He handed me the letters, which I took into my room at once, and I shut the door, so great was my excitement, Sister O. I could not get a single word out, nor even look at my family. I must spend the evening with you all, and no one else.
I will write more once I have read all the letters.
Your novice,
Dear Jai,
Thank you for your letters! I understand perfectly that you waited until you had heard from me and knew I had arrived safely before writing. And thank you for the red thread you sent! How could you know that I had ripped a hole in my cloak? Not to worry, it is very small. I can fix it with this thread and no one will guess it was ever torn.
I will do as you say, and hold you in my thoughts every new moon, and know that you are doing the same. Thank you. It will make me feel much less alone.
How dare you laugh at my marriage proposal! You ought to know that it was certainly the first and only of my life so I must cherish the memory fondly! In all seriousness, though, I do so wish that we could sit beneath the lemon tree and laugh about it together.
I am terribly envious of all the books you have read in the treasure chamber! You cannot imagine how much I yearn for those books. I miss them almost more than I miss all of you! I am joking, of course.
It is incredible to think that it was a girl who came to the Abbey for convalescence—whom you helped to care for—whose father brought your letters all the way here to me. It is difficult to imagine new novices coming to the Abbey, novices I will never have the chance to meet. I hope you make many friends among them, Jai, truly I do. Yet I hope that there always remains a small place reserved in your heart for me alone. There is, isn’t there, Jai, my friend?
Your friend,
Venerable Sister Nar,
I thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the seeds that you sent. I have greatly missed turmeric; it is such a useful plant. I will sow radishes too. I wonder what my mother will think of their peppery flavor! We have had problems with snails here—do you have any advice for getting rid of them? I am sending you a bag of honey-flower seeds. Is that a plant you have ever come across? The flowers make a delicious tea, and I believe they have an invigorating effect. If you study the properties of the plant, I would be most interested to know your findings.
Yours faithfully,
Venerable Sister Mareane,
I now have a goat and kid to care for. Any advice you might have about caring for these animals would be gratefully received!
Yours faithfully,
Most Venerable Mother,
Thank you for not castigating me for giving away the silver you entrusted me with. You have lifted a great burden from my conscience. I will do as you advise and try to trust the people around me, as I trusted you all when I lived at the Abbey.
I believe the omen you received at Moon Dance foretold the death of my sister’s baby son last autumn. There have been no other deaths since, and neither have I seen the Crone’s door. She is here nevertheless, I understand that now, and I can feel her presence. She is everywhere, as are the Maiden and the Mother. Though different people give her different names and forms, we are all children of the First Mother.
Respectfully,
Venerable Sister Eostre,
Thank you for your letter, brief though it was. I knew you would be the only one to understand. You accurately predicted Marget’s behavior over the past year: she has withdrawn from everything and everyone, kept mostly at home, not wanting to participate in shared tasks or celebrations. No one blames her for what happened, but I believe that she blames herself.
You wrote that the solution is simple, and that I already have all I need to help Marget. I believe I do understand, and I am ashamed that it never occurred to me before. I will do my best.
Yours faithfully,
My dear Ennike Rose,
Thank you for all your words of encouragement. You are a great friend, do you know that? It makes no difference to me that you are now the Rose, servant to the Maiden. To me you will always be Ennike, the first friend I ever made at the Abbey.
You are too funny with all your questions about Kárun! I have only met him a couple of times since returning home. He is no one, you know, just a neighbor. Well, you will see when I send the second bundle of letters—and you will be able to read about Géros and see how wrong you were! Strangely, I have not thought about Géros in several moons. The things we did together creep into my dreams sometimes, but he has been replaced with a sort of faceless man. I wish that you were here, so that we could discuss these dreams. They are the type of thing that can only be discussed with the Rose.
Thank you for sending me more Goddess Tongue. I may need it again at some point in the future, if I choose to warm my bed with a man again. For a mother is something I never want to be.
I can stand close to the Maiden and the Crone, but the Mother demands so much energy. Do you understand what I mean? I want to remain free to work and study. Besides, if I do not use it myself there are others I can give it to, other women who do not wish to fall pregnant again, or at all.
Geja has grown so big! It was wonderful to receive a letter and drawing from her. Jai truly has a way with her.
But I expect that she will forget me. For her and all the new novices, Maresi Enresdaughter will become little more than a myth. A story to tell on dark winter evenings.
Yours,
Dear Sister O,
I saved your letters until last. I sat and read throughout the evening, paying no heed to Tauer or the evening meal or my family. I started my replies at once, writing several letters in one go, because I wanted the feeling of immediacy, as though I were truly talking to you all, in genuine conversation.
It was very wise of you to send me more paper.
I was most taken aback by what you wrote about my mother. With all due respect, I did take offense at your words. I am trying my best to listen to all she has to say. And I do understand that it was difficult for her to send me away. But why must it be so difficult for her to have me back? You say I must continue learning from her. Yet she taught me everything she knew during the first nine years of my life. What can a farmer’s wife from Rovas teach me, who has studied at the Red Abbey? It is your teachings that I miss!
When I sent those first letters, which you have now received, I had not yet come across the tone that sings and resonates through the forest, both luring and frightening me. Do you know what it is? Certain phenomena occur that seem connected, but I do not understand how. The calling kite, Gray Lady’s desire to go out into the wild, that tone . . . It is as if they are trying to speak to me in a language I do not understand. I have prayed to the First Mother for guidance, but have received no answer yet.
I miss being able to ask you all the questions that swirl around in my mind. You have always taken the time to try to answer them. Thank you for everything you wrote in your letters, and all your guidance. I will hold it close when storms are raging, and when I feel uncertain and weak.
I no longer feel like as much of an outsider as when I first arrived. I am sorry that I complained so much. You are right: I can never be like everybody else here because I have had experiences that no one else shares. But I will take your advice and try to use this to my benefit—if I can. Sometimes Tauer gives helpful advice. His knowledge is not of the same sort as yours, for he has not studied it in books, but he has lived a long life, seen much and helped many. He is a friend to life and death alike. That is something I also choose to be. Currently I am of the opinion that life is the more frightening of the two.
Has the Mother Abbess told you about the vision she had at Moon Dance? The one where she saw me standing by the opened door of the Crone? I wrote to her saying that I believe the vision foretold the death of my nephew, but I fear that this may not be the case. It was not I who opened death’s door for him; it was not I who let him through. I have not seen the door of the Crone since coming here, I have felt only her breath. What do you think the visi
on means? It worries me.
I agree with the Mother Abbess: you do need to take a novice. Your stubbornness is incomprehensible. I am in Rovas now. My life is here. There must always be a servant to the Crone at the Abbey, and therefore you must train a novice. You are not old, and there is time for a new girl to come to the Abbey, one whom the Crone calls, as she did me. You will teach her all you taught me about the Crone’s mysteries, and more besides, and she will be your support and your aid in all the tasks you now do alone.
Your novice,
Most Venerable Mother,
It is late evening, but still light, as always at this time of year in Rovas. I am sitting in a room that is new to me, but which, all of a sudden, is my very own. It is mine in a way that no room has ever been before. My bare arms are covered in mosquito bites, and the scent of fresh wood fills my nostrils. I love the smell. My heart is full of . . . I know not what, Venerable Mother. Gratitude.
Kárun came to our homestead earlier this evening. I am sure Sister O must have read aloud the letter in which I mentioned him. I was sitting in the central yard and keeping an eye on Dúlan and Maressa while unraveling one of Father’s old sweaters. Mother wanted to reknit the yarn into some garments for the girls. Náraes and Jannarl were on a visit to the neighboring village and their daughters were impatiently awaiting their return.
Rovasian late-spring evenings are truly special, Venerable Mother—the light, the lingering warmth from the day’s sun, the scent of the soil and slowly awakening summer. Mosquitoes were buzzing around us, the sow and her piglets were grunting and snuffling around the yard, and Maressa was practicing writing the names of all the members of her family. Náraes is the most difficult. She just writes “mama” instead.
Kárun appeared at the gate just as Mother came outside to empty the dishwater. His words of greeting were almost swallowed by the pigs’ eager grunts as they rushed over to see if Mother was throwing out anything edible.
“Blessings on your hearth,” he said.
Mother peered at him with wariness and suspicion.
“Blessing on your journey,” she answered curtly. She does not think much of woodcutters and other solitary folk. She says she does not trust them. “Akios isn’t home.”
“I have a matter to discuss with Maresi,” said Kárun quietly. I looked at him in surprise. He was leaning against the gate with his shirtsleeves rolled up, and the sun-bleached hair on his forearms glinted gold in the evening sun. His deep-set eyes gazed at me with absolute earnestness. He was not mocking or playing with me. His hair was tied back, and his skin was already brown from the spring sun.
“Will you come with me? I have something I want to show you,” he said. “If your mother can spare you.”
Mother looked disapproving as I put down the sweater.
“Would you look after the girls?” I asked. She bobbed her head in answer and did nothing to stop me. Then she turned around and marched straight into the house, only to return a moment later with my staff. She handed it to me without a word. I gave her an appeasing smile as I took it.
“No need to worry, Mother. He is a friend of Akios. He is no threat to me. I will be back before long.”
But I know that it is not violence she fears. She sees Kárun as a suitor—regardless of my feelings on the matter—and does not wish to see a daughter of hers wed to a poor woodcutter without farm or field.
Kárun led me along the path toward Jóla, and I asked no questions. It was pleasant to walk, pleasant to move. I have spent most of my time at home recently, rereading your letters, milking my goat, experimenting with making cheese and cooking the whey into whey cheese. The garden also needs much attention at this time, when everything is sprouting, including weeds.
The trees have started blooming, and the forest was a marvel of beauty: shiny white tree trunks under a thin veil of pale green. The stream surged, joyful and wild, to the left of the path, as melodic as an instrument, and to the right there grew a dense carpet of snowblues, which is a small spring flower in the shape of a bell. It is common in these parts and gives off a divinely fragrant nectar.
“I heard you got letters from your abbey,” said Kárun. “That must’ve made you happy.”
“Yes.” I smiled to myself. To this day your letters make me happy whenever I think of them. “It was good to know that everybody back there is well, and that they are thinking of me and have not forgotten me.”
Kárun peered down at me. “And are there really only women there?”
“Yes. Is that so strange?”
“Quite strange. I’m not used to men and women being divided in such a way.”
“You freelander types who hunt and fell trees and float timber are exclusively male,” I said.
He nodded and thought for a moment before answering. “True, but many have wives and children waiting for them back home in a cabin somewhere. They long for home and talk often of their families. They have mothers and sisters. Perhaps I don’t go among many womenfolk myself, but I certainly wouldn’t like it if I never saw any of them. Any of you.”
“I had to reaccustom myself to men when I came home,” I said hesitantly. I had never spoken to a man about this. About how strange I felt on first hearing male voices again and seeing men everywhere on a daily basis.
“It can’t have helped, what happened to Marget,” said Kárun.
I glanced at him. Nobody talks about it openly. He is the first person not to avoid the subject.
“It is true. But it started long before, with things that happened at the Abbey. Wicked men did us harm. Great harm.”
“What happened to them?”
“I killed them.”
I did not intend to say it, Venerable Mother. It simply slipped out. The only person who knows about those terrible events is Náraes. I cannot even bring myself to tell my parents about what happened with the door and the Crone and my blood. I regretted the revelation at once, suspecting that Kárun would see me in a new light. I realized in that moment that I did not want to lose that searching, serious look he always gives me. I looked down at the ground, stumbled over my own feet and swallowed the lump stuck in my throat.
“So that’s what’s been weighing on you,” said Kárun calmly. “I knew there was something.”
I looked up, my eyes a little misty. He had stopped before me on the path, with the evening sun illuminating him from behind. He looked at me with a steady gaze, without fear or disgust. I could not answer, and only nodded. We stood there awhile.
That instance of pure honesty and ensuing acceptance was one of the best moments of my time in Rovas, Venerable Mother.
We walked farther and came to a place where the path divided and a newly trodden path led uphill to the north. We waded through a small sea of thimbleweed, then through a hazel shrub and emerged in front of Kárun’s building site.
However, it was no longer a building site. It was a completed house. It was beautiful and golden, steeped in evening sun and surrounded by wonderful scents. Kárun has cleared away all the timber and waste, but the ground around the house is covered in sweet-smelling shavings. It is a small building, just one room, but with a window to the south and one to the west, and a real chimney—not just a smoke hatch like many old houses here still have. It is lovelier than any house in the village, up on its little hill with a view across a field of grazing Jóla sheep, and a view of the little stream where it meanders in a merry curve. Behind the house, to the north and east, the forest is at its most beautiful, full of fanning leaves and birdsong.
I leaned on my staff and beamed. “This is so beautiful, Kárun,” I said. “To think that you did all this alone.”
“Oh, well, a few of the lads from Jóla helped me with the roof,” said Kárun, running his hand over his head. “And I had help to lift the final logs.” I gave him a playful shove in the side, and he laughed in surprise. “But yes, it’s a fine setting. That’s why I chose this place. Do you want to come in?”
I followed him insi
de. Sunlight poured through the western window and made the fresh-wood walls appear as though daubed in honey, or gold. It is not a large room, about the size of Mother and Father’s cottage, but without a separate bedroom. There is a small mortared fireplace on the north side and some wall-mounted shelves beside it. That is all.
“It is wonderful,” I said, and the dimples in Kárun’s cheeks deepened. I could see that my approval was important to him, though I did not know why. “You are yet to move in though, I see?”
“I don’t intend to live here.”
I turned to him. He cleared his throat and started rubbing his hands together.
“I’ve built this for you, Maresi.”
I stared at him.
“For your school.” He looked at me searchingly.
“My school?” I whispered. “I have no school. Only three pupils.”
He shook his head. “You needed help to lay the first log, that’s all. Here, I’ve laid it for you. Now it’s up to you to continue building.” He looked around the room. “I didn’t know what the right furniture for a school would be, but you only need tell me and I’ll try to put it together before I have to travel south down the river. That day is fast approaching now.”
“A long table,” I said slowly, picturing it. “With benches.”
I looked at him, and perhaps it was the first time I had truly looked at him. An entirely ordinary man, a little older than I. An entirely ordinary man, grown from Rovasian soil, like my father and brother. Yet not really like them. No, not like them at all. Broad shoulders, arms strong from swinging an ax through summer and winter, coarse hands—hands that he has used to build me this incredible gift. Furthermore, he wants nothing in return, Venerable Mother. I know this. I have communed with the Maiden enough to know.
“Why, Kárun?” I asked.
He hesitated. “Sit down, Maresi,” he said, and gestured to the floor. He sat opposite me with crossed legs. He searched for the words awhile. “My father was a wealthy man when my mother married him. But one night, when he’d been drinking, he played a game of dice, not understanding what was written on the paper that defined the stakes. He lost our farmstead, the livestock, everything.” Kárun stared blankly out of the window. “Afterward he was a changed man. He took out his anger and shame on everyone else.”
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