Grace lay a soft hand on Balat’s “I would feel much better if you would stay in and see to your potions. I’ll help Tarr dig.”
“Ah,” Balat said, his eyes gleaming. “You just want to get out of cooking the midday meal, I know. All right, Grace. For you, I will trade. You dig and I will cook.”
Grace was warmed by Balat’s teasing. He would not force her to voice her concerns for his health, nor would he fight them. “You have a deal, Balat,” she said fondly. “Thank you for being so cooperative.”
After the morning meal was cleared away, Grace and Tarr put on layers of clothes against the icy cold and together forced the cabin door open, thrusting snow aside. When the opening was wide enough, Grace slipped through and dug around the doorway on the outside so Tarr could push the door open completely. Together they cleared the arc of the door’s swing first, then began to dig a path around to the woodpile.
The snow was wet and heavy, and they both labored with their shovels. Their ragged breathing sent wispy clouds of vapor into the air, clouds that whirled and broke apart and disappeared in the sunlight. The sound of boots crunching on snow echoed through the forest.
Halfway to the woodpile, Tarr stopped to rest. Grace was tired, too, and took advantage of the time to catch her own breath.
“I’m glad you stopped,” she said. “I didn’t realize how tired I was.”
“Are you angry with me?” Tarr asked unexpectedly.
“Angry?” Grace leaned on her shovel, puffing. “For what?”
Tarr scowled. He wondered if she teased him. “For last night. Because I threw the rock.”
“Oh.” Grace dismissed it with a shrug. “No, of course not. You did what you felt you must. I have no right to pass judgment on you.”
Her answer did not seem to satisfy him. “You used to.”
Grace accepted the criticism stoically. “Yes, I did. I’ve changed, I think. And I apologize for my behavior before. I had no right to be that way. I was wrong.”
If anything, that reply only agitated Tarr more. “Well, I couldn’t help it last night. I couldn’t hear what you wanted me to hear and I burned my hand! I just couldn’t do it!”
Grace stared at him. He was visibly upset, yet she was not sure why. “It doesn’t matter,” she consoled finally. “There is no failure. Only lessons.”
Tarr looked as if his eyes stung, and he turned away from her for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was more controlled.
“I’m really trying, Grace. It doesn’t come easy for me, but I’m trying.”
“I know.” She laid a hand on his sleeve. “I know you are.”
As if her tone and gentle touch triggered something in him, he turned back and impaled her with his eyes, dark and intense.
“Come away with me, Grace. We can leave here, get away from all this snow and work and all the old ways. We can find a place that’s warm and bountiful, and we can marry. You can teach me what I need to know. You’re the one doing the teaching, anyway. We don’t need Balat. Let’s leave here and go someplace beautiful.”
Impassioned, Tarr did not notice how Grace’s hand slipped from his arm during his plea. He did not see the gentle light go out of her eyes. He stood before her, proud, sure and expectant, awaiting her answer, not realizing it was already there on her face.
“It’s impossible,” she said finally. Her voice was barely audible.
“Impossible?” Tarr asked. “Why?”
“I will never marry.”
And as she said it, she knew it was true.
Tarr stared at her, too stunned to be angry. “Why not?”
Sightlessly, Grace’s eyes shifted away from him to the crystalline snow.
“Because I am Hers. Everything I am, everything I have, is Hers. All my ... energy, all my creative force is Hers.” She looked back at Tarr. “You see? It is not even mine to give. Not to you or anyone. Ever.”
He was unconvinced. “It’s not like it was before the Shift; people who give themselves to the Goddess don’t need to stay unmarried. No one—”
“I did not give myself to Her,” Grace said stonily, “until I realized that I already belonged to Her.” She fixed him with an unwavering stare. “I will never marry. Never. With anyone.”
Tarr stared back at her wordlessly for a long moment, his young, untrained mind racing to make sense of it all. He felt bruised and broken, yet almost before he was aware of it, his mind had covered over the hurt with anger, denial and bravado.
“Fine,” he said with a practiced shrug. “Go ahead and rot here with Balat and his simple magic. Stay here with rocks and owls for your companions. I’m sure the Goddess will think you chaste and good for it. I have better things to do.”
Smoldering with half-buried anger, Tarr grabbed up his shovel and fairly tore into the snowdrift, hacking out a path to the woodpile like a machine. Grace stayed still where she was, allowing some space between them, then came more slowly after him and neatened up the path of huge, angry gouges. Tarr finished long before she did, grabbed an armful of wood and strode defiantly back to the cabin.
Without watching him go, Grace knew his intent. It was no surprise to her when, moments later, he charged out of the cabin, a small pack under his arm, and made a laborious path for himself through the snow back toward the colony.
When Grace reentered the cabin, Balat was stoking up the fire and preparing to hang a pot of soup over it. Grace shed her coat and gloves and removed her snow-packed boots, then joined Balat at the fire.
“What did he say?” she asked.
Balat set the pot over the fire and stirred it carefully. “He said he’d come to realize how much his family needed him during the winter and had to go to them. He said they had no one else to dig snow tunnels for them and I did.”
Grace watched a drop of soup splash over the edge of the pot and fall into the fire with a soft hiss. A tiny puff of smoke went up.
“He’s not going to his family,” she said.
Balat smiled grimly. “I know.”
CHAPTER 13
That winter was a particularly hard one. Snow fell in great amounts, frequently, and the wind howled sorrowfully, often for days on end. It seemed to Grace that she would just get a clear area in the yard for their various needs when a new storm would rage through and fill her clearing with snow again. She was frequently tired and had little energy for anything but the necessary chores.
It was even harder on Balat. He did what he could to help Grace but the cold attacked his bones and brought him pain and stiffness. There was sickness in the colony and Balat insisted on working long hours over his medicines, then trudging the frozen forest to take them to the sick and dying. It was an awful time because some things had to be done or people would die, but the doing was often just as deadly. When Grace found Balat exhausted and almost frozen just a few yards from the cabin one day, she insisted he stay indoors from then on and she, in turn, added the healer’s rounds to her daily work. By day she trudged and shoveled and worked at whatever seemed most critical, and Balat kept a fire up and food ready; then at night Grace collapsed and Balat tended her so they could begin again the next day. The pace took its toll on them both.
Grace often wondered what the people thought of this killing winter; if they blamed her, as they had credited her for the bountiful summer, or if they thought the Goddess might now be exacting payment for the rich harvest. They never spoke to her of their feelings, though, and she didn’t ask. Luckily they could all be grateful that food was plentiful and although some might die of sickness, no one would starve. That was reason enough to be thankful.
By the time the bleakest months of winter had passed, Grace knew both she and Balat would survive but not without cost. They had both lost weight and had become frail and weak. Grace had no courses at all over the long winter and it almost seemed that her body, intent on survival, forgot that she was female at all. Balat became dangerously thin, yet some inner whipcord strength seemed to keep him going. He co
ughed almost continuously now and was ever chilled. When the tide of winter turned, Grace knew he would live, but she did not know how long.
When clear weather allowed, she had Balat sit at the window with a blanket and the sunlight on him, hoping to infuse his old bones with warmth. Although snow still fell fairly often, the days in between storms were bright and clear and people began to talk of spring and summer. It would not be many more weeks, Grace knew, before the day came to welcome the sun back and to honor the Goddess. She wondered if Balat would be well enough to accomplish that.
“If I’m not,” he told her when she voiced her concerns, “you will do it.”
Grace seldom thought of Tarr but when she did, she felt that he was far away. He had gone to his family only briefly, then had left the colony completely; she’d heard that much from the people she tended. Some thought he would freeze to death before he reached that elusive place of warmth, others held hope for him. Grace thought he was probably still alive, but very far away.
Most of that winter, Grace had little time to think of anything but work and warmth and sleep. The rock of Tarr’s lay still on the floor by her pallet, forgotten. Her small Dya charm hung on the wall, voiceless. There seemed no time for magic, miracles or learning. Aside from her small prayers for the morning and for food eaten, Grace seldom even turned to the Goddess. It took all her strength to see herself and Balat through the days. If she thought about it at all, she realized that she must trust the Goddess to keep the world turning, as the Goddess must trust her to keep herself and Balat alive. It was as much of a bargain as she could enter into now.
When finally the sun dallied a little longer above the horizon in the afternoons than it had been, Balat took note of that and called Grace to him. She came and stood patiently before him, ever the dutiful protégé. Almost forgetting the thing he wanted to discuss with her, he saw unexpectedly that, for all the hardship of the winter, Grace had matured.
“You have grown such, Grace,” he said with a weak but heartfelt, smile. “You are so tall now and you have lost all your childlike roundness. When summer comes and you gain back some of the weight you have lost, you will be a striking young woman. I can see that now.”
Grace shifted uneasily. “Right now I feel as if I am barely human,” she said, “much less a woman.”
“I know,” Balat said. “Your courses don’t come.”
Grace shrugged. “It’s of no matter. I will never marry, never bear children. That is not to be my work. Whatever the Goddess needs me for, it is not to be a wife or mother. And I am not displeased.” She returned his small smile. “What is it you want to tell me?”
“Ah, yes. The time comes for the solstice ceremony. I would guess it will be a matter of several days yet. You must go to the clearing in the forest; do you remember where it is?”
“Yes. I can find it.”
“Go there tomorrow before dawn. Remember the dead tree in the center, the one with the fork in it? You must stand so your back is to the clearing and so you look through the fork of the snag and see a V-shape of trees on the horizon, and a large rock at the bottom of the V. Stand just so, and note where the sun rises. Tell me how many fingers away from the boulder it is and then I will know what day the ceremony must be.” He watched her closely. “You are tired, Grace. Can you do this, too?”
“I can do it. I may sleep through spring but I can do it. Now, where is that second blanket I had around your shoulders? You’ll chill without it.”
The next morning, Grace made the necessary observations and she and Balat calculated the solstice day. They had five days to prepare. She started by telling the people what day to assemble.
“The rest is up to you,” Balat said. “The uninitiated think there is a formula to the solstice blessing, but there is not. You must simply stay open and the Goddess will guide you. Mind your dreams and your impulses; She will tell you what to take, what to say. Do as She moves you to do.”
For the next few days, Grace strove to recapture the simple beingness she had before this winter. She prayed for openness, prayed for insight. Her dreams were muddled and gray; no images came clearly. She was afraid she would fail.
“The Goddess won’t,” Balat said to her voiced fear. “Rest easy, Grace. Be at ease in your heart. It will come.”
The night before the solstice, she felt as unmarked and as untouched as a pure drift of snow. And as cold. Had the Goddess deserted her? Had She grown angry at Grace’s lack of attention during the winter and turned Her back on Grace? That night was long and still and practically sleepless for her. When Balat roused her in the darkness, candle in hand, she felt groggy and numb. She still had no feeling of how to honor the solstice. She dressed and went to the path to await the people, empty inside.
Perhaps it was her grim presence that quieted the people, or the effect of the harsh winter, but the procession to the clearing was not the restless, celebratory event she remembered from a year ago. No one spoke as they walked the narrow, beaten path between dirty patches of snow; no one laughed or called out. It might well have been a funeral procession, Grace thought. And the tonnage of that winter’s toll weighed so heavily on her that she found it hard to even care.
She took her place at the clearing and the people fanned out around her. She had no instruments to use, no words to say, no images to draw on. What was she to do? The horizon above the boulder, triangulated to her perfectly through the snag, was already brightening. She had only moments.
She could hardly bear to meet the expectant gazes of the people, yet her eyes went around the quiet circle almost on their own. Each face looked back, questioning, waiting, asking, praying. All but one.
Jeh.
Her eyes rested on him and an image of him working his loom sprang up in her mind. But it was not an image from memory; it was a dream image, a dream she had last night but had forgotten. It flowed back now, the sharp picture of Jeh before his loom, weaving a tapestry of brilliant warm colors as he worked the shuttle back and forth with amazing speed. In the span of a heartbeat, Grace could see what the tapestry was, what it would be—the sun, blazing in golden glory, shimmering, radiating, shooting out rays of warmth and life.
“Jeh.” The name crashed in her mind, yet she was not at all sure she spoke it, but he broke from the circle and moved toward her as if she had. His booted feet crunched through the brittle snow, yet it seemed to Grace he almost floated to her, ghosting along an invisible beam from his eyes to hers. When he reached her, she inclined her head respectfully, as if honoring the honor she bestowed on him, and blessed him with her fingertips light on his chest. He took her hands and kissed her forehead, his lips warm on her cool skin, and turned toward the east.
Grace did not remember willing her feet to carry her off, but found herself off to the side, behind Jeh and the stump and the snag. She felt drained, empty as before, yet different, for now she felt as if she had, truly, been full when she had called Jeh forward and she had poured whatever energy she had into him. Although exhausted, she felt not so apathetic now, not so feelingless. She leaned against a tree and watched with curiosity to see what Jeh would do.
She did not wait long. He faced the brightening horizon and began a quiet prayer, his lips moving easily although no sound reached her. His hands seemed to rise almost of their own will and soon he was standing tall and straight, arms high overhead, fingers splayed. Grace looked above him and saw rays of light slashing through the upper reaches of the forest even though the sun itself had not crested the horizon. The rays shot through the trees like living light, angling down visibly as the yet-invisible sun levered up. Grace could see the shards of light approaching Jeh’s outstretched fingers little by little, inch by slow inch. The light rays were afire with orange brilliance, swimming with motes from the fertile air. As Grace watched, the edges of the rays touched the tips of Jeh’s fingers, and for an awful, mind-tricking moment it looked as if the man’s fingers had caught fire, as if the tips of them were not light-burnished f
lesh but living, glowing flames that shot geyser-like out of his fingers. For a heartbeat, Grace’s breathing stopped and her flesh chilled, for he looked like nothing more than a man crazed and senseless, self-immolated, a human candle, and she almost cried out. Before her throat would obey the panic of her brain, however, the light angled down even more and then it was Jeh, just Jeh, sunlit and golden and glowing. The sun broke from the horizon and threw jeweled fireballs through the forest and the dirty patches of snow glittered golden and bright.
Grace had seen enough to know that Jeh was succeeding; he was doing what the Goddess and the people required. She sank against the tree and closed her eyes, exhausted yet serene. How grandiose she had been to think that only she could ensure a fruitful growing season, that if she failed in her duties the seasons would stop. There was a pang of liberating humility as she realized how shortsighted she had been. She was only one of the Goddess’ servants; if she were incapable, there were always others who could step in. If Grace’s limits were bound by her humanness, the Goddess’ were not, and the world would continue to turn. It was somehow comforting to know that the world did not turn in her hands. She was just as glad to give up that responsibility.
Jeh was speaking now but Grace paid little attention. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, slowing the pounding impulses of her body. She breathed in sunlight and breathed out winter mustiness. Spring was coming. She would heal; Balat and the colony would heal. There was too much work to be done before any of them could rest for long.
She was not even aware that Jeh had finished his ritual until she heard voices all around and felt hands on her. She drew herself up from her reveries, received the people’s concern and thanks, pressed their hands in hers and murmured assurances. The grimness of the morning was gone; people talked and laughed and made plans for spring. Grace let herself be carried along by the tide of pleasant humanity and they dutifully escorted her to her cabin. They left her with words of praise for her and of recovery for Balat, and she watched after them as they walked away.
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