In the cavern, Ugard and Wiglaff made a map of the villages on the ground, and as the reports came to them, they made marks to indicate the spread of the disease. They used information that Winna brought to update their display, and they admonished her on many occasions to keep away from the village any people who had contracted the plague and those who had contact with anyone known to have the plague. “The best prevention for the plague is distance from those who carry it,” Ugard told her.
Ugard wouldn’t speculate about what caused the plague or why the plague spread the way it did. For a long time Ugard took precautions lest he contract the plague while in the cavern. While Wiglaff believed he knew what caused the outbreak, he promised himself never to tell about the terrible vision that he had shared with Ugard. It still haunted his dreams, both waking and sleeping.
Finally, the plague subsided, and all who still had the plague at that time died, but no new cases of plague were reported. Some few villagers had caught the plague and survived, but no one could say why those villagers had lived when so many others had died.
All during the time of the plague, fear ran through the land like the disease itself. No one was entirely safe who remained in its path. Like Onna and her children, those who had fled north early were assured of remaining well and, eventually, of a safe return. Winna conferred with Ugard and Wiglaff before she ventured north to escort Onna and the children back to the village.
The enemy began maneuvers when the plague had passed, but those only demonstrated how thin the enemy ranks were now that so many had died. The enemy’s gods and goddesses were universally reviled because they had not prevented the plague, and no prayers brought their assistance during it.
So the enemy citizens stopped visiting the temples of their deities, and they stopped invoking them with prayers. Priests and priestesses were shunned and avoided. Among the villages the shamans were generally blamed and avoided for the same reasons.
It was otherwise for two particular shamans Ugard and Wiglaff. They remained in good graces, though they sequestered themselves in their cavern except to perform essential rituals like those for planting and harvesting. The male village warriors who survived the plague pretended to be disgruntled because there had been no fighting when the enemy forces were strong and threatening.
Winna knew the truth—that they were very relieved that they had not been tested and found wanting. As for herself, Winna resolved that she had survived to fight another day. She replaced her plague victims after honoring them with ritual burials attended by all her women warriors. She wanted to honor the example of those brave women who died in agony alone in self-isolation, rather than socializing their disease with the others.
Onna was glad to come home to her hut and find that Winna and Wiglaff had survived the plague. She bustled about to assure that her home could function after her long absence, and she made arrangements for the girls to study with their sister Winna and the boys with their brother Wiglaff. She invited Ugard down from his cavern into her home, and he came for long stretches, and he enjoyed teaching the children as if they were his own. In a sense since he had married Onna, they were his children now.
Ugard told Wiglaff, “You are now the shaman of the village. I’ll help from time to time, but I’m going to retire and study things I’ve always wanted to learn, like why crows recognize certain people, why corn stalks grow up while the roots go down and why dim-witted people have such a resentment of intelligent people.”
In the evenings before the family’s bedtime, he told stories about his life and his visions. Onna called most of his stories “stuff and nonsense,” but Wiglaff could see the twinkle in her eyes when he told of his love for her before she married Mordru.
Ugard never said anything against his former rival for Onna’s hand. In fact, Ugard had a policy of never saying evil of any man or woman unless it was absolutely necessary. An exception to this policy applied to the elders. Ugard marveled that only the fatuous and self-aggrandizing males of a village assumed those positions. He might have made an exception for the male warriors also, but he held his tongue because he didn’t want to slight Winna by innuendo. He still admired Winna for her fighting spirit but, like Onna, despaired of her finding a proper match.
Wiglaff, the dutiful oldest brother, finally did find a match for his sister. His choice was a tall, handsome, strong and intelligent villager from the far north named Morfar. From Wiglaff’s point of view, Morfar’s only failing was that he hated all shamans on sight, Wiglaff included. Nevertheless, Wiglaff contrived so that Morfar visited Onna’s hut on one of his customary journeys to the south, and he fell in love with Winna at first sight.
Of course, Winna hated Morfar on sight and wrestled him to the ground and broke his arm when he made a coarse remark about women warriors. Chastened, he allowed Winna to bind his arm and make a sling. She mothered him until he had time to recover, and then she reconsidered her view and fell in love with this man who acted so much like her father Mordru had.
Love did not come easily for the warrior woman. Winna bridled against her growing love for Morfar. She had formerly been very willful and battle hungry. She felt it odd that finding a real hero like her father and nursing him back to health should so transform her that she might be willing to give up her independence, even if she loved the man. One moment she thought she should flee and go back to her women warriors. The next, she reflected on how wild and wonderful her hero made her feel. Onna said she knew just what Winna was feeling. This did not help her daughter, who never wanted to be like her mother in any way. Still, she had seen how happy Onna was married to Ugard. What was the conflicted woman to do now?
In the end, Winna and Morfar were married, and she left the village to live with her husband in the north where his people lived. Before she departed, she gave over her command of the women warriors to her best protégé Ildryd, and she promised Onna that she would return with grandchildren for her since she thought it unlikely that Wiglaff would do her that service.
After Winna departed with Morfar, Wiglaff spent more and more time in the cavern halfway up the mountain, where he worked on honing his skills and practicing his shamanistic rituals. Wiglaff, who was adept at white magic, was not especially interested in pursuing the kind of black magic that Ugard knew and practiced occasionally, because his mentor could provide that better than he if the village needed to have it.
What occupied most of Wiglaff’s reflection now was the implication of the vision he had seen while helping Ugard counter the attack of the enemy forces. The civilization that was destroyed and reverted to the jungle intrigued and haunted him, and he contemplated the brevity of life and the transitory nature of all things. It took centuries to build something vast that crumbled in mere months when it had finished its perilous cycle. A civilization was a lot like a human life. It ended when it was most active and mature, senselessly descending into the dust from which it rose.
So daily now while thinking such thoughts, Wiglaff would walk out from his cavern up the mountain path and look out over the wide, green lands that came into view when he reached the summit. There he first met Onya, a beautiful young maiden who was curious what she might see on the mountain top, when suddenly she saw the shaman Wiglaff. She was startled, but he was gentle and easy to talk with. The two spent the afternoon and part of the evening watching the sun set and the stars rise. He escorted her down the mountain path to the village afterward because he didn’t want her to fall or stray off the narrow path.
For many days Wiglaff didn’t see Onya, and he missed her even though they had been together only a few hours. He remembered her large, deep brown eyes and her auburn hair with a floral wreath knotted in it. He liked her soft voice and her sense of wonder about everything. He thought he’d like to know her better, but he didn’t know how that might happen. She wasn’t one of his village’s women, and he thought that surely she must have suitors.
Then around a week later she came again to the mountain, and
this time she stopped at the cavern to say hello and chat. Wiglaff invited her in for herbal tea, and she admired everything in the cavern and asked him what they were or what they were for. This gave him the chance to teach her about his role as the village shaman, and she told him that her father was a great shaman, so she understood perfectly well what he was and what he did.
“You make the rains come and the crops grow,” she said with her innocent sense of wonder. He had to admit that she was right—as right as rain.
The couple walked to the summit together while she went on talking about anything at all. He liked hearing her voice and watching the way she touched her hair with her fingers and the way she looked away quickly when she found him staring at her. Wiglaff had never felt as he now did with this fairy girl who was nothing at all like his mother or his sisters. What would Winna think of this girl? Wiglaff asked himself. He decided to invite Onya to dinner with the family at Onna’s hut, and she said she’d be delighted to meet his family.
So Onya came to Onna’s hut, and Onna and Ugard were cordial. Onya was a hit with the children because she took an interest in each one of them. Wiglaff felt relaxed in her presence, and Ugard saw all the signs before his pupil did. Onna saw them also, and she asked out loud when Wiglaff and Onya were going to be married. Of course, this brought great peals of laughter from everyone and a great amount of blushing from the newly met couple.
Onya said, “A decision to marry is something that should take time. I’ve learned to be patient. My mother and I are visiting relatives in the neighboring village for two weeks before we head back south to our own village.”
Wiglaff asked her, “Will you stay with my family after your mother goes south?”
Onya replied, “I’ll ask my mother about that and let you know tomorrow on the mountain.”
After he escorted Onya to the hut of her relatives in the next village, he walked home in the dark, wondering about his chance of meeting on the mountain top and about what Onna had said about his getting married. Onya, he thought, had taken the suggestion well enough, and she had given him room to consider without feeling pressured. She hadn’t mentioned being interested in other suitors, had she? No. So he would talk about that among other things tomorrow.
Onya came to the cavern in the late afternoon the next day, and the couple went to the summit to admire the view and talk. Onya monopolized their conversation on the path, and when they reached the summit, she remarked on the beauty of the sunset against the wide plain. She looked so fresh and alive that Wiglaff was speechless, and he gazed on her with delight and admiration. She said something and he had to ask her to repeat what she said because he was momentarily distracted.
“Do you think that a shaman should marry?” she asked.
“Ugard married Onna finally. Actually, he would have married her first off except that my father asked her first, and she jumped into marriage while still holding a flame for Ugard. When my father died and I became the leader of my family, Ugard asked my permission to marry my mother because he had always loved her.”
Wiglaff let this idea sink in.
After a moment, she seemed to understand. Her expression became forlorn. “I think that’s so sad. They loved each other, but something got in the way. Fortunately, the story has a happy ending. That’s good, don’t you think?” She apparently liked the idea of a happily-ever-after ending.
Wiglaff shook his head. “I think that life plays tricks on us. For example, here you are. You are so fresh and alive and beautiful that I find myself speechless. You look out on this wide expanse from the mountaintop, and all I can do is look at you.”
He kept his eyes fixed on her so intensely that she looked away at the expanse that lay before them. She was making his point by her action. He understood the irony and smiled. She reddened and brushed a tear from her cheek. Her expression changed rapidly as her eyes blinked in wonder. She looked both flattered and bewildered, but most of all she was embarrassed. She had never met such an admirer as he, and it showed in her confusion.
“I must be blushing, Wiglaff. You make me feel so self-conscious, looking at me like you do.”
“So perhaps I should wear a blindfold, or look at something or someone else.” He was half teasing her, but she took him in earnest.
“No, no. I want you to look at me. When you do, I feel alive and happy. Yet I know you are a shaman. Could you ever really give a woman all your heart and soul?” Wiglaff thought she had the oddest way of shifting focus and turning the right questions right back at him. She reduced him to blushing now, and he felt a burning sensation on his torso and a fluttering of his heart.
“Until you came the other night, I didn’t have the foggiest idea, but now I think I do. You see, for me being a shaman is not a calling in the ordinary sense. I was born a shaman, and my training only brought out in me and refined what I already knew I was.”
Wiglaff did not know how to make this beautiful woman understand what he was saying. Against the vista, they were like two ciphers hovering over an abyss while struggling not to topple over into a void.
She surprised him. “My father is a shaman, but he’s not at all like you. He’s a recluse and not always nice to be around. My mother sometimes says the most awful things about his work, and she’s jealous of the time he spends with his rituals. He won’t share what he does with any of us, least of all me. So tell me, are you like him deep down inside?”
Again, the woman struck home with a question that threw Wiglaff back into his inmost soul. He struggled to find an answer that was both true and satisfactory to her.
“I do like solitude, but I can share that without sensing a contradiction. I can’t speak to whether you would feel left out of my life if I had to perform a serious ritual that took all my waking attention. I hope that the little time we’ve spent together has been pleasant for you.”
“These have been the happiest hours of my life so far, and I know of no way they could have been improved. Here, let me take your hand and hold it on my heart, thus.”
As she said this, she gently took his hand and placed it palm down over her heart. “Do you feel it beating?”
Wiglaff’s own heart was pounding now. He replied, “I do, and my heart leaps for joy that you are real. As a shaman I’ve studied envisioning, and my dreams, like my visions, are so real that they seem more real than anything I can sense. You, however, excel anything I have ever known in my visions. Once I saw two birds fly out of a mist and land right on my extended arms. They were not there, and then suddenly they were using my arm as a perch. You came out of nowhere like those birds, and now I’m afraid you’ll disappear as they did the next morning.”
She did not know what to say to this. She looked down and away. Wiglaff wondered whether she was going to tell him she was leaving. For a moment he wondered whether she was real or one of his vivid visions.
Accidentally, he said aloud, “Are you really real?”
“Silly, I’m real. Look at me. I know it’s getting dark, but my eyes will tell you I won’t disappear.”
He looked into her eyes and saw them fill with tears. He smiled and said, “There’s no need to cry.” He used his thumbs to brush away her tears.
She laughed and shook her head. Again she had a question, but she led with a statement. “Yesterday evening you asked me to stay at Onna’s house after my mother left for the south. Why did you ask me to stay in your family’s home?”
“I want to be close to you, and I want you to know all about me and my family. Also, I fear if you go back south with your mother, I’ll never see you again. That might destroy me, and I’m not sure why, but it’s so.”
“Haven’t you got some other woman? If not, why not?”
Now she was probing an old wound. Wiglaff had never responded well to women. His sister and mother were exceptions to the rule. In fact, women had found him repellant. They preferred manly warriors, not intellectuals and visionaries. Now this woman was confused by his not fitting the pa
ttern she had always known. He decided to tell her exactly how things stood.
“I’ve no other woman. I’ve been studying every waking moment to be what I am—a shaman. I have my sisters and my mother, but none of the other girls in the village were at all interesting to me. My sister’s women warriors are not my type.”
“And what is your type, exactly?” She seemed genuinely curious. He saw she was smiling. Was she making fun of him?
He surprised her by turning her question around. “Well, there’s you. Sensitive, quiet, happy—that’s something very rare!—beautiful, gentle. Has anyone ever told you these things before?”
“I’ve never met anyone who’s struck my fancy in the least. Until now. I’m confused. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what not to say. I want to be patient, but I know my heart, and I just don’t want to lose the chance of knowing you.”
Wiglaff felt much the same. He saw the opening he was looking for. He took a stab and asked the question that was troubling him—the question that would clarify where she stood and prove she was not going to disappear.
“So you’ll stay with my family after your mother goes?”
“No, silly, I’ll stay with you, and I’ll stay until you send me away.”
So Onya stayed with Wiglaff, and they loved each other from those first moments and became friends before they got married. Onna was very pleased that her son had found his soul mate. Ugard was pleased because his protégé was now a complete man as well as a complete shaman. Winna was at first upset that she hadn’t been consulted before her brother married, but when she met Onya she knew that her brother had chosen well, and she grew to love her sister-in-law as if she were her own sister. Wiglaff marveled that quiet and calm Onya should grow to become the closest female friend of his aggressive and forceful sister Winna. Opposite personalities seemed to attract somehow.
The WIglaff Tales (The Wiglaff Chronicles Book 1) Page 9