Before the Tide

by Christine Malec

  Chapter 2: Rowena, the Raven, and the Metamorph Magi

  Rowena woke with a start. She had dreamed of the flaxen haired woman again. She sat up on her straw pallet and rubbed her eyes. She normally didn't remember her dreams, but these were of such clarity and vividness that it was as though she'd actually lived them. She viewed such excesses as signs of an undisciplined mind, and frowned in deep dissatisfaction with herself as she rose in search of a drink of water. Her throat was dry, and the dream had left her twitchy and restless.

  The dreams had started harmlessly enough, uncommonly vivid and coherent, but not menacing. She was like a silent observer of the other woman's daily life. Along with flaxen hair, the woman had a pleasantly rounded figure and a remarkably sweet smile. Rowena watched as the woman tended a well-organized herb garden, milked several goats, used magic to heal an owl with an injured wing, and dispensed remedies of many kinds to a succession of folk who sought her out.

  Over several nights, the dreams had become less coherent but much more alarming. The pleasant-faced woman was threatened from many sides by dangers Rowena couldn't name. Standing, cup in hand in the darkness before dawn, Rowena exhaled sourly through her nose. She didn't need to be an interpreter of dreams to know what dangers might threaten a witch who took little care to hide her abilities. The other woman's guileless expression told Rowena that a prudent caution was not one of the healer's gifts.

  Rowena slipped quietly between the straw pallets where other women slept the sleep of the untroubled. She made a stealthy way into the tiny scriptorium. She wouldn't be so unthrifty as to waste a candle on such a frivolous errand, so she felt her way in the dark, following along the table until she came to the shelves where books and scrolls rested: an island of reliable wisdom and calm in a world that often felt too complicated to be born. She rested her hands flat on the surface of the book that had been preoccupying her of late.

  The other sisters couldn't imagine what Rowena found so compelling about an old dry book dedicated to the minutiae of grammar, but they were accustomed to her idiosyncrasies, and left her to it. She always accomplished her day’s work of copying, was studious, quiet, disciplined and dedicated. She was certain that none of the other sisters imagined what she found so engrossing in the grammatical tome. She didn't judge them for this. Imagination wasn't anything she valued.

  The book had come into her hands not long before. She remembered the day with unpleasant clarity. Her mother had died two years ago. Like many, she had entrusted some items of value to the care of the local priory. Rowena hadn’t known this, so was surprised to be summoned by the prioress last harvest time.

  The woman was kind, but had a very sharp eye. Such people made Rowena uncomfortable. She always feared some laps on her part, that might lead a careful observer to discover those things about herself that Rowena took such pains to hide. The book lay on the table before the prioress. She was glancing alternatively down at it, and up at Rowena, as though trying to fit puzzle pieces together.

  “This was left in our care,” the old woman explained. “Your mother asked us to keep it some time ago. Now that she is gone, it belongs to you. No doubt you will wish to donate it to the priory.”

  Rowena looked down in surprise at the book. Her mother hadn’t been one for literature. Rowena knew she could read, but had never heard the story of how she came by such uncommon knowledge. There were certainly no books in their house when Rowena was growing up.

  She read the title up-side-down, and had to exert all her considerable self-discipline not to show her shock. The Metamorph Magi: Enchant Your Way to Anonymity. Now Rowena was young, but not so young that she didn’t know the value of silence. She stood absolutely still, waiting for the prioress to speak. The prioress, however, was a master at this tactic, so finally, Rowena said with no inflection, “I didn’t know my mother owned any books.”

  The prioress glanced down at the book once more, with a puzzled frown. Rowena’s mind was spinning. She had a good mind, and it was capable of spinning very quickly. What would the prioress do? What would she conclude about Rowena’s mother, or Rowena herself? Would Rowena be compelled to admit what she was? Would she be cast out, persecuted as a …? Even her well-disciplined mind lost control of itself at this point, and she dropped her eyes, barely able to breathe through her dread.

  “And of all the books for a woman like your mother to own,” the prioress began, and Rowena tried to brace herself for what was coming, “a book on the minutiae of grammar … It’s highly irregular.”

  At last, a statement with which Rowena could whole-heartedly agree. The minutiae of grammar? “It seems an unlikely subject for my mother to be interested in,” Rowena said, stalling for time, “perhaps that’s why she left it in the priory. It doesn’t seem like something she would have any use for.”

  “Indeed,” the prioress replied disapprovingly. “Well, every book has its own intrinsic value to the true scholar, so no doubt you will find some virtue in it, and she certainly intended you to have it: you, not the priory; she was explicit about that.” The disapproval was still strong. “You might as well take it with you, though of course you’ll wish to keep it in our library.”

  Rowena left the prioress’s room in a daze. Metamorph Magi? The minutiae of grammar? Her mind was in a ferment, so that she nearly walked into sister Hilda.

  “What have you there?” Hilda asked pleasantly. Not giving herself time to think about it first, Rowena held out the book without speaking. “An Old Man’s Guide to Great Grammar?” Hilda read out, “Where did you get that? It’s not from the library.”

  “No,” Rowena answered faintly. “The prioress just gave it to me; it belonged to my mother she says.”

  “I didn’t know your mother was a scholar!”

  “Neither did I,” Rowena replied enigmatically, and walked away, leaving Hilda staring after her.

  Though there were duties she should have been attending to, Rowena took the book with her into the dormitory, which would be empty at this time of day. She sank down on her pallet, staring at the book, then slowly, she opened it. It was a spell book.

  She had been given some tutelage from her mother, so the spell on the first page of the book presented no obstacle to her. The magic beyond that though was a different matter. She became completely absorbed, and it was only the sound of the priory bell that shocked her out of her enchantment with the book’s contents.

  In the days that followed, she became obsessed with the book. When she was alone in the scriptorium, she would complete her day's work by magic, then spend the time till nightfall poring over the book, puzzling over the complex instructions, and wondering if she dared try any of the spells. Only last week she'd had a terrible turn when, having accidentally transformed her long dark hair into bright feathers, she'd been temporarily unable to change it back. The panic engendered by this near catastrophe had scared her badly.

  Before coming to live here, she had spent many sleepless nights agonizing over the decision to renounce magic, and devote her life to scholarship. She had given up much in exchange for the safety and opportunities this place afforded. She had forced herself to accept many onerous obligations in order to be here, had spent time earning the trust of her sisters. The thought of losing her hard-won position because of a reckless mistake was intolerable. She vowed to go more slowly, to be more careful.

  Her mother had been dismayed at Rowena's choice. They had argued about it. Her mother, a less serious-minded woman, pleasure-loving and easy going, couldn't imagine choosing the life Rowena contemplated. "You'll be shut up with the same people day in and day out!" She exclaimed. “And no men: ever!”

  They were sitting companionably by the fireside in the single room of their cottage. A spindle hovered in midair beside the older woman as a smooth length of green thread emerged from it, rolling itself into a neat ball on the table. Rowena, whose task it was to make the soup for their evening meal, caused a spoon to stir the caldron in
precise circles as she sat across from her mother, leaning forward and speaking with intensity.

  "How else can a woman be a scholar?" She asked passionately. "You know that's all I care about. I don't care about children or husbands or pretty things." She cast a glance around the cottage, which was adorned with many pretty things.

  "You're my only surviving child. Am I never to have a granddaughter then?"

  Rowena's eye's softened and she reached out to lay her hand briefly on her mother's arm, almost in apology. Rowena rarely showed affection. Her mother sighed, and allowed the spindle to come to rest on the table.

  "Ah well, it's for you to choose. If that is what you wish, then I will not hinder you."

  Rowena smiled. She had been prepared to defy her mother if she must, but she was glad not to have to. Also, she was glad not to have to bring forward the most grim of her many reasons for choosing as she had. The tide of belief and custom was turning in Britain. Magic, once revered and sought after, wasn't quite so stylish anymore. In fact, it could be downright dangerous in the wrong company.

  Rowena's mother knew this as well as anyone, but she would not be careful. Rowena had remonstrated with her many times over indiscretions, but her mother would just laugh. Only last month, Rowena had watched in horror as her mother stopped the cheese maker's youngest son grievously injuring himself, by magically arresting his fall from the limb of a cherry tree he'd been forbidden to climb.

  "Would you have had me let him break his leg or worse?" Her mother had asked in shock.

  Rowena frowned. "He's a horrid little boy and he's been told over and over not to climb that tree," she said.

  "You haven't answered my question," her mother replied. For a light-minded woman, she was capable of a logical rigor in conversation that Rowena had learned from, but which she didn't always appreciate.

  Rowena hated above all else to be at a loss for words, or incapable of answering a question. This, however, was a riddle beyond her skill. Should magic be used to save others from suffering, even if the potential victim was unworthy? Even if it put the sorceress herself at risk?

  Choosing to sidestep the question again, Rowena said, "If the wrong person saw you do such a thing, folk might begin to mutter against you. You yourself have told me tales of witches and wizards being driven away by folk who feared or mistrusted them. Sometimes an even worse fate awaits those accused of dark practices."

  "What dark practice is there in saving a child, no matter how wretched, from injury or death?" It was an argument they had, in one form or another, at least once a season, and it always ended with her mother saying blithely, "I'm a sorceress, no one can harm me!" Rowena hoped passionately that this was true, but she wasn't sure.

  Now, standing in the darkness, her hand resting on the cool cover of the Metamorph Magi, she felt a stab of longing for her dead mother. Kind as the other sisters were, Rowena had no true friend among them, except perhaps Hilda, and she missed the intimacy of having someone to love, who loved her.

  The next few weeks offered little opportunity for scholarship, mundane or magical. It was planting season, and all hands were needed in the fields, even hands which normally touched only parchment. During this time, Rowena's dreams receded into their former forgettable recesses. The physical fatigue of the work had its benefits. She hoped that this would be the end of the matter. Not long after her return to the scriptorium however, she was once again wakened by compelling but unfocussed sequences in which the fair-haired woman was surrounded by forces that sought to harm her.

  Although the source of the threat was unclear, certain details of the woman's surroundings began to build in Rowena's mind, until she felt sure she would recognize the village and the people in it if she encountered them in the living world. The woman wasn't far from the coast. The countryside she called home was hilly, and there was a Saxon castle somewhere nearby. Storms were violent, and sometimes caused destruction, or even a change in the shape of the coastline. There was a scruffy dog, and a benign procession of ill and wounded coming for treatment.

  Rowena couldn't have said when or how she began to believe that the woman was real. By the time she thought to wonder how it had happened, it was too late. Rowena was not given to fanciful notions. In fact, she found fanciful notions distasteful. She had never dreamed like this before, and she knew that her mother had sometimes learned things about the real world through dreams. The compelling vividness of the dreams convinced Rowena that they betokened something in the real world. This certainty was rivaled only by her fervent wish that they would go away.

  One of the most disturbing aspects of these dreams was how oblivious the fair-haired woman seemed to the danger that menaced her. The sweet smile that was her typical expression alternately charmed and infuriated Rowena. The woman began to seem like the younger sister Rowena had never had, and she longed to shriek warnings as the other woman dispensed charms and remedies with ingenuous disregard for the risks.

  It was around this time that Rowena began noticing the raven. It didn't do anything showy, but ravens are ravens, and she noticed. The first time she saw it, it was perched on top of a barn, another raven next to it. Immediately she thought of Huginn and Muninn, the ravens of thought and memory. Thought, or perhaps memory, took to the wing, and Rowena didn't see it again. The raven's continued presence, combined with the dreams, were undermining the tranquility she'd come here to find, and distracting her from scholarship.

  She began to get careless, a failing she loathed in others. One evening, thinking herself alone in the scriptorium, she used magic to prevent her candle from tipping over onto the manuscript she had just finished illuminating. She heard a gasp of shock behind her, and whirled to find she was not alone. She tried to say that she'd caught it with her hand, but she saw the incredulity mingled with fear on Hilda’s face. Nothing was said, but Rowena's place there, never completely secure, became even less certain.

  It was the incident with the raven that forced her hand. She'd been helping (reluctantly) with the milking, and some foolish village children were throwing stones at the raven, which had perched on the barn's roof. Rowena hadn't known what they were doing until she stepped out of the barn. If she'd had more time to think, she'd have done differently, but, seeing the bird about to be pegged off by little Willie, who had a vicious and accurate shot, she acted before thinking, another flaw she despised in others.

  Using magic, she stopped the stone in midair and sent it back to tap Willie smartly on the forehead before falling to the ground at his feet. This time, it wasn't just one person seeing something odd in the half light of evening. There were witnesses: lots of them. In the shock of what she'd done, she lacked the presence of mind to dawn an astounded expression to match those of the people around her. Instead, they all looked stunned, while she alone looked guilty and frightened.

  Some clarity returning at last, Rowena broke the awed silence. Trying to sound as normal as possible, she upbraided the children for their idleness. Disliking children, she was fairly accomplished at upbraiding, and the children, like the adults, not knowing what to do or say, merely slunk off, muttering vaguely. Rowena picked up her pail of milk, and made a remark about the weather before scuttling away.

  After that, things began to be markedly uncomfortable for Rowena. She could feel tension building. No one had said anything yet, but instinct told her that her place there might no longer be a safe one. She had heard many stories from her mother of such times: when security turned to suspicion, and it became prudent or even necessary to move on.

  She blamed herself bitterly for having been tempted by her mother’s book. She had determined when she came here, that magic would have no part in her life. Like a garment too gaudy for good taste, she would discard it. She would devote herself to learning, the only learning that was safe. If only the book hadn’t come to her. And yet, the book still exerted a strong pull on her attention, and on her feelings. She supposed it was because it represented a
last link to her mother. She had often found her mother frivolous, but they had been close, and Rowena never even considered destroying or abandoning the book; such an idea would be unthinkable.

  She was not yet permanently committed to the house where she lived. She could leave without betraying any vows. She lay awake at night, wrestling with herself over what to do. She had found a life well-suited to her here. Its ordered, regimented days appealed to her. Life was routine, predictable, safe, governed by a rigid schedule, and by austerity, which also appealed to her. Nowhere else did a woman have such access to books and learning, except perhaps the very wealthy, which she was not.

  Women came to this life from many directions. She understood religious devotion motivated some, but she knew she wasn’t alone in having other reasons for wanting to be here. The world was a dangerous place for women. Her father was long dead, and lacking mail kin to protect them, she and her mother had been vulnerable. There was safety in numbers, even among women. Leaving such safety was a frightening idea, but if folk here were beginning to suspect what she really was, that safety could turn to violence at any moment.

  When she asked, a peddler's family bound for the coast agreed she could travel with them. She had heard of an abbey with a library there, and, having no other destination in mind, abandoned what she had expected to be safety and permanence. Hilda embraced her in fair well, but wouldn’t meet her eyes. She gathered up her meager belongings into a bundle, the book wrapped safely in a shawl, and left the dormitory for the last time.

  Folk were unflatteringly pleased to see her go. She held her head high as she left, but felt a twinge of sadness she was careful not to show.