Mayor Lutter still seemed shaken. “Ah - you sent word not to make any special preparations - but we couldn’t - you know - we’ve prepared a feast in your honor - ” he stammered. The women waiting near the Temple took that for an order, and started bringing out dishes. Things were a bit confused for a moment, then the Mayor’s wife Mandy took charge and got everything set to rights and organized. Tables and benches placed on the platform were quickly covered with clean white cloths, and the visitors were guided to their seats. Everyone else scrambled for seats down below, as the young women and wives appointed as servers began bringing out food.
Keisha would have taken this opportunity to slip away, but Mandy Lutter wasn’t having any of that.
“There you are!” said the reedy voice as Keisha tried to ease her way out of the crowd. Mandy’s thin, hard hand seized her arm, and the Mayor’s wife pulled Keisha up toward the platform. Keisha wanted to jerk her arm free and run off, but that would have been unbearably rude, so she allowed Mandy to hustle her up onto the platform and into a seat.
“This’s Keisha Alder, our Healer,” Mandy proclaimed. “I’m afraid she’s a bit shy.” Keisha moved to protest, but was stilled by Mandy’s sharp glance.
Keisha looked cautiously about, and discovered she’d been seated between two of the visitors; Darian was on her right, and the lady with the black hair was on her left. And curiously, as she got control over her own nerves, she realized that the nausea and headache she’d been suffering from ever since she woke up were - gone!
“ - Kel will be arriving a little later,” the woman was saying to the Mayor. “He wanted to run his morning patrol before coming here, and that seemed like a wise course to us.”
Keisha wondered who “Kel” was, but she didn’t get a chance to speculate, for Darian addressed her just as the woman went on to talk about the bondbirds.
“I’ve been told that you have the old cottage that I used to share with Justyn,” the young man said, with a friendly enough smile. But immediately Keisha worried. Did he want it back?
“ Ye-es,” she replied carefully. “No one was using it - you don’t mind, I hope?”
He chuckled, and his eyes crinkled at the corners. “Why should I mind? It’s nice to know it isn’t sitting empty, or worse, fallen into a ruin. I just hope you’ve managed to make more of it than we did.”
“People fixed it up for me. They fixed the walls, the roof, everything,” she told him, and hesitated a moment. “I don’t suppose you’d want to see it, would you?”
His face lit up with his smile. “Actually, yes I would, quite a bit. I was trying to think of a way to ask you if I could.”
“I will - if you’ll let me see the gryphon up close!” she said, suddenly thinking of a way to achieve her own wish.
Now Darian laughed. “Let? Havens, when he comes in from patrol, you’ll have a hard time keeping him away! If there’s one thing that Kel loves, it’s an audience.”
That led her to questions about gryphons in general and Kel - or “Kelvren” as his name really was - in particular. Darian was perfectly willing to answer them, and while he was talking, she didn’t have to.
Darian was a vast improvement over her brothers, both in manners and appearance. He never interrupted, passed platters without being asked, offered food to her before taking some himself, and never heaped his plate with the best cuts. He used knife and fork properly, didn’t wipe his mouth on his cuff, and didn’t make sarcastic or cutting remarks, even when Mayor Lutter was holding forth with great pomposity on things he obviously knew nothing about. When that happened, he just exchanged looks with others of his party, and hid his smile by turning his head.
As for appearance - well, Keisha didn’t blame the rest of the girls for competing to serve him, nor did she blame them for their posing, their flirtatious glances, their outright adoration in some cases. He was really one of the best-looking young men she’d ever seen, and the leather Hawkbrother clothing with its fringes, beadwork, and tooling only gave him an exotic touch that was very attractive.
He seemed completely oblivious to their attempts to catch his eye, though. Mature and self-possessed, he managed to pay attention to Keisha’s questions and to the discussions that the Hawkbrother Elders and the village officials were having at the same time. She was used to having to listen to more than one conversation at the same time, since she often had two or more people babbling at her about an illness or injury, but she’d never known anyone else to have that gift.
Well, maybe he’s too busy with that to pay any attention to the girls. Or maybe he’s used to admiration. At least he doesn’t seem vain about it, if he is.
“The bondbirds are mostly in the trees around the edge of the village right now,” he said, in answer to her last question. “No reason to call them in, and too many strangers make some of them nervous. Firesong is enough strangeness for all of you to handle, I think!”
“You have a bird, don’t you?” she asked.
“Of course! I couldn’t be a Hawkbrother without one!” he laughed. “His name is Kuari, and he’s an owl. He’s fledged of Snowfire’s two birds. When we’ve got lots of space, I’ll call him in if you’d like to see him. He is really far too big to call into a crowd.”
“What’s it like, having a bondbird?” she asked curiously. “Is it something like having a Companion?”
“Huh. A bit, I’d guess. The bond strengthens with time; in the beginning, you have to work to talk to them, but after a year or so, they’re always in your head and you’d have to work to keep them out - assuming you’d want to.” He raised his eyebrows. “I can’t imagine why anyone would want to, though. They’re so different from humans that it isn’t like having someone eavesdropping on you.” He warmed to his subject. “Their needs are very different from a human’s, and their interests - it’s only because they are bred to be extremely intelligent that they have much in common with us at all. Have you ever been around ordinary birds of prey at all?”
“Not really,” she admitted. “In fact, the only raptors I’ve ever seen up close have been a couple of bondbirds, the ones that come with Hawkbrothers who’ve brought things to trade.” She offered a slow smile. “I really like Steelmind’s buzzard, he’s so calm.”
He chuckled. “You haven’t missed much with ordinary raptors. Oh, they are beautiful, graceful, and amazing to watch, but there isn’t much room in those heads for anything except hunting, breeding, and survival skills. They’re very focused. That’s the way Nightwind puts it. Bondbirds are less focused, but they do have intelligence and the ability to socialize, and not just with us. They play games and socialize with other bondbirds, and not just of the same breed. They have to be able to do that, or they couldn’t work together - and too many of them would be on the dinner menu for the biggest of them, if they didn’t have that ability to tell friend from food!”
She stifled a laugh. “I never thought about it that way.”
“Believe me, it’s quite true.” His attention wandered for a moment, as he caught part of one of the other ongoing conversations. It was only for a moment, though, and it came right back to her. “When you see the size of Kuari, you’ll understand. Honestly, I’m not strong enough to hold him for long without something to help support his weight.”
That candid remark surprised and charmed her. She couldn’t imagine any of the young men she knew admitting they weren’t strong enough to do something.
By this time, the meal was just about over; the last of the dishes were whisked away to make way for bowls of fruit and pitchers of wine. “Would you like to see the cottage now?” she asked, and when he hesitated, she assured him, “There won’t be any serious talk going on yet. Mayor Lutter won’t want any real discussions of anything happening in front of the whole village.” She listened a moment to the Mayor’s current topic, the past Midsummer Faire. “He’s on the Faire. The next thing will be the harvest, and the number of traders he expects. He’ll be priming your people for suggestions
later about what they might bring to trade on a regular schedule. You can see the cottage and be back before he gets onto the next thing.”
“That sounds fine, let’s slip off.” He rose from his seat at the same time that she did. He set out in exactly the right direction, and it took her a moment to remember that he had lived here for years, so of course he would know where the cottage was!
“Well,” he exclaimed, as they approached the workshop. “You were right about people fixing it up. It certainly never looked this good when I lived here.”
She felt a bit of pardonable pride, for it was a neat little place now, with the stone walls scrubbed and morning glories and moonflower vines climbing up the trellises she’d built on either side of the door. The thatch had been patched and freshly trimmed last fall, too, and this spring she’d painted the shutters white.
“Show me around the outside first,” Darian urged. Always happy to show off her garden, Keisha took him around to the back.
“Oh, this is good,” he exclaimed, as the garden came into view. “What have you got here?” Without waiting for her reply, he walked carefully around the beds, identifying plants aloud. “Feverfew, wormwood, basil, thyme, lobelia, comfrey - ” Keisha was impressed, for she would never have thought he’d have any knowledge of herbs. “I must say, I’m glad Justyn didn’t have all this.”
“Why?” she asked, startled.
“Because then I wouldn’t have had so many excuses to go out into the forest,” he replied with perfect logic. “Keisha, you’ve done some remarkable things here. This is wonderful from the point of view of having supplies at hand.”
“And to trade,” she pointed out. “I’m able to get some things by swapping with traders that come here. Perfume oils are popular, and dyes, of course.”
“Of course.” He took another long look around the garden, nodding. “So, why don’t you show me what you’ve done with the inside?”
His grin as soon as he entered the door made her flush with pride, and she was very glad she’d cleaned everything thoroughly last night. “Good job. Really good job. You’ve made this place into a fine home and workshop.”
“I had help,” she began shyly, but he shook his head.
“I see one person’s hand everywhere,” he began, but a tap on the doorframe interrupted him.
The Hawkbrother woman - Nightwind - stood there. She said something quickly in the Hawkbrother tongue; he nodded and turned back to Keisha.
“Nightwind says that Lutter wants to speak with me, and she wants to have a word with you,” he told her. “Right now, she says - while things are still quiet.”
“Me?” she squeaked, surprised once again. “Why?”
He shrugged helplessly. “I suspect that’s to be between Nightwind and you. I’ll see you later, when Kel comes in.”
With that, he slipped past Nightwind, who entered and closed the door behind her.
“You need not look so apprehensive,” the woman said, in slow, careful Valdemaran. “I think that this may be a very welcome conversation for you.”
Keisha swallowed, and recalled her manners. “Will you sit down? Can I offer you something to drink?”
“After that feast?” Nightwind laughed. “Thank you - but no. I shall sit, however.”
She took one of the two chairs at the cold hearth; warily, Keisha took the other.
“I have spoken with Healer Gil,” Nightwind said, with no warning, and Keisha stifled a groan. “Nay, do not look so stricken! I am a kind of Healer, as is Adept Firesong; we believe that together we can supply the teaching that you lack.”
Before Keisha had time to react, Nightwind went on. “You do not know how close you came to turning into a hermit,” she said soberly. “You have been feeling unwell around others, have you not? That is because you have never learned to shield.”
“Shields? You know what that means?” Keisha was too excited by this to be annoyed and embarrassed now. “I haven’t been able to make any sense out of what was in the books, and I knew it was important, but Gil couldn’t explain and - ” She stopped herself, took a deep breath, and told herself to calm down. “So that is why I get upset when other people are upset?”
“Exactly.” Nightwind relaxed just a trifle. “And you will be getting your first lesson from me, right now. I put a shield around you at the feast; now you will learn to make your own.” She studied Keisha’s face. “I think you will learn quickly, and it is a good thing that you are a Healer, rather than an Empath. You already are grounded and centered.”
Those were two more terms that hadn’t been explained in the Healers’ texts. “What does that mean?” she asked, determined to indeed begin her lessons at once.
“When you are working here, when you are in the forest - you feel a strong connection to the earth, do you not?” Nightwind asked, and Keisha nodded eagerly.
“I’ve never even dreamed of flying,” she confessed. “I dream about being a tree, a really huge tree, with roots going all the way down into the heart of the earth.”
“Empaths must learn to ground and center themselves, to create that connection to the earth,” Nightwind told her. “Healers - those with the Gift - are born with it. They just have to learn to identify it, strengthen it. So - first, I will take the shield from you, and I wish you to do just that. Find that tie and wait a moment. I will touch your mind with mine, and show you the strength of the earth about you, and how to pull that strength into yourself.”
Keisha was too excited now to be apprehensive; she had always enjoyed learning, and now she was about to be given the keys to mysteries that had frustrated her for years. She closed her eyes and sought that still, deep place within herself where her tree-dreams came from. It was easy enough to touch, but a moment after she did so, something strange happened.
There was something - someone? - there as well. Something that wasn’t her.
:Good,: she heard, startled, inside her head. :So you have exactly the sense of self that you need already! And you are hearing me in words?:
Cautiously, she tried to form her reply in the same way she “heard” it. :Yes. What is this?:
:This is Mindspeech, so besides being a Healer, you are also a Mindspeaker. That is not always, or even often, the case. It will make things easier for both of us.
Ah, let “me“ come closer, and touch “me “ so that you see through “my” eyes.:
Keisha forced herself to relax as the alien presence somehow moved closer to her, and then -
“Oh, my!” she exclaimed involuntarily; her eyes flew open, and she felt disoriented, seeing things in the strangest kind of double-vision, herself looking at Nightwind looking at herself -
She didn’t have to be told to close her eyes again; she squeezed them shut as her stomach churned. Nightwind also closed her eyes, making things easier. . Nightwind waited patiently until her insides settled, then opened her own eyes. :Now, see what I am seeing? This is just the surface of the world. This is how a Healer sees it, with the Oversight.:
The world was suddenly alive with light, all colors of light; to Nightwind’s eyes, Keisha had a halo of emerald green, the seedlings growing on the window ledge had a similar halo of light, though weaker. Keisha had a sudden flash of memory. She had seen the world like this before, but she had rejected it as an hallucination.
“Let me try by myself!” she demanded, and Nightwind pulled away. She opened her eyes and, with a mental twist, brought this new kind of vision into focus.
It worked! With a gasp, she saw the world about her as a web of light and energy. She got up and went to the window that overlooked her garden; it was unbelievable! And not only could she see the light, but -
“I can tell which plants aren’t doing well!” she exclaimed.
“And if I were ill, you would see that,” Nightwind agreed. “Now I want you to touch the place where the light is strongest - no, with your mind, not your hand! Touch it, and bring it into yourself. Here, watch me.”
Obediently
, Keisha used this new sight to watch her teacher; it took some time before she caught the trick of what Nightwind was doing, but when she tried it tentatively, she had yet another surprise.
Not suddenly, but slowly, gently, a warmth and well-being began to fill her, in a way that defied description. The closest was to sitting by a warm fire on a cold night, or in the sunshine on a spring day after a long, hard winter. It was not a rush of feeling. This was more like the easy misting of a good, soaking rain, permeating the thirsting earth. It filled places she hadn’t known were empty until now.
Nightwind said nothing, waiting as Keisha sat with closed eyes, very nearly in a trance. Finally it was Keisha herself, feeling that she had been “filled” to capacity, who opened her eyes and spoke.
“What did I just do?”
“What every Healer does; you replenished yourself from the earth,” Nightwind told her. “Now, the next thing you need to know, and urgently, is how to shield. This will put a barrier between you and other people. If you are going to stay sane, you will have to make this as much a part of you as breathing, and only let it down when you want and need to, in order to sense what is wrong with a patient. Now - here I put an artificial “edge” around you. See it?”
It was a “thickening” of the glow around her, as thin as a piece of paper. Keisha nodded.
“Now take your own energy, and put it there. Make it into armor - make it tough, flexible, and strong. Concentrate! Make it tough enough to keep me out of you. I will begin pushing on it, and you must keep me out.”
Impossible to describe in words, except the ones that Nightwind had just used - but very real and very palpable - Keisha “felt” the barrier she was creating. As she made it stronger, she “felt” something outside of it, pushing on it; in response, she poured more of her energy into it. She sensed it trying to tear a hole in the barrier, she responded by doing something she couldn’t even have described, making the outside slippery, too slippery to catch hold of. The presence outside changed tactics, hammering blows on barrier; rather than hardening it, she responded by making it elastic, giving under the blows and absorbing the force.
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