Life Giver

by Lisa Lowell

  When he estimated no one would be able to swim back to shore, Yeolani released the magic of the tornadoes, and the men fell out of the sky and into the water far below. Few had survived the vicious winds, and none would last the impact with the surface, but Yeolani did not stay to be sure. He spun his personal tornado back into the sky and returned to the Land.

  Dusk had settled over East by the time he came to the ground finally, trembling with exhaustion. He staggered into his human body at the foot of the now empty tower, the only building to survive even partially intact in East. No fires burned, and only the West's lights reflected on the river. Yeolani couldn't bear to return to the chaos and celebrations that occupied the villagers on the other side of the river this night. Instead, he sank his mind into the ground at his feet and felt the patient strength of the prairie that restored him a little. At least he had found a way to travel magically, even if he left a wide path of destruction wherever he went.

  With a grieving sigh, Yeolani whistled for Marit. She came running through the empty, blackened streets and together they walked off toward the north and into the night.

  9

  Changeling

  Winter bore down on Yeolani before he made it to the mountains, but for some reason, he felt reluctant to use magic to speed up the trek he had decided to make. He wouldn't return to the Fallon Forest, but his northeastern path skimmed along its edge and up against the mountains where hundreds of little creeks fell out onto the plains. He avoided starving by hunting and selling his catch in the villages he passed, but the game became scarce with winter's arrival.

  And then there was Marit. She had gotten herself pregnant while she was at West, and now she suffered along with him. It must have been her first time encountering another dog, so it was bound to happen. Catering to her needs put pressure on Yeolani to make some changes. He must find someplace to winter over for her sake rather than continuing his stubborn refusal to perform magic or do something useful with his gifts.

  Finally, Yeolani settled on a cave tucked in behind a frozen waterfall just outside Fallon, on a creek that came out of the mountains, a few hours walk from a town where he could trade for the things he wouldn't conjure. He gathered wood and as much food as he could before the first storms came thundering down over his head. He went hunting for Marit but not for himself and instead sat in the dark and cold wondering why he felt so reluctant to use his magic.

  It came down to guilt, he decided. He had been wrong to engage in the problem at East. When he had gotten involved, he managed to get people killed as well. Too flashy, he agreed with Vamilion, but also too cocky. He could have found a better way to persuade Kreftor to move off and never involved the townsfolk. Worst of all, using tornadoes instead of simply binding the magicians and sending them down the river in fish barrels like he threatened, that was overkill. If he always overused his magic, he would continue to harm innocents. And so, he punished himself by using no magic at all, living on the edge of starvation or freezing. He was miserable and felt he deserved such a fate. He justified it by telling himself that he wasn't going to harm anyone with magic if he didn't use any.

  Marit's patient companionship kept him alive. He would conjure wood and make a fire to heat the cavern for her. He gave her the furs from the few animals he was able to hunt to make herself a bed, and she ate like a queen, but her solemn brown eyes accused him. They kept him from drifting deeper into his depression.

  Then the night that Marit dragged her bed furs farther into the back of the cave and wouldn't let him come after her, he knew he was about to have puppies on his hands. She wanted to be alone, and so he stoked up the fire and sat looking at the frozen waterfall, drifting off in his melancholy into a dream.

  Yeolani dreamt that he stood knee-deep in summer grasses on the prairie. The blue sky rolled uninterrupted overhead. He was about to sit down and luxuriate in the deep grasses when he found himself sinking right through them into the rich soil. He didn’t panic; how could he when this was the one place where he belonged. He passed through the earth, past gopher holes and earthworms, and wondered again at what power the prairie could provide. Then he passed effortlessly through the stone floor of the earth and felt no distress. Perhaps the prairie thought he had died and now was burying him.

  Then abruptly, the stone gave way to a low shallow cavern, and he dropped to the bare rock floor of the space, staggering a bit, and then straightened up to see where he had arrived. He could see in the space, for the fairies had followed him down into the gullet of the earth. Their glow lit it well enough, and he looked out and saw the cavern ceiling loomed low, dripping with muddy crystals stabbing toward him. As far as his light would stretch, the low arch covered a body of water just smaller than a sea. It didn’t move like the ocean, but he stood on the shoreline of a cistern that stretched to prairie-sized proportions. The drip from above and the resulting ripples made little splashes that echoed in the monstrous space. Was there truly an aquifer like this beneath every acre of the plains?

  Curiously he reached up and touched the roof, drawing his hand over the frosting of crystals just above his head. The smaller shards that dusted the cavern ceiling crumbled at his touch, but one larger chunk, about the size of his thumb, fell at his feet. He bent to pick it up and caressed the silky sides of the hexagonal shaft. In the blue-white light of the fairies, it looked almost brown and muddy, but the refraction of light might change in bright sunlight; certainly not clear like a diamond, but opaquer, like quartz.

  As he stood in his dream wondering at the faceted piece in his hand, the fairies came low around him and hovered at a respectful height, leery of his curse. He would not have cursed them again, but they still didn't trust him; another reason to feel guilty. They began dancing above him, and he let their movements hypnotize him. He thought he heard their tinny little voices like he had when Honiea was speaking with them, trying to mitigate his curse on them, but this time he could understand them.

  "Why can I understand you now? You decided to make sense?" Yeolani asked in wonder, and his mind-voice echoed in the cavern even though he didn’t speak aloud.

  "You never tried to understand us after you touched the Heart Stone. You have to try in order to receive the message."

  "What message?" he asked out of duty, not for any interest.

  "You cannot give up. You will only feel more guilt if you stop your Seeking. The world needs you."

  "No, the world is far safer without me bumbling about in it.”

  "No," replied the fairies in their compounded voices. "We love you. We need you. Your Talismans, your Lady, your future all need you. You need to Seek them, or they will be lost."

  "Lady?" Yeolani asked in surprise, maybe even aloud in his sleep. He had forgotten that finding a mate was a possibility. He wasn't interested in the power of a Wise One, and the duties only meant more ways to mess up and feel guiltier. But a lady was waiting for him? That piqued his interest more than some mysterious cavern far away. It wasn't as if he weren't interested in finding a mate, but…but what would that mean? He had been alone for so long that the thought of even courting a girl seemed more alien than swallowing a tornado, which was completely within his abilities.

  No, he wasn't going to go off like an idiot and try to find his future wife. That would only be inviting trouble. Besides, Marit would not be able to travel for months now, and he must concentrate on the things he could handle here – raising puppies and feeding Marit. That he could do without using magic foolishly.

  "Foolish?" the fairies seemed to say. "You are foolish to not try. Very well, we'll give you something to make you realize how foolish you have truly become."

  Yeolani woke to the first mewling of a pup, but he didn't move, just staring at the low ceiling of the cavern behind the waterfall, comparing it to the one from his dream. He knew it would take hours for Marit to finish her birthing process, so he didn't rise to go see how she fared. He could lie here and consider all the imagery from his dream. Besides
, he had other things to think about. Was there actually an aquifer someplace beneath the Land? What would he find there? Perhaps his Lady? How would he know this woman? She would probably be magical. He couldn't imagine a Wise One marrying anyone who wasn't also powerful, but how did you tell if someone were magical if there wasn't a flock of fairies following them around? Or was there something more? Well, he wasn't interested in exploring it right now, but the idea of a lady in his life might be enough to draw him out of these mountains and prevent him from turning completely to stone and ice.

  Another sound from the back of the cavern made Yeolani lift his head. This did not sound the same as before. He really wanted to see how Marit was doing, but he also didn't want to frighten her. Maybe if he crawled in on his belly. Moving carefully, he made his way toward where he assumed his dog had made her nest, but in the flickering light of fairies and a fire, he couldn't be sure.

  Then the entire cave echoed with the angry howl of a baby… a human baby. Yeolani froze right where he was. He recognized the sound from the uncomfortable time when his mother gave birth to his sister when he was just a six-year-old boy. That sound was unmistakable, and Yeolani couldn't move with the sudden demands that cry threw down on him like the entire mountain had collapsed. He stood up and looked around frantically. Every instinct in him demanded that he find the source of the wail. What alien magic was this?

  He ran about the cavern, terrified as the screaming child made his head ring with its demands. Groping in the flickering dark Yeolani found a baby in the shadows up above where he'd most recently dropped his pack. He pulled the bundled child off the rock and brought it to the firelight with trembling hands.

  The newborn glared at him from scrunched up eyes. Swaddled in tightly wrapped blankets, Yeolani couldn't guess how he had appeared here. What had the fairies done? He had heard of changelings – children taken from their cradles and replaced with something magical that would fade, but he never knew what became of the human child that was taken. Did fairies always do this, leaving them in a cavern for a reluctant magical hermit?

  The baby’s cries did not still as Yeolani began gingerly unwrapping the child. The infant was a boy, new enough to still have the umbilical cord attached. Frightened beyond thinking, Yeolani rewrapped the child and with unpracticed hands tried to rock the child as he'd seen his mother do, hoping to still his squawking. How could the fairies have done this to him?

  Foolish? Was that the word? There could not be a single person on the planet less prepared to take care of a child than Yeolani. What must this baby's mother think? How was he going to do this? Magic, a must in this situation, wouldn't be enough. Magic wouldn't teach him how to dress and feed an infant. It wouldn't prevent him from dropping the baby or letting him get a rash. How do you keep a baby clean? Yeolani was no wet nurse. What was he to do?

  "What's your name, little one?" Yeolani whispered, frightened by the sound of his own voice.

  Nothing answered him but another whine from Marit's side of the cavern and a squeak from the baby. Yeolani looked up at the ceiling, but all signs of the fairies had left him. Well, he would have to do magic until he figured out what to do with the changeling. This much was obvious. Greatly daring, he conjured a milk skin, warmed it in his hand, and then presented it to the baby who turned away from it and resumed crying.

  Well, that wasn't going to work. Yeolani rocked the baby, but he kept up his protests until Yeolani was about to go crazy with stress. Then, with a suspicious peek, he checked the swaddling and found the real reason for the complaint. So, this is where the great Wise One magic would take him, cleaning up messes for an incontinent child. Yeolani held the child away from himself and wished the mess away, washed the offending bottom, and wrapped the babe up again without actually thinking about what he was doing but just hanging the child up in the air by his arms. When he was done, the child stopped crying and Yeolani set him back in his lap and tried his improvised milk skin again. This time it worked, and the child drank greedily.

  Yeolani was the first one asleep, even before the baby, Marit, or any of her pups that night.

  And the next morning, after a miserable time punctuated with similar struggles to get the child to drink, the problem had not gone away. Eventually, Yeolani gave the child a name: Nevai, named after his dead sister Nevia. At least with a name, he could use name magic to command the child to stop crying, go to sleep, or to eat when he didn't really want to. Marit's four pups were equally obedient but less bother for their mother. She at least had the instincts to deal with her brood and Yeolani didn't. Human babies woke every two hours demanding something, and Yeolani's patience wasn't nearly as well developed as Marit's. He wanted to go hunting but didn't dare leave the child alone for fear Nevai would wake while Yeolani was gone. If Yeolani magically required the infant to sleep, he fretted that he would addle Nevai's mind with too alien a schedule. He couldn't seem to remember how often his baby sister had cried for food, a change, or even how long she had slept. It was all too much of a mystery.

  Finally, Yeolani realized magic wasn't going to solve his problem; he needed a human to ask for help. And the best human for that job would have to be Honiea. He held up Honiea’s candle and waited patiently with Nevai fussing in his lap. The Queen of Healing came almost immediately and took one look at the cranky baby and a flustered, exhausted Yeolani and began to laugh uncontrollably.

  "This isn't funny," Yeolani protested. "I’m about as prepared for this as a groundhog."

  "Obviously," Honiea agreed, sitting down beside Yeolani on the cold rock floor, but she didn't even reach for the baby. "So, how did you come to be possessed of a child?"

  With a grumpy sigh, Yeolani told her of the dream, leaving out the cistern and the talk of a Lady, but he admitted to his reluctance to use magic and the threat to make him truly feel foolish, which now he did. The fairies had their revenge, gave him the baby and abandoned him. Finally, Yeolani confessed his confusion and hope that she would be able to help him with his problem.

  "And what on God's green earth makes you think I know anything about babies? If they aren't sick, I can't fix them. I was an only child, and Wise Ones can't have children," she admitted.

  "What? You never said that when you were trying to convince me of both sides of the coin," Yeolani protested.

  "It slipped my mind," Honiea replied sheepishly. "And it wasn't as if you would notice. You being a father seemed far down the list of your ambitions. Does this offend you?"

  Yeolani's snort must have been mixed with disgust as well as pure hilarity, and it startled the baby. "I'm the last person in the Land who should be a parent. So, why on God's green earth did the fairies make me into one? Can I give him back? Can I pass him onto someone else who wants him? Is there some desperate mother somewhere cursing fairies for me, wanting her child back?"

  Honiea shook her head sagely, ignoring his ire. "I think the fairies did something wonderful for you. You were being foolish for ignoring your magic, and this baby will force you to see that. You won't be able to pawn this responsibility off on anyone else because it is now a part of your Seeking. It will drive you back into the world, and for the child's sake, not your own. You will learn discretion with magic and love for those you serve. I will not take it from you. The most I will tell you is the baby is cranky because you're not burping him. He'll tell you that if you listen to his mind."

  Then, without even saying goodbye, Honiea disappeared.

  Yeolani let his head drop in frustration and realized that everyone in his life probably had the right of it. He picked up the baby and held him out at arm's length, undergoing the serious stare of the barely focusing eyes and listening to the mind behind them. He felt the uncomfortable tightness in Nevai's gut, the stress that must be a reflection of Yeolani's own distress and an ethereal thought that he loved this man who was holding him up like some strange animal. Nevai loved Yeolani? The thoughts weren't verbalized; Nevai was too young for words, but like Marit, his thoughts were
emotional and loving.

  "I'm sorry, baby. I wasn't listening. How can I help you?" Yeolani thought back to the baby. There was no impression of words, but mostly longing. Carefully Yeolani put Nevai against his shoulder and began patting gently like he'd seen his mother do long ago. It worked, and Yeolani got a smelly mess down his shoulder but also a wave of relief from Nevai's mind. Yeolani magically disappeared the mess and patted Nevai's back until they both fell asleep.

  The next morning Yeolani made a decision and told Marit, just in case. "I need to go to town to learn more about how to care for babies. Or find Nevai's mother. It's five hours walk one way so I can't take the baby unless I go faster, which means I go by magic. Will you be fine with your babies while I'm gone?"

  Marit gave him a placid look and a single thump of her tail.

  "Yes, I know. Leave plenty of food, and you'll do the rest," he interpreted it. "Do you think I could conjure a horse? It would go faster, but I've never been a rider. I'd get more respect in town if I had a horse, and perhaps it's a skill I need to learn. Yes, I'll try that. And what about Nevai? I'll take him with me, but how? Invisible? No, I don't want to be flashy, and how would I explain if he was to wake up and let out one of his famous howls and people hear that? No, I'll carry him the way any normal person does. I'll make a pack and make do."

  Having met Marit's approval, Yeolani began to do his conjuring. He made a woven basket for his back where he could perch Nevai, cover him up, and include all the things a normal parent would carry for a trip with a baby, things he had been conjuring at the need. With Nevai at ease asleep inside, he packed in around the baby and magically added a bit of warmth in case the weather grew too bitter, and then put his own arms through the straps and stepped outside the cave for the next step.