And then a memory came to her, of another day on the mountain, years past. Midmorning in a brilliant autumn it had been, and she, still new alone and hopeful, had heard the sound of the rising mist and followed it all the way back to the ridge overlooking the valley, so close she could feel the weight of the cloud in the air, so close she must cringe at the scream of the man it drove to the ground. So close she could see it as she’d not seen it when it came for her. Soft, it appeared, like the cotton that flew from the trees in spring. Soft even as the color dampened, and it was a vague, blurry, terrible thing, falling on him. Frozen, she watched it drop and sink into his skin, and covered her ears against wails that called back the sensation of the thing as it had reached through her, weaving itself around muscle and bone. She had thrown it off. He could not. Like water drawn into the soil, it found its way and took him.
She had never come so close again, until today, when the call of the child drew her. There again was the smothering cloud, there again the writhing victim. It descended upon her, but where in time past the mist flowed unchecked, now it pounded at the child, a wave against the jetty, an invader rattling an iron gate. It could not enter. In the first, stunned moments on the ridge, she had not marked what she did now. Pursued, hurt, near broken, the child had not been taken.
Reluctantly, Laysia opened her mind to the mist. She could hear it, always, its ugly whispering, a noise beneath all the noise of the wood, of the day and the night. But it was like a pain grown dull, with the mind turned from it. Its sting had subsided to an ache that could be set aside. Now she did not ignore it. She did not push it away. She let the pain stab at her. She listened. And through the miserable spasm came a strange, unfamiliar note: outrage. Outrage, fury, and frustration.
When the sun had inched a fraction higher in the morning sky, they reached a clearing where a low stone wall kept a crowded garden from spreading into the forest. Like the hillside that ran into the valley, it was full of everything — plump yellow squash peeking beneath wide leaves, vines full of small tomatoes that tumbled over the wall, studded with red and green and orange fruit, a line of fringed corn, like a row of tall women standing along the back, even a few grapevines that leaned over the stones in the far corner. Behind it, half hidden by the corn, stood the house. It was a stout little cottage made of stone and wood with a chimney sprouting from one side of the roof. The rest of it was all topped with a fleecy curtain of moss that hung over the eaves. Even from the outside, Kate could tell it was a light-filled place, because every wall held an open window. Beneath each of these were flowers — delicate open-palms, like the ones Nell had filled their room with in the sanctuary, and others Mistress Elna had showed her in the first garden: the bell-like dangles in their many colors, the yellow-and-purple bee-sweet, the red-and-orange dawnbuds. As they neared the house, the morning air thickened with the smell of them — vanilla and mint and honey.
The woman used her hip to push open the front door of the house. Before Kate saw the inside of the cottage, she caught a whiff of books mixing with the scent of flowers, and so was disposed to like the place. Like Liyla’s house, it had a large main room with a fireplace and a smooth old table with sturdy chairs, but unlike Liyla’s, it was a sunny, airy space, brightened by a soft woven rug and crowded with books. Shelves of them stretched up into the rafters and had been hung above the windows made up of polished boards. Books sat in stacks beside several cushioned chairs and in a small basket near the woven rug; books rested on a side table beside covered dishes and stood on a cart beneath the plates and cutlery and an old varnished pitcher with a chipped handle. At the sanctuary, they’d said the books in the great library were only a fraction of the ones that had been before, in the old times. Kate guessed maybe the others were crammed into this small, sweet-smelling cottage.
There was not enough time for looking just then. The woman moved directly to the back wall, where three doors led to other rooms, and pushed at the right-most of them. Kate followed her into a small bedroom with a wide bed. She set Nell gently down upon it.
Nell sighed softly, and Kate felt her shoulders relax at the sound of it. In that small sound, she could hear again the sister she knew. Nell burrowed into the bedclothes, her face half in shadow. But Kate could see that the tension had gone from it. A crisscross of morning light, streaming through the window over the bed, fell across her still form.
She would have liked to sit down, even lie down near Nell, and wait for her to wake up, but the woman put a finger to her lips and motioned her out. When she’d closed the door behind them, she said, “She’s away from it now and can rest. They can’t reach her here.”
Now that they were face-to-face, Kate felt shy. The woman stood awkwardly before her, saying nothing else, and Kate wondered what to do next. She looked around the room, seeking inspiration. The woman confused her: silent, uncomfortable, staring. Maybe she ought to go get Susan now. She suggested as much, but Laysia looked at her with alarm.
“Back through the mist? What if it goes after you?”
“But I didn’t break any rules!”
The woman looked swiftly at the closed door of Nell’s room.
“What rule could she have broken? She’s only a child!”
Kate shrugged. She didn’t know. But the woman’s mention of the mist worried her. What about Susan and Max and Jean?
“I need to go back and wait for the others. They’re coming.”
Before either of them could say anything more, her stomach said it for her, loudly. And for the first time, the woman’s smile reached her eyes. Kate was surprised. Gone was all the timidity, all the holding back she had sensed on the ridgetop.
“And again, years alone have made me stupid,” Laysia said. “A wise man once told me that, after all, the first of things is a good meal of bread and cheese. Sometimes I think now it’s the best of them, too. Here, sit.”
She motioned to the table, and Kate sat, watching her as she busied herself at a cupboard by the front door. She brought over the chipped pitcher and Kate saw now it was full of water. Kate fidgeted at the table, wondering how Susan would know where to come. What if she walked the other way into the woods? What if, even now, she was circling, calling for them?
“Mistress Laysia?”
The woman looked up, the last of the smile still on her face. “Laysia,” she said. “Only. I’m no teacher.”
Kate thought that a strange thing to say for someone with so many books. But adults were often strange.
“I can’t stay here. Susan will be looking for us. I need to get back to the top of the hill.”
Laysia set a mug and a plate in front of her.
“Rest easy. I’ll know if someone comes up through the mist. The sound of it changes. If I hear that, we’ll go.”
“Hear it? But we’re so far!”
The sad smile replaced the easy one. “If the mist has come for you, its voice lingers. Perhaps your sister will hear it when she wakes.”
Kate said nothing. She was keenly aware of being behind, too slow to catch what others did. Maybe this was like that. She’d have to wait for Nell, now, to tell her what it all meant. She hated to, for two reasons — first, because Nell despised the job, and second, because she’d never let her forget it. Nell, even more than Susan, liked to remind Kate that she was younger and would never catch up. Every year older Kate got, Nell got, too — evidence, her mother had once confirmed, that the universe was not fair. She lived with it, but she didn’t like it. Thinking that way sent a pang of guilt through her, and she looked furtively at the door behind which Nell slept.
“She’ll be okay now, right?” she asked the woman.
Laysia nodded. She lifted the cloth off one of the covered dishes, sending a whiff of fresh bread into the air. Beside it she placed a plate of mild-smelling cheese.
“Soon she’ll be thanking you for bringing her.”
Kate doubted that.
“Is that what happened to you?” she asked, hoping to change the
subject. “Someone pulled you away from it?”
The woman shook her head.
“Didn’t you have any family, to come for you?” Kate asked.
At this, Laysia winced, and Kate flushed. Nell had once complained that she asked stupid questions, and too many of them. Now she kicked herself inside, thinking this must have been the stupidest of all. But after a moment, Laysia said. “I had family. A brother. But he couldn’t come.”
Kate thought of Max. She couldn’t help herself.
“Why not?”
Laysia leaned back in her chair. “That’s a story. A long one.”
But Kate was familiar with stories, and she knew a statement like that was as much a beginning as Once upon a time.
She did not like to tell the child unhappy stories, but this was one who had climbed through the mist and seen her sister nearly taken. This was the child who had walked in dreams. Still, grief clung to the words and made it hard to begin. Laysia glanced at the worn books and wished one of them could speak for her. But the stories in them belonged to the ancients, and this one, this small private tale of anguish and loss, had no place there. What mattered one exile, one woman alone? The visions of the orchard had been gifts of the infinite mind, the pattern maker. Even if born in bitterness, they were grand enough to reach through time. She had only herself — a voice unused to speech, and words unpolished and workmanlike, too narrow to fit the tale. Yet she had been asked, and the small one waited in silence, in this place where silence had gathered too long. So she began.
It was my brother who saved me first,” the woman said, and Kate thought again of Max. “Like many others, I was unwanted, a girl child born unexpected, when only a boy would serve. They were farmers, my parents, and needed strong arms and a broad back, if they needed a second mouth to feed at all. Of course, I know this only from my brother, who told me later. I begged him so often for details of them, the memories almost seem my own, but they’re not.”
The woman laughed at herself. She had taken a seat at the table and was running her hands over a section where the good, dark, varnished wood had dulled. Kate wondered how many hours the woman had sat here, rubbing her fingers in that single spot.
“My brother was already half grown when I was born, and he was a great one for hearing things and spying them out. He heard my parents talk of putting me away. Do they still call it that, in the villages? I always thought it strange, as if a child is a thing to lock in a cupboard or set out in the woods with the trash.”
She looked up at Kate, who could only shrug, and quickly looked away again. “Maybe they have different words for it now. But at any rate, he heard, and heard, too, word of the hooded ones, though these were just market tales. He thought to find one or, failing that, to raise me on his own in the ruins. He might have done it, too, he was so stubborn.”
She laughed again, but a little dread crept into Kate, listening to the story. She had a feeling she knew what was coming. At home, she never liked stories like this, where the good people didn’t make it to the end. She didn’t even like to read about all the trouble people had on their way to happy endings. She’d beg Susan to tell her the end, to avoid the awful waiting for the bad thing that was coming. Now, though, she kept quiet, reminding herself that she needed to know things here, without the others to help her.
“As it happened, he found the fabled powerful ones, and they gave us sanctuary. My brother loved the life in the valley. We both did, when I grew old enough to know anything. He was much celebrated there, having come away on his own, a boy so young. And then, too, he was eager to be taught and had a quick and ready mind. So he learned, and moved up in rank, and came each night to tell me stories of his lessons. I doubt you’ve heard those yet, being so young, but they were wondrous. As time passed, I wanted nothing more than to be like him, to learn what he learned, to discover for myself whether the marvels of those stories were true.”
Kate had spent enough nights hearing Nell argue with Susan to begin to understand.
“But they wouldn’t let you.”
The woman shook her head. Her hands had retreated into her lap, and now she glanced out the northern window, where the sun glossed the trees. The birds were making a racket in the branches, and suddenly a cloud of them rose at once, dark pebbles thrown into the sky. They swooped and played and then settled again to blacken the branches.
“It was not the way, for girls. So I sought answers in books. When that wasn’t enough, I began to frequent the scholars’ garden. Things were different in those years. The Guide had just been elevated, and the council was still of two minds.”
Kate blinked, confused. She warned herself against asking. No stupid questions. Nell’s voice rang in her head. But the woman noticed, and paused.
“I mean, they were not as set in their ways as they are now. My doing, I suppose. At that time, there was an old man, a great scholar, who thought that those like me, who sought learning, should have our chance with the mysteries. He was overruled many times, but he went his way and invited me to learn. So I did, coming at night to meet him outside the walls, among the crops. I came, and others, too, for a time.”
Outside, the blackbirds had started their commotion again. Their hectoring voices tumbled from the trees and through the windows and made Kate feel that they were urging the story on to its bad end. She kept thinking of Laysia’s brother, the smart, quick one, the brave one who had saved her. She wondered who had hurt him.
But the woman went on, ignoring the birds.
“How could I know the doings of the great ones? The council is full of intrigue and pride — that’s what my teacher told me — and yet I heard those words as nothing more than the words in a story, to be set aside, to be moved past as if you understood them. I didn’t understand them, didn’t see the danger coming. But then, perhaps, neither did he. He was an old man, as I said, and had weathered so much. Perhaps he thought this, too, was only the bubbling jealousy of young men, which passes, in time. Only it didn’t. Or perhaps it was that he didn’t understand my impatience, my passion. I don’t know.”
Kate sat perfectly still, knowing she and the racket of blackbirds and the late-morning sun gilding the windows were forgotten. She was used to listening in silence to this kind of talk. Even at home, she’d learned that when people talked this way, if she stayed quiet enough, she’d learn the answers to questions she didn’t know to ask.
“So we went on that way, for a while. And the fights of the great ones grew more heated, until to his surprise, I think, Tur Nurayim was turned out of the council and shunned. Exile was not the same then, you see. Still, it hurt him. His students left him, afraid of the taint of it. All but me. He built this place then and taught me in solitude. And perhaps I wasn’t enough, for he died not long after. And then I — broken a little, too, I think — grew impatient. And bold. I thought I would show the elders the wrong they did. I would convince them. I decided to enter the heart, where the books of mystery are kept, and prove that I belonged among them.”
Kate looked up sharply at that, but Laysia, her finger again circling the wood grain of the tabletop, didn’t see.
“A great lock keeps the gate of the inner garden closed,” she said. “It has no key. The legend is that only the worthy can open it, a scholar with the power of a trained mind. I found that to be true. It took me a long time, but I managed it. When I did — and I’d gotten inside — they found me.”
She remembered Kate then, because she looked up with that sad smile of hers. “They saw that I had gotten in, but it meant nothing. Worse, it meant that I had betrayed them — broken their rules. And so they put me out. In exactly the way they put your sister out. I was the first exile.”
Kate waited. She thought she must have lost the thread of the story now, because of the brother. She’d been listening for him. When Laysia failed to go on, she finally asked what happened to him.
The look on the woman’s face at her question made Kate think at first it must be ano
ther stupid one, and that she’d failed to hear Laysia tell her about her brother’s accident or sickness. She started to apologize, but the woman held up a hand.
“No, it’s all right. I should have said. I have no knack for stories, do I?” She shook her head, trying to laugh, but no sound came with it. At last she sighed, like someone very old, or very tired.
“My brother. He’d become a great favorite of the council by then. A rising scholar, a great mind, a champion of the ancients and an upholder of the pattern. That’s a great thing for a young man. For anyone, really. And he did protect them. He was still good at hearing things, even then. Still good at spying things out. It was he that saw me go to the garden that day. And it was he who told them I was there. My brother — Lan.”
The arguments of sages could be heated, but they had never been hateful, until the end. Laysia had told herself often enough that she had been blind not to see what lay ahead, but then Tur Nurayim himself had been blind to it. He had seen things always in the pretty terms of debate — are we this or are we that? What road is best, what manner of thought? He did not understand until the end the dangerous nature of threats.
“Many have called the sanctuary the last flame,” he told her once, so near the end that it seemed foolish now to have talked in calm voices amid the waving corn and wheat on a late-summer afternoon. “But is it the bit of warmth kindled in the window of the farmhouse so the traveler might see, and take of it for his own lamp and campfire, on his way? Or is it the devouring fire that burns the infected seed from the ground so the farmer might plant his own there? Or if it be like water, as others say, does it quench thirst or wash the mountain away in a great deluge? Some choose the gentler way, the warming lamp, the small cup of water. For others, there is only the devouring flame and the punishing wave.”
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