by Sandra Waugh
“I cast a spell.”
That surprised him. “It is said that the amulets speak to their Guardians, that they reveal themselves when ready.”
I shook my head. “What I saw I manufactured.” I looked then to Laurent. “I forced the reveal. So perhaps all of this is wrong and I am not ready.”
Laurent did not protest, and I worried suddenly that he agreed that it was done wrongly—that it was a rushed mistake, this touching of marks and claiming of Guardian and Complement. Hadn’t Eudin just said that we needed to be thoughtful in the choices we made? It had been a messy business with the wisps, and Laurent had fallen, and what if he too impulsively forced the bond seeking? What if—
Eudin insisted, “Your birthmark was proved. The verse claimed you as well.”
“But I do not feel anything. There should be a bond, no? Something more than a spell’s hallucination.” It was a disappointing thing to admit aloud.
Laurent murmured, “Perhaps you have not taken the time to listen.” He said to Eudin, “The lady has had a rough time of it. We’ve worked our way here through a number of challenges”—he winked at me—“easy that they were. Perhaps we should give the Guardian a chance for silence.”
I’d been silent, I thought. I’d spent the afternoon alone; I’d spent nearly two months alone. But Laurent was looking at me, a brow raised as if he knew that thought and challenged it. And maybe he was right. Maybe I’d been in silence but had not listened.
I slid out from the bench. “May I go?”
Eudin nodded. I put my hand on my heart, bowed to the captain, and started to leave.
Then I came back to swallow the last of my cider. Fortification.
THE MOON WAS high and bright as I crossed the length of quarry and followed the path back to the waterfall. Doves nested in crevices—their cooing suspended at my footsteps. I threaded my way under the leaves of the birch and walked past the first pool where I’d showered, to the wider basin of still water. I didn’t choose this site for any reason other than I knew how to find it, but it felt a good place for privacy. I breathed in deeply. It smelled of cool, wet stone—of night. I unbuttoned my sandals, pulled my skirts out of the way, and sat on the rock facing out over the quarry. The faint spray of the waterfall brushed my bare legs.
Listen, I directed myself, settling in. And so I listened, hard, to the silence, to the undersong and odd calls of night things. And then I wondered at the different ways creatures made their sounds. I stared at the moon, a lopsided circle on the wane, and counted the days ’til the dark moon—
Listen. I closed my eyes and breathed more slowly. Breathed the metallic tang of the rocks, considered which minerals emitted that scent. I thought of the scents filling our herb shed and then of Grandmama and Lark. I pictured our hands plunged into the mixtures of Grandmama’s recipes for soaps, spreading the mash into the trays for curing, and us laughing and reeking of lavender and lemon balm—
Listen! I was terrible at this. This would be what Lark loved. She could drink in the peace of night or sunny meadow, sit in contemplation of raindrops spattering on the casements with no thought to time. I wanted the bustle and chatter of market day, where others would tell their stories, not mine—
Evie! I pushed myself up from the ledge. I couldn’t listen. I couldn’t. I’d divined something about a shell, and that was done before I even knew what it was. Now the moment was lost, and how many waterfalls were here in the quarry let alone through the land? Would I have to search each one? What if it had nothing to do with a waterfall?
Always a question. I turned my back on the moon and the gaping quarry, and kneeled by the pool, angry that my mind wandered so. And then I was angry that I was angry. Where had the calm Healer gone?
Lark would have heard her amulet right away.
The moon poured light into the little pool. The water was looking-glass still. I leaned forward a little to see how my reflection was caught, to see my own frown. My hair shimmered silver in the pool like a trail of moonlight. Moonlight on water brings Nature’s daughter… floated back from memory. If that was true, then what of the rest? Swift-bred terror and sorrow of slaughter. / Silver and sickle, the healing hand, / Find the shell’s song; bring rain upon land….Rain. There was no rain. The Breeders had taken it.
A leaf from the birch screen was falling. There wasn’t any breeze, yet the leaf drifted sideways, lilting down in slow death until it came to rest on the pool. I leaned over to clear it away, and my braid slipped from my shoulder and dropped heavily into the water, breaking the mirror surface. My face disappeared. “Guardian,” I called myself back. Guardian…
The pool stilled, the reflection resolved, but I was no longer the picture. The swirls of my braid were weaving into something else entirely. An apparition suspended in the water. A shell. The whelk shell.
I held my breath and watched. Whorls—pearlescent spirals of shell folding and unfolding. A house, a hiding place, a gift, a remnant—constructed and then discarded. I reached my hand to hover over the image, understanding….
A shell as Death’s amulet. Like a tiny window to the in-between of worlds, the remains of what once held life. It was itself a passing through, in exquisite miniature.
If I plunged my hand in, would it be there for me to take? But then it seemed my hand was stretching, dipping beneath the water to pull the amulet from its hold. And I thought with childish delight: I am having a vision….
A cave. Almost dark. Oppressive walls of rock, a torrential pounding of water behind me. I stood hip-deep in water, staring at the little shell. It was tossed on a narrow ledge—so out of place, so abandoned. I felt the deepest yearning to pick it up, to take its care into my hands—as any mother to a lost child. The ache pulled me straight to it, a thread of heat in a cold space.
A vision, I reminded myself. Pay attention. Learn where you are.
My gaze went elsewhere, looking to identify. The walls were dank, slimed with algae and something more. My hand reached then, not for the shell, but for its stone coffin. I felt the cold wetness, the hard chipped edges, the mustard-yellow algae, and the slickness of whatever else was smeared there turning the algae brown in places. The water swirled at my hips as I moved to touch then draw away, to shift into the feeble light where I could look at the residue on my fingertips. Blood.
My breath caught and my head shot up, for I heard something else….
I was not alone.
There was a sharper sound, a splash, and I was back on the quarry ledge, panting for breath. My hand had dropped into the pool, ruining the vision—but maybe I’d seen enough, maybe. But the blood, the other sound…?
“Evie.”
It was soft, the calling of my name, just beyond the curtain of leaves. I yanked my hand from the water, turned to hold it out under the moonlight. “I’m here.” My voice shook.
Laurent pushed through the canopy. “I heard you gasp, heard the splash.” He stopped and looked at the pool, the falls, at me.
“You followed me?” Clean. There was no blood. I swallowed and wiped my palm on my sleeve.
“Only to be sure you were safe. I was waiting just beyond.”
“I thought the fort was very safe.” ’Twas rude, but I wasn’t thinking very clearly.
There was a pause. “And so it is,” he said softly. “I’ll leave you to your silence.”
He turned to leave. I blurted: “Rider…”
Another pause. His back was to me. “Lady?”
“I saw it.” My hand was out. A gesture of need, of something. It dropped into my lap. “I saw the shell.”
He turned around, saw I was wide-eyed with awe, with accomplishment, and then he smiled. I shifted, making it clear that he could join me, and he did, coming over to sit by my side. We both hung our feet over the edge and I described what I’d seen. I was breathless, I knew, excited and proud now that I’d achieved a vision; wound and set running like a jabber toy. “It needed me, Rider! It needed me.” As if that could express the dep
th of what I’d understood: that in the midst of burden or despair there was beauty to be found in caring for another.
The Rider said softly, “Remember that, Evie.”
There was a hint of warning in those words, stilling my jittery energy. I looked over and studied him for a moment. “Do you honestly think a Guardian could destroy her amulet?”
“We must be vigilant that they don’t.”
We. Keepers, Riders, those of Tarnec. I was hushed. “Would you kill a Guardian if she made that choice?”
“It has never yet come to that.”
“And what if it did? And what sort of choice is it to return or destroy her amulet if one of the options is a death sentence? And why would a Guardian ever—even accidentally—destroy her amulet?”
“One needs a shield…” Laurent sighed at my barrage of questions, then chose to answer one—or all, I wasn’t sure. “We do not always act with clear mind.”
“Well…” I brushed my hands again and stood up, jitters back. I did not want to dwell on vulnerabilities; I was ready to save. “My mind is clear now. If Eudin knows the waterfall I describe, I can make my way there. The moon is bright enough.”
“Now?” Laurent chuckled, a faint mocking of our first encounter. “What happened to your need for sleep first?”
“The sooner claimed, the quicker the end. And I am not sleepy.”
His humor retreated and was replaced by a gentle grin. “Ever eager to mend, Healer. To spare pain,” Laurent murmured. “But do not take any moment of peace lightly, Healer. It allows for strength later, when we will need it.”
A different we, this time: he and I. The Rider meant to go with me, I knew, and yet that simple word seemed so powerful. We. I liked its sound.
Perhaps the Rider was tracking my thoughts. He asked, “In your vision you were not alone. Do you know who or what was there?”
“No.” I looked at him. “Maybe ’twas you.” I swallowed quickly, made light of my presumption. “Well, since you are my Complement.”
He gave a low laugh. “Is that a complaint?”
I shook my head. I wouldn’t lie.
“Good, for it would be unseemly for a Complement not to protect his Guardian.”
“Or likewise,” I murmured, and he grinned.
“Really?”
“ ’Tis only fair.” I looked at him full on, how the silver light sank into his dark hair, how it made the white of his shirt gleam. Then I grinned too. “You need protection, perhaps more than I. You are already under siege, Rider.”
He cocked his brow. “Am I?”
“Do you not see what is in the pocket of your tunic?” There was something small shadowed there I’d just noted.
He looked down, reached into the fold of fabric, and drew out a withered-looking stem. I laughed. “Do you know what that is?”
“A daisy, by the look.”
“That, Rider, is a hopeful love charm.” I’d not expected Laurent to be Lill’s choice, and it seemed a foolish one, for she was so young. But then my laughter caught in an odd squeeze of my heart. What did I know of Laurent? What if Lill was special?
I said quickly, “The girl, Lill. ’Tis hers. She fancies you.”
“She would.”
I stared at him. Laurent said, “The Riders saved her some ten years back. Soldiers were taking her family as slaves for Tyre.”
“Ah, so you saved them and she has adored you since.”
“I was not there and we did not save her family.” It was terse. “Her father and mother were killed. Her sister was lost to the slavers. And I was not there because—” He changed his mind. “Because I will not return to Tyre.” Then he seemed to relent, letting the past recede. “But I suppose I fit her imagination.”
Return. The word leaped out. “I do not know your history.”
“You’ve seen what there is to know.” I waited and he looked at me sideways. “I am a Rider. Those of Tarnec who are chosen—the strongest, the bravest—”
“Most modest…,” I couldn’t help chiding.
Laurent shrugged. “I only speak truth, my lady.” He drew a knee up, rested his arm there, and looked out over the quarry.
“Why do you not speak of your past?”
A snort. “ ’Tis a hard enough road for Riders—to be present, always at the ready, my lady. Past has no place in it.”
“Then I will imagine that scar along your temple holds the past for you. Does it have to do with Tyre?”
No answer to that. Except that he said, “I do not hold the past as dear as you do.”
“Then there is hope for Lill.” I pointed to his daisy.
Laurent glanced at it, smiled—a smile that dazzled. Brilliance and light. A warning. “Hold it for me,” he said, pushing it at me, then turned back to face the quarry, leaning forward on his hands. “This night is beautiful.”
I tucked the sprig into my pocket. Looked out. The moon was very high over the quarry, the limestone pearl-white.
“I am thinking about the shell.” I broke the now too-quiet space. ’Twasn’t exactly true, but I was trying to sway my thoughts from Laurent and Lill…and Laurent.
“And?”
“A shell is a carcass. It makes a good amulet for Death. But there’s more to the choice isn’t there? If the primal forces bind Nature to Earth, then mightn’t each force be tied with an element?”
The Rider nodded. “Life with Earth, Dark with Air, Light with Fire, and Death with Water. Nature is the way to commune with the intangible.”
“And so the Guardians—we too are tied. Lark in the gardens, my love for swimming—”
“Swimming.” He laughed. “Proclivity for certain talents is not what binds you.”
“Nay, but it’s here.” My hand was on my chest as if I could pull out what I meant. “That something—Life or Dark, or Water or Fire—it’s primal to us as well. You said that Guardians are awakened to seek their amulets. But the forces that we champion, they were always inside of us—what we would be drawn to, awakened or not.”
There was quiet. My heart was beating against my palm, slow, steady. Then the Rider spoke. “It is your truth.”
He said it not to me, but to the moon and to the wide sky, as if he meant that truth for all of us. It made me strangely happy that he understood.
And it seemed, too, a good opportunity. I asked, hopeful: “The shell’s song. How do I find it?”
Laurent glanced over and smiled. “How many questions, my lady, before you are sated?”
A flush. He’d drawn it from me again. I said, as lightly as I could, “As many as you have answers.”
He nodded. “Well, then. I will say the amulets are for Balance, no more. It is something to your Guardianship, to your story, that asks of a song.”
“How so?”
“Guardians’ stories do not repeat. Only the amulets are constant. Each awakening will pose unique challenges—different people in a different time. The verse is how we found you, proved you as Guardian, no one else. So it is for you to discover.”
“But surely—”
“Look,” Laurent interrupted smoothly, pointing down far to our left. “Night fishing.”
Pressing the Rider would yield nothing more. I leaned over to see. There were men lowering lanterns into the lake—fat globes of glass, lit with candles, descending slowly on contraptions of poles and ropes as thin as reeds. Some globes already bobbed gently on the water, casting a blue-green halo in the deep.
“The nets are cast,” the Rider said softly. “The light is bait; ’twill draw in the curious barrow fish.”
It drew me in. ’Twas like a dance, lyrical and fluid, those lanterns. I watched. I forgot about the too-quiet space.
“How lovely,” I whispered, “the way they glow on the water. It’s as if the moon was captured in each.”
“You’ve captured a bit of the moon,” he murmured. I looked up at him. “Your hair. Like strands of moonbeam.”
His voice was so rich it took my own f
rom me. Below us the men began singing, music floating up, faint and melancholic. Laurent reached a hand and lifted a loose piece, tucked it behind my ear. The whisper of a touch.
Now I barely breathed, frozen by this act. Like an arrow, desire pierced deep, fast and foreign, and I did not know what to do with it. Laurent pulled his hand back as I tensed, and then shifted to give me more space. “My apologies.”
“For—for what?” I swallowed. What is it that you hold so tightly? he’d asked once. If he asked again…
But Laurent only said, “I disturbed you.”
“How?”
The smallest hitch of breath. “There is another who claims your feelings. Please know that I do not presume his place.”
He spoke of Raif; he did not presume. ’Twas another sharp and sudden hurt—memory and desire all crushed together by this Rider. I said hoarsely, “What you presume is that your tucking my hair reminded me of him.”
Laurent was quiet. Then he nodded, pushed himself from the rock to stand silhouetted against the moon. I looked away.
“We should take your news to Eudin now,” he said.
I nodded, relieved…and yet not. I got up far slower, regretting our talk was done and the “we” separating. “I hope the captain recognizes what I describe.”
“Eudin knows the quarry. He’ll guide us well. We can leave on the morrow.”
Laurent held out his hand, friendly enough, and so I reached for it, glad to feel it close warm and strong around mine.
With his other hand he held up the curtain of birch leaves for me to duck under. I passed near enough to inhale the faint sandalwood of his skin.
“HOODED FALLS!”
The shout flung me awake. It took a moment to remember where I was; the soft pillow, the quilt…I thought, Merith! but then the light resolved and I recognized the hewn walls of Gren Fort and the bright face of Lill.
I blinked at her, and she said it again eagerly: “That sea-shell you want is to be found in Hooded Falls!”
I pushed onto my elbows. “That’s what Eudin said. The cave that glitters, the mustard algae—”
“And the blood!” Lill nodded brightly, setting down my tray of bread and tea. “ ’Tis what’s most whispered, the blood on the walls. That is the legend of Hooded Falls, you know, that it weeps blood.”
