Meri

by Bohnhoff, Maya Kaathryn

  She was still sitting mulishly upright, her eyes clenched shut against the assaulting blow, her body rocking arrhythmically to the beat of each gust. She was freezing, wet and miserable, and ignoring that with every ounce of mental and physical resolve she possessed. She was building an aislinn wall about herself—a wall made of invisible stones that would take the misery away, that would keep even the tiniest tendril of wind-blown spume from reaching her. Already the storm was fading from her consciousness. All she need do was lay the last stone.

  The wave was twice as tall as a man and Meredydd, intent on completing her aislinn sea-wall, did not see it until it broke over her, nearly toppling her from her perch and bathing her in hard, freezing water.

  Concentration devastated, she found herself engaged in a physical battle against wind and wave...and Skeet. He reached her as she scrambled to regain her seat upon the tussocks, caught at her flailing arms and tried to drag her away up the beach toward relatively dry land. She fought him, struggling to pull away, to return to the Pilgrim’s Post. Another huge wave broke over them as they strained in opposite directions, felling them in knee-deep brine that swirled about them, sucking and pulling seaward.

  “Come! Now!” Skeet shrieked at her against the wind.

  Rapacious, it tore the words from his lips and devoured them.

  Still Meredydd resisted, wrenching away from his tenacious grasp as she clambered soddenly to her feet. He shook her, harder than she thought he could, and thrust his face close to hers.

  “She won’t come now! She will not come! Come with me!”

  Meredydd glanced around her. The entire world was in frantic, drenched motion. Earth, sea and sky blurred and she realized that if the Meri were to appear in this barrage, she would never see Her. Reluctantly, she allowed Skeet to lead her to the burrow he had dug away from the assault of the waves.

  It was a sandy pocket, just big enough for one person. He had cloaked it with one of the ground covers from their sleeping kits and secured it with large rocks. He pulled the cover back now, and pushed Meredydd inside.

  “Stay!” he ordered her and shook a slender finger in her face. The lid closed and he disappeared.

  When the adrenaline ceased harrying her blood, Meredydd began to feel the chill of her predicament. Her clothes were more than just wet; they were completely sodden. And her body, no longer protected from the cold by her stubborn will, quaked uncontrollably. Struggling to find a comfortable position, she discovered her back pack instead. There was, within it, the last change of clothes she’d soaked—dry now, thanks to her attentive Weard.

  Feeling a relief that bordered on the euphoric, she began to drag out the clothing, then stopped. Perhaps she should remain as she was. Perhaps some suffering was called for. She had been driven to abandon her Pilgrim’s Post, she had fallen asleep twice and had constantly allowed Skeet to ply her with luxuries and comforts. She felt suddenly guilty.

  She sat very still, pondering the idea, dry clothes tempting her fingers, wet ones mortifying her body.

  “The Meri,” she heard Osraed Bevol remind her, quoting the Book of the Meri, “is not reached by the weak, or by the careless, or by the ascetic, but only by the wise who strive to lead their soul into the dwelling of the spirit.”

  She began to strip off the wet clothes as fast as her hands could move. It was difficult in the small, dark pocket, and the dark, as much as the constant howl of the wind, was oppressive in such close quarters. She used the arduous task of removing her sopping garments as a defense against that oppression, pushing the sodden wads of fabric up under the lip of the cover to act as stop-gaps, gratefully extracting the dry replacements.

  The sand within the burrow was damp, but it was paradise compared to the cold misery she had known only minutes ago. When she finally curled up in the relative warmth of her new condition, she was suffused with a great, wonderful contentment—a peculiar thing to feel, she supposed, when one huddled in a damp hole on a storm besieged beach while wind and wave and thunder assaulted on every side. But content she was, and exhausted, and the combination of these pulled her into the arms of sleep.

  Silence woke her. She opened her eyes to absolute darkness and her ears to virtual hush. There was a rhythmic hissing sound outside her safe little haven—the voice of a calm sea. She pulled herself upright, rubbing at the ridges and depressions the backpack had left in her cheek.

  Above her head the cover rippled gently; she sensed it and reached a hand up to feel. Water soaked through the fabric at the touch of her fingers and ran down into her hand. She held the hand there until a palmful of water pooled, then brought it to her lips. It was cold, fresh and good, despite the slight taste of canvas-oil. She got a bit more water, then gingerly lifted the cover from her den.

  Moonlight, blinding and beautiful, poured in under the flap, nearly drowning Meredydd in its pale tide. It glittered in tiny points of light across the wet sands, mimicking the stars strewn overhead. The entire world was jeweled, like the great cavern Meredydd had always imagined rune crystals came from—some subterranean cathedral, shimmering with magic just like this.

  She was awed by it, songless and wordless—unable even to think. Out of the pocket she came and down to her Pilgrim’s Post. She took up her place on the damp dune and began, again, to wait. She knew, of course, that no one had ever waited this long for the Meri, but she didn’t let herself dwell on that. This place was magic—this night was magic. It was as if the Eibhilin world had merged with the world of men and decorated it with sublime radiance.

  She waited expectantly now, eyes on the moon-bright waters. Mist rose around her from the moist sand, and she imagined she was being watched over by Eibhilin who hid their unimaginable glory with coarser nature. The moon glided across the perfect sky, glazing a silver path over the waves.

  A path down which the Meri will come, thought Meredydd.

  Her stomach growled and she thought of Skeet—faithful, fleet-Skeet—and wondered where he was. Still asleep, she thought, and smiled. She would apologize for making his role as Weard so exhausting and difficult and she would tell him she could not have asked for a more perfect, devoted companion. She was a little ashamed to have ever thought him too young or too ignorant. He knew, it seemed, everything he needed to know.

  The moon rode over and dipped toward the Sea, then into it—or apparently so. Meredydd knew the true ways of moons and stars and planets and yet still imagined that in some world the moon boiled the water into a hissing froth when it set.

  She enjoyed the moon-set, watched the silver fade from the face of the Sea. The jewels were returned to their box and the swathe of light disappeared as the moon drew in its train.

  When it was gone, Meredydd nearly held her breath. The world around her seemed hushed and expectant; only the waves whispered among themselves, but every blade of grass, every grain of sand tarried in silence. Together, they waited.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  Nothing stirred; nothing breathed. Meredydd was alone as the magic oozed out of the night like water from a riven bag. The light of the moon faded from the horizon; the silver beach tarnished, dulled, blackened. The chill of exhilaration was replaced by mere chill. Even the waves whispered differently now—backbiting the lone, lonely figure sitting cross-legged on her sandy throne.

  “Silly Meredydd,” they murmured sibilantly. “Silly, silly Meredydd.”

  Despair swept over her, and she could not dam up the tears it brought with it. They overflowed her eyes and poured down her cheeks in a flash-flood of anguish. Had this been what Taminy-a-Cuinn found one hundred years ago somewhere along this stretch of rock and sand? Was this what sent her into the Sea to meet death instead of eternal life?

  Meredydd cried until she had no tears left. Until the sense of loss became a sense of resignation. Until the only thing she wanted in life was home and Osraed Bevol and Skeet...and Gwynet. There could be nothing warmer than a home fire, nothing sweeter than a shared cup of
hot cider, nothing more desirable than family. Jewels.

  She took a deep, shivering breath, trying to fill the empty space within her with something besides vacuum. She could come back again in three years. Wyth had failed his first Pilgrimage; that didn’t mean he’d fail this one. If he could be brave enough to weather the extra years of Prentice-ship, she certainly could.

  Her backbone stiffened a bit, bringing her sagging frame upright. Well, she thought, taking a final, tear-spangled glance at the vast ocean, she had better find that lazy Skeet and tell him she was ready to go home—after supper. Her stomach had never felt so empty.

  She was on her knees when she saw it, far out from shore like a false moon-rise. She stared at it, not registering what it was at first, but only watching numbly as the pale patch spread out upon the dark water like a spill of milk on black velvet. But this spill was spreading with a purpose, undulating just beneath the waves. And it was coming right toward the spot where Meredydd now stood. She could see, now, that it was not just a milky, pallid green; it was radiant. Radiant with Eibhilin Light—the Light of the Meri.

  Despair, resignation, hunger, cold, loneliness—all fled before the Light wending its way shoreward. Meredydd wanted to dance, to sing, to shout aloud with jubilation. Oh, where was Skeet? Could he see her? Could he see this? She wanted him to see this.

  She glanced around, wildly, her eyes scouring the beach for her young Weard. She dared to turn toward his camp; there was no fire laid and the cover of his burrow was open, catching the Eibhilin Light as it flapped in the breeze.

  Anxious now, she made the pass again. More details came to light in the approaching glow of the Meri—hillocks and rocks and tangles of driftwood. Her eyes moved south along the waterline again, toward the Bebhinn marshland—there, a branch; there a piece of flotsam; there a rock; and there, something that did not belong on the beach at night. Half in and half out of the water, it looked like a large rag doll—limbs awry, trailing in the surf. But it was not a doll, it was a boy.

  Terror pulsing in heart and head, Meredydd glanced wildly out to sea; the milky radiance continued its slow approach, serene and silky.

  She twisted back toward the body. The body! Dear God, no! That was Skeet; she couldn’t think of Skeet like that—an empty shell floating lifelessly like a discarded rag.

  With one final glance for the Meri, Meredydd bolted from her post and up the shoreline to where he lay, as sodden as her clothing had been and as limp. She pulled him free of the water’s icy grasp and hauled him onto dryer sand. Water poured from his mouth and nose. She held him so that it would all be expelled.

  The beach was growing lighter. Meredydd did not look at the light. She rolled Skeet over and felt for his breath—there was none. She listened for his heart with her ear, with her palms.

  There was no rhythm. She didn’t accept what that told her. She knew a duan. One she had never used. One Osraed Bevol had taught her and which she had heard him sing but once. It was an Infusion duan, and he had used it to focus a Revival inyx.

  But Meredydd was not Osraed Bevol. She needed more than a duan to focus her frenetic energies. Her pack lay back in her sandy den, the Farewelling crystal in one pocket. Unhesitatingly, she rose and flew over the sand to get it.

  The beach was now awash with Eibhilin Light. Meredydd did not look at the Light. She fell into the burrow, fumbled for the pack and dug out the crystal. It was a clear one and just fit into the palm of her hand. She raced with it back to where Skeet’s still form lay, frosted with the glow from the water.

  Meredydd dropped to her knees beside him. Shaking so hard, she could barely hold the rune crystal, she cupped it just above Skeet’s still heart. She closed eyes that barely noticed the radiance lapping at the shore so very near them, and began the duan.

  “See the rain fall on the land—soak the earth.

  See the sun blaze in the sky—bring rebirth.

  Water to the stream, to the lake, to the well.

  Heat to the land, to the corn, to the dell.

  Return what is taken. Return the water.

  Return what is taken. Return the heat.”

  The beach now blazed with Light, but Meredydd did not see the Light. She droned the duan, feeling it gather her fading faculties. Sensing its warmth between her shoulders. Trembling

  with nothing like cold as a Door opened above and golden power flowed through the crown of her head, down her arms to her hands.

  “Return what is taken. Return the water.”

  The Light was in Meredydd’s hands. It leapt from her fingers to the surface of the crystal and ran like soft, golden lightning from facet to facet until it had covered the gem in a cloak of incandescence.

  “Return what is taken. Return the heat.”

  In the clear crystal heart a spark flared, grew, blazed bright and fierce. Meredydd opened her eyes and the Light flooded them, bathing her face and arms and Skeet’s still form.

  “Return what is taken. Return the water.”

  She laid the crystal over the boy’s heart, holding it there with one hand while, with the other, she tilted back his head.

  Almost did she succumb to her own sense of incompetence when she realized the full import of what she was trying to accomplish.

  “Return what is taken. Return the heat.”

  She had never woven this rune. Never called upon an inyx of this power. She had watched Bevol confer the breath of life on a young woman who had fallen from the Mercer’s Bridge over Halig-tyne. She had adored him that day—Osraed Bevol, a saint so strong in the Art he could bring the newly dead back to life.

  How dare she attempt what was an exceptional feat even for the Osraed?

  She swept the doubts aside—she had to for Skeet’s sake—and bent her head over his. She put her mouth over his mouth and breathed her breath into his body.

  The crystal in her right hand radiated her Light, mingling with the Light from the water lapping only inches away; the duan rolled through her mind; the breath flowed from her lungs. Two times. Three. Four.

  Tears formed behind her eyes and spilled over again. How long had it taken Master Bevol that day? She couldn’t recall.

  Surely it hadn’t taken this long.

  She raised her head and keened in anguish. Skeet would die and her single-mindedness would have killed him.

  Beloved God, she prayed, dearest Meri, don’t let Skeet die!

  She lowered her head again and suffused Skeet’s body with breath and anguish and a plea. Again. And again. And again.

  Under her hand the crystal shed sudden warmth. Its Light pulsed brighter—just for a second. It dimmed, then pulsed again, heat flaring into Meredydd’s sheltering palm.

  She breathed out again and felt an answering tickle of warmth on her cheek as her fingers loosed their hold on Skeet’s nose. A banner of steam sailed from his nostrils into the night air. The rhythmic Light pulse of the crystal steadied, the banners of steam lengthened. He coughed then, freeing his lungs of the residual moisture, spilling it onto the already drenched sand.

  Meredydd, weeping, dashed across the sand to his burrow and came back with dry clothes and the ground cover. Carefully, she moved him, stripped and redressed him, bundled him into the ground cover and built a fire near her own cozy den. She found his tins and pots and heated water for tea. He drank without waking, his eyes looking sunken and bruised in the firelight, then slid swiftly into a deep, natural sleep.

  That was when Meredydd remembered that other Light. The Light she had all but ignored until now. The Light to which she had issued her final, desperate supplication. Now she looked up and around and realized that the only light on this shore was from her own fire. The Sea was black once again, the beach, nearly so. The Eibhilin Light of the Meri was gone.

  Skeet coughed again as if to remind her of the nature of her choice. He moaned a little in his sleep and fully captured her attention once again. She made him comfortable and warm and encouraged him to drink a little more tea. He slipped
back to deeper sleep effortlessly, curled beside the fire.

  Unable to sleep herself, unable to think of what else she might do, Meredydd seated herself once more at her Pilgrim’s Post and let her eyes stray to the darkened Sea. The Meri had come and Meredydd had chosen to ignore her for Skeet’s sake. Now She was gone, the Sea, empty.

  Meredydd knew better than to ascribe the events on this beach to coincidence or happenstance. She saw her Pilgrimage, now, for what it was—a series of choices between obedience and compassion, between the Meri and the creatures to whom She gave her guidance. Choices: What was life but a sequence of choices? To live or die, to seek revenge or knowledge, to follow duty or intuition.

  Something deep within struggled to understand the nature of the choices she had made and their consequences. She could grasp neither. So she sat, mind empty, waiting for dawn.

  She was aware of the tingling for sometime before she reacted to it. It seemed to trickle from the crown of her head downward, cold and hot like the static shock she had received from one of Master Bevol’s experiments with electricity. It scurried just beneath the skin, up and down her arms and legs, over her face, around her neck. She merely shrugged at first, wriggling against the fabric of her sous-shirt and leggings in an attempt to quell the odd sensation. It only strengthened.

  She rubbed at her arms and legs with both hands; the tingling refused to abate. In a matter of moments, it raged beneath her skin like polite fire, making her scratch. Finally, she pushed back the sleeve of her shirt and stared at one forearm. It looked normal enough in the firelight except....

  Her narrowed eyes peered at the shadowed side of her arm. The flesh there seemed to be covered with a sheen of tiny, pin-prick stars. Gingerly, she touched the skin with the tips of her fingers. It felt warm—warmer than she expected.

  She shifted her position a bit so that her entire arm was in shadow. All of it sparkled. She hastily pushed back the other sleeve; her left arm, too, was spangled. Was this a sign? Was this the Meri’s way of consoling her?