by Annie Bellet
Áine stepped from the circle of the woman’s arms and walked up the beach to get out of the water. She retrieved her basket and turned back to the woman.
“I greet you,” she said politely, remembering her manners belatedly in the excitement. “I thank you for your help.”
The dark haired woman laughed then, at least, Áine thought it was a laugh, for she threw back her head and barked not unlike a seal, though singularly human mirth threaded through the sound and her face as well. She walked out of the water toward the girl.
Áine held still; she did not think the woman meant her harm for all she acted strangely. Áine wondered how she could be out on the shore in the wind without a stitch of clothing on her body. She didn’t even have cold bumps on her skin. Áine was shivering and had cold bumps all along her legs from her soaked and muddy skirt. She pulled down her sleeves and wiped her skinned and dirty hands self-consciously on her dress.
The woman touched Áine’s blood-red hair, coming loose now from its braids, with one long-fingered and big-boned hand. She smiled and Áine noticed with a start that the woman had small sharp teeth behind her bloodless lips. The child reached up with a curious hand and touched the woman’s face. Her skin was warm and very soft. Her eyes were round, large and dark with strange pupils. Like a seal, Áine thought, dropping her hand.
The woman spoke again in her strange but beautiful tongue. Áine shook her head looking up at her in confusion. Then the mysterious woman bent as she tipped Áine’s chin up. She kissed the child full on the lips, her mouth cool. The woman stood back up and turned away.
Áine licked her lower lip, tasting where the stranger had kissed her. She tasted of salt, as though she’d licked a stone that had soaked in the sea or perhaps swallowed a tear.
She watched silently as the woman turned and walked back into the sea. Her dark head disappeared beneath the waves with barely a ripple. Áine, her seaweed-collecting mission long forgotten, took off down the beach toward the village to tell Tesn what she’d just witnessed.
She glanced back at the ocean before she turned up the path to the huts. Out in the white and green waves, swimming through a rare shaft of sunlight, watched a seal with its dark head round and glistening above the water. Áine waved and then ran up the path.
“Tesn!” She stopped as she crossed the threshold of the low main lodge and blinked as her eyes adjusted to the dim interior.
Tesn sat by the hearth where her old bones could stay warm away from the autumn damp and chill. She smiled as she took in the muddy and frantic appearance of her adopted daughter.
“I’m here, Áine.”
Áine nodded politely to the three women who sat in a semicircle just inside the open door, using the light of the afternoon to mend nets by. She walked past them and sat on the rushes at Tesn’s feet, folding her cold feet underneath herself. She glanced at the circle of women and leaned in to whisper to her mother. She told her in hushed tones of her encounter on the beach.
“Was she a selkie, Tesn?” Áine said the word with reverence.
She knew the story of how she’d come to the wisewoman. Tesn had told her as soon as Áine was old enough to form sentences of how a selkie had carried Áine across the sea and given her as a special gift to the healing woman to raise as a daughter and apprentice. Áine had many years ago ceased to tell the tale to anyone else, for the children made fun of her and the adults regarded her with either condescending indulgence or keen suspicion.
“She likely was, my dearest heart.” Tesn smiled at the girl, her dark eyes kind in her wrinkled face. “We’ll talk about it more tonight. You should go and change your dress. If you ask sweetly, I think Dydgi means to do wash this afternoon and she might help you.”
Áine nodded and stood. She went to the low cot she shared with Tesn and pulled her leather pack out from under the bed. Her second dress was better mended than the one she wore, though no less plain.
She went outside and walked the short distance to the freshwater stream. She hissed at the cold water but dutifully scrubbed her feet. She pulled off her soiled dress and rinsed the mud from her legs and arms as well. For good measure she splashed her face, recalling the touch of the selkie. She wondered if it were the same one who had carried her across the sea and nursed her on the shore.
Shivering, Áine pulled on her second dress as she fought to recall any of the selkie’s words. Perhaps Tesn would know the language if Áine could remember something about how it had sounded.
The girl tucked her dirty dress under her arm and tugged free the leather ties on her braids. She ran her fingers through her long red hair and pulled it back into a single braid as she walked.
Áine returned to the lodge and found the women circled around the very pregnant Wladus who lay on a makeshift padding of deerskin before the warmth of the hearth.
“Her water’s broken,” Tesn told Áine as the girl walked to her side. “What should be done now?”
Áine knit her brows as she concentrated. “If her contractions are weak, we should make a tea of raspberry leaf. For pain we can give a tea of chamomile and water elder. Liniment of lavender and chamomile should be rubbed on the belly and lower back to help ease tension and make pushing easier.” She looked up at Tesn and relaxed a little as the old woman smiled.
“Very good, love. Fetch my things. We’ve a while yet ‘til the babe starts to come, but we should be ready.”
The men returned and the rain followed on their heels falling in large cold sheets that swept across the sea and up the beach toward the mainland. They repaired to a hut to wait out the birth, leaving the lodge to the women who held quiet vigil within.
Áine nodded off, curled on the cot before the fire. She woke to Tesn’s gentle touch.
“It’s time.” Tesn turned back to the women.
Wladus crouched now over the clean rushes. Blood dripped from between her legs. Áine knew this was normal enough, for it was not the first birth she’d assisted. She hovered near Tesn as the wisewoman intoned gentle prayers and rubbed sweet-smelling oil into the stretched skin of the pregnant woman’s belly.
The night deepened and still the baby did not come. The woman’s pains intensified until she could hold herself up no longer and lay back instead with a pad of soft leather clenched between her teeth. Tesn felt her belly and then eased her fingers into the birth passage to feel for the baby. She could just touch the crown of its head. The child was the right way round yet still not passing as it should have. She sat back on her heels to think.
Áine knelt beside her mentor, recognizing that look of deep concentration. Something was definitely wrong.
Wladus looked up at them both between painful contractions, her dark eyes full of worry and pain. Áine reached out and touched her knee, smiling in reassurance as she’d seen Tesn do many times.
A strange jolt went up her arm, almost like a muscle cramping. Suddenly it was difficult to breathe as her belly filled with pain and the blood rushed in her ears. She grabbed at her neck with both hands and tried to free herself from the phantom strangling cord she felt there.
The pain faded immediately and she could breathe again. Everyone, including the exhausted mother, stared at her.
“The baby,” Áine said with strange certainty, “the birthing cord is twisted around his neck. I felt it.”
One of the women backed away from the group, her fingers crossing in front of her heart to ward off evils. The other two looked at Áine with a mix of fear and awe on their faces.
“Could the child be right?” Dydgi asked as she looked to Tesn.
“Aye, more than right I think. The babe is crowning but going no further. It would make sense. Sometimes a women’s intuition begins early, it seems.” She smiled a wise and careful smile that disarmed much of the tension in the room.
Wladus’s half-gagged scream disarmed the rest as the focus shifted back to her.
“Áine, scrub your arm, my heart. We’ll need your capable little hands to free the baby.�
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Áine nodded and dashed to the hearth. She gritted her teeth against the scalding heat of the water, but she knew that it must be as hot as she could stand to keep infection from opening a path to evil in the body. I guess I get to free two babies today. She turned back to Tesn with wide green eyes.
“Tell me what to do, mother.”
It was nothing like freeing the seal pup. Tesn guided her verbally as Áine slid her oiled hand inside Wladus’s body. She felt the soft crown of the head and gently pushed it back until she could slip her own slim hand into the womb. She felt the cord, letting her strange, double sense of being both the child and herself guide her to the right place. She closed her green eyes and slowly, so terribly slowly, loosened the birth cord until she could twist it free of the child’s head.
She let go and pulled her hand from the woman as soon as she felt that the baby had bloodflow again. Her hand was covered in blood and sticky fluids and a fresh rush of blood followed its removal from the womb. Áine went to rinse it off as Tesn had the women lift Wladus to crouch so she might push again.
Áine leaned against the hearth and watched. There was a lot of blood now, but births always had a lot of blood. The baby came, Tesn gently pulling the child free and hanging him upside-down as she expertly cleared the fluids from his tiny nose with her other hand. The boy’s first cry rang out through the lodge and broke the silence. The women laughed and patted their friend as Áine came forward with a sharp knife and soft cloth. The wisewoman and her assistant bathed the baby. He had the thick white cream coating his skin that newborns sometimes got when the birth was long or difficult.
Wladus slowly stopped bleeding as she drank down the special tea Tesn prepared for her. She was helped onto the bed they’d brought in for her and tucked in with a heavy quilt. Her son’s appetite whet with a little honey on his tongue, he settled in and drank his first meal with barely a complaint.
Deicws, Wladus’s husband, came in and greeted his wife with a broad smile. His first child was a son and a tiny perfect babe at that. He gave a necklace of beautiful shell beads to Tesn in thanks.
“We’ve lost the two before this, early in her time. Thank you for saving my son.” His front teeth were crooked when he smiled behind his thick beard.
“It be my assistant you’ll want to thank. It was her intuition and her small hands that saved your son’s life,” Tesn said, taking the necklace. Áine knew they’d trade it in a bigger village for supplies. A wisewoman carried only what she needed and had no use for baubles.
Deicws turned to the strange girl. If not for her large green eyes, he’d have wondered more if she were not a changeling or one of the Fair Folk what with her pale white skin and blood-red hair. She had a strangely brave and confident demeanor as well, rare in a girl so young.
“I thank you, Wise One’s apprentice.” He nodded solemnly to her.
Áine nodded to him as well, smiling at the appreciation and glowing with pride that Tesn approved of what she’d done.
They slept on the cot, Tesn rising at dawn to check on the sleeping mother and baby. Áine, bleary-eyed, sat up as her mother returned to the bed.
“I felt his pain, I felt her pain. How is that, Tesn?” she whispered.
“I don’t know, my heart.” Tesn had been thinking on that very thing since the others had left them. “I think perhaps it was the selkie’s gift.” She kissed the top of Áine’s head and drew her in close.
That made sense to Áine’s young mind. She was special, after all, so it was fitting that the selkie would give her such a gift. “I’ll make sure to use it well then,” she said seriously.
“What is our rule, love?” Tesn smiled into her child’s hair.
“Do no harm.” Áine said as she sank down sleepily in her foster mother’s arms. “Mother?”
“Yes dearest?”
“I think they should name him Moelrhon, after the seal.” Áine smiled and slipped into sleep.
Eight
The rain had let up early that morning, but the ground shifted and soaked through Áine’s shoes, giving her the sensation of walking on a wet blanket. Tesn, leaning heavily on her walking staff, wore a blank expression broken only by tiny smiles everytime Áine glanced back. Though the season turned toward spring, the days were still short and darkness came before they’d reached the next village.
Áine set about making a fire as best she could from the drier wood she found under the spreading oaks while Tesn rolled out an oiled cloth that would protect their bodies from the worst of the wet ground. The fire smoked and gave off little heat, barely enough to heat water for tea.
The wisewoman and her young apprentice ate a cold dinner of hard bread and little cakes of fruit and fat. After Áine stoked the fire as best she could, they curled up together and fell into a fitful sleep.
Áine woke abruptly from a dream of cobwebs and fire to the dim grey light of false dawn and a huge wolf stalking the edge of their camp. She jumped to her feet, scrabbling for her staff.
The huge beast, gaunt with hunger and scarred from a hard life, growled deep. His jaws dripped foul-smelling foam and his body twitched, eyes rheumy and full of promised death.
“Áine,” Tesn’s voice came from beside her ankle as the old woman rose very slowly to kneeling. “He’s sick, be careful. If we show him strength, he might leave.”
Áine nodded, not taking her eyes from the wolf. The creature growled again and leapt straight for her. She swung the staff but it was caught by the wolf. He ripped it from her grasp, sending her tumbling sideways, almost into the smoldering fire.
The wolf twisted with a snarl and darted for Tesn.
Áine, with adolescent bravery, grabbed a smoking brand from the fire and threw herself between the charging wolf and her mother. The brand smashed into the wolf’s face with a sickening crunch. The huge creature screamed and thrashed away, disappearing into the dark woods.
Áine half-crouched, shivering. It took her a moment to realize the pain in her hand and she released the charred branch with a tiny cry. Her skin was blackened and red from gripping the burning wood so tightly. Tesn’s cool fingers wrapped around her wrist, steadying her. She poured a little water over Áine’s hand.
“You are lucky, love. Is but a slight burn. I think it likely you gave that wolf far worse, my brave, beautiful child.” The old woman shook her head.
Áine took a couple deep breaths. “I don’t think I’ll be able to get back to sleep,” she said.
Tesn chuckled. “I, also. It’s light enough. Walking off the tension will be good for us both, I think.”
They arrived in a little village along the coast of Cantref Gowen near midday to find a wedding celebration in full swing. The wisewoman was greeted with much respect and kindness, though the chief and others looked at her young companion with the normal mix of curiosity and suspicion.
Bowls full of savory goose and mushrooms, Áine and Tesn settled a little apart from the main group. Áine ate slowly, watching the newly married couple. Something within her stirred as she saw the husband lift little tidbits and feed them to his new wife. There was a mystery there, lingering between the two young people. Something Áine desperately wanted to touch, to understand. They looked both shy and content at the same time.
Áine turned to Tesn. “Is it always so at weddings?”
Tesn, seeing the young couple, smiled sadly. “No, love, not always. Marriage is first a contract, usually to bind two families together or bring in fresh wealth and goods. That the two people care for each other is a good sign, but often that, too, comes with time. In a small village like this, it is more likely. The more important the family involved, the less likely such affection will exist before the marriage, for it is less likely the two would even know each other beforehand.”
Áine digested this information as she chewed. “What about wisewomen? We are freer than the village women, no? Can we marry who we wish?” She watched the couple, imagining a dark youth looking at her with such tender
ness.
As her body had started awkward changes this last year, so had her mind it seemed. She found herself self-consciously brushing down her hair when around handsome youths her own age. This annoyed her; people always looked on her strangely, and she didn’t want to care even a bit what anyone besides Tesn thought.
“Áine, love.” The sorrow in Tesn’s voice made Áine turn her head. The old woman’s dark eyes looked at her, full of deep compassion. “Wisewomen do not marry. A wife belongs to her husband, a wisewoman belongs to all men, all people. We do not settle or raise families, though we do occasionally have children. The boys are fostered, the girls raised to follow our path as I have raised you.”
“I see. But if we do not marry, how do we have children?” Áine bit her lip. She knew the basics of how babies were made, but she’d not seen an unmarried woman give birth in all her thirteen years.
“Ah, that. You are a little young yet, my love, but just as there are many kinds of injury, not all of them physical, so, too, are there many ways to bring healing. In a few years, I’ll show you what I mean. There is joy in this healing too, you’ll see.”
Áine turned and looked back at the young couple. The woman bent her wreathed head close to hear something her husband murmured to her and then laughed, radiating joy. But what if that’s what I want? She shoved the uncomfortable feeling aside.
Tesn knew best, and anyway, Áine thought bitterly, who would want a girl marked by the fey as she was? She put her back to the happy scene and stared off over the rooftops into a deep-blue sky.
Nine
Áine put her back to the wind and pulled her cloak tighter against the autumn wind. She slipped the cloak pin back into it, knowing that nothing short of five more brooches could hold the cloak tight to her body in this wind. At least the soaking drizzle they’d walked through since morning had finally given way to a cloudy but drier afternoon.
Tesn, leaning heavily on her staff, plodded ahead of Áine on the slight path they followed along the cliffs overlooking the sea. Áine shook her head. Here she was struggling with the wind and cold, and Tesn, who had a good extra forty years in age over Áine, was moving along as though today were a sunny stroll in the loveliest day of summer. It didn’t help that Áine hadn’t quite gotten her land legs back after the rough two-day sea voyage.