Comrade Grandmother and Other Stories

by Naomi Kritzer

  The fortune-teller had no children, and had adopted Eleanor to take care of her in her old age. Eleanor asked her once who her real mother was. “I don’t know,” the fortune-teller said irritably. “I found you in the potter’s field, where the poor are buried and people leave babies they don’t want.” So Eleanor swept the old woman’s house, and cooked her meals, and cut wood for her, and fetched her water.

  The day that Eleanor tried to see her own fortune, she spent the rest of the afternoon worrying that the scrying-bowl would tell the fortune-teller that Eleanor had meddled with it. But when the old woman gazed into the water that evening, she saw nothing amiss. Eleanor wondered after that if the fortune-teller really saw anything in the water—what good was a scrying-bowl that couldn’t even tell you that your servant was shirking her work? But the fortune-teller was quite well-respected in their neighborhood; even the wives of wealthy merchants occasionally walked down the narrow streets to their house near the harbor, lifting their skirts out of the salty puddles and wrinkling their noses at the smell of the fishing nets drying in the sun.

  One morning the fortune-teller did not get up, and when Eleanor brought her tea, she discovered that the woman had died in the night. The old woman hadn’t seen this in her scrying-bowl, either; she’d always said that she meant to give a gift to the priests of the sea-god, so that they would pray for the disposition of her soul, but had neglected to get around to it even in the week leading up to her death. When the fortune-teller’s nephews came to sell the house and the old woman’s other property, they decided to give Eleanor to the church, in place of the gift their mother had intended. “She can read,” they told the priest when they took her up the hill to the church. This was true, though Eleanor couldn’t write; the fortune-teller had always thought that teaching her would be a waste of paper and ink. “And she works hard.”

  “Does she tell fortunes?” the priest asked warily.

  “No,” the fortune-teller’s oldest nephew said. “She has no power.”

  The priest agreed to take Eleanor, in exchange for the church’s prayers for the old woman (“Though it won’t do much good,” he muttered as he closed and locked the great church door). He showed Eleanor to the scullery, where the other church servants gave her some supper and made a bed for her on the floor of the kitchen.

  This must be why the old woman never saw any fortune for me, Eleanor thought sadly as she curled up under her blanket. She didn’t need a scrying-bowl to see that her life here would be much the same as her life in the fortune-teller’s cottage—except that as the newest and youngest of the servants she would probably spend the whole morning chopping wood instead of just an hour or two each day.

  To her relief, the other servants seemed inclined to be kind to her, at least until she settled in. They gave her a good breakfast and then set her working on some light chores—dusting and polishing the statues in the church sanctuary. At least this was a very different task from what she usually did in the fortune-teller’s house; Eleanor amused herself while she worked by making up stories about each statue. The fortune-teller had not been very devout, and Eleanor’s religious education had been sparse, so she wasn’t actually sure who most of the statues represented.

  As she worked, she realized that someone was watching her—the priest. She wasn’t sure if she should curtsy or continue with her work. She finished dusting the statue she was working on—a detailed marble representation of a young man being devoured by a dragon—and turned to see if he was still staring at her. He was. She gave him a low, respectful curtsy, as the fortune-teller had taught her to do for anyone who came to their door to have their fortune told. “Good morning, Father,” she said.

  The priest approached her, staring fixedly into her eyes. “The men who brought you here said that you had no power.” His voice was stern, and Eleanor wondered what she could possibly have done wrong already. “Explain yourself.”

  Eleanor ducked her head, not certain what to say. “I don’t know what you mean, Father. I have never had the power of sight that my foster-mother had.”

  “No,” the priest said. He grasped her chin and pulled it up to stare into her eyes again. “Yet there is power here.”

  Eleanor tried to shake her head, but the priest held her chin too tightly.

  “Terrible power,” the priest said. “Terrible, dark power. And in a child so innocent! Thank the Gods, Eleanor, because unlike your foster-mother, your soul may yet be saved.” He released her and she rubbed her chin, wondering what on earth he was talking about. “Listen to me, child. Your foster-mother must have known, but she lied to protect you from yourself. You carry power like a full bucket holds water—and it must be contained. To use your power, even a drop, would destroy your soul and the Gods know what else.”

  Eleanor couldn’t imagine that this would be a problem—whatever power she had, she certainly hadn’t used it yet—but the priest was pacing, clearly distressed. “Dusting will never do,” he said. He led her back down to the kitchen where, on the priest’s instructions, she was set to work on much heavier chores. Scrubbing the floor, her skirt soaked with cold water. Carrying water from the public tap, pails and pails for the washing and the cooking. And chopping wood, of course, splitting a mountain of logs. “Through your holy labor,” the priest told her, “your power will be tamed.”

  Eleanor went to bed each night more exhausted than she had ever been living with the fortune-teller. But she remembered how tired she had been when the fortune-teller had first decided she was old enough to earn her keep, and tried to take heart. She would get used to the work. At least she got enough to eat.

  A few times, usually as she sat back on her heels to blow on her numb hands, scrubbing the stone floor of the vast church sanctuary, she wondered what this power was, that the priest was so frightened of, but that the fortune-teller had denied. Maybe she’d had no fortune not because she had no power, but because she would spend the rest of her life with her power “contained,” tamed like the caged lion that had been taken through the streets once. The fortune-teller had refused to give Eleanor a coin to let her take a look, but she had sneaked a look anyway, running away when the lion’s keeper shouted at her. She wished afterwards that she hadn’t looked; the lion hadn’t even growled at her, it had looked so tired and sad.

  Two months passed; the work did grow a little easier with time. Eleanor felt as if her hands were nearly always cold, though, and she was surprised by how bored she was. It had always been interesting to listen to the old woman telling fortunes. At the church there was only the bickering of the other servants to listen to, and occasionally church services.

  As Eleanor scrubbed her way through the complex of church buildings, though, she discovered a small library next to the priest’s study. Perhaps, she thought, one of those books would teach me about this power that the priest is so afraid of. She would never use this power, she thought—that would be wrong. But at least she could know what it was. That way she could be sure not to do anything by accident. The bookcases were not locked, and she eased out one particularly large book and sat down on the floor, opening it onto her lap.

  That book turned out to be a collection of prayers and hymns. She put it carefully away again. The next book she pulled out, which had a delicately tooled binding, was in a language she didn’t recognize. On her third try, however, she found herself holding a small book called, On the Nature of the Powers: Earth, Air, Water, and Fire. She opened it and found an intricate picture of a sea-monster. A truly powerful water-magus can transform himself into a leviathan, the book said. A middling water-magus can transform himself into a fish. Only those with substantial power can transform themselves at all; those with only a few drops of the water power must content themselves with such lesser deeds as scrying.

  Scrying! Eleanor turned the page forward, eager to read more. If her foster-mother had enough power to tell fortunes, and Eleanor had great power, did that mean she could turn herself into a leviathan? Or eve
n a fish? Not that life as a fish looked like it would be much fun—it would be even colder and wetter than her life at the church, and fish had to dodge fisherman’s nets, and larger fish. A leviathan, though—

  “What are you doing?”

  Eleanor jerked her head up. The priest stood in the doorway, towering over her. “This book had fallen off the shelf,” she said. “I just picked it up to put it away.”

  “You’re lying,” the priest said, and snatched the book out of her hands. “Come with me.” Eleanor backed away from him, and he seized her wrist, dragging her down to the dark stone cellar under the church, and locking her into a closet. It was cold in the cellar, and Eleanor shivered in her damp dress. She wondered what the priest would do to her—beat her? Starve her? Surely he wouldn’t kill her—she hadn’t really done anything wrong. Hours later, she heard footsteps, and the door swung wide. The priest stood by the door, holding a lantern; he was accompanied by a man Eleanor had never seen before, garbed in rich robes.

  “This is the girl, your Eminence,” the priest said. He spoke fawningly, as if the man held as much power over him as he held over Eleanor.

  The strange man took a long, cold look at Eleanor. “I see what you mean,” he said. “Her power is great. You have tried to control her through labor?”

  “Yes, but I’m not sure it’s working—as I told you.”

  “Let her be kept down here,” the stranger said. “She can lead a life of prayer and contemplation—with no opportunities for corruption. You can brick her in—”

  Eleanor recoiled at the stranger’s words. Brick her in? No matter what her power was, she didn’t deserve that. Ducking under the priest’s arm, she pelted back up the stairs. “Stop!” she heard the priest shout. Then—“Stop her!”

  Through the door, down the hallway, into the kitchen. The cook and the other servants must have heard the priest shouting, but they were strangely slow to react, carefully setting down their work before they reached for Eleanor, long-gone by then. Out of the kitchen, through the church sanctuary, and into the street.

  “STOP!” The priest was still chasing her. Eleanor didn’t know this part of the city at all; she had been brought here by the old woman’s nephews and then had never left the church. It occurred to her that the priest would probably expect her to head down the hill—towards her old home and familiar ground—so she ran up the steep hill instead. She dodged around servants with baskets of fish and vegetables, a man with a wheelbarrow of wine casks, a boy selling oranges. When she could no longer hear the priest’s shouts, she stepped into an alley to catch her breath.

  She couldn’t go back there—that was certain. Brick her in. Eleanor shuddered. Where, then? None of the fortune-teller’s relatives would be happy to see her, and would probably take her right back to the church. She tried to calm her whirling thoughts and think for a moment. The old woman supported herself through fortune-telling. Eleanor hadn’t ever been able to see anything in the scrying dish, but maybe she could fake it. How did you convince people you were a fortune-teller? Presumably you tried your hand at it and convinced people you knew what you were doing. Well, if she told enough fortunes, she was bound to get a few of them right.

  Not here, though; she was still too close to the church. Checking carefully for the priest, Eleanor started the long walk across the city.

  She spent the night in an alley; luckily, she found a bit of bread that someone had dropped. That didn’t even come close to filling her stomach, but hopefully she’d have another source of food soon. When morning came, she washed her face at the public tap, and did her best to rake her fingers through her hair to neaten it. She tried to convince herself that a wild appearance would be to her advantage. Now for a scrying-bowl—it hardly mattered what she chose, since she’d never been able to see anything in the scrying-bowl anyway. She found a small stone with a little hollow in it—that would hold a few drops of water. Good enough, she thought. She went to the market square in this part of town, and at her polite request a passerby helped her to chalk onto the paving-stones: FORTUNES TOLD—FREE. Then she sat down cross-legged to wait.

  “Why are you telling fortunes for free, girl?” asked one of the women who’d come early to the market.

  “I’m just starting out,” Eleanor said. “I need the practice. Would you like me to tell your fortune?”

  “All right,” the woman said with an amused smile. She set down her basket. “Do you want to look at my palm?”

  Eleanor hadn’t ever seen that sort of fortune-telling done, so she shook her head. “The water tells me what I need to know,” she said, trying to make her voice mysterious. She studied her pebble, then peaked up at the woman’s face. “You’re married...to a dark-haired man?” The woman was shaking her head. “A fair-haired man?”

  “I’m not married,” the woman said, starting to laugh.

  “An admirer then?” Eleanor said. The woman was still shaking her head. “Then I must be seeing an admirer you don’t know about,” Eleanor said. “A secret admirer.” The woman looked skeptical, but a little intrigued. “He’s not someone you see every day. Maybe once a week, or even less, but he makes excuses to be close to you.” Eleanor spun a wild tale of this woman’s secret admirer, ending by advising the woman to wear perfume and a head-scarf to signal the man that she was interested. Eleanor had heard the old fortune-teller give this advice once.

  The woman in the marketplace laughed, and flipped Eleanor a tiny coin. “Thanks for the advice, girl. I’m not sure fortune-telling is your thing, but you did give me a farthing’s worth of amusement.”

  Unfortunately, the morning went downhill from there. The next girl to stop by for her fortune thought that Eleanor was dead-on, but didn’t tip her; the next time, Eleanor got something wrong straight off and blew her credibility. Almost everyone who asked for their fortune was female, until late morning, when Eleanor looked up to see a very tall man standing over her.

  “My fortune,” he said. “Let’s hear it.”

  “If I get it right, will you pay me?” she asked.

  “You say you’re ‘free,’“ he said.

  “That’s true, but I’m pretty hungry,” Eleanor said. “I think I might be better at this if I weren’t.”

  The man opened his satchel and took out a piece of bread and a slice of cheese. “Have a bite to eat, then,” he said, handing them to her. “Then tell me what you see in my future.” He squatted down beside her in the square.

  Eleanor ate the bread and cheese quickly, trying not to look like she was wolfing them down. “Let’s see,” she said when she was done, stalling. “I see no wife.” He was young, so it was a good bet.

  “That’s right,” he said.

  “But you do have a sweetheart.” She glanced at his face, but he kept it still, giving her no hints. “She’s got hair as golden as a buttercup, and eyes like the noon sky.” Still no sign. “Well, you should know, there’s a dark-haired young man who’s got his eye on her. He’ll steal her away from you if you don’t watch out—you should bring your sweetheart flowers tonight, and a nice gift within the next week.”

  The man had a faint smile on his lips. He waited for a beat to see if Eleanor would say anything else, then said, “You aren’t very good at this, are you?”

  “Why? Did I get the hair color wrong?”

  “I have no sweetheart. Besides, when does a man ever go to a fortune-teller for romantic advice? You should warn me that my drinking and gambling will lead to my ruin—except that I don’t drink or gamble, either.”

  “Maybe men should go to fortune-tellers for romantic advice,” Eleanor said. “Did you want to ask me about anything else? Because if not, maybe you should move along so I can tell someone else’s fortune.”

  “It’s just too bad,” the man said, standing up. “I’m sorry to see you wasting your powers this way.”

  Eleanor’s eyes grew big, and she leapt to her feet. “What powers?”

  “You aren’t a water-witch, that’s obvi
ous, or you’d have gotten more right,” the man said. “You’re an earth-witch, and fortune-telling is never going to be your strong point.” He started to leave the square, then turned back. “I can teach you about earth-magic, if you like.”

  She left the square to follow the stranger without so much as erasing the chalk on the pavement.

  The man strode brusquely up the steep hill toward the Baron’s castle. Eleanor had to half-run to keep up with him; his legs were much longer than hers. The man never glanced back, but she had the odd feeling that he knew she was there. A few times, as they came to busy cross-streets, he slowed, as if he were waiting for her to catch up. Finally he reached the castle wall, and he paused at the gate until she reached his side.

  “In there?” Eleanor said. “You live in there?”

  “I’m one of Baron’s court-magi,” the man said. “You’ll have to stay close to me, now.”

  Eleanor followed him through the gate onto the castle grounds; they didn’t go into the castle, but past it, beyond the stables, and into a house near the edge of the wall. “This is where I live,” he said. “I only go into the castle when the Baron has need for my services.”

  Eleanor didn’t know what to say. The man quietly pulled a chair out for her at the table, and started a pot of porridge. “My name is Martin,” he said. “Tell me how you came to be telling fortunes in the square.”

  Eleanor told Martin about the fortune-teller who had raised her, and being given to the priest, and what the priest had said to her, and tried to do. Martin listened quietly, stirring the porridge. “The priest was right about one thing, if nothing else,” Martin said. “You have huge potential as a magus, Eleanor.”

  “And it isn’t evil?”

  “Priests who worship the sea-gods think that all magic is evil,” Martin said. “They’re wrong; power is power. It’s what you do with it that’s good or evil. That priest, for example, had power over you—and he used it to threaten you and abuse you. I’d say that’s evil.”