Owlsight v(dt-2

by Mercedes Lackey

  When she did her own laundry, everything went on the line, regardless, but Sidonie felt that the shirts and other white things got more sun if they were laid flat on the hedge.

  Not that it would matter all that much with my clothing!

  Sidonie came out twice more with baskets full of wet clothing; by the time Keisha was done, there wasn’t a single bud or stem visible on the hedge and clothing on the line had been double-pinned, two garments sharing the same space. When Keisha brought back the third basket empty, Sidonie met her at the door with the Alder’s lone bit of carpet and a brush.

  No need to ask what that was for either. Keisha took it downwind of the drying laundry, out to the railings of the neighbor’s fence, and laid it over the top rail. She brushed and beat the bit of rug until no more dirt or mud would come out of it and her arms were tired.

  She brought both back, and this time her mother accepted them with a smile. She smiled back, relieved. Evidently she’d performed enough penance.

  “Here - go sweep up,” Sidonie told her, handing her the broom. “I seem to have all our dishes and most of our neighbors’ as well - ”

  And Sidonie would never return so much as a cup if it was still soiled. Keisha ventured an opinion.

  “Mum, why aren’t the boys helping you?” she asked, digging the broom into the cracks of the wooden floor to dislodge crumbs that would attract mice. “They make more than their share of mess, and it wouldn’t hurt them to help.” At Sidonie’s quizzical look, she added slyly, “And they’re stronger; they could really do a good job of scrubbing.”

  “Oh, they’re such clumsy louts,” Sidonie began, but she sounded doubtful this time, and Keisha took advantage of that doubt to press her point home.

  “I wouldn’t trust them to do dishes, or to wash good clothes, but they can’t hurt anything scrubbing floors and walls or washing sheets and their own clothing. Maybe if they had to scrub their own clothes, they wouldn’t be so quick to get stains all over them.”

  Her mother laughed. “Isn’t that the pot saying the kettle’s black?” she asked gently.

  Keisha snorted. “At least my stains come from work, not drinking wine and beer with my friends - and what’s more, I do scrub my own, I’ve never asked you to do it, not since I started this Healing business.” She warmed to her subject. “What’s more, I never get stains on my good clothes!”

  “You never wear your good clothes,” Sidonie pointed out.

  “Because I’d get stains on them,” she countered. “And I do wear them, just not every other day to impress some girl! I just think they’d be more careful if they knew they’d be the ones doing the work.”

  This time, instead of dismissing the idea, her mother actually looked as if she was thinking about it - and thinking about the fact that half her work force was gone, and the other half - as she’d discovered this morning - was not always reliably available. “You might have a point, dear,” was all she said, but Keisha was encouraged. “Would you go pack up Shandi’s things for me? Ruven of the Fellowship says that there will be a trader for their shawls and trims coming straight from Haven and going straight back after the Faire, and he’ll take Shandi some packages, probably in exchange for her embroidery threads.”

  “Then I’ll give him a little more incentive,” Keisha told her. “Shandi and I had gotten some scarlet dye; I’ll go ahead and make up some thread, you know how hard it is to get scarlet, and that should seal the bargain.”

  “Oh, now that would be a help,” Sidonie replied, brightening, since as Keisha knew, the trader would probably ask for a coin or two as well, and this would save the Alder household from having to part with those hard-earned coins. “Just - try not to get your hands all red this time, dear.”

  Keisha pretended she hadn’t-heard that last as she went to the back of the house to the little cubby-bedroom she shared with Shandi. After all, it had been ages since the incident when she dyed her hands with red ocher, and how was she supposed to know the stuff had to wear off? It had been her first experiment with dye for Shandi!

  Shandi was so neat that it didn’t take long to make her things up into a few tightly packed packages. Keisha left her a generous supply of embroidery threads for her own use but kept out the rest to use to bargain with the trader. Shandi’s friends would just have to find another source for their threads from now on - Or they can spin their own and pay me to dye them.

  She also kept all of the undyed spun thread; not only was she going to dye as much of it scarlet as she could tonight, but she intended to make that experiment with overdying in indigo and see if that didn’t make a purple.

  I’ll have to dry it in the workshop, though - and without afire. In fact, I’d better dye it before dark so I don’t have to use a candle. The fumes could be dangerous.

  She was just as glad that she was the one doing this batch of dye and not Shandi. She wasn’t certain she could have impressed on Shandi just how dangerous those fumes could be in close quarters. None of the dyes Shandi had used until now needed anything but water and a solvent followed by a fixative, and none was poisonous unless you were stupid enough to drink it.

  But my medicines can be very poisonous. The bruise potion, for instance, or the joint-ache rub; they could both kill you if you weren‘t careful.

  She paused for a moment to admire Shandi’s undyed threads, the wool, the linen, and the special baby chirra-wool that she got from the Fellowship. No one in the village could spin a tighter, smoother thread than Shandi, and no one made thread better suited to embroidery. Shandi’s threads were not inclined to knot, break, or catch; that was why everyone liked them.

  But Audi is almost as good - and this will just give her incentive to do better.

  When Keisha had finished, there was just enough daylight left to do the dyeing that she’d decided on. She took the hanks of undyed thread, left the packages on Shandi’s bed, and headed out the door at a fast walk before Sidonie could recruit her to help with dinner. “I’ve got something I have to do, Mum!” she called as she went out the door. “I’ll be back for dinner!”

  She got herself out of shouting distance by breaking into a run as soon as she let the door slam behind her - thus making it possible to claim that she hadn’t heard Sidonie, if a reproach was to come over dinner.

  She closed the door of her workshop behind her and leaned against it for a moment, conscious of a profound feeling that she had reached a sanctuary, and guilty for having that feeling.

  Then she dismissed both emotions, caught up in the excitement of having something new to experiment with. The pouch with the dye in it waited in a patch of sunlight on the workbench, and she had the rest of the afternoon before her.

  She quit only when it was getting darkish and the fumes from the dyeing thread made her feel as if she’d drunk three glasses of wine and then hit herself in the head with the bottle. By then, the last couple of hanks came out noticeably lighter than the others, which meant that the dye was losing strength.

  That’s all right, she thought as she hung them to dry with the rest, along the line where she usually hung bunches of herbs to dry. They‘ll either be a nice rose-pink, or I can use them for that overdying experiment. She had more than enough thread to make the trader willing to seal the bargain, and she’d used up three-quarters of the dye to do it. If Shandi’s friends complained, she had enough dye left to dye their spinning, which wasn’t good enough to tempt a trader. Thar’s a reasonable compromise, I think.

  She’d been careful to dye equal amounts of all three kinds of thread, too - linen for embroidering on light fabrics, sheep’s wool for tapestry work on canvas, such as highborn ladies indulged in, or for embroidering woolen clothing and leather, and chirra-wool for work on heavier fabrics than linen.

  She made sure all the windows of the workshop were open before she left; by morning the fumes should be gone and the threads dry. Her work was probably not quite as perfect as Shandi’s - for her sister would make certain that every skein in
a dye lot matched, and discard the dying solution as soon as the color showed any sign of weakening - but as rare as a good scarlet was, she doubted that would matter. As she left the workshop, she was gratified to see that she had managed not to get any of that scarlet dye on herself.

  She’d thought about discarding the dregs, then thought better of it, sealing the bowl with another placed upside-down atop it. If those last skeins came out pink, it might be worth the trouble to keep dying, letting the color grow fainter and fainter, as long as it stayed colorfast. Shandi did that with indigo, and the girls loved being able to do subtle shadings with the results, producing flowers that looked real enough to pick.

  Dinner was already on the table when Keisha arrived, and there were no reproaches for her from Sidonie when she pulled up her stool and helped herself to bread and soup.

  Her father picked up what was obviously a conversation in progress before she arrived. “Na, then,” he said, looking pointedly at Tell, the middlemost of the five boys. “It’s about time you started helping out your Mum, like. You’re of an age, and you think she’s been put in the world to be your servant? Not likely, then.”

  Keisha kept her head and eyes down and ate quickly. The expressions on her brothers’ faces had ranged from astonished to offended, sullen to rebellious. This did not bode well for her.

  “What about Keisha?” asked Rondey, the oldest, whose expression had been the offended one. “She’s a girl, and it’s her place - ”

  My place? Oh, really? Keisha thought, anger rising.

  “Keisha was here doing her share and yours today, for you were lazing about with your friends this afternoon,” Sidonie snapped. “Trish saw you, so you needn’t deny it and say you were working.”

  “And as for talk about place, I’d like to know where you got ideas like that,” Ayver said, with some heat of his own. “There’s no places in this family unless I put you in it, and I won’t hear any more nonsense like that, talking about your sister that way! It wasn’t you that was Chosen, was it, and maybe now your mouth has just given us the reason why!”

  Keisha risked a glance out of the corner of her eye and saw Rondey redden to the same glorious scarlet hue that she’d dyed into the threads.

  “As to places, you might take thought, you boys, as to who’s going to be doing your cooking and cleaning when your Mum is gone and your reputations keep any girl from wanting to take you as a husband, hmm?” Ayver chuckled, and Sidonie continued that line of thought.

  “Oh, indeed, let me tell you that there isn’t a girl in this village who’d wed a man who’s likely to treat her as his private servant!” she snapped. “And as for me - I may well stop keeping house before I die - I won’t be spry forever, you know! Your good Da knows how to care for himself, but you lazy louts can count on it that he won’t be waiting hand and foot on you!”

  “So there you have it, lads. No choice for you.” Ayver chuckled again, quite heartlessly, and Keisha almost choked on her soup, suppressing a chuckle of her own. “You’ll be doing your own wash and picking up from now on, and each of you will take, a turn at the dishes and cooking supper. If you don’t want to cook, you can buy a meat pie or pasties from the baker, or pay a neighbor to make us soup. If you don’t like having to share the chores, you’re free to find some other household that will take you in, or live in the woods.”

  The groans that arose from his words were heartrending, but Ayver’s word was law, and the boys knew it. Keisha finished her portion quickly and took her bowl to the sink; much as she disliked doing dishes, she decided it would be politic to volunteer tonight, and began on the soup pot and cooking utensils already waiting there.

  Evidently the boys hadn’t figured out that she was the source of their new chores - or else they were hoping for an ally - because they were decent to her when they brought her their bowls. That was certainly a relief! And Sidonie’s quick hug when she brought the rest of the dishes was a welcome surprise.

  “I know you’ve been worked hard, lovey, and you haven’t complained about it till now,” her mother said in her ear. “And it isn‘t fair, not when the town depends so much on you. You’re a bit young to have that on your shoulders, and I keep forgetting that you’re more than just my little girl. And I know you kept getting lost in Shandi’s shadow - that wasn’t fair either.”

  Keisha had often wished she could go off into the woods to live as a hermit, but not at that moment. She flushed, and smiled at her mother. “It’s all right – now that the boys are going to pitch in to help,” she said. Then an awful thought occurred to her. “You aren’t really going to make them cook, are you?”

  Sidonie laughed. “If they give up one night in the tavern, they’ll have enough to buy us all supper for that night,” she pointed out. “And if they really want to cook, I’ll be overseeing everything to make certain what comes out in the end isn’t going to poison us.”

  “Oh, good.” Keisha heaved a sigh of relief and rinsed the last spoon. “Oh - I got you a rose vine from Steelmind yesterday; I’ll plant it tomorrow. Where do you want it?”

  Sidonie beamed and gave her another hug. “And I just this afternoon thought about putting up a trellis by the bedroom window, and I was wondering what to train on it! There, please, lovey. Going to study before you go to sleep?”

  “Of course,” she replied with wry resignation. “What else?”

  “Then you might as well take the kitchen candle with you,” her mother replied, and kissed her on the cheek. “Good night, sweet.”

  She took the proffered candle and went to her little cubby, now strangely empty without Shandi, but scented with her favorite herbs. She studied until her eyes grew too heavy to keep open, then blew out the candle and pulled the blankets over her head to block out the snores and grunts of her brothers. Tonight as she fell asleep, her thoughts were not of Shandi, but about the old wizard, Justyn. She’d never seen him; they were too far out in the country for a child to come into town and she’d never been sick enough to need his attentions. She wished that she had known him.

  For all that her parents loved her, they still didn’t really understand her. It’s the feeling - the feeling I have that’s so strong, that I have to help people. Like seeing two ends of rope and wanting to tie them, just because they are there, as if they are somehow incomplete until I join them. It’s as strong as needing to breathe or eat, and they just don’t grasp that. I can’t help myself, I never could; when someone is hurt or sick, I have to help them no matter what. She had the feeling that he would have understood her, though, or else why would he have stayed and stayed during all the years when he was disregarded?

  He had that feeling, too, he must have. Oh, how I wish he were here now, to teach me all the things I don’t know!

  Three

  Hooves made very little sound on leaf-littered forest floor, which was a welcome change to everyone from the steady clicking of dyheli hooves on roads packed rock-hard from generations of use. And after four years of so-called “normal” forests and entirely domesticated Valdemaran fields, Darian Firkin was glad to see a forest that looked normal to him.

  It’s so good to be on home territory again! Trees so tall you can’t see the tops from the ground, with trunks so big it takes three men to circle them. This is more like it! He didn’t crane his neck and gawk upward the way a “foreigner” would, but all the same he was very aware of how high the trees above him reached, simply by virtue of the fact that he had to look up before he saw any branches springing from the huge trunks standing all around him. Darian had grown up on the edge of the Pelagirs, and what the Valdemarans seemed to think of as proper-sized trees looked like saplings to him. Most of his life had been spent in the forests with his trapper parents, rather than in his home village of Errold’s Grove, and he felt as comfortable among trees as did his adopted Hawkbrother-kin.

  Oh, it’s very, very good to be home. Now I don‘t feel as if the sky is going to swallow me up. Despite the pleasure he took in his surround
ings, he remained alert. The rest of the team rode ahead of Darian; he usually rode tail-guard, and took his responsibility seriously.

  They were all on their way home now - not to Errold’s Grove, at least not immediately, but to k’Vala Vale. This little group of Tayledras - one of many, be it added - had taken on the task of spending four years away from their Vale for the purpose of cleansing some of the northernmost Valdemaran territories of pockets of “trouble” left over from the mage-storms that had swept the entire world a few years ago. Darian had personal experience of the Storms and of their results, most of which were anything but beneficial, and he could see why the Valdemarans needed help with it. “Trouble” could take many forms: bizarre creatures warped and twisted from ordinary animals; dangerous animals “imported” from some other far lands within the area of Change-Circles; even pools of magical energy with the potential to affect anything that fell into it. And while they were at it, they were establishing new ley-lines and nodes, or reestablishing old ones, so that magical energies, just like rainwater, could again flow into and through convenient channels.