The Wood Nymph & the Cranky Saint

by C. Dale Brittain

  “Not out here,” I said with a laugh. “They must grow their own lettuce, and we saw their goats, but I didn’t see a bake-oven.”

  Evrard suddenly pointed upward. “Who are they?”

  I craned my neck to look. Tiny figures were descending the cliff, a short distance to our right. They seemed to be making their way down by handholds and toeholds. It made me dizzy just to look.

  “Maybe,” I said, “the entrepreneurs have their first five pennies at last—or I’d guess even more, if they’re charging five apiece.”

  “It’s going to take them a while to save enough to hire me if they can only manage pilgrims at this rate,” said Evrard.

  I didn’t like to watch, but I couldn’t look away. There were three figures on the rock face, all robed in light gray. They descended slowly but steadily. In a few moments, the first, then the second and third, reached the ground.

  “Maybe they didn’t want to go around by the road on foot because it’s so much further,” said Evrard.

  “Well, they’d certainly reach the valley floor the fastest way possible if they fell off the cliff.”

  They walked toward us, and I was able now to see that the three men all had deep cowls pulled over their heads and crosses embroidered on the shoulders of their robes. Pilgrims, I decided.

  They saw us and stopped, apparently surprised to see two wizards in a holy hermit’s grove.

  “Bless you, my children,” said the pilgrim who appeared to be the oldest. Then all three seemed to forget us completely. “Do you have the bread and the little bottles?” the old pilgrim asked the others.

  “Right here,” said another. He pulled from his pocket a large loaf like the one we had eaten last night.

  “Then let us proceed.” They walked purposefully toward the shrine at the center of the grove.

  “If the apprentices have to rely on occasional pilgrims for their bread,” Evrard commented, “maybe it’s just as well we didn’t eat any more.”

  A gust of wind caught the pilgrims’ robes, lifting them and wrapping them around their ankles. One had to stop and untangle his legs, shod in tall riding boots, before proceeding. But I was looking forward to seeing the nymph again and was nearly as uninterested in the pilgrims as they were in us. I glanced up to see pale tiny clouds coming in a thin but steady flock across the slice of blue sky above us.

  Even though we had just been there yester day, the wood nymph’s tree seemed very difficult to find. I had begun again to wonder if she was deliberately hiding from us, when at last Evrard pointed to a deep footprint in the soft earth. “That’s mine. I came down last night faster than I meant to.”

  I said again the spell to call the nymph, and a tinkling laugh came from the tree above us. We caught a glimpse of violet eyes and a beckoning hand.

  But when we started flying up toward her, the nymph darted away, leaping lightly through the air, catching branches just in time to break her fall, swinging through the canopy of the grove. Evrard and I flew after her, almost catching her a dozen times. But every time, laughing and with her hair swirling around her, she dodged or spun away at the last second. Much less agile among the branches than she was, we kept getting leaves in the face just when we thought we had cornered her at last. But finally she returned to her platform, and all of us dropped to the cushions, panting and laughing.

  This morning she had strawberries and the same icy, invigorating water she had offered us the day before. Evrard did not mention that he would have preferred tea and doughnuts. “Were you two sleepy heads this morning?” she asked, which made me look suspiciously at my cup, wondering if she had put something in it.

  But I did not ask, deciding instead to find out at once what she knew about the Cranky Saint. She might have some idea why Eusebius wanted to leave. Although I remembered scarcely any of our conversation of yester day, I did remember the beginning. The sensation was that most of the rest had taken place years ago and had comfortably faded.

  “Lady, I want to ask you something,” I said, putting down my cup almost full, though I was thirsty. She bent gracefully to offer me more berries. “Do you speak to the hermit of this grove and to Saint Eusebius?”

  She looked away, out across the tops of the trees, and an expression passed across her face that might have been a frown. Evrard lifted his eyebrows at me questioningly, but I shook my head at him.

  The wood nymph looked back at us again, not quite smiling. “The hermit and I speak of mortality and of God.”

  I opened my mouth to speak and changed my mind. But she took my silence itself as a response.

  “Yes, I have wondered sometimes,” she said slowly, “what it would be like to be mortal. You humans are born and live for a period, trying to create something in this world to match your dreams, seeking to achieve something you never quite reach. And when you become old and weary you die. But then, the hermit has told me, you come face to face with God.”

  Joachim, I thought, ought to hear this.

  “You live for such a short period of time,” she added, “that your goals and dreams can never all be fulfilled. Does facing God make up for this?”

  I didn’t know what answer to give, but fortunately she didn’t seem to expect one.

  “I don’t think I was ever born,” she went on, so softly that I had to bend toward her to hear. “The world has changed, and I have changed, but I do know I was here long before any humans first came to the valley.” Her head drooped forward, and her long hair almost hid her features. “I have lived here in the grove forever, or at least as long as I can remember. The trees are mine to tend, but even they always grow old and die eventually, in spite of my care. They take the only way that leads out of the ever-repeating cycle of life here on earth, but that way out is closed to me.”

  Her voice dropped even lower. “I know I don’t think of time the way you humans do, although the hermit has tried to explain it to me. You go from a world of time to a world of timeless ness when your souls are set free by death. But I am not sure I even have a soul. The hermit has told me that I will not meet God face to face, if I ever meet Him at all, until the end of infinite time, when the world itself shall end.”

  She lifted her head almost sharply and tossed her hair back over her shoulder, frowning at me in earnest. “I am immortal, but not with the immortality that the hermit tells me is reserved for mortal humans. While the world lives, I live, and I revere the God whom Eusebius taught me created it. But according to the hermit I shall not pass on to spiritual immortality, nor even become weary of living and find rest in death. The saints, including my old friend Eusebius, may appear over the seasons to the hermits here, and even some times to other men, but they do not speak to me.”

  This took care of my hope that she might know what the Cranky Saint actually intended. “But—”

  “But I have not become weary of the world,” she said without giving me a chance to speak, and in her normal cheerful tone. There was now not even a trace of a shadow in her expression. For someone who never had contemplate her own death, it must be hard to be serious for very long. “There are always surprises here in the world, such as young wizards.”

  “What was that all about?” Evrard asked me in an undertone, but I shook my head. I was even more convinced than I had been that there was no reason, whatever the bishop might think, to try to move the wood nymph out of the Holy Grove.

  “Let me offer you some honey in which to dip the strawberries,” said the nymph.

  I took a sip from the cup in my hand and wondered if the nymph herself deliberately set out to forget some of the experiences of the uncounted millennia she had lived, either because they were unpleasant or just because there were too many of them. But if so she managed to be selective in what she forgot, with an under standing of the magic involved that was certainly beyond me.

  The conversation shifted at once to other topics, and nearly as quickly I began to lose track of what we were discussing. The nymph’s conversation was as une
xpected, yet as internally consistent—and as difficult to remember—as the dreams one has when first drifting into sleep. The minutes could have been the seasons within a forest, each with its own events, but in retrospect all timeless and the same.

  I looked down at the cup in my hand and realized I must have drunk a number of glasses of the nymph’s icy water. In spite of the disconcerting effect of watching myself forget, talking to her was so pleasant that I would have been willing to continue indefinitely.

  As each new topic arose, it was crystal clear, and I thought with admiration that the nymph was not only charming but witty and highly informed about the practice of magic. With each topic, as we laughed and traded quips, I thought I could not possibly forget this conversation. But as we turned to a new subject, even while that subject became brilliantly clear, I realized that the former was fading from my mind.

  The only part of the day’s conversation I was able to reconstruct afterwards was her attempt to explain the lives of birds to us. She whistled until finches and thrush flew from all over the grove to land on the branches nearby. They chirped to her, and she to them, in apparent perfect understanding. Although they all seemed to have nothing magical about them, their colors were more brilliant, their eyes brighter, their songs sweeter, than any birds I had ever seen.

  “We’d better leave soon, if we’re going to the duchess’s castle,” I managed to say at last. I had only intended to stay in the nymph’s tree for an hour or two, and we must have been here far longer. Even suggesting we leave required a major effort of will.

  I glanced upward to try to guess the time from the sky and was startled to see it was already dark. And then I realized it was raining, a light steady rain that tapped on the leaves around us but touched us not at all. I had the vague recollection that it had been raining for some time.

  “You may leave if you wish,” came the wood nymph’s warm voice from the shadows, “or if you like you can spend the night here with me.” I knew, even without seeing her, that she was not addressing herself to me, or even to both of us. She was speaking to Evrard.

  He knew it too. “I would very much like to stay, Lady. Daimbert, what will you do?”

  “Evrard, I—”

  “I am free,” he said meaningfully, “and that means I am free to choose.”

  I knew better than to stay where I was not wanted. “I’ll go back to the apprentice hermits,” I said. “They can practice their hospitality some more.”

  Wrapping a protective spell against rain around me, I floated down from the tree, landing lightly next to Evrard’s heavy footprint. Long ago, I had put a spell of light on my belt buckle. Because the buckle was made in the shape of the moon and stars, I had thought it appropriate to do so, but I had always been disappointed that it had never glowed very brightly. It would not have sufficed the night before, to light the path for two mounted men, but when I turned it on now it glowed softly, giving just enough light that I was able to grope through the grove amidst little swirls of mist, fly over the waterfall, and continue down the valley toward the stone huts.

  Our mares were where we had left them, standing contentedly head to tail in the warm rain. I continued past them to the hut where Evrard and I had passed the previous night.

  The light from my buckle showed a blanketed lump in the corner. It thrashed suddenly as I came in, and the leader of the apprentices sat up, looking at me with startled eyes.

  “I’m very sorry to disturb you,” I said contritely, “but would it be possible to ask you for hospitality again tonight?”

  Without answering, he jumped up, seized his blankets, and ran out into the night. I went to the doorway and was fairly sure I saw him enter another one of the huts. I would not have wanted him sleeping out in the rain on my account.

  I unfolded the saddle blankets we had left in the corner with our saddles. Tonight I had both mine and Evrard’s, and the damp air made me glad I did. My stomach growled, but I did my best to ignore it. I felt surprisingly weary, as though I had run a great distance today, instead of sleeping late and then spending many delightful hours talking with the nymph. The steady drum of rain on the slate roof over my head lulled me quickly to sleep.

  V

  I awoke near dawn, unsure what had wakened me but suddenly and abruptly fully conscious. The sound of rain had ceased. I breathed very quietly through my mouth, not daring to open my eyes or even move but convinced that someone—or something—was in the hut with me.

  Whatever it was, it seemed to be trying to be as silent as I. Very slowly, I opened my eyes, just far enough so that I could see through the lashes. The predawn light was still dim. Next to my face were two horny bare feet. The toes appeared unusually large.

  Against my will, my heart pounded violently and my eyes flew open. Saint Eusebius, I thought, had appeared to me.

  My eyes moved upward, to a long ropy beard and then to a face where sharp eyes looked back at me from beneath heavy white eyebrows. I realized after one dreadful second that this was not a vision of the saint. He smiled kindly. It was the old hermit.

  He sat down companionably next to me. “I am sorry if I wakened you, my son,” he said. “But I wanted, if possible, to speak with you before my apprentices arose.”

  I sat up slowly, pushing back the blankets. “What do you want to discuss?”

  “I wanted to provide reassurance, both to you and to your friend the royal chaplain. That young man takes his spiritual responsibilities so seriously that I fear he may forget the words of Christ, ‘My yoke is easy and my burden light.’”

  I let this assessment of Joachim pass without comment. “Well, I’m hoping to reassure him myself,” I said. “He and the bishop were worried that the wood nymph might be an inappropriate influence here at the Holy Grove, but when I talked to her yesterday it was clear that she herself takes spiritual issues seriously.”

  As I spoke I realized, almost guiltily, that it was much easier talking to the hermit alone than it would have been with Evrard there.

  The hermit smiled gently. “My daughter, the wood nymph, certainly does not distract me from my devotions, if that is what the chaplain has feared. I wish he had mentioned his concerns, and then I could have eased his mind.”

  “I don’t think I need any spiritual reassurance myself,” I said, “but I did want to ask you something. What has the Cranky— I mean, what has Saint Eusebius said to you? He appeared to the chaplain in a vision and told him he wanted to leave this grove. Apparently he was fairly firm on that point.”

  “As I told you before,” said the hermit, looking at me with bright eyes, “he will not want to leave the shrine where he worshipped when in the flesh, and where his relics have always been.”

  I hated to doubt the word of such an obviously holy hermit, but I knew he was prevaricating—either that or I would have to doubt the veracity of Joachim’s vision.

  “You mean,” I said, lowering my eyebrows at him and trying to give an air of wizardly wisdom, “that your conversations with the wood nymph have persuaded you that the saint’s cranky temper comes and goes. You are personally confident he will no longer be irritated with life in the valley if the entrepreneurs are removed from the top of the cliff.”

  “Those poor souls do seem somewhat confused,” said the hermit, which I took as a confirmation of my guess. “Do you know,” he added, cocking his head to one side, “they came to visit me yester day?”

  “They did?” This was a surprise.

  “They came in disguise, of course, because they were embarrassed at the spiritual inappropriateness of what they doing. They hoped to find out, without actually asking, what was my opinion of their business, and, even more importantly, if Saint Eusebius might be thinking of leaving the grove. From the point of view of their enterprise, I realize, the departure of the saints’ relics would be disastrous.”

  “In disguise? But— Of course. I saw them too.” I should have realized myself that the three men in gray robes were not really weary, fo
otsore pilgrims. I had even seen their riding boots. “What did they say?”

  “Very little. They offered me loaves of bread, as true pilgrims normally do, and they knelt in prayer at the shrine, although they seemed uncomfortable doing so. They took some water from the river in little bottles. But I know that Saint Eusebius will judge the spiritual impulse of their inner hearts, which made them ashamed of making money from the things of God.”

  “And what did you tell them about Saint Eusebius?”

  “I merely told them that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.”

  The hermit was fairly astute, but I had a different explanation for why three disguised entrepreneurs should have come to the shrine. If they had been hired to upset the Cranky Saint by the priests of the distant church who wanted the saint’s relics, then they wanted to find out how well their plan was working.

  But I recalled that, when Evrard and I had seen the half-constructed scaffolding, I had concluded they really must hope to make money from pilgrims coming to see the Holy Toe. This was rapidly becoming too confusing for me this early in the morning.

  “You say that you do not need spiritual comfort yourself, my son,” continued the hermit, his eyes resting on my face. “But I think that you do. Come back to the grove with me now. I was going to break my fast with some of the bread those poor souls left with me, and I would be happy to share it with you.”

  I hesitated for a second, knowing that Joachim would be surprised if I did not go, knowing that Evrard would roll his eyes at me if I did, and wondering uneasily what my teachers at the school might say. But then I stood up. I could certainly have breakfast with an old hermit. Besides, I was hungry.

  Early morning was just reaching the valley. We picked our way up the path beside the waterfall and went into the center of the grove, where the hermit’s hut backed up to the shrine of the Holy Toe. The inside of the hut had the same dirt floor and rough walls as the huts of the apprentice hermits; if anything, it was a little smaller.