The Safe-Keeper's Secret

by Sharon Shinn

  Sure enough, one by one, the neighbors started to arrive. Elminstra was first, her one-year-old granddaughter in her arms. “Isadora, I thought that was you!” she said, greeting the Dream-Maker with a kiss. “Tell me what you’ve seen in your travels.”

  “Hello, Elminstra, how good to see you,” Isadora replied.

  They had only exchanged a few words before the farmer down the road arrived with his two teenaged daughters, shy and beautiful. Next it was Dirk and his father; after that, the blacksmith, then the carter, then the money-changer. After that, Fiona lost track. She helped her mother bring out trays of food and gather up the used dishes, offering unobtrusive hospitality. Though all of these people had, at some point, come to this very house to seek Damiana’s services, none of them were here tonight to confer with the Safe-Keeper. They were here with sincere expressions of goodwill and well-being, but they had an agenda that was nobody’s secret—they hoped some of the Dream-Maker’s magic would rub off on them or those they loved. None of them said so, of course. They talked of the weather, the conditions of the road, last year’s harvest, next spring’s fair. Most of them brought some kind of small token to press into Isadora’s hand—a glittering crystal stone, a braided leather belt, a pair of embroidered slippers. Thoughtful remembrances that said in turn, Keep me in your thoughts. When the power takes hold of you again, remember me.

  It was past midnight before all the guests were gone, and Fiona was yawning over the sink. Reed, who was not about to go up to bed even if he didn’t feel like being useful, was shuffling and reshuffling a dog-eared card deck, trying to teach himself a trick. Damiana wiped down the kitchen table one last time and peered into the big main room.

  “I think they’re all gone, for the moment,” Isadora said.

  “Then let me fix up the bed for you,” Damiana said. “You two—go on upstairs. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Reed, of course, protested, but without much credibility. Fiona washed her face and went upstairs without another word. She tried, as always, to listen to the adult conversation transpiring below, but she was too tired. She fell asleep before her mother had even come upstairs to kiss her good-night.

  Chapter Four

  At first, it seemed like nothing in particular came of Isadora’s visit. No one found gold in his back yard in the week after she’d left; no extraordinary babies were born. Classes were not miraculously canceled, so Fiona and Reed trudged out to the schoolhouse every day, kicking their way through the first curled brown leaves of early autumn. Fiona did not suddenly with a touch of the Dream-Maker’s hand understand the intricacies of math; and Calbert Seston did not seem to have any greater awareness of her existence. Her deeper, darker wishes, of course, did not come true—but then, neither did anybody else’s.

  Until Madeleine Herbrush’s mother died two weeks after the Dream-Maker left town.

  Madeleine, a pretty, reserved girl about four years older than Fiona, hadn’t been at school that day, but Fiona hadn’t particularly remarked on that. The schoolhouse was small enough to have only two rooms and two teachers. Just this fall, Fiona and Reed had been moved up to the room where the ten- to sixteen-year-olds were taught, and Madeleine was in this classroom, though she was often absent. Many of the students were. The farmers’ children had duties at planting and harvest times; children from large families were frequently required to stay home and help their mothers take care of sick siblings or handle other chores. Damiana was a firm believer in education, and so she rarely succumbed to any arguments that Fiona or Reed put forward when they tried to convince her that they needed a day off from school. But they were among the few who could be found regularly in the schoolhouse.

  It was only after she got home that Fiona heard the news. Reed had skipped alongside her down the road to home, then continued on toward Elminstra’s to see if Greg was available to play. Elminstra herself was seated in the Safe-Keeper’s kitchen, sipping tea. Damiana stood with her back against the cabinets, holding her own steaming mug. She wore that expression that Fiona liked least—the one where she tried to show no expression at all.

  “What’s going on?” Fiona said, because clearly something was.

  Her mother tried a smile. “Hello, sweet girl. How was your day?”

  “It was all right. I didn’t do so badly in math. What’s wrong?”

  “Birdie Herbrush died last night. We’re talking about what we might do for her family,” Damiana said.

  Fiona was instantly sorry. “Madeleine’s mother? Oh, the poor thing! Doesn’t she have three little brothers and sisters? And a father that travels all the time?”

  Damiana nodded tightly. Elminstra said, “Well, I hate to see anybody leave school before they’re done, but she just might have to. Stay home and take care of those younger ones.”

  “Her sister’s thirteen,” Damiana said. “Old enough to be some help when their father’s gone.”

  Elminstra made a sympathetic noise. “Still. Four children and no mother. It’s got to be a nightmare for Dale Herbrush.”

  “Well, it’s a dream come true for Madeleine—for all the children in that house,” Damiana said quietly. “Isadora’s visit did some good after all.”

  For a moment, no one in the kitchen spoke. Damiana had said the words so calmly that they didn’t instantly register; and when they did, both Fiona and Elminstra stared at her.

  “What do you mean,” Fiona said, “a dream come true?”

  But Elminstra had figured it out more quickly than a ten-year-old would. “Oh, my,” said the older woman, shaking her head and gazing down at the table. “Oh, my lord. Once in a while I thought—and there would be those bruises—but I thought, well, children play. They fall, they get hurt. I suppose this was a secret you’ve been keeping a while?”

  “Five years,” Damiana said.

  “What secret? What are you talking about?” Fiona demanded, though she had already guessed part of the answer. Why would any child be happy to learn that her mother had died? Fiona shivered and hoped, just a little, that her mother would tell her this was one of those things she was too young to know. But her mother looked straight at her and replied.

  “Madeleine’s mother was a violent woman. She would go into rages and beat her children—Madeleine—all of them,” Damiana said. “And Madeleine was afraid to tell anyone, because her mother had threatened to do more harm to her brother and sisters if she did. One day Madeleine came home from school to find the other three children tied to the door and bleeding. She stayed so she could protect them—and she told no one for the same reason.”

  Fiona felt her lips trembling as she tried to shape the words. “But she—she told you,” she whispered.

  Damiana moved her shoulders in a gesture that might have been a shrug. “She had to tell someone,” she said. “And I could keep her secret safe.”

  Elminstra looked up at last. “But you need not keep it any longer? She does not fear the pity they will all receive when the story is told?”

  Damiana shook her head. “She said she wanted the world to know that her mother was a cruel woman.”

  “She had a lot of friends here,” Elminstra said hesitantly. “You are the Safe-Keeper, of course, but will everyone believe you?”

  Damiana smiled somewhat grimly. “If they do not, I will call Thomas to town. No one disputes him.”

  Fiona had listened to these last few exchanges in silence, feeling like her head was about to burst open. “But how could you!” she finally exclaimed. “How could you keep such a secret?”

  Her mother looked at her with eyes as shadowed as ever Thomas’s could be. “Because that’s what I do,” she said gently. “Keep secrets.”

  “But not such dreadful ones!”

  “Sometimes,” Damiana said, still in that gentle voice. “I know secrets that are worse than this one.”

  “But you—but you—but things like that should be told!”

  “Maybe,” her mother replied. “But not by me.”

&n
bsp; Fiona shook her head. Inside, it felt like her brain was buzzing with a convocation of angry bees. “But surely Madeleine came to you because she thought you could help her—”

  Elminstra looked over at her. “It was a help. You don’t know it yet, but sometimes the weight of knowledge is almost too much to bear. Sharing it with one other living soul is enough to ease your burden. Even if no one else ever learns of it. Even if nothing changes.”

  Fiona shook her head again, more violently, but she could not dislodge the bees. “I don’t understand,” she said fiercely. “How could you not have done anything to help her?”

  “Fiona—” her mother said, but Fiona flung her mug to the floor. It exploded into a dozen pieces and threw liquid in as many directions. Fiona ran through the door and down the lawn and out toward the streambed, without pausing to see if anyone hurried after her or even came to the door and called out her name.

  She spent the next two hours sitting on the bank of the spring, watching the water gurgle past. The air was still hot enough, this early in the season, to make the notion of wading in cold water seem pleasant, but she hadn’t bothered to unlace her shoes and step in. She hadn’t bothered to undo the top two buttons of her dress, which she usually did as soon as she got home. She hadn’t bothered to pick up a stone and bounce it down the glittering surface of the water. She just sat there and stared, and wondered how soon the world would fall apart.

  Reed came looking for her around the dinner hour. She heard him coming from fifty feet away, because he was making no effort at stealth, but he did not call to her. He didn’t even greet her when he arrived at the streambed. He merely dropped to a seat beside her on the muddy bank and put his arm around her waist.

  They sat there a few moments in silence, and the only thing in the whole world that seemed to have direction or motion was the creek before them. As a rule, Reed was not formed for quiet, but on rare occasions, when the situation demanded, he could sit still as a cat watching an unwary bird. That was how he sat now while Fiona continued to watch the water.

  Finally she sighed and stirred. His arm tightened briefly, and then he released her. He pulled his kirrenberry whistle out of his pocket and began blowing silent melodies into the hushed twilight.

  “I couldn’t have kept a secret like that,” Fiona said at last.

  Reed held the whistle up to his eye and peered down it as if wondering what obstruction kept its voice silent. “You didn’t have to,” he said. “It wasn’t told to you.”

  “But someday, when I’m a Safe-Keeper, someone will tell me a story like that. I don’t know what I’ll do.”

  “You don’t have to be a Safe-Keeper,” he said.

  “But I want to be.”

  He shrugged and put the whistle away. Finding a handful of round stones, he dropped them one by one into the racing current. “Then you’ll learn the way of it. Someday. But there’s no reason you have to start practicing now.”

  “What if I’m never good enough?” she asked, not looking at him.

  He balanced a bigger rock on his head a moment, then jerked forward with enough force that it flew away from him and into the stream. “Well, I suppose, you tell somebody’s secret, and nobody ever tells you secrets again, and then you get a different job,” he said. “Ned said he tried to be a carpenter before he was a blacksmith, but he could never understand the wood. He says he understands iron.”

  “It’s not the same thing,” she said impatiently.

  He shrugged and threw a rock so hard that it landed on the other side of the creek, hit a tree, and rolled into the water anyway. “I don’t see why not,” he said. “It’s just finding out what you’re good at. Most people don’t know that when they’re ten years old.”

  “All you’re good at is throwing rocks,” she said irritably.

  He grinned over at her. His eyes were a freckled green, fringed with spiky brown lashes, and even when he was serious he looked like he was up to mischief. “What I want to know,” he said, “is what some of the other secrets are.”

  “You can’t ask that!”

  “But don’t you wonder? And what Angeline’s secrets are? Do you think they know about buried gold? Like the cleric in Thrush Hollow had?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Or maybe they know that—that—Lacey stole a diamond ring from Elminstra’s house.”

  “Elminstra doesn’t have any diamond rings.”

  “Well, she doesn’t now,” Reed said.

  Fiona couldn’t keep herself from laughing. “Maybe they know where old Josh keeps his still.”

  “Maybe they know about people who’ve been murdered.”

  “No! That’s terrible!”

  “Bad people,” Reed said quickly. “People who deserved to die.”

  For a moment, Fiona heard the echo of her mother’s voice. Who killed Anya Haber? “They probably know who killed them,” she said, entering into the spirit of it, “and how they did it, and why.”

  “They might be hiding evidence,” Reed said. “A knife. Or a cup of poison.”

  Fiona glanced over her shoulder. “Maybe,” she breathed, “they helped bury the bodies.”

  Reed leaned over to whisper in her ear. “Maybe,” he said, “there’s one buried in our root cellar.”

  Fiona shrieked and covered her ears, but now she was laughing. “No! I won’t be able to sleep tonight!”

  “Fi-o-na,” Reed moaned in an unearthly voice. “I’m coming back to find my bones.”

  She screamed again and scrambled to her feet. Reed chased her all the way home, crooning her name and making her laugh so hard she almost couldn’t keep her footing.

  That night, Fiona was under the covers with one candle still lit when Damiana came in to tuck her into bed. Her mother sat on the edge of the mattress and brushed her blond hair back, as always.

  “So are you still upset with me?” her mother asked.

  Fiona stared up at her, trying to read secrets on the smooth, composed face. She wondered if this was why Damiana always seemed so untroubled, no matter how hectic the day; she knew of so much that was so much worse. “I’m trying to understand it,” she said at last.

  “Everybody has a part to play,” her mother said. “Bart Seston raises cattle, the butcher slaughters them so we can have food. A midwife brings people into the world, an undertaker buries them when they die. Life is good sometimes, hard sometimes, bad sometimes, and good again.”

  “I don’t always understand your part,” Fiona said.

  “I am the voice that says ‘I know’ when someone tells me ‘This is too hard for me to hold on to by myself.’ I am the soul who reminds other souls that they are not alone. I cannot bring them solutions, I cannot make their troubles disappear, I can only say that I hear them and I understand. Sometimes that’s enough.”

  “Sometimes it’s not,” Fiona said.

  “Sometimes it’s not,” her mother agreed. “And then they look for help from someone other than me.”

  “You said you knew other secrets, even ones worse than Madeleine’s.”

  Damiana was quiet for a moment. “One or two,” she said at last.

  Fiona shook her head against the pillow. “But aren’t they ever too much for you to know?” she asked.

  “Sometimes. Sometimes I have to hear someone say ‘I know’ when I have a secret too great to hold on to in silence. And then I tell Angeline. Or the Safe-Keeper in Thrush Hollow. Someone else who understands silence.”

  “You can’t tell Thomas, though.”

  “Thomas is the last one I would tell.”

  “It’s strange that the two of you would be friends, then.”

  Damiana smiled. “Ah, but Thomas is my mirror image, don’t you see? Or perhaps it is stronger than that. He brings light where I create darkness. He gets to say aloud all the things I have kept to myself. When the time for secrets is past, and the time for truth has arrived.”

  Fiona turned on her side and folded her hands togethe
r under her chin. “I think it would be hard,” she said. “To hide the truth or to tell it. It would be so hard.”

  Damiana leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. “Any task worth doing is.”

  Chapter Five

  That fall, Fiona’s greatest secret was that she was desperately in love with Calbert Seston. He was two years older than she was, a swaggering, honey-blond farmer’s son with an angular face and the well-developed muscles of a laborer. He could beat up any boy in the schoolhouse, both older and younger, and he had a fine, defiant way of answering Miss Elmore when she asked him a question in class. All the girls in the second classroom blushed and sighed when he looked their way, but he was not much interested in girls. He would rather win a footrace from the quarter-mile marker to the schoolhouse door than spend five minutes making conversation with the prettiest girl in class. Even Megan Henshaw, who was fourteen and beautiful, could not hold his attention for long, though it was an accepted thing that they were destined to marry. Megan’s father owned a slaughterhouse near the Seston property, and Calbert’s father owned the biggest herd of cattle for miles around. Megan was bored and possessive when Cal was sitting near her, familiar with him through years of family dealing and somewhat blinded to his magnetism. But she knew all the other girls adored him, and so she wanted him, and made sure to touch his arm or address him directly at least once a day, even when he appeared to be ignoring her.

  Fiona told no one, but she was sure, she had a preternatural certainty, that she and Calbert Seston were destined to be together. Everything about him appealed to her, from the shape of his face to the stance of his body. She would grin to herself when he made some obscure comment that no one else in the room, not even Miss Elmore, understood, because she had understood it; it had seemed clever to her. She knew his wardrobe by heart. She could often guess, half an hour before he arrived at school in the morning, whether he would be wearing his blue shirt or the plain cotton white one with the tiny tear by the collar. She could distinguish his voice in any group, no matter how many were talking at once or how far down the road they might be. His laugh delighted her. His smile haunted her. She wanted to be with him forever.