She was about to speak when he raised his hands toward her and sank slowly to his knees in supplication before her. Stunned, she watched as he bowed his head, laid his hands out on the sand before him and passed out.
It was some time before Balat awoke. Grace made a place for them in the shadow of the colossal rock, digging out a shallow bed for Balat in the soft sand, cushioning it with the blankets she brought from the campsite in the canyon. She carried all their things to the new place, even starting a fire and digging some small, strength-building plants in order to make a tea for her mentor. Having no utensils save her knife, she found a hollowed out piece of lava and set it on the fire so its small caldera could hold the steeping tea. When Balat awoke, she removed the rock from the fire and set it near him, and the vapor of the cooling liquid drifted to him.
They stared at each other for some moments. Somehow, Grace knew, they were both different this day. She seemed to have found a new beginning; Balat, it seemed to her, had found the beginning of an ending. She had much before her; he had only a little. She had no doubt that her realizations were truths.
“Are you all right?” she asked him finally. She thought perhaps he knew all that she knew but didn’t want to speak of it yet.
At her voice, Balat dragged in a long, deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Yes,” he said. “I am fine. What about you?”
Grace nodded, liking the feel of the familiar teacher-student concern. “I am all right also.” It felt comfortable to slip back into the old patterns of camaraderie even with all the newness in them both. “Things are very different now, though, aren’t they?” she asked.
Balat’s eyes searched hers and she seemed to see some fear there, but then assurance chased it out. “Yes,” he said, “things are very different. Do you know who you are? What you are?”
Swallowing, Grace said, “I know I belong to the Goddess. Before anything else, I am Hers.” Her voice rang with the surety of humility.
Balat nodded, relieved. “I could not follow you at the last. I was with you on your first travels, but not the last. She revealed Herself to you, then?”
“Yes.” But Grace was puzzled. “I don’t remember anything but the dream I had last night when I ... saw Her. I remember nothing before that. What travels did I have?”
Balat dismissed them with a weak wave of his hand. “They are not important, so long as you know your path now. Everything you need will be revealed to you when it is time.” He lay back on his blanket and reached for the tea. “For now, we need to get this old, broken body of mine well so that we may return to the cabin. It will turn cold soon, and I don’t want to be in the shadow of this rock when that happens.”
“What ... happened to you?” Grace asked.
The question, with its inference, seemed to touch off a fit of coughing and when he was done, Balat groaned with soreness.
“My body is old; I have almost outlived its usefulness. The shock of what was revealed to me in trance was almost too much for it. I think my heart very nearly stopped.”
Concerned but excited, Grace said, “You will recover, though, of course? What did you see? You said you still had much to learn here. Did you learn all there was for you?”
Despite his soreness and exhaustion, Balat chuckled. “So many questions! Yes, I will recover; yes, I learned all that was here for me to learn and no, I cannot tell you what I saw. It will be shown you in your own time. It must suffice that we are doing well, you and I; we are on the correct path for us in this lifetime.”
He saw she was disappointed a little by his words, and managed a smile. “You have changed this day, also, young Grace. Look.”
He reached out and touched her hair, pulling out a strand of a few bright white hairs among the brown. Startled, Grace took the strand and drew it close where she could see it.
“I never noticed these before,” she said a little uncertainly.
“They were never there before,” Balat said. “Your eyes are different also; when we get back to the cabin, draw a pail of water and use it to look closely at yourself. You are no longer a child, Grace. You are a woman of the Goddess now.”
Suddenly shy, Grace dropped the strands of hair and averted her eyes. She felt strange, unsure of herself. What must she do now?
“Now,” Balat said, as if in answer to her silent thoughts, “we must heal my old body and for that we need food. This is the wrong time of day for hunting,” and he squinted up at the midmorning sun, “but you will be favored. Go find food for us, Grace. Let us take care of today; tomorrow will take care of itself.”
They stayed in the shadow of the big rock two more days. Grace found some late berries on a thin, straggly vine, and managed to rob a larger animal’s cached kill. With the small greens she gathered, they had tea and wild salad. Balat savored all that she found and grew stronger. Grace thought she felt stronger too but was unsure if it was due to her role as sole hunter and provider, or if it was only a trick of her mind after the last days’ events. In any case, they both gained strength and resiliency and it was not long before Balat insisted they start the long trek back.
“I will go slowly,” he promised at her worried look, “and use the walking to build myself up. If I feel it is beginning to tear me down, we will stop. We may not travel quickly, but we will get home all right.”
Home. The forest seemed so far away, not only in distance but in time. For a fleeting moment she had the strangest feeling that she did not belong there, that the cabin was no longer her home, but she shook it off. Where else would she go? And she would stay with Balat as long as he needed her. She vowed that.
They did make very slow progress. What they covered in one day on the trip out took three or four on the way back. Grace fretted a bit about the weather breaking, but it held. The nights, she noticed, were cooling, but not enough to be uncomfortable—not yet. She tried to hurry Balat without badgering him and realized for the first time that he was more solely in her care than she was in his. He had said something once about that—about changing roles. But between watching him, breaking out and making up camp, and hunting and gathering, she had little time to do more than recognize the change.
The day they spied the long, dark smudge of the forest along the far south horizon was a day they both felt some relief. Camped in a bluff on the desolate area, the dark band of green looked safe and welcoming. When Grace looked back behind her, she saw that the mountain had dropped away into only a small, hazy bump on the horizon, and that the rock—the huge, gigantic rock—was not to be seen at all. She wished to see it, if only to reaffirm that all that she remembered had really happened, and yet she knew it had. Unexpectedly, something told her she would never go to the big rock again. She wondered why.
The night they reached the forest and camped beneath the green canopy, a cold north wind blew swirls of snow in across the stark plain. From their fire amid the trees, Grace and Balat watched the flecks of snow swirl and dance across the open ground. The wind howled through the topmost branches of the trees, but down on the ground below, the two travelers were safe.
The day they trudged to the door of the cabin, the weather had warmed again but they both knew winter was coming. Although the sun shown brightly through the trees, Balat built a big, cheery fire in the fireplace and Grace prepared a thick, hearty stew to bubble over it and scent the cabin. They settled in their respective chairs before the fire and breathed in the warmth of home and fire and food. It felt good to be back.
“That trip was more rugged than I thought it would be,” Balat said.
“But we are home, now, and have as much time as we need to rest.”
“Almost,” Balat said. Grace looked at him curiously. “We have some days to rest. Then we will have a guest.”
CHAPTER 12
A handful of days later, an early storm howled down and tore through the forest. The wind wrenched branches from trees and threw them violently about the forest and an angry cloud of snow and hail swept the fields. Al
though most of the fall harvesting had been done before Grace and Balat had returned, during the first hours of the storm they heard people calling to one another as they fought through the wind to complete their last gathering chores. When the last loose article was stored or tied down, the voices faded and the only sound to be heard was the wail of the wind or the loud crack of splintering wood. Each crack echoed like thunder through the forest, and Grace found herself jumping in alarm at the violent sounds. Wide-eyed with an emotional anxiety that would not be subdued by reason, Grace trembled in fear.
“It was after just such a storm a year ago that we found you,” Balat said. “Do you remember?”
She didn’t, but this current storm evoked enough fear in her that she felt certain the one a year ago had indeed been a painful reality for her.
“Come here,” Balat said. “Sit with me and we will weather the storm together.”
They huddled together before the fire on blankets on the floor. For a short time in Balat’s arms, Grace felt again the shy, scared child she had been a year ago. Slowly, though, as the storm blew itself out, she realized that she was holding Balat as much as he was holding her. The grown man and the young girl-child were gone; in their place now sat the old man and the young woman and she knew she had grown through her ordeal by storm.
The next day there was nothing left of the wind except its debris; huge branches and even whole trees littered the forest. The sky was bright and clean, but the air had a crispness to it. Together, Balat and Grace began their necessary preparations for winter.
Balat saw to the storing of all their herb and vegetable goods while Grace went afield to harvest the last wild plants for their larder. She made Balat promise not to overtax himself while she was gone. He had never broken a promise to her yet but she still fretted that he might take on more than he could safely do. The trip to the mountain had taken a severe toll on him and Grace feared he might never fully recover.
So although she ranged the forest and fields for the wild greens they needed, her thoughts were constantly with Balat and she hurried so she could get back to him before dark. When her pack was full of the stems and roots she’d gathered, even though the sun still slanted sideways through the trees, she headed back to the cabin. So long as the weather held she could continue to do their gathering and storing on other days.
The sound of someone chopping wood rang through the forest and she thought little of it. With so much downed wood from the storm, some in the colony would take advantage of the windfall and stock up on firewood but not, of course, Balat. He was too weak to swing an ax now. Yet the nearer she came to the cabin, walking a zigzag path through the trees that provided some triangulation, the more she feared that was exactly from where the sound was coming. By the time the cabin came in sight—and the ringing sound persisted—she felt a rush of anger spawned by fear and she ran the last short way to the yard and gulped in the deep breath that would fuel her tirade.
“You promised! You foolish old man, you promised me you wouldn’t—”
She was cut short by the sight of Tarr straightening up from the stump, ax slung carelessly over his shoulder, wood chips scattered about his feet. The young man’s eyes lit up at sight of her, although her words confused him.
“Grace?” He welcomed her with a question.
“Where’s Balat?” she demanded, her anger only slightly dissipated.
“In there.” Tarr jerked his chin toward the cabin. “I think he’s resting.”
Weak with relief, Grace rushed into the cabin and slung her pack on the floor. Balat was on his palette, just sitting up from a nap. She ran to him and flung her arms around him and burst into sobs.
“What? Grace!” he cried, disoriented by her actions as well as his recent sleep. “What is it, child? What’s wrong?”
“I was so angry!” she ranted. She clung to him as if he might slip from her grasp. “I thought it was you chopping wood. I was afraid you’d hurt yourself!”
“Ah.” He chuckled now, holding her tightly back and shaking his head. “I’m sorry you were upset, but you had no need. I told you I would rest and I did. Tarr was kind enough to offer his young strength.”
Her fear abated somewhat and she managed to wipe her eyes and loosen her grip on Balat. “Why is he here?” she asked suspiciously. “I can chop wood for us.”
“Yes, I know you can.” Balat’s eyes twinkled at her pique. “And you know as well as I do why he is here—to be close to you.”
“Well, he doesn’t need to be here,” she said. “I will send him away.” And she started to rise but now Balat kept her from going.
“He has asked to study with us,” Balat said. “He would stay with us this winter and learn with us.”
Grace stared in disbelief. “Stay? And you allow this? We talked of this already, of what he says with his words and what is in his heart. He doesn’t want to learn!”
“I see. So you know what is in his heart better than he does, is that it? You know his desires more than he does himself? Is that so, Grace?”
Chastised, Grace slumped on the cot. “No. That’s not so. But I don’t ... trust him. I ... feel things from him, things that are twisted, somehow, backwards. He follows the Goddess with his mind but not with his heart.”
Balat spoke quietly, soothing her bruised ego. “That may well be, but we don’t know that, Grace. Only Tarr knows what is in his heart, and if he chooses to learn then he should have that opportunity. Perhaps he truly does not know the Goddess now, but wants to. Would you deny him that chance?”
“No.” Grace knew she was being childish, but it was difficult for her to think of sharing Balat with anyone. He’d been her mentor alone for so long now.
“I think you have it wrong, Grace,” Balat answered her unspoken thoughts. “It is I, now, who must share you. If Tarr learns, he will learn more from you than from me.”
Grace looked doubtful. “Wait and see,” Balat said cheerfully. “Now, what plants did you find for me?”
The rest of the afternoon, Grace and Balat pored over her findings while Tarr chopped wood. When they had stored away all the plants, Balat made them all a fine dinner and the three of them sat down to eat. Grace found it difficult to meet Tarr’s eyes—they seemed to seek her out constantly—and so sat through most of the meal with her head down but Balat kept up a lively conversation with the young man.
“Have you any interest in plants, my boy?” Balat asked. “Herbs and such?”
“Uh, yes, some,” Tarr said. His desire to please was painfully obvious.
“Good. That is more than Grace has, so perhaps I have finally found someone to pass my knowledge on to. We have some drying and preparing to do for the winter so we can start there.”
“More than Grace?” Tarr echoed. “Grace doesn’t care for herb lore?” He blinked from Balat to Grace as if it were inconceivable for her to lack an interest or talent in anything. She found his idealism of her rankling and might have spoken sharply if Balat had not answered first.
“Grace is an exceptional student, Tarr, but she is also a normal human being with likes and dislikes and fondnesses and disinterests. No one can excel at everything.”
“No, no, of course not,” Tarr agreed. “I see what you mean. Well, I like plants all right, although I must say they’re not my favorite. I do know a lot about animals, though, and stones. And I am fascinated by magic.”
“Magic?” Balat asked. “What sort of magic?”
“You know; wonders. Like when Grace caused those birds to appear on the equinox. Grand miracles.”
Balat regarded him thoughtfully for a moment. “Grand miracles you like and yet small miracles are all around you, even now.”
“Now?” Tarr craned his head to one side and the other, but nothing looked miraculous to him. It was just a cabin. “Where?” he demanded.
Silently, Balat traded a look with Grace, then returned his attention to Tarr. “The fact that our brains can interpret words and respond to them
is a miracle. The fact that we can turn our heads from one side to another is a miracle. The fact that we have eyes to see and ears to hear and brains to reason is a miracle. The wood of this table, this food we eat; they are all miracles. Yet we forget that because they are all familiar to us. If you recognized all the miraculous things around you, you would be so overwhelmed with awe that any thought of grandness would be impossible.”
Tarr opened his mouth as if to speak, thought better of it, and closed it. He picked up his spoon of horn and turned it in his hand, looking at it. Then his gaze traveled across the wood of the table to the wooden wall, out the window to the forest and the sky.
“I think I see,” he said finally. His brow wrinkled with new thoughtfulness and there was a curious confusion in his eyes.
“Perhaps you do,” Balat said. “More stew?”
Those first days were hard on Grace. She found Tarr’s non-sensitivity to the subtle invisible wonders of life to be exasperating, and when Balat would lead the boy patiently through convolutions of reason to awareness, she chafed at the detour back to things she had learned long ago. She could not begrudge Tarr his desire to learn but after the trip to the far mountain and the changes that had occurred there, she was yearning for new experiences. When they had returned to the cabin, she had felt full of new promise and power, ready for new challenges. Now she felt bored and stifled, hardly more than a reluctant classmate for Tarr.
Balat let her sulk for some days in silence, then gave Tarr a task to do and asked Grace to take a walk with him. He had regained most of his strength by walking daily and it almost seemed to Grace that they might recapture the peace of the past. For a few moments, she could imagine it so.
“How long are you going to allow yourself this sourness of spirit?” he asked finally.
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