by Vicki Grove
By then she’d turned round far enough to see not two but three players sitting cross-legged upon the ground! Three girls, but only two of them human. The third, close between the other two, had the whitest of knees, the whitest of thin girlish arms, and long white hair that blew across her face in the breeze. She pushed it back with bone-white hands, then smiled with white lips. The eyes in her white face were the lightest of colors. Bluish, they were, but only as milk may be said to be bluish, though it is, truly, white. She wore a thin garment. It was indeed her shroud, for Rhiannon recognized with dread the phantom from the night of the wake, the will-o’-wisp ghost she thought was Primrose!
Rhia advanced slowly, one arm out toward the girls in a semblance of calm, though beneath her skirt her knees were knocking. “Daisy, that is not your sister,” she said. Then she took a breath and said more firmly, “Take Sally’s arm and let us go home.”
Daisy put out her hands, palms up. “Of course she is not my sister, Rhia! Primrose lives in heaven now, remember? Ingrid lives right here, within our woods! She doesn’t even look like Primrose.”
And then, Daisy began to giggle at Rhia’s foolishness, and Sally joined her in it, their knees bobbing upon the ground, their skinny shoulders hunched as though they would laugh forever at such a silly mistake. Only the third abstained, looking down at her lap as though with guilt at being caught among the living.
Rhia turned to Gramp, who turned his head away. If she would not believe him when he’d given dire alarm, why should he respond to her conundrum now?
But without his counsel, what to do, what to think? It was well known that ghostly spirits were tricksters. What better way could Primrose find to lure her sister to an eternal wander in limbo than to change her aspect so’s not to frighten DAisy, and then to sit on a spring afternoon and join in her earthly games?
This new child did look made of solid flesh, not ghostly mist. But children were not white-haired and did not possess the snowy skin of doves! Further, this child did not resemble the folk in the woods. She was without color, whilst their color was grayish, or ofttimes yellow. She was so smooth she seemed made all of glass, whilst their skin flaked and was oft scaly, except where it flamed red with soreness.
While Rhiannon stood fearful and perplexed, the girl jumped up and took to her heels. At wood’s edge she turned to blow a kiss, first to Sally, then to Daisy. Daisy blew a kiss back, then bent across and raised Sally’s hand to Sally’s lips. The deathly pale stranger pretended to catch Sally’s clumsy kiss upon her cheek, then to take it in her fist, then to clasp it gently as a precious treasure between her two white hands.
Rhiannon felt all her dire certainty dissolve in the warmth of that small gesture.
“Ingrid, then,” Rhia whispered, and burned with shame for the poor welcome she’d given the strange woodland child. For it was certain that no trickster spirit would do such a graceful thing simply for the heart’s peace of an invalid like Sally.
“I still don’t understand how your new friend came to be in our woods,” Rhia declared as they three walked home under Gramp’s circling shadow. “Is her mother there?”
Daisy shrugged. “How should I know? Ingrid never speaks of her.”
Rhia frowned. “Does she talk of how she fares in the woods, whether she needs anything? Does she speak of whether she’d like to come from the trees and live inside?”
Daisy shook her head. “She never says.”
“I saw her on horseback, galloping at midnight on Aleron’s steed,” Rhiannon mused. “Do you know how she learned to ride so well? Was she born an aristocrat, then?”
Daisy sighed. “Maybe. What is one of those?”
Rhia thought. “Well, an aristocrat is . . . hmmm. Put it this way. Most aristocrats speak the language of Francia. Does Ingrid speak the language of Francia?”
“Ingrid speaks no language of anywheres,” Daisy said.
Rhia grew exasperated. “Oh, Daisy, everyone speaks some language.”
Sally leaned around Rhia. “Three fish!” she said cheerfully to Daisy, as if to demonstrate Rhia’s point. “I’ll have three. Three!” Then, in the blink of an eye, Sally stopped walking and pressed her palms to her ears, crying, “No, stop, stop!”
She began to tremble head to foot. Rhia and Daisy hastened to put their arms around her—Rhia’s around her shoulders, Daisy’s around her hips. But still, Sally shuddered.
Something terrible played in her brain, but who might know what it was?
In another moment, as quickly as the sun may slide from behind a roiling thundercloud, Sally took her hands from her ears, seemed confused, and then smiled bright again, looking to Rhia with nothing in her eyes except the reflected late-afternoon sky. The three of them walked on along, though more slowly, Daisy and Rhiannon holding fast to Sally’s arms from either side. Though Sally now seemed recovered from her fit, it had left small Daisy shaken, and Rhia well nigh in tears. No one spoke until the cottages were in sight, then Daisy said quietly, “Rhiannon? Ingrid does not talk.”
Rhiannon frowned, her thoughts still with Sally. “What do you speak of, Daisy?”
“Ingrid, my new friend! She does not talk is why she speaks no language!”
With this mysterious saying, Daisy hugged Sally good-bye and ran toward Granna, who kneaded bread on the stump beside the hives with the bucketed tortoise near her feet.
“Rhiannon!”
Rhia recognized the pilgrim’s voice and turned quick toward it. Sir Jonah stood alone back beside the nether cot, giving her a wide-armed wave with the ax in his hand. Nearby was a goodly pile of oakwood. A log was balanced upon the splitting stump.
She noted that Sal, too, saw Jonah but had no especial reaction. She did not fear him, though the fright she’d had at his hands might still live somewhere within her.
“I see you have come home from your forest sojourn!” she called to him. “I’m sure Brother Thaddeus is gladdened to have some relief from the chore you left him!”
She’d meant to sound witty, but instead had sounded gruff, she knew.
He drew his arm across his face so that his orange hair, newly gilded with sweat, seemed like an ornate, ragged mane. His eyes blazed, even from this long distance.
“Thaddeus has gone looking for you!” he called to her.
Again, like the midnight before in the chapel, when she’d raised her candle and perceived him newly become himself, she was seized with the impulse to drop to her knees. She held Sally’s arm tighter and tapped Mam’s cross upon her chin, seeking her own balance.
“He’ll find me at home in a moment!” she answered Sir Jonah.
A quick glance told her that Granna was paying no mind to this exchange. She and Daisy were fully occupied retrieving the thrashing tortoise from the overturned bucket.
“He’d speak to you in private, and there’s some urgency to it,” Jonah called. “You may find him in the chapel, as he expressed a need to catch upon his prayers. Go straightaway, if you can.”
Rhia started walking Sally again. Something inside her was too stubborn to quiz Sir Jonah about this urgent matter. “I’ve no wish to disturb anyone’s prayers!” she called back, feeling a little thrill at having the last word.
Though once past his line of sight, had she not had Sally with her she would certainly have hitched her skirt to her knees and run full speed to the chapel.
Chapter 22
Rhiannon and Sally soon enough reached the cottage. Mam looked up and smiled at them from where she stirred their second largest kettle over the firepit, making a quantity of barley soup that smelled rich and delicious.
Rhia sat Sally upon the bench and tossed the seed sack onto its peg, then she hustled to her mother and spoke near her ear. “Mam? Sally used a different saying today. She has said it twice now that I’ve heard. ‘No, stop, stop!’ I wonder, did she utter it first yesterday, when Sir Jonah grabbed her clammy shell?”
Mam stopped stirring and looked at her. After a moment, she shook her he
ad. “No, I didn’t hear her say that. Her only words were her usual ones, and those not uttered often, miserable as she was. She cried until she was all hiccoughs, poor Sally.”
Mam and Rhiannon both looked at Sally then. Seeing that she rocked calmly there upon the bench, they turned back to speak more, their heads together over the kettle.
“Well, I am afraid the shock yesterday made her remember her horrible brother cuffing her when he’d got no fish,” Rhia whispered. “The first time Sally said her new words today, Daisy’s pet was trapped within her fancy clothes and fighting to get free. I fear Sal saw in that struggle her own hapless struggle to stop her brother hurting her, and that she may now remember anew whenever she sees such things.”
Rhia’s throat had grown too filled with anger to let further words through.
But though Rhia fumed, Mam fumed hotter. She stirred the soup as though she’d like to beat the turnips into runny liquid and whip the rabbit meat until it hopped away. When she finally spewed out words, they were as blistering as the fire itself.
“Violence is like a poison arrow shot from a tight bow, so why will you not provide some hard target to take that arrow’s hit and stop its travel? The heart and memory are wispy things, never fashioned to fend against the brutal force that flies unchecked throughout this world! Why, why, why have you designed things so uneven? The hurt to Sal now travels well past the skull-crack that tore her mind asunder. It presently sails right through the heart of her, taking away her innocent peace, damaging over and over again with no stop to it! How . . . how dare you construct things so lopsided, the brutal things so endless in their flight and the gentle things in brutality’s path so breakable!”
By the end of this tirade, Rhiannon realized to whom Mam spoke and was truly shocked, as who would blaspheme so, calling God to account as Mam just had? The large vein in Mam’s thin neck pulsed as though it would burst. Rhia was afraid of Mam and for Mam, both. God Himself may well have shuddered, had He been here.
Knowing not what else to do, Rhia fetched a bowl and reached far around Mam to quick ladle soup into it, then escaped to sit beside Sal upon the bench and feed her. Sally opened her mouth wide for each mouthful. She looked into Rhia’s eyes with her usual candor, innocent as a babe, though near as grown as Rhia herself.
Rhia tucked Sal’s light hair behind her left ear and gently ran her fingers across the filigree of shattered bone beneath her clear skin. She closed her eyes and prayed with all her might that God might right quick heal Sally and redeem Himself in the eyes of Mam, His faithful handmaiden in all things.
Rhia kept her eyes tightly closed for so long that lights danced behind her lids and her ears roared as with the ocean’s voice. She would give God plenty of time, as healing bone must be especially hard work.
But Sally’s head was not healed when Rhiannon finally opened her eyes. Sally indeed thought Rhia was playing some game with her, and laughed with delight.
Mam was now crouched upon her haunches nearby the bubbling kettle. She stared into the fire with her elbows upon her knees and her cloud of shining hair held back from her face by the slim fingers of both hands. Rhia thought she looked much like a young girl, crouched like that. She’d given God a tongue-lashing, and now she was for certain waiting for Him to make an answer to it, just as Rhia had waited for her own answer, and received it not. Did Mam indeed expect Him to speak from the flames, as to Moses?
Rhia stood. “Mam? Shall I take Sally along to her own cot, now she’s eaten? She appears over her fear of Jonah. Just now she was calm when we passed him, and she was not afeared when he came in with you this morn, or to eat the midday meal.”
After a moment, still staring at the fire, Mam said listlessly, “Yes, Rhia, if you please. And daughter, you’d best go find Thaddeus when you’ve taken Sally home. I’d forgotten. He would speak with you.”
And then, Mam turned to give the barest glance to Rhia and Sal, where the two stood hand-in-hand near the doorway. But strangely, her eyes arrested on them, and then bore into them, as though they were a wonder and not the daily thing they certainly were.
Mam then covered her mouth with her hands and stood, yet still she stared at them.
Finally, she wiped her eyes right quick with the heel of one hand, then took to stirring the soup again.
“We go, then, Mam,” Rhia said, a bit uneasily. “If indeed you are ... all right?”
“Yes, daughter.” Mam gave her a small smile. “I’m fine.”
“Did God make you an answer to your complaints?” Rhia asked in a rush. She feared Mam would think she pried, but she needed to know! “Did He show you in the flames how the brutal of the world will burn eternal when they die?”
Mam still smiled, but wrinkled her nose. “That is cold comfort here on earth, Rhiannon, don’t you think? And such eternal punishments are best left to God, His business, never ours. Come close here, daughter. Bring Sally.”
They went close. Mam leaned to kiss Sal upon the cheek, then Rhia. She grasped their linked hands within the two of her own. “God reminded me that one thing can fend. The care we take of each other comes from His own loving heart and will not be broken.” She squeezed their hands, then released them and waggled her fingers at them as one will to shoo chickens. “Now off with you two, as it soon grows dark!”
Rhia was a bit surprised to see the sky already painted with glowing streaks of orange and pink and yellow as she and Sal left the stoop to walk to Sal’s cottage. The day had been overfilled with events, and had gone racing by so that already it was twilight.
“Sally?” Rhiannon confessed in a whisper. “I did not expect your shattered skull to be knit back when I opened my eyes. I saw what I expected, a beautiful girl with a dent aside her head. My lack of faith may well have stayed God’s hand from healing you. If that is the case, I give you heartfelt apology.” Rhiannon sighed.
They’d got to Sally’s stoop, and clearly Sal was glad to be home. When Rhia opened her door, the young girl rushed to her pallet and lay upon it, curling into her sleep shape with a smile upon her face. Rhia pulled the flaxen blanket over her and said good night.
“I shall bring a candle when it gets full dark,” she whispered, pushing Sally’s tangled hair back from her eyes. “But first, I should find Thaddeus.”
And then Rhia could finally run full-tilt to the chapel. As it was not yet time for Gramp to assume his nightly sentinel duties upon the roof, she threw her weight against the chapel door without seeking his go-ahead, then suddenly felt uneasy entering without it. It was an eery time of day. The moon floated above the trees, and yet the sun had not handed over the world to that silvery dame quite as yet. It was that brief time when things hang suspended—not day, not night. Caught in that hairline crack between past and future, the present is not well formed and can be dreamy and unreal.
In fact, Rhia’d heard rumors of sudden disappearances of both animals and humans, all gone missing in those uneasy moments when the sun keeps his mighty hold, yet haughty Mistress Moon spreads her dark cloak anyhow.
She decided not to enter the part-opened door until she’d peeked around it first. And indeed, she saw that the shadows were grown long upon the walls, and the light was chilly and dim. The large floorstones had grown dampish, as soon the mists would rise from them to float where once those monks had surely walked, chanting their songs, hiding from fierce Northern slayers in their dragonboats. Hiding for a while, that is, but not for long, as their own days were numbered had they but known it.
Rhia wet her dried lips and took a step inside, though still she kept the heavy door cracked open with her heel. “Thaddeus?” she whispered, her voice echoing the single word. “Are you about? It’s . . . Rhiannon.”
Indeed, she now made out Thaddeus near the altar up front, but he was not alone in that gloomed place. A small, bright figure had been nearby him, and it came hurtling toward the door, bent upon escape now that Rhia had spoke and startled it.
Rhiannon dodged aside, her hea
rt in her throat, intent on giving the spook freedom to take its hasty leave, as who would contain a ghostly haunt against its wishes? But as the one who sought to flee came close, Rhia recognized her and jumped back to bar the door, her hands out imploringly. “Child, please don’t go! I’d give you sincere apology first, as I hope to be your friend!”
Ingrid had no choice but to stop, though she right out trembled.
“If it please you,” Rhiannon pleaded in a rush, “forgive my earlier ... well, bad manners.” Stupidity, she might have said. “I will be a good friend to you, if allowed.”
Still Ingrid stood atremble, saying nary a word, frozen as a hare gone helpless in a net. Thaddeus had come gently up behind her, and when he put his hand upon her shoulder, Ingrid did not flinch but looked up at him, awaiting his direction.
“Thaddeus, tell her!” Rhia begged. “Say that I would never do her harm.”
Thaddeus smiled at the girl. “It’s true, Ingrid. Rhiannon will be a friend always.”
Hard to say what the child thought then, as who may know the thoughts of the hare upon seeing the net opened? Whether to trust is the question, for an open pathway may lead to freedom, but may instead lead only to the hunter’s well-sharpened knife.
And so Rhiannon could only move aside, and the child dove through the open door and into the murky dusk. Thaddeus and Rhia watched her dart to the woods as though she were a wisp of cloud tatter blown along by a raging gale.
“What was she doing here?” Rhia breathed. “Did you bring her hence?”
Thaddeus shook his head. “She was here when I came in. Rhia, I believe she hides in here when the sun is brightest, as her skin and eyes are harmed by its rays. At night, then, she goes about in the woods. We saw her on Charlemagne last night, remember? And on the foggy evening I first came up here, she was at Sally’s window.”
