Longeye

by Sharon Lee

  There was a moment of perfect stillness, while the sunbeam stretched along the floor, then three poofs! of displaced air in quick succession.

  The first produced a stand and a pitcher at the far corner of the little alcove. The second, a wooden tub, steaming gently, sitting on a bright rag rug.

  The third poof! produced Nancy herself, her arms filled with bundled clothing, and a pair of sturdy country shoes dangling from one delicate hand. She unburdened herself and flashed over to the bed, tugging the covers down with a will and harrying Becca out of her warm nest.

  "Brute!" Becca laughed in spite of herself, pressed her fingers to her lips and looked guiltily at the screen.

  "Yes, I'm up!" she continued in a whisper. "Now, attend me—gently, if you please, Miss!"

  She slipped out of bed and approached the tub, pausing at its side. The rag rug was soft and comforting beneath bare feet, the steam rising from the water scented with mint and rosemary. Becca raised her left hand and clumsily used her bandaged right to unknot the dressings. The cloth fluttered down to the rug, revealing a smooth brown hand, the fingers long and well-formed—and not a scratch nor a scar to be seen.

  She unwrapped her right hand with fingers that shook, and found a similar state of complete healing. It was as if, she thought, wondering, turning her hands over, she had never been wounded at all.

  "It was only fremoni that she used to dress them," she whispered to Nancy's impatient flutter. "Easewerth in the water, to dull the worst of the pain, fremoni on the wounds before wrapping, and aleth tea to put the patient to sleep." She shook her fingers, imitating impatient wings. "Those should have been days a-healing."

  Nancy's wings fluttered again, expressive of boredom, or possibly irritation. Becca felt her lips curve into a slight smile.

  "Yes, I was the one who called for a bath," she said; "and the water is doubtless growing cold while I stand her and moon about. Your pardon, Nancy." She raised her unmarred hand and pulled the ribbons of her nightdress, shivering suddenly as she remembered her dream and the liberties taken by the mist . . .

  The nightdress fell to pool on the rug about her feet. Becca stepped into the tub, and sat down, Nancy steadying her right elbow. She sighed in heartfelt contentment as the warm bath embraced her—and squeaked as water cascaded over her head.

  She shook the hair out of her eyes in time to see Nancy replace the pitcher on the stand. The tiny creature twirled, plucked a bar of soap from the air, and approached with such an air of determination that Becca could almost see her shoving up sleeves she did not possess.

  She denied him!

  He leapt to his feet, dashing the glass away, anger dissolving wine and glass before ever they were swallowed by the mists.

  After all his planning, his care, his—

  Anger.

  Deliberately, Altimere calmed his rising kest. The boiling mists withdrew somewhat as he did so, and that calmed him further. He had been close, oh, so very close to another entrapment, for the mist was greedy for kest, and for anything else that would fill up its nothingness and give it weight, form, being.

  It was said that those who wandered the mists changed, which at first thought was only rational. A living being who becomes a mist-wraith has surely changed. But it seemed that there was something more to that commonplace than he had considered.

  He moved his hand, recovering his glass and its wine from the mists. Anger was not an emotion of which he often partook. Oh, his Rebecca had moved him twice to mighty rages, but, in main, he was a rational man. As an artificer, his nature tended to logical thought, to problem-solving and experimentation.

  Altimere sipped his wine, frowning into the mists, seeing something beyond the wearisome sameness.

  Perhaps, he thought, he had one more string to his bow.

  Nancy did not bathe one as gently as the Gossamers, but she was certainly thorough, Becca thought some while later. She had been briskly dried and her hair wrapped up in a towel. The tub, stand, and pitcher were gone, though the rag rug remained comfortably underfoot. Becca shivered slightly in shift and bloomers while Nancy shook out a canvas split skirt, and a long-sleeved blouse demurely figured with honey-cups. Those, with the sturdy shoes and wool stockings also to hand, were precisely what Becca wished to wear, while remaining troublingly similar to certain articles of clothing she had last seen hanging in her closet in her father's house, far beyond the keleigh.

  "Where did these clothes come from?" she asked, as Nancy did up the long row of tiny mother-of-pearl buttons. Of course, there was no answer. Becca sighed and suffered herself to be pushed down onto the chair. Stockings and shoes went on with brisk efficiency, while, abandoned, the rag rug blinked out of existence, returning, so Becca devoutly hoped, to wherever it was that Nancy had . . . borrowed . . . it from.

  Her hair had been ruthlessly dried, the towel vanquished, and the braid almost done when Violet Moore peered 'round the screen.

  "Well! I can see that I needn't worry about waking my patient!" the girl said. Her cheeks were rosy, whether from exertion or embarrassment, Becca could not determine. She stepped into the small space. "Let me see your hands, please."

  Becca extended her right, and Violet Moore took it gently, subjecting it to a minute examination.

  "This has healed very well," she said at last, releasing the member to its owner.

  "Not only have my hands healed well," Becca said, "but they seem to have healed with remarkable quickness. Can you tell me, is this . . . usual? Or was there something else beside easewerth and fremoni and aleth in the cure?"

  Violet stared down at her, lips parted, and Becca wondered what she had said to earn such a look. The girl shook her head and forced a smile.

  "I remember, now. Gran had said that—on the other side of the hellroad—an injury might take a week and more to heal, even with the proper application of cures. Here at New Hope, healing is more rapid, as long as—" Her face shadowed and she glanced aside. "As long as," she continued, her voice lower, "the correct cure is applied."

  "I . . . see . . ." Becca said, frowning.

  Violet cleared her throat, straightened her shoulders deliberately, and raised her chin. "Did you sleep well?" she asked, determinedly civil.

  "I slept until I woke," Becca told her, which was one of Sonet's old jokes. But, really, there was no reason to burden this innocent girl with the sorts of dreams a ruined woman had earned as her nighttime companions.

  "I do apologize for not having been on hand when you did wake," Violet Moore said. "I was out in the garden and lost track of time."

  "No need for apologies," Becca said, feeling the tug of Nancy tying off her braid. "I was well-attended, though now that you are here I will admit to being hungry. Thank you, Nancy," she added as the tiny creature came 'round to hover before her. "You have been very helpful this morning. I will call you when I need you."

  Her maid braced her feet against the air and executed a broad bow before vanishing entirely.

  "Where does she go?" Violet Moore asked softly.

  Becca shook her head. "I have no idea. It cannot be far, however; she always hears me when I call."

  "That's useful," Violet said. "And an artifact, so the Good Lady said. Did you create it?"

  Becca glanced aside, face heating. She stood, and bought another moment by shaking out her skirt.

  "I am not an artificer, alas," she said, managing to keep her voice firm and light. "Nancy was . . . created . . . by a Fey, whose allegiance she rejected. She now serves me."

  "I understand," Violet Moore said, though what—or how much—she understood was more than Becca could say. "And you must forgive me, Miss! You're wanting your breakfast and here I am keeping you talking! There's tea, bread, and jam in the kitchen, if that will serve?"

  "That will serve very well, indeed!" Becca said warmly, her stomach noisily agreeing. She blushed, and Violet laughed.

  "Come along, then," the girl said. "I could have another cup of tea, myself."

&
nbsp; "Good morning, Lady Rosamunde." Meri leaned on the gate of the lean-to, watching the mare with approval. She flicked her ears, perhaps with something less than approval, and glided up to him.

  "That's gently done." Meri stroked the soft nose and sighed. He'd woken sticky and disoriented from a dream of mist-walking and unlocalized lust. Such things were unsettling, though they came rarely to a Ranger. He'd left his nest for a look at the dawning sky and a breath of the new day's breeze. The dream clung to him, though, waking longings that were surely nothing short of madness in one who stood soft of kest and surrounded by heady Newmen auras.

  Unwilling to return to his nest and tempt another such dreaming, he had strolled into the near trees and breakfasted on bonberry, vinut, and spring water so cold it took his breath.

  Fully awake, and satisfied, the dream finally fading, he had leaned against a ralif and sent a good-morning to the trees.

  Good sun, Ranger. That was the voice of the ralif he rested against, though he could feel the attention of other trees, all about him.

  "I am in search of a branch of Rangers, who passed under leaf some number of days ago. It is reported that a charge came to each, save the last. None have sent word of their condition, and she to whom they owe duty begins to wonder after them."

  A Ranger under leaf is in no danger, said a larch.

  Meri shivered and forcibly thrust aside the memory of the trees under whose undead branches he had stumbled, lost and blind and disregarded, beside which the monster his arrow had taken receded to a mere novelty.

  "I have myself walked among trees that took no note of me, nor of anything living," he said slowly. "And there are strange things a-move, under leaf."

  True, said the larch.

  And—What are their names? asked the ralif.

  He gave them; six names. Five Rangers who had received a charge, and the sixth, who had gone seeking.

  The trees will search, Ranger, the ralif said, and he felt the agreement of others, as the names made their way into the thought of the forest.

  He'd thanked them, and took his leave, walking back to the village for lack of a better direction for himself, and so had found himself at the lean-to sheltering Rebecca Beauvelley's quarter-Fey horse.

  He stroked the mare's nose again, hearing the slight sound of young steps behind him. Rosamunde snorted, and danced away, perhaps not wanting to be seen accepting his caresses.

  "Good sun to you, sprout," Meri said, turning sideways, with his foot still on the rail.

  "Good sun, Master," the boy said with his accustomed good cheer. "The Lady sent me to find you and say that there will be a Speaking under the Hope Tree at the next half-hand."

  Meri sighed to himself. At least he would not have to endure the auras of the entire village while confined by dead wooden walls.

  "I will be in attendance," he said to the boy. "And yourself?"

  "Oh, the whole village will be there!" Jamie said blithely. "Lady Sian sent me 'round to everyone." He grinned. "I'm to tell Miss Beauvelley now, and escort her to the Speaking."

  Meri felt his eyebrow rise. Send a vulnerable sprout to escort that one? What was Sian thinking?

  As if she heard the slight to her rider, Rosamunde snorted and stamped.

  "She is a very . . . beautiful . . . lady, isn't she?" Jamie asked. Meri blinked down at him.

  "Who?" he asked, around the tickle of cold dread in his belly.

  "Miss Beauvelley," Jamie answered. "So . . . bright."

  "Oh, aye, she's bright." Meri reached out and put his hand on the boy's shoulder. "Jamie, mind me."

  The sprout looked up, winging brows rumpled.

  "Rebecca Beauvelley is—you may think her beautiful. But her aura—she is not like the others here in the village. You must take care not to come too close to her, lest her brightness burn you."

  Jamie frowned, then smiled.

  "I'll be careful, Master," he said, and slipped out from under Meri's hand. "I'll fetch Miss Beauvelley now."

  Meri shook his head, watching the boy run down the grassy lane.

  "May I ask," he murmured, "what the trees told the sprout just then?"

  Why, only that you were harmed by wretched and evil Newmen across the hellroad, said the elitch at the center—the Hope Tree itself. And that you are justly wary since.

  "That will not help him to protect himself," Meri said irritably. "Last night, he might have been immolated, or bound to her, or—"

  Ranger, these Newmen have sheltered beneath my branches for many sunrises. They are not the same as those who treated you so cruelly.

  "Cruelty need not be deliberate," Meri argued.

  There was no answer from the tree.

  He sighed, and staggered, as Rosamunde pushed him firmly with her nose.

  "It was an earthdance," Violet Moore was saying, staring hard into her teacup. "We all ran out into the green. Gran . . . We were in the workroom. She sent me out, and—she said she was coming right after! And then—the tree fell. It struck the house, not the workroom. The dance kept on, and Gran never came out—maybe she didn't trust herself to walk on the land. When it was over, I ran back—she was on the floor, no mark, as if she were sleeping. We took her to Mother's house and put her to bed."

  She swallowed, raised the cup, and sipped, blinking hard.

  Becca sipped her own tea, put the cup down, and picked up her bread and jam.

  After a time, the girl took up her tale again.

  "She didn't seem to be hurt—" Violet raised her hand, unconsciously, Becca thought, and touched her right cheek—"a scrape, here, from when she fell, I thought. I looked in the books, but— She had some trouble breathing. I gave her air nettle tea, by drops. I thought—I thought that had eased her, but she didn't wake up. Sam came back from Sea Fort—and still she hadn't woken. I gave her a tiny dose—three grains, no more!—of kaen. It seemed to do nothing. Sam sat with her, and I did. She began to sweat, and show some restlessness, and I thought, Good, the kaen is working on her, and then she—she took a deep breath and just—she was gone . . ."

  She closed her eyes, but that didn't stop the tears. Becca put down her uneaten bread and reached across the table to put her hand over the girl's.

  "It is . . . very hard . . . when a patient dies," she said, slowly, trying to think what Sonet would say, in her infinite, practical wisdom. "Especially a patient who shows no mark, or any reason to fail. It must be—I can imagine that your grief is made worse, Miss Moore, by the fact that it was your own teacher who died. It must feel as if you failed her."

  The girl bent her head, the tears coming in earnest now, and nodded bleakly.

  "Yes," Becca said. "But, you know . . . I think you did well."

  "Well!" Violet gasped, pulling her hand away. "Gran died!"

  "Yes," Becca said again. "She did. But that was not the fault of your treatment. You were conservative and thoughtful, and I do not know that I could have done anything better." She paused, recalling Sonet's words upon a particular occasion. "One of the sorry truths of our calling is that sometimes, for what appears to be no reason at all—someone will die. The elderly often slip away from us this way. It's as if they just—become tired. It's not the healer's part to prevent them from seeking their rest. We treat the ill and the infirm, set bones and stitch cuts." Becca took a breath, Sonet's words echoing inside her head.

  "We do our best, Land helping. But we must never forget that we're part of the cycle of growth and death, too."

  She leaned back, biting her lip, suddenly ashamed of her presumptuousness. Who was she to advise this girl, who had lost the guidance of her teacher and the love of her grandmother? Who—

  The garden door burst open, and the boy Jamie stepped into the kitchen with a smile that faded as he beheld his sister's distress.

  "Violet?"

  She turned her face away, and bent, using her apron to mop up. "It's all right, Jamie," she said, breathlessly. "Miss Beauvelley and I were talking about healing."

  "
Oh." He cast a doubtful look at Becca, who did her best to smile for him.

  "Good morning, Jamie Moore," she said.

  "Good sun, Miss," he answered, and cleared his throat. "The Lady sends me to escort you and—and Violet to the Speaking."

  Becca frowned. "Speaking?"

  "I expect Lady Sian will be telling us her plans and orders," Violet said, her voice hoarse, but her damp face approaching composure.

  "That's right," Jamie said. "Under the Hope Tree, and everyone's to come." He turned and glanced outside at the sky. "Now."