The Wisewoman (Waterspell 3)

by Deborah J. Lightfoot

  “He couldn’t think that!” she’d gasped. “How could he think that?”

  “What would you have him think, girl?” Meg had countered. “You won’t talk to him. You won’t tell either of us what happened that night. The man on the docks said he saw you jump in, and you were carrying something—something that was not recovered with you.”

  Meg had put her hand over Carin’s, attempting to soften her words. “I have searched my wagon,” she’d murmured, “and I do not find the jug there, widgeon. If you wish me to reach some other conclusion, then share with me what you know of this matter. Else, I am forced to believe that you took the opportunity that night, when all around you were in chaos, to commit a theft and a heinous act of destruction.”

  “No,” Carin had said. “I didn’t steal anything.”

  That had been the girl’s only response. She’d gone then to bathe and to pull herself together. When Verek returned that evening, he’d found her much recovered, though still disinclined to talk—at least, while Megella was within earshot. What Carin might have said to Verek later that night, Meg couldn’t guess.

  They had spent the next two days buying supplies, loading the wagon, and picking out clothing for themselves. Carin’s only britches were woolen—increasingly too heavy as the days lengthened and the sun warmed. She had but one shirt, and though the linen had stood up remarkably well to repeated dunkings, fevered sweats, and nights spent on the ground, she was in need of a change. As was Verek, who also had only the clothes that he had been wearing when the pair of them turned up in Granger. So they went shopping, using the gold from Carin’s old home to re-outfit themselves.

  When all were ready, they said their good-byes. The sun was not yet up when Verek went down to pay their bill at the Harbor Hill, but both the innkeeper and his brother the sheriff were waiting in the foyer to shake his hand.

  And several of Megella’s new friends had gathered in the wagon yard to see her off. Even the barber-surgeon was there. He presented Meg with the antique mortar and pestle that she had admired in his shop.

  All the well-wishers were courteous to “Alice,” but the girl had not made such a favorable impression in the town as “Lord Forester” and his old nurse “Millicent” had. Megella heard grumblings about the young lady’s aloofness, how she had hid herself away in her room and not deigned to dine in company a single evening of her stay.

  “Such a beauty,” some people had whispered, “but cold. That estimable Lord Forester needs a wife with more warmth in her nature.”

  “You are forgetting,” others whispered back, “how she went riding with him that night, scantily clad. Those green eyes may seem as cool as seawater, but the lady is a hot-blooded creature. Just consider: When she thought Forester’s horse had killed him, she was so distraught she tried to drown herself.”

  “No! Is that what happened?”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  Wheesht! thought Megella. Who could resist such a tale of romance? Long after we are gone from this place, the people of the coast will be repeating and reinventing the story of wayfaring Lord Forester and his lovely, mysterious Alice.

  Carin held stubbornly to her aura of mystery as they rolled out of Easthaven and continued north. The girl seemed lost in her own thoughts—or adrift, perhaps, in a kind of waking dream. As the two women sat side by side on the wagon seat, Carin hardly spoke to Megella except when offering to take the reins.

  “Very well, widgeon,” Megella said. “You drive and I shall sleep. My days in Easthaven were as busy as yours were restful. I do think it only fair that you—former sleepyhead—should now remain awake while I doze.”

  The dozing was good, too. Smoothly the coast road took them on north, dipping occasionally down to the beach but staying mostly inland among the amber-gum and yellowwood trees, the saltbush and the sweetbells. Where the trees stretched their feathery foliage over the road, they traveled in cool shade, sometimes for miles at a stretch. Verek’s party made good time, pausing only to water the horses at small ponds tucked into shady groves.

  Theil did not leave them to hunt. Meg’s wagon was so abundantly loaded with supplies, they could eat well without supplementation. When her nephew had an easy shot at game, however, he took it, bringing down the occasional deer and shooting waterfowl on the wing.

  Once when the road angled down to the beach, they found the sand almost blanketed with sea turtles. For days then, fresh turtle was on the menu, prepared in every way that Megella could devise—boiled in saltwater; herbed and broiled; on bread; in soup.

  “Tastes like veal,” Verek murmured with his mouth full. He chased the meat with a sip of tea, then added, “This is an excellent sign. Surely we would not see such healthy multitudes of snappers along this beach if the sea were in distress.”

  He reached across and touched Carin’s shoulder. “You did well, fìleen, clearing the strangleweed from this ocean. By your skill, you have averted a great harm.”

  Carin seemed to stiffen. She mumbled something Megella could not make out.

  After they had eaten, while they were preparing to bed down for the night on the powdery sand, Meg pulled Verek aside.

  “What is wrong with that girl?” she demanded softly. “I can scarcely get two words out of her, and it seems to me that you are doing little better.”

  Verek tilted his head, a gesture both resigned and quizzical. “I would give much to know what happened to her that night. Damned horse! I have only a hazy memory of Carin loosing her shot—nothing more until the sheriff’s men jostled me back to my senses. But by all accounts, she was not submerged in the harbor long enough to suffer ill effects from a lack of air. And neither of us found evidence that she struck her head when she tumbled into the water.”

  He sighed. “She seems too pensive, almost melancholic, even as you and I see reasons for hope. The seagoing variety of the weed has been destroyed, thanks to her. And though we travel north toward the reported source of the strangleweed infestations, we are not encountering masses of the inland species. I am in hope that others have learned, as the people of Easthaven did, how to control its spread. What, then, can be troubling Carin?”

  “Is she still unable to forgive herself for what befell that goatherd?” Megella asked. “I had hoped that all the sleep she got in Easthaven was a healing sleep … that she had found a way—through her dreams, perhaps—to remedy the defect in her spellcraft that cost Flynn his life.”

  Verek shook his head. “That was an evil thing, I grant you, but it was not done with evil intent. I have told Carin as much, but still she remains silent.” He frowned. “I am troubled that she no longer chooses to confide in me. Why does she keep her thoughts to herself? I do not like to think that I have lost my lady’s trust, but I fear that may be the case. Though I cannot understand why.”

  “Maybe it is herself—not you—that she distrusts,” Megella murmured. “Perhaps she lives in fear of killing you during a moment of high emotion.”

  “She would never do that. She is not capable of such a thing.”

  Meg turned her hand palm up. “Can you really say, nephew of mine, what that girl is capable of? Has she not already exceeded your every expectation?”

  “She has,” Verek conceded. “But not that. She could not do that. Carin knows how I love her.”

  “But perhaps she fears that love is not enough.”

  When Theil made no reply, Megella started to turn away. But she halted as another thought struck her and swung her sharply around to face him again.

  “The pensiveness you see in her,” Meg said in a voice hardly louder than a breath: “perhaps it is not a momentary depression of the spirits, not a mood that will lift in time. Could it be that her working of strong magic has affected her mind? You will remember, nephew, that I knew the girl long before you met her. I knew her when she lived the harsh life of a bondmaid. I never saw her sink into melancholia, even when she had ample reason for despair. The girl is inclined, by her nature, toward h
opefulness. It was her hope of finding her rightful place in the world that brought her to you.”

  Verek stood silent for a moment, watching Carin comb through a low pile of driftwood on the beach, near where they had spread their blankets beside the fire. The girl was examining what Megella first thought was a turtle’s egg. But as Carin tipped the object into the firelight, Meg saw that it was only an egg-sized lump of wood. The girl put it back in the pile and chose another, smaller lump, more like a bead than an egg.

  As Carin leaned over the heaped driftwood, her crystal dolphyn swung free, dangling from her neck on the new cord she’d acquired for it in Easthaven. With an idle motion, seemingly an unconscious gesture, the girl rested her hand on her heart. From where Meg stood, it seemed Carin’s hand formed a barrier to protect her from the touch of the swaying talisman.

  Verek, too, was concentrating on the girl. “There was a time,” he murmured, slowly, “when I thought that I had saved her life as surely as she saved mine. Now I wonder if I have given myself too much credit. Perhaps it would have been better for Carin if she had never come to me. It was the magic of Ruain that called forth the full power of her gift and started her down the road she now travels.” Verek shook his head. “I have long known that Carin’s gift could be my undoing, but I prayed to Drisha that she would not fall victim to her own strength.”

  * * *

  They followed the road along the beach and ate turtles until Megella declared her intention to never again swallow a morsel of snapper. Fortunately for her, the road gradually angled back inland, returning them to a spring-green landscape that was dotted with birch trees, wild plums, and shaded pools. Verek shot a deer that had come to drink. He could not fit it into Meg’s loaded wagon, so he slung the carcass over the back of one of the bobtailed horses that still plodded patiently along, tethered to the tailboard.

  As Verek had observed, this landscape was reassuringly free of strangleweed. They had seen no living clumps of the parasite since they left Easthaven.

  But Megella could tell where it had been. Interrupting the groves of trees were wide swaths of blighted land where no plant remained alive. All around, the land was green with new growth. The fresh blooms of wildflowers scented the air. Birds sang. But in stark contrast to the exuberance of spring stood the desiccated, denuded skeletons of trees and bushes. They stood stiffly in the dead swaths, mutely testifying to the destructive power of the strangleweed.

  Megella, sickened by the sight of so much land despoiled, wanted only to hurry past. But Verek reined up, dismounted, and stepped cautiously to the edge of the devastation. After a moment, he walked out into the dead tract, squatted on his heels, and crumbled something between his fingers.

  “Aunt Meg,” he called, lifting his head and directing his voice to the wagon where she sat. “And Carin, too. Please come here and look at this.”

  The girl, to her credit, climbed promptly down and also helped Megella alight. Though Carin seldom spoke these days, she was not the sleepwalker she had been in her early convalescence. Her movements were brisk as they stepped together through the skeletons of the dead vegetation and bent down beside Verek.

  He showed them a dry, colorless vine, which he then crumbled to dust.

  “This is what’s left of the strangleweed, I believe,” he said, looking up at them. “It seems to have died off naturally here. I see no evidence of anyone having cleared the surrounding land in order to contain its spread. But these worry me.”

  Verek held up his fingertips, which were spotted with tiny black specks. “Are they seeds? Spores? And more importantly: are they viable? Could they be carried on the wind to infect new hosts?”

  Megella whipped her handkerchief out of the waistband of her skirt.

  “Theil!” she exclaimed, thrusting the kerchief at him. “Wipe those off. What are you thinking, sir? You know nothing of how the strangleweed propagates. To sprout anew, it may require only the heat of your hand or the moistness of your skin. Get those things off you at once!”

  She began backing up, pulling Carin with her. Carefully she wended her way between the killed stalks, trying to avoid brushing her skirts against spore laden fragments of dead strangleweed.

  But Megella saw the impossibility of it. Her hips were too wide and her skirts too full to pass the dead vines without disturbing them. Sooty clouds rose into the air. The day was so still, the clouds simply hung there, waiting for lungs to breathe them in.

  “Cover your mouth!” she shouted at Carin. “Pinch your nose shut. You likewise, Theil,” she cried as he rose to his feet and followed them. “Do not take another breath before you reach the road.”

  When all three of them were out of the dead swath, she ordered them to strip.

  “Carefully!” she barked as Verek started to tug his shirt over his head. “Seedlets may have lodged in the weave. Shuck your clothes slowly so as to shake nothing loose. And stand apart from one another, you two! You do not want the one to breathe spores wafting from the other. Hold your breath if you can.”

  Megella watched briefly to be sure they were following instructions. Then she stepped round to the back of the wagon and hid between the horses. Carin and Theil had often been naked together, and the sight was well pleasing to them both—and to anyone who spied on them. But Meg would not have either of her younger companions seeing her in her natural state of sags and wrinkles.

  She undressed gingerly, dropped her clothes in the middle of the road, and pulled on fresh apparel from her packs in the wagon. Then she climbed into the wagon bed and tossed down clean garments to Carin and Theil.

  When Verek was dressed, he nudged his castoffs with the toe of his boot. “What do we do with these? Haul them to the next waterhole and scrub them out?”

  Megella shook her head. “In water, the spores might sprout.”

  “Then I suppose we should burn them.” Verek looked glum at the prospect of destroying the good clothes he’d purchased from Easthaven’s best tailor. “But why stop with our garments?” He tipped his head questioningly. “If we mean to counter a threat of strangleweed spores, then we should burn the dry husks from this entire tract of denuded land.” Verek pointed at the expanse of dead vegetation beside the road.

  “No,” Carin said.

  Megella looked sharply at Carin, and noticed that the sound of the girl’s voice had also brought Verek’s head whipping around. As chary as Carin had been with her words of late, a single syllable from the girl was enough to get the attention of them both.

  “Why not, widgeon?” Megella asked. “Fire proved to be an effective weapon against the lushly growing weed. Why should it not be our surest means of killing the weed’s spores?”

  Carin shrugged one shoulder. “You said yourself that we don’t know how the strangleweed propagates. Maybe its seeds or spores must be exposed to fire before they can take root. I remember you telling me, Meg, back when I used to slip away from Crowter’s shop to help you gather nuts along the creek, that some seeds can’t sprout until they’ve been through a fire. Without fire to crack the shell, the seed inside never grows.”

  The girl turned to Verek.

  “I also remember,” she murmured, her voice slightly rusty from disuse, “you telling me that stillness can be better than action. I have been keeping still, trying to float to the surface … and trying not to commit any act that I will regret. Maybe that’s best now, too. Let’s don’t do anything here. Let’s just leave those things to bleach in the sun, and get on our way.”

  Verek gazed at her thoughtfully. Then he nodded.

  “Well reasoned, fìleen.”

  He lifted Carin in his arms, kissed her soundly, and set her on the wagon seat, on the driver’s side. Giving their shed clothes a wide berth, he returned to his horse and mounted. When Megella had settled into her blankets in the wagon bed, Verek led them on, through an increasingly scarred landscape.

  The farther north they went, the more numerous the dead swaths became. The surviving plants—iron
wood and bearberry, fringetrees, meadowsweets, and other native species of Ladrehdin—clustered in narrow strips, growing green and vigorous but confined on either side by wide tracts in which nothing lived.

  Megella thought back to the heathland that Carin had cleansed with her magian fire. Behind that blaze, new life had immediately sprung up. Meg remembered Flynn’s joy at finding sprigs of marsh elder poking through the soil. But here where the strangleweed had choked out the native life, itself living long enough to set seed, the land seemed sterile, with nothing in reserve.

  Will these dead patches ever recover? Meg wondered.

  The road took them past a long, lifeless tract, then began to wend its way through a thicket where several varieties of spicebush grew. The shrubs seemed to be thriving despite the nearby devastation. Megella breathed in the heady perfume that wafted from the clusters of orange and yellow flowers.

  She also detected mint and wild onion. The smell of the onion was strong enough to be making Verek sneeze. Up ahead of the wagon, Theil was reacting so violently, he almost left his horse.

  Then, to Megella’s surprise, it began to be her turn. She started sneezing explosively, with painful force.

  Meg bent her head into the crook of her arm and got a faceful of what she thought was mucus. But as she raised her head, gasping for breath that would not come, she saw the blood. Blood-spray from her nose had soaked the sleeve of her blouse.

  Not onion, Megella thought just before she blacked out. Strangleweed spores. They’ve sprouted.

  Chapter 16

  Amangêda

  Carin did not have the urge, at first, to sneeze. The alien life that was growing in her head did not trigger that impulse in her. Instead, she put her hands to her face and pressed hard on her cheekbones. She could feel the spores bursting open inside her. Those that had lodged in the air passages of her nose were sprouting tendrils that tried to slither their way amongst the hidden hollows and inlets of her skull, anyplace they could find—or force—an opening.