The Wood Nymph & the Cranky Saint

by C. Dale Brittain

  But I was now the senior wizard in Yurt, and there was still a magical creature on the loose, one that had killed a man. I forced myself to sit up and immediately felt so weak that I almost collapsed again.

  “Good morning,” said Evrard. “You look terrible.”

  “I feel terrible,” I agreed. I leaned against the wall and rubbed my temples. At least the headache was virtually gone, but I was horribly hungry. “I don’t think I’ve had anything much to eat for the last week, except for berries.”

  Evrard produced bread and cheese and a rather wizened apple. “This is about the end of the food the three priests brought with them.” So the priests were still here after all.

  I ate ravenously, thinking that I had never properly appreciated the meals in the royal castle. Then, no longer feeling I was about to faint, I pushed the horse blanket away and staggered to my feet.

  “You’re covered with blood!” cried Evrard in dismay.

  I glanced down at myself. My clothes were indeed filthy, ripped, and stained with quantities of blood. “Not my own,” I said. “The old wizard’s.” But then I looked around in panic. “Where is he? Where have they taken him?”

  “They took his body up to the shrine,” said Evrard, not entirely as though he approved but not wanting to disapprove either. “The apprentice hermits and the youngest of those priests were all going to wash the body and lay it out.”

  “We’ll have to take him back to the royal castle and bury him in the graveyard there,” I said. “Evrard, the monster killed him. And it’s still loose, probably stronger than ever. It has a real face now.”

  “Your chaplain told me you hadn’t been able to catch it,” he said in a low voice, as though afraid to suggest that he was belittling my efforts.

  But I knew perfectly well I had failed, failed to catch the monster and to save the old wizard. I had to accept that now.

  “I can’t go up to the shrine like this,” I said. “See if I have enough spare clothes in my saddlebag to keep me decent.”

  I walked down to the river, peeled the rags from my body, and slid into the water. It was as cold as the cave, but bubbling beneath the brilliantly blue summer sky the water was only invigorating. I splashed and tried to rub off the worst of the grime and blood, then let myself sink to the river bottom. It was not deep enough for swimming, but lying on the stones two feet beneath the surface, with my eyes open, I could see the green and white of the valley walls transformed into rippling slabs of color.

  I jerked back to the surface, caught my breath, and pulled myself up on the bank. Evrard had found me some clothes; I rolled on the grass to dry myself and pulled them on. For a minute I sat quietly, letting the sun beat on my wet hair, enjoying the fleeting sensation of peace.

  “I’m trying to decide,” I said then, “if we dare leave the valley while the monster’s still in the cave. The old wizard said that he knew his creature would be drawn here, so it may not be able to get out. I would appear horribly disrespectful if I didn’t attend the old wizard’s funeral.”

  “Maybe it’s lost forever in the cave,” suggested Evrard.

  “The creature can’t see in there, certainly,” I said, “and the cave itself is a labyrinth.”

  “It’s terribly easy to get confused,” Evrard agreed, “even with torches and a thread to find your way out.” When I looked at him questioningly he added, “Didn’t the chaplain tell you? When you and the old wizard hadn’t come back by yesterday morning, he and I spent much of the day trying to find you. We unraveled my old tunic for thread.” I noticed then that Evrard, too, had been improved by a change into spare clothing. “We didn’t know which tunnel you’d taken off the large chamber, which made it difficult. I’d hoped you’d have left a magic mark to show where you’d gone, but if so you didn’t use any spell I know.”

  I was touched that Evrard and Joachim had looked for us and wished that I myself had had the sense to unravel a thread as I went. “I’m sorry! I did use magic marks, but not until we were well into the cave. I only wanted to mark the way back out, even though, as it turned out, I missed some of them and became lost anyway. I never thought anyone would try to come after us.”

  “We started by exploring the tunnels closest to the river, but they all went underwater very quickly, or else became so small that we knew you wouldn’t have been able to go through, unless of course you transformed yourselves into frogs.”

  “In fact, we left the great chamber by a passage on the farthest side—it’s a wide, fairly straight way, at least at first.”

  Evrard shook his head. “We never got there.”

  I stood up carefully. “Even if we had dared transform ourselves into frogs, in the knowledge that our croaks would not be able to approximate the Hidden Language and that we’d have to be frogs forever, we wouldn’t have needed to. The monster is human size, and all we were trying to do was catch it.”

  “Could you have summoned it, forced it to come to you?” asked Evrard, falling into step beside me as I started toward the grove. I had brought the old wizard’s staff and leaned on it when even the short walk began to tire me. “Maybe a true summoning spell rather than the more general calling spell that got me all those sparrows?”

  I shook my head. “It wouldn’t have done any good to summon its mind if its body couldn’t follow. And you know they always taught us that to summon a human mind, against its will, was the greatest sin a wizard could commit. I don’t know about you, but the teachers refused even to teach us the spell.” I and a few other young wizards had managed, on a late-night expedition to the Master’s study, to get around that prohibition, but I didn’t want to mention this.

  “But in this case,” said Evrard reasonably, “you wouldn’t be summoning a human mind. That could mean, however, that there might be nothing there to summon! Not knowing the spell would certainly be an additional disadvantage …”

  His voice trailed away. I didn’t tell him that the monster had almost had the old wizard’s human mind transferred into it.

  As we approached the grove, I heard a distant hammering. I looked up toward the top of the cliff to see if the entrepreneurs were at work at their windlass, but if so I could see nothing from below.

  “How did you get out of the cave?” asked Evrard.

  “I’m not sure,” I said slowly. “The last few hours, it was almost as though someone else was guiding me. Then, at the very end, I heard the wood nymph calling me. If it hadn’t been for her, I would have walked right by the way out and never even seen it.”

  “The wood nymph? Did she come into the cave?”

  “No, but I think she must have been right outside, calling. Had you sent her to look for me?”

  Evrard shook his head. “Maybe she just likes wizards.”

  When we reached the Holy Grove, the first thing I saw was the old wizard’s body, lying near the pool with his eyes closed and his hands crossed on his breast. He had gone very far beyond the help of the wood nymph.

  The apprentices had done a good job. The worst of the stains had been washed from his clothes, and his hair and beard were clean and combed. His twisted limbs had been straightened out, so that, at least at first glance, he could merely have been asleep.

  His dignity had been restored to him, but he would not have cared about his body’s appearance when he was gone. He had wanted to create an undying monster and to live on in it, and if he had succeeded he would have discarded this body deep under the earth.

  I put my hand over my eyes and stood quietly for a moment to compose myself. I would have to live for the rest of my life with the knowledge that my abilities had been too weak to save him.

  We continued the short distance to the Holy Shrine itself, where we found the old hermit and all the priests. Joachim managed to look delighted to see me without smiling in the least.

  “Good,” said the thin priest. “You are here at last.”

  Before I could find anything to say in reply, the apprentices arrived, carrying a r
oughly made coffin. This, then, explained the hammering. I helped them to lift the old wizard’s body in and to arrange it. He still looked as though he were sleeping, but his flesh felt as cold as the stone a quarter mile beneath the earth.

  Wizards, as a matter of professional pride, do not speculate about the afterlife, leaving that to the priests. But even the Church, with its prayers and liturgy, cannot say for certain what will happen to an individual’s soul. The wood nymph might think mortality liberating, but I myself thought that a lifetime, even the long life of a wizard, might never be enough to finish with the questions, much less start on the answers.

  He had died not fearing death, not worried about his soul, but irritated that he had failed in his spell. Looking at my predecessor’s still face, I wished him well on his journey, wherever he was going.

  “Were you going to bury him with this ring?” asked the round priest.

  I had been staring without seeing and came back with a start. “No, he wouldn’t want us to. In fact, he said I should have it.”

  The priest pulled the ring from the wizard’s finger and handed it to me. I took it reluctantly, with the sense that it symbolized enormous responsibility.

  It was quite a striking ring, made in the shape of an eagle in flight with a tiny diamond in its beak, but it did not in fact symbolize anything, being only a Christmas gift from the king after the old wizard retired. But I slid it onto my own finger as though taking up even heavier burdens than I already carried. Behind me, I could hear the apprentices nailing the lid on the coffin.

  Joachim touched me on the shoulder and looked at me with his enormous dark eyes. “You’re not a priest,” he said quietly. “You’re not responsible for anyone else’s soul but your own.”

  This was probably supposed to be comforting. I nodded, took a deep breath, and turned to the thin priest. “Why did you want me here?”

  He took a breath of his own. “Well. We need to determine the desire of the saint, to see if it is his will to return with us to the city where he first made his holy profession.” The priest glanced quickly toward Joachim. “The royal chaplain thought it was important that you be here.” He didn’t add, “God knows why,” but he might as well have.

  The hermit, who had not yet said anything, suddenly spoke up. “The saint is very fond of this young wizard.” We all turned toward him, priests, apprentices, and wizards. “I didn’t mention this before to anyone but the royal chaplain,” he said with his gentle smile, “but the saint appeared to me in a vision last night. He had me send my daughter, the wood nymph, to look for him.”

  I staggered for a second with amazement, then felt Evrard’s hand under my elbow and regained my balance. My prayers had been answered after all. This was so unexpected that I had to fight my initial impulse to say, “No, wait, I didn’t mean it!”

  This, then, explained the strange sense I had had that someone else had directed my path the last few hours in the cave. Someone else indeed had. But, being unaccustomed to listening to saints, I had only turned to his guidance when faced with a clear choice between different tunnels. Voices could have spoken for some time in my mind without making me look up to see the crack that led to freedom. That had needed the voice of the wood nymph.

  “I see,” I said, which sounded highly inadequate.

  But then I had another thought that made me as irritated with the saint as I had been overwhelmingly grateful a moment before. If Eusebius could save me from wandering to my death in the cave, why had he done nothing to save the old wizard? I leaned against Evrard, frustrated enough with all priests and saints that any wizard, even a marginally competent one, was exactly who I wanted beside me.

  “Then perhaps it is indeed best for you to be here, Wizard,” said the thin priest grudgingly. “After all, as Holy Scripture tells us, a little child shall lead them.”

  I had no attention to spare him or to feel insulted. I didn’t know what the saints’ plan might be, in which I appeared to feature prominently, but I felt a deep and unshakeable determination not to become a pawn in someone else’s program. I would not be turned by gratitude into anyone else’s creature, not even a saint’s. I had more than motive force; I had a mind and a soul, and they were still my own.

  Evrard interrupted my thoughts. “Are you all right?” he asked in a low voice, his blue eyes worried. “Can I get you some water or something?”

  “Yes, that would be good.” I sat down with my back against a tree, drank the cup he brought me, and closed my eyes. I sent up a brief prayer, so that Saint Eusebius would know I really was properly grateful. The wizard had said at the end that he was glad I had never become obsequious. Well, I hoped that whatever characteristics had endeared me to a cranky old wizard had also endeared me to a cranky saint, because I had no intention of becoming obsequious to someone who let a monster roam his valley, killing respectable wizards.

  I opened my eyes to see all the priests and apprentices clustered around. “Listen,” I said. Something had just become obvious to me.

  They turned toward me with surprising respect. I stood up on legs that trembled for a moment, then found enough strength to step forward. “This whole problem started when the entrepreneurs first put a booth on top of the cliff, inviting people to see the Holy Toe for a fee. I know why they’re there.”

  And I did know. It had come to me not in voices, not through revelation, but through my own reasoning powers. The saint, I thought, had been confident that I would find this answer, and indeed hoped in addition that I would pass judgment, make the final decision of right and wrong. I had no intention of doing the latter. If I was barely competent as a wizard, a regent, and a judge, I was even less qualified to be a religious arbiter.

  But the first was important. “This may pain you,” I said to the old hermit, “but they meant it for the best. Come here,” to the leader of the apprentices.

  He came toward me slowly but not reluctantly, as though he had been expecting this and was determined to go through with it bravely. He even managed a certain dignity in spite of his rags and badly-shaved head.

  The round priest started to speak but I turned my back on him, addressing myself only to the young hermit.

  “The first time the chaplain and I came here,” I said gently, “you apprentices asked us if we had been sent by the bishop to take your master away—because of the entrepreneurs on top of the cliff. As I should have realized at the time, it was very odd that you might think that the bishop would hold an old hermit responsible for some disreputable entrepreneurs.

  “And then the ducal wizard and I came to this valley to see the wood nymph, and he and I asked you more about them. All you would say then was that you weren’t sure if your master, the hermit, had discussed their enterprise with the saint. Your unwilling ness to talk about them contrasted strangely, I should have realized, with your master’s quite open conversation when he and I spoke two days later.

  “So far, you’ve kept it from him, and I’m sure you felt you had very good reasons. Now I’m not going to accuse you or sit in judgment on you. But you do need to tell us all. Why did you apprentices invite those people to come make money off the Holy Toe?”

  VI

  In the ensuing confusion, I went back to sit under the tree again, to make it clear I was not passing judgment. The story came out somewhat incoherently, with the other apprentices hurrying to confess that they too were at fault, to say that it was their love and concern for the hermit that had led them into error, and at last to fall prone before him and beg his forgiveness in voices racked by sobs.

  The saint, I thought, could not have revealed this to the hermit himself, because the hermit might have refused to speak out against his apprentices. I presumed it was a compliment to my reasoning abilities that Eusebius had not felt it necessary to tell anyone else about this in a vision.

  The story was fairly simple when the apprentices had finally told it all. They were worried about their master, who always gave them his last crusts eve
n when he did not have enough himself. They were worried about the rather erratic appearance of pilgrims with offerings of food or coins and distressed because their own agricultural abilities had not progressed much further than goats and lettuce, although this spring they had planted a lentil crop for which they still had high hopes. When, earlier in the spring, a merchant traveler had detoured by the valley and asked for hospitality for the night, they had been more than willing to listen to his proposals.

  The thought of obtaining a small but steady cut of the entrepreneurs’ profits, of perhaps seeing more pilgrims once their shrine’s fame began to spread, had been enormously appealing. It was only later, when they found that they were afraid to admit to the hermit what they had done, that they had realized they were trying to make money off the holy things of God.

  But by this time their merchant contact had recruited Prince Dominic himself as a backer, and the apprentice hermits had felt unable to back out. This then was why the saint, after fifteen centuries, had begun to think of leaving the valley. Knowing that one of the apprentices would probably replace the old hermit at the Holy Shrine within a few years would have made even a less cranky saint irritated.

  The apprentices had apparently made their peace with the hermit. Their leader rose, his face tear-streaked. “I’ll go tell them now,” he said. Refusing the priests’ offer of a horse, he walked quickly toward the cliff and began to climb.

  All of us fell silent, watching him. Although the trees of the grove hid much of his ascent, his small figure kept emerging into sight, climbing steadily up the white cliff face. I had a sudden fear of the monster bursting out of the cave and following him, but nothing of the sort happened.

  The apprentice reached the top and disappeared. We waited for another ten minutes, then he put his head over the edge and waved, which could have meant anything, and started down again.