?” Hannah asked.
Cybele smiled dreamily. “Yes. He did. While he was sucking, he opened them and looked around. Didn’t you, little Lato? Didn’t you do that?” Cooing wordlessly to him, Cybele pulled Lato close and gave her nipple to him. He rejected it once, jerked his head away, then nuzzled her breast and fastened onto the nipple. She clucked happily to him and stroked the small head of soft, downy hair.
“Then what?” Hannah prompted.
Cybele sighed, never taking her eyes from her son. “He is so tiny, so wonderful. You know, I was almost afraid of him at first, but I know now there’s nothing to be afraid of. And when he sucks ...”
An expression that might have been pain touched her face.
“Yes?”
“Oh, just that, when he sucks, s
ometimes it feels as if ... as if he is sucking at my very soul, as if he is pulling on my center, as if there is a wire from my nipple to my belly and as he sucks it pulls, tighter and tighter. Sometimes it hurts, but sometimes it feels—I don’t know—it tingles, my whole body tingles and it’s almost like when Diehl sucks on my breasts when we make love; it’s almost sexual. But it feels good. It feels very, very good. I mean, I don’t really think of Lato sexually, but I love it when he sucks. You don’t think that’s bad, do you? To like that feeling?”
“I don’t think so, no,” said Hannah. “I think all mothers feel what you do and I think it’s completely normal. He’s quite content now, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” Cybele smiled. “Isn’t he wonderful?”
“Very wonderful.” Hannah sat down next to Cybele and gazed at the tiny face at her breast. “And I think he knows how you feel right now. Cybele, do you see what you’ve done?”
Cybele looked up at Hannah as if just realizing where she was. Her eyes were wide with pleasure. “He stopped fussing!” She whispered joyously. “You did it!”
“Not I.” Hannah sat back. “You did it. I did nothing but watch. But you see what happened? Do you understand what you did?”
“Yes, I—I think so. I just ... recaptured my mood from this morning, and—and he calmed.”
“You were calm and he mirrored that. Now, without thinking too much about it, how were you after you fed him this morning?”
“Oh, I was so content when he was feeding and then just as I was dressing him for the day, Diehl said he hoped his nursing wouldn’t pull my breasts out of shape! I got furious at him, to think that—”
Hannah held up a hand to stop her. “See? He’s fidgeting. Leave off about Diehl. Wait until he’s asleep, then you and Diehl can discuss his remark. Remember that you are intensely connected to your son and through that connection, he feels what you feel. If you want him to be calm, you must be calm. If you are agitated, he will be agitated. Do you see?”
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