Seeker

by Cate Tiernan

  “Oh, no,” I began lamely, as the woman screamed again. It made all the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and I was uncomfortably reminded of the time when Morgan had shape-shifted into a wolf.

  “Vous elle aidez,”said my driver in a no-nonsense tone.

  “Oh,no,” I said, trying to find my voice. “She should be in hospital.” Did anyone here understandsomeEnglish? I was rapidly running out of French. I glanced at the bed again and saw with dismay that, in fact, it wasn’t a woman in childbirth—it was a teenager who couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen. Morgan’s age. And she was having a hard time of it. “Non. Vous elle aidez,”my companion said, a shade more loudly and with more tension.

  “A hospital?” I said hopefully, and couldn’t help shuddering when the girl screamed again. She didn’t seem to know I was there. Her shoulder-length black hair was soaked with sweat, and she clutched her huge belly and curled up as if to get away from the pain. Tears had wet her face, so there was no dry skin left. The older woman was trying to soothe her, calm her, but the girl was hysterical and kept batting her away. The tension in the room was climbing rapidly, and I could feel coils of pressure surrounding the whole cabin. Oh, Goddess. The older woman looked at me. “The ’opital is fiveheuresfar. Far.” She gestured with her hand to mean “extremely far away.” “Is big money, big money.” Bloody hell. The girl wailed again, and I felt like I was in a nightmare. A huge swooping attack from Amyranth right now, with Ciaran trying to rip my soul away, would almost have been more welcome. The older woman, who I guessed was a midwife, came toward me. The girl sobbed brokenly on the bed, and I felt her energy draining away. “I getbébéout,” the older woman said, using descriptive hand motions that made my face heat. “Youcalmez’er.Oui? Calmez.” Again she gestured, with soothing, stroking motions, then pointed toward the girl.

  There was nothing for it: I had to step into the fray. The girl’s eyes were wild, rolling like those of a frightened horse; she was fighting everyone who was trying to help her. My nerves were shot, but I reached deep inside my mind and quickly blocked things out, sinking into a midlevel meditative state. After a few seconds I began to send waves of calmness, comfort, reassurance to the girl. I didn’t even try to interact with her present self but sent these thoughts deep within her, into her mind, where she would simply receive them without examining or questioning them. The girl’s wild, terrified eyes slowly turned and focused on me. Then another contraction racked her, and she coiled and screamed again. I had never done anything like this before and had to make up a plan as I went along. I kept sending waves of calm, comfort, reassurance toward her while I desperately searched my spell repertoire for anything that might help.Right, come on, Niall, pull it out of your hat.I stepped closer to the bed and saw where it was soaked from her

  water breaking. Agh. I wanted to run from the room. Instead, I looked away and began to sketch

  sigils over the bed, muttering spells to take away pain, spells to calm fears, spells to make her relax, to let go, to release.

  The girl made harsh panting sounds,hah, hah, hah,but kept her eyes on my face. As if in a dream, I slowly reached out and touched her wet hair, like black silken rope beneath my fingers. As soon as I touched her, I got a horrible wave of pain, as if someone had run a machete through my gut, and I gasped and swallowed hard. The girl wailed again, but already her cry was less intense, less frightened. She tried to slap my hand away, but I dodged her and stayed connected, pushing some of my own strength and energy into her, transferring some of my power. Within half a minute she had quit struggling, quit writhing as much. Her next contraction broke our connection, but I came back, touching her temple, closing my eyes to focus. The poor teenage girl couldn’t begin to understand, but the deep-seated, primal woman within her could respond. Concentrating, I tuned that woman into the cycles of nature, of renewal, of birth. I sent knowledge that the contractions weren’t the pain of injury or damage, but instead signs of her body’s awesome power, the strength that was able to bring a child into the world. I felt the consciousness of the child within her, felt that it was strong and healthy, a girl. I smiled and looked up. My driver and the midwife were nearby. The midwife was sponging the girl’s forehead and patting her hand.“Une fille,”I said, smiling.“Le bébé est une fille. Elle est jolie.” At this the girl met my eyes again, and I saw that she understood, that she was calm enough to hear and understand words.“Une fille,”I told her softly again.“Elle est jolie.”I tried to think of the word for healthy but couldn’t.“Elle est bonne”was the best I could come up with. The midwife smiled, and so did the woman who had fetched me, and then I sensed another contraction coming.

  This time I reached down and held the girl’s hand, and as her muscles began their tremendous push down, their intense concentric pressure, I tried to project the feeling that these contractions were just her body working hard to accomplish something. This was what she needed to do to get her baby out; she had to release her fear and let her body take over. Her body, like the bodies of women since time began, knew what to do and could do it well. Together we rode the wave of her contraction, squeezing our hands together as it crested, and then I think we both panted as the force ebbed and her muscles relaxed again. “Oui, oui,”murmured the midwife. She was down at the end of the bed, pushing the girl’s knees

  up, and besides that I didn’t want to know. I stayed near the head of the bed, looking into the girl’s bottomless black eyes, holding her hand, sending calming waves. Her eyes were much calmer and more present; she looked more like a person. “Elle arrivé,”the midwife murmured, and the girl’s face contorted, and fast, fast, I sent images

  of things opening up, flowers blooming, seeds splitting, anything I could think of in my panicked state. I thought relaxation, concentration, releasing of fear, surrendering to her own body. As I looked at her, her eyes went very wide, her mouth opened, she said, “Ah, ah, ah, ah,” in a high-pitched voice, and then suddenly it seemed like she kind of deflated. I made the mistake of glancing over to see the midwife pulling up a dark red, rubbery-looking baby, still connected to her mother by a pulsing blue cord. Sweat broke out on my forehead, and my skin grew cold, as if I were about to faint. The baby squinched up its quarter-size mouth, took a breath, and wailed, sounding like a tiny, infuriated puppy.

  My patient’s face softened, and she instinctively reached out her arms. The midwife, beaming now, wrapped the kicking, squalling baby in a clean towel and handed her to the mother, the cord stretching back behind her. As if the entire episode of terror and gut-splitting pain had never

  happened, the girl looked down at her baby and marveled at it. Feeling somewhat queasy, I

  looked at the infant, this end product of two people making love nine months earlier. Her face was red and raw looking. She had a cap of long, straight black hair that was glued to her little skull with what looked like petroleum jelly. Her skin was streaked with blood and white goop, and suddenly I felt like if I didn’t have fresh air, I would die. I staggered to my feet and lurched from the room, through the lounge and out the front door. Outside, I took in great, gulping breaths of icy air and instantly felt better. Somewhat embarrassed, I went back in to find that some of the other women had come into the bedroom. They were smiling, and I felt their waves of relief and happiness. They praised the girl, who was now beaming tiredly, holding her new daughter close. The midwife was still busy, and when I glanced over, she was picking up the cord, so I looked away fast. I had never seen a human birth before and wished I hadn’t seen this one. Yes, it was a miracle, yes, it was the Goddess incarnate, but still. I would have given a lot just then to be sitting in a pub, knocking back a pint and watching a football game on the telly. The girl looked up and saw me, and she smiled widely, almost shyly at me. I was struck by how regular she looked, how girlish, how smooth her soft tan skin was, how white her teeth were. The contrast with how she’d been, while racked with pain and fear, was amazing. I smiled back, and she gestured to
the baby in her arms.

  “Regardez elle,”she murmured, smoothing the baby’s cheek. The baby turned her head toward

  her and opened her rosebud mouth, searching. Quickly I said,“Elle est très jolie, très belle. Vous avez bonne chance.”Then I cornered the woman who had brought me and took her arm. “I have to go home now.” We were interrupted by other women thanking me gravely, treating me with distant gratitude, then turning, all warmth and smiles, to the girl. They knew I had helped the girl but also knew I was a witch and probably couldn’t be trusted. I had mixed feelings. Surely a girl this young ought not to be having a baby. From looking around, I could see these people had no money; who knew how many of them lived in this four-room cabin? Yet seeing how the women clustered around the girl, praising her, admiring the baby, tending to them both, it was clear that the girl was safe here, that she would be treated well and her baby looked after. There was love here, and acceptance. And often, that was most of what one needed. I tapped my driver’s arm again—she was cooing over the baby, who was now attempting to nurse. I kept my eyes firmly away from what I considered a private thing (I was the only one who thought so—there were at least five other people in the room). “I have to go home now,” I said again, and she looked up at me with impatience, and then understanding. “Oui, oui.Vous avez fatigué.”

  Right. Whatever. I looked for my coat and shrugged it on. My right hand was sore from being squeezed so tightly. I suddenly felt bone weary, mentally and physically exhausted, and I was ashamedly aware that out of all of us, I had done the least work. Men might have bigger muscles, bigger hearts and lungs, but women have greater stamina, usually greater determination, and a certain patient, inexorable will of iron that gets hard things done. Which is why most covens are matriarchal, why lines in my religion usually went from mother to daughter. Women usually led the hardest, most complicated rites, the ones that took days, the ones that took a certain ruthlessness.

  I sighed and realized I was punchy, my shoulder brushing against the door frame as I went through. The night air woke me up, making me blink and take in deep breaths. I groaned audibly as I saw my nemesis, the blue pickup truck from hell. The woman, whose name I had never

  learned, walked briskly to it and pulled herself into the driver’s seat. I climbed into the

  passenger’s seat, pulled the door closed, and reflexively clutched the door handle. Then the door of the cabin opened, and a sharp rectangle of light slanted across the dark yard.“Attendez!”cried a woman, and she came toward us. She gestured to me to roll down my window, but it didn’t unroll, so I opened my door.“Merci, merci beaucoup, m’sieu sorcier,” the woman said shyly. I saw that it was the older woman who had been in the kitchen. I smiled and nodded, uncomfortable about being openly identified as such.“De rien.” “Non, non.Vous aidez ma petite-fille,”she said, and pushed a package toward me.

  Curious, I opened the brown paper and found a warm loaf of homemade bread and, beneath it, a somewhat new man’s flannel shirt. I was incredibly touched. Right then I broke off a piece of the bread and bit it. It was incredible, and I closed my eyes, leaned back against the truck seat, and moaned. The women laughed."C’est très, très bon,”I said with feeling. Then I unfolded the shirt and looked at it, as if to assess its quality. Finally I nodded and smiled: it was more than acceptable. The woman seemed relieved and even proud that I thought her gift was fine.“Je vous remercier,”I said formally, and she nodded, then clutched her shawl around her shoulders and

  ran back into the house.

  Without another word, my chauffeur started the engine and hurtled us down an unpaved road that I couldn’t even see, but she obviously knew by heart. By holding on to the door handle with one hand, I was still able to break off chunks of warm bread with the other and eat them. I was happy—I had done a good day’s work—and then I remembered that I had been there only because Da hadn’t.

  “Daniel—souvent il vous aidez?” I said, butchering French grammar. The woman’s dark eyes seemed to become more guarded. I motioned back to the cabin.“Comme ça?”Like that? “Comme ça, et ne comme ça,”she said unhelpfully.

  “Do you speak any English at all?” I asked, frustrated. She slanted a glance at me, and I thought I saw a glimmer of humor cross her face as I flinched, going over a pothole.

  “Un peu.”

  “So Daniel helps you sometimes?” I asked in my neutral Seeker voice. As if the answer didn’t matter. I looked out my window at the dark trees that flashed past, lit momentarily by the truck’s unaligned headlights.

  A slight frown wrinkled the skin between her brows.“Quelquefois.” She hesitated, then seemed to make up her mind. “Not so muchmaintenant.Not so much. Good people, only when so desperate. Like today.”

  Every Seeker instinct in me came to life. “Good people?” She looked away, then said in a voice I could barely hear over the engine, “People who don’t walk in the light—they go tole sorciermore often.” Oh, Goddess, I muttered to myself. That didn’t sound good. We were both silent the rest of the ride. She pulled up in front of Da’s cabin but didn’t shut off the engine. “Merci,”she said quietly, not smiling.“Elle est ma fille, vous aidez.”

  “Soyez le bienvenue.”Then I got out of the truck, knowing that I would probably never see her,

  her daughter, or her new granddaughter again. Her tires spun on the snowy dirt behind me as I went up the steps to the porch. Inside, my father was there, in the kitchen, eating some meat I had browned hours ago. He looked up as if surprised to see me still around. “We have to talk,” I said.

  Answers

  I told Da about helping the First Nation girl give birth. He seemed interested, his eyes on me, as

  he finished eating. I gave him the tiny piece of bread I had left, and he ate that, too, though it seemed to take effort.

  “It sounds like you handled it well, son,” he said in his odd, raspy voice. “Good for you.” My heart flared, and I became humiliatingly aware that part of me still longed to impress him. Impresshim,this pale imitation of my father. “Da,” I began, leaning forward. “I need to talk to you about how you’ve been helping people around here. I’m a Seeker, and you must know that some of the things I’ve seen and heard concern me. I need to understand what you do, what role you play, how you’ve made it safe to be known openly as a witch.”

  For a moment I thought he might actually try to answer, but then he raised one hand in a defeated gesture and let it fall again. He glanced at me, gave a faintly embarrassed half smile, then stood and headed to his room, just like that.

  I sat back in my chair, unreasonably stunned—why had I expected anything different? Maybe because when I was a child, my da had never turned away from answering a question, no matter

  how hard, how painful. He had given it to me straight, whether I really wanted the answer or not.

  I had to let go of that da—he was gone forever. In his place was this new man. He was what I had to work with.

  That night I lay on the lumpy couch, unable to sleep and unwilling to do a calming spell until I had thought things through. I was a Seeker. Every instinct I had was on alert. I needed to find out what my father was up to. I needed some answers. If Da couldn’t give them to me, I would find their answers myself. Then I would have a decision to make: whether to notify the International Council of Witches or not.

  On Wednesday, I awoke early with renewed determination. I was going to follow Da today. All I had to do was wait for him to get up, then track him, something I was particularly good at. Within moments of waking up, however, my senses told me the cabin was empty except for me. I frowned and swung my legs off the couch. A stronger scan revealed no other human around. How could that be? It would have been impossible for Da to wake and leave without my knowing. I was a light sleeper to begin with, and the couch of torture had only increased that. Then it occurred to me: itwasimpossible for Da to have left without my knowing. Which meant that my father had spelled me to keep me asleep. I sprang up, m
y hands clenching with anger. How dare he? He’d spelled me without my knowledge. There was no excuse for that, and it only emphasized how shady his business must be. Swearing to myself, I shoved my feet into my boots and tied them with jerky movements. I pulled on the flannel shirt I’d earned, grabbed my coat, and stomped outside. Outside, I saw that it was still early, and the air smelled like coming snow. The big pile of black garbage bags filled a corner of the front yard, and the thin, half-melted snow was tracked with my footprints. There were no tracks leading away from the house; none headed into the woods. Obviously Da had covered his trail.

  I stomped a small circle into the snow and stepped into it. It took several minutes for me to release my anger, to summon patience, to center myself and open myself to the universe. At last I was in a decent state, and I began to craft revealing spells. I had to say this for him, Da still knew his spells. His concealing spells were in several layers and included some variations that took work and thought on my part to break through. Either he was a naturally gifted and innovative spellcrafter, or he had considered me a real threat. Or both. When I was done, I felt cold and drained and wanted nothing more than a cup of tea and a warm fire. Instead I got up and retraced my steps around the cabin. I saw the repeated tracks of my feet leading to the woodpile, but this time I also saw a set of new footprints, one that definitely hadn’t been there earlier: tracks leading from a corner of the porch into the woods. My mouth set in a firm line, I followed them.

  How had my emaciated, malnourished father been able to hike this far the last couple of days, I wondered some forty minutes later. Granted, it was taking me longer because the tracks doubled back on themselves, I had to clear away other concealing and illusion spells, and I had to watch out for traps—but still, it had to be something desperately important to compel Da to trek this far every day in his weakened state.