by CJ Arroway
In the gully Evie lay still, her back against the wet rock and her feet hanging into the water that pushed them against each other so it seemed she kicked them against the sides of the flat stone; but Evie was not moving. Her eyes were closed and her arms spread out either side of her, the sleeves of her tunic pulled out flat against the rock so that, to the crow that circled above, she must have looked like a wounded bird, broken and still, her wings weighed down with water.
The crow spiralled slowly down in narrowing circles as it passed between the gully walls to land on the rock besides Evie’s outstretched hand, still holding the open bag of herbs. It dabbed at the bag with its beak – dipping and stabbing at it until a small blue flower attached itself. The bird dropped its head to twist it side to side, wiping it off against the rock and Evie’s sleeve. It picked at its feathers, lifting its wing to get underneath and sink in its beak. Then it hopped onto Evie’s chest and walked up towards her neck, where it spread its wings again and flew out of the gully.
And Evie opened her eyes.
The Lake
Evie opened her eyes. The heavy sleep on her lids and the brightness of the room forced one eye immediately back closed, as the other cracked just enough for her to take in who was there.
Luda sat on one side and Nan on the other. And Nan was smiling.
‘Back in the land of the living, Evie?’ Nan said, resting her cold, rough hand on Evie’s forehead.
‘Where am I?’ Evie asked dreamily, then suddenly scrambled to sit up. ‘They’re coming, we need to get away. Is everyone dead?’
Nan put her hand to the top of Evie’s chest and gently pressed her back into the bed. ‘It’s ok, everyone is safe. You’re in Brya, we’re taking care of you. You need to rest, there’s nothing to worry about any more.’
Evie’s eyes were fully open now, but blinking as she looked around the room, then to Luda who smiled at her. She could see his eyes were red, and he looked tired and worn.
‘I think you’re starting to get a moustache,’ Evie said, reaching up to try to touch his lip, her finger missing and falling a long way short of his face.
Luda let out a nervous laugh. ‘About time I guess? I always was a late bloomer. Are you feeling ok? Do you remember what happened?’
‘Shush!’ Nan warned, ‘she’s just woken up, don’t ask her too much yet. Give her a few days.’
‘No, it’s ok,’ Evie said. ‘Luda’s my friend. Do you know him?’
Nan and Luda exchanged glances. ‘It’s ok Evie, we’ll come back in a bit when you’ve had a rest.’ Luda pulled the edge of the sheepskin blanket up so it covered Evie’s shoulder.
‘No, no. It’s ok. I can remember now. Please stay,’ Evie pushed the cover aside again and pulled herself up as Luda and Nan moved in to support her.
‘I can remember it. I was coming back for you, the Sea People… the Sea People?’ Evie’s voice raised in alarm and Nan held her shoulders and hushed her, frowning at Luda.
‘The Sea People are gone, Evie,’ Luda said reassuringly. ‘We beat them, they’ve gone. Everyone is safe now,’
‘Aldrwyn?’ Evie shouted, suddenly sitting up and looking frantically around the small hut. There were two other beds in the hut, but both were empty.
‘He’s alright,’ Nan said. ‘He was in a bad way, we thought we lost him, but he’s ok. He’s still very sick but we hope – we think – the worst of it is over. He’s being looked after.’
‘I saw Aldrwyn, I spoke to him,’ Evie said, sinking back down into the straw and fleece of her pillow.
‘Yes I know – we know you’re friends with Aldrwyn and he’ll know you’re worried about him.’ Nan smiled.
‘No – I mean I saw him when I was in the Spirit World. When the attack was happening.’
Nan was silent for a moment, then let out a sharp sigh. ‘You took magebane – it’s very dangerous. You’re lucky to still be here. Where did you get it from?’
Evie didn’t answer. ‘I saw Aldrwyn, he asked me to help him with something. I think he wanted me to tell him to live.’
Nan shook her head. ‘You shouldn’t have done that Evie. You shouldn’t go to the Spirit World if you don’t know what you are doing. You can’t take magebane like that, without the other herbs, without someone there. It could have killed you.’
Nan saw the expression on Evie’s face and her tone changed quickly. ‘But it sounds lucky you did. Aldrwyn must have needed your help.’
‘Why could I see him Nan?’ Evie asked.
‘Aldrwyn was hurt very badly. The Spirit World is where you take your path away from here. If you are dying, if you are crossing the path, you go there, as I suspect he did. Sometimes you can come back before you reach the Gateway. Like I did,’ she sat upright to pull her shawl straight, looking over Evie’s head to the far wall of the healers’ hut. ‘And sometimes you don’t. Like Bryndl.’
Evie’s eyelids suddenly felt heavy and her head nodded down and sharply up again. Nan pulled herself back from the bedside. ‘You need to sleep now. Tomorrow we’ll see if you can get up and about a bit. Rachlaw will want to say goodbye.’
* * *
‘Do you have to head off straight away?’ Evie said, as she handed him the small leather-tied scroll Nan had made up for him as a parting gift.
‘Thank you Evie,’ he said, placing it in the bag he was tying carefully to his saddle. ‘I’m afraid so. I need to get back to Wyrra before King Quist and the other nobles do. Can’t have them stealing all the glory can we?’ Rachlaw winked at Nan then turned to give Evie his full attention.
‘You’ll be fine here with Nan while you recover. Look after Luda and Aldrwyn, and when you are all patched up you can come and see me in Wyrra. I think you’ll find it’s changed a lot when you get back there. I hope so anyway.’ Rachlaw looked at Nan who smiled back at him. ‘I’ll keep my promise Nan.’
Evie looked back and forth between the two, waiting for one of them to decipher their conversation. Nan nodded to Rachlaw.
‘Long ago, Evie,’ Rachlaw said, ‘I made a promise to Nan – and I repeated it to your mother – that if and when I was in a position to do so I would close down the cleansing schools and allow small magic to be practiced again in The Wyrran. I think now I may be in that position – if I get back to Wyrra in time, if I get the right people on my side. I will do my best, anyway; it won’t be easy, but The Wyrran has its own laws and right now it needs a new lawmaker. With what the Cyl have done for us here, that might be the difference we need.’
‘Thank you, Rachlaw,’ Evie clasped her hands around his. ‘Thank you, for keeping your promise. Oh wait!’ Luda had been standing back as Evie and Nan said their goodbyes to Rachlaw, but now she beckoned him forward and signalled for him to hand her the bird necklace she had given him before the battle at Cran Dy.
‘Take this,’ she said, handing it to Rachlaw. ‘My mother gave me this. If you find her before me, give it to her to let her know I am safe.’
Rachlaw nodded and put his hand to Evie’s shoulder. He hesitated for a moment then pulled her in gently and stooped to put both his arms around her small shoulders and hold her for just a second.
‘I’ll miss you Evie. I’ll miss all of you. Come and visit as soon as you can. Nan – look after them and don’t go picking fights with the Borderers while I’m not here!’
‘We can manage that fine without you – we’re Cyl remember,’ Nan chirped back. ‘Take care – and keep that promise, or I’ll come down there with some of the boys here and remind you about it!’
Rachlaw laughed, and rode away.
‘He’s a good man.’ Nan said. Evie hesitated. ‘Are you alright, Evie?’
‘Nan I need to ask you some things,’ Evie said and the tone of her voice changed Nan’s mood quickly from warmth to apprehension.
‘Go ahead,’ Nan said.
‘Not here – in the library.’
* * *
Nan paced rapidly up and down the narrow space between the table and th
e library shelves, her staff tapping tiny dents into the hard wooden floor.
‘Rachlaw is a good man, he cares about you Evie.’
‘I know Nan – I can feel that, I know he does. But the men were waiting for me in the cave he sent me to, and he said only he knew about. They weren’t Sea People.’
‘I don’t know Evie,’ Nan interrupted, suddenly stopping her pacing as a thought struck her. ‘The hunter – you said he was there, he tracked you – maybe they were with him…’
‘He killed them, Nan – they tried to take me, he took me off them.’
Nan now tapped her cane more urgently on the floor. ‘Could they have come through the other way? They must have been there to protect you, to make sure you made it through. They saw the hunter and they were taking you quickly away.’
Evie scrunched her face: ‘That’s possible, yes. I’m just not sure…’
Nan cut her off with a thought: ‘But why would Rachlaw send people to take you? He already had you. He’s your friend, you were already with him.’
Evie shook her head. ‘You could be right Nan – it wouldn’t make sense. I’m just very unsure of everything, I still don’t know what’s happening. And Rachlaw told me something – that he’d not been honest with me all these years. That he knew why the Sea People wanted me.’
Nan stopped her pacing. ‘Luda you should go.’ Luda threw a pleading look at Evie.
‘No Nan, he stays. He’s been in this from the beginning and I’m not shutting my friends out now.’
Nan waved anxious acceptance and Luda sat back in his chair again. ‘Why did he say they wanted you?’
‘Because I can talk to the dead. That’s what he said – that the Sea People see me as some sort of threat, that I can do special magic or something, and they want to use it, or kill me – I’m not quite sure.’
Nan’s face darkened and she looked again at Luda, as if willing him to leave, but he kept his seat. ‘Go on.’
‘Well I told him I don’t have any special magic, the stuff about talking to the dead – you said it yourself, it’s my imagination.’
Nan stood up and walked toward the screen that hid the smallest alcove of the library. ‘I’m sorry Evie, I should have shown you this before.’
Nan moved back the screen, then tiptoed up to unlock the latch hidden behind the ancient scroll. She removed the parchment from its hiding place and brought it to the table, unfolding it across the flat surface. Evie could see the document was old – it looked more ancient and worn even than the one Nan had told her was the oldest in the library. The text was very different to any she had seen in Wyrra, or in any book here. Below the writing was a long series of small, crudely drawn pictures – jagged, simple forms of animals, birds, plants, people.
‘I wasn’t entirely honest with you when you asked me about it. It’s something I don’t really understand myself, but it feels like something to be kept in the dark. That’s all. I didn’t think it was right to say anything when I couldn’t help.’
Evie looked at the text and then at Nan and she wasn’t sure which one she was finding hardest to read right now.
‘The text is mostly in Old Myrian,’ Nan said – drawing a finger across the unfamiliar script. ‘It seems to be an attempted translation of the images at the bottom – and that I cannot read. But that which I can is clear, and part of it is a warning, it seems.’
‘What is it warning about?’ Evie said – following Nan’s finger across the page as if that would help make its meaning any clearer.
‘Talking to the dead. It seems to be saying people who try it will die themselves – it looks like some people were trying to do it, and this is meant to warn them off. It says that it isn’t possible, unless…’
Evie glared at her, prompting her with urgent eyes. ‘Unless what?’ she finally snapped.
‘Unless they have the gift the Crow gave to the Second Man.’
Evie shook her head.
‘True magic, Evie.’ Nan said, her expression now turned to resignation.
‘No. Sorry Nan, no!’ Evie pushed herself back in her chair and away from Nan, who was now pacing the floor without her cane.
‘Rachlaw told me about you, a long time ago – about the girl he had found who had heard his daughter. He came to ask me about you and I told him to protect you. It took me a while to realise when you first came that it was you, that you were the same girl. When you said about your father I remembered, and then I saw you with Rachlaw – don’t you see now, how I knew it was fate.’
Evie’s face contorted into a disbelieving grin.
‘I feel it Evie – you feel it too, I know you do. And if you have true magic, if we could find it in you, do you know what that could mean? With Rachlaw changing things in Wyrra, with the magic kin free. We could bring the kin together, all of them. We could reunite magic. Around you. It feels like the time is now. We could bring back things the way they used to be.’
Evie was furiously shaking her head, disbelieving what Nan was saying. And now Luda joined in.
‘Evie – this could mean you’re free to be yourself. We could go back to Wyrra, to Uish and we could show them all–’
‘No!’ Evie had her hands to her ears and her eyes closed. ‘No. Stop it. Stop it now!’
Luda and Nan were silent. Evie stood frozen for a few seconds, she breathed deeply in one great draw, releasing the air in stuttering sighs that made her whole body shake.
‘Who do you think I am? Who does everybody think I am?’ Her voice seemed to tremble for a moment then came round strong and clear, with an edge to it Luda had never heard before.
‘First I’m cursed, then I’m special, then I’m dangerous, then I’m powerful. I’m none of those things! I can’t save the magic kin, Nan. I’m sorry. I wish I could. I’m no threat or weapon for the Sea People, I’m really not. I’m just me. Why do you not listen to me?’
Nan and Luda looked at her and said nothing, any thought of interjecting quickly pushed back where it came from by the fire in Evie’s eyes.
‘Why does no one listen?’ She looked from Nan to Luda, her eyes daring them to answer. ‘Luda – you of all people. You know me!’
She stood up sharply and her chair fell back to the floor with a clatter.
Luda moved briefly to pick it up, then stopped where he stood as Evie glared at him.
‘If you want to listen, I will tell you who I am. I will tell you what I can do, and I will tell you what I want. I’m Evie – that’s all – I’m just a girl who does small magic. I go to my woods and I smell the earth and touch the trees. I can listen to nature and I can make pictures. That is it. And all I want – and all I ever wanted – was for my mother to come into the woods with me and watch me make my pictures and tell me they were beautiful. And I don’t even have the power to do that!’
* * *
It wasn’t until the evening that Evie spoke again. She had left the library, and left Nan and Luda to talk and plot and do whatever they wanted on their own, though in truth all they had wanted was to talk to Evie again.
And later that night, as they ate supper in the Great Hall, they got the chance.
‘Evie,’ Luda smiled sheepishly as she sat down beside them.
Evie nodded back.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly as she sat down beside him. ‘I just…’
‘It’s ok. Let’s forget about it.’ Evie said, though her face suggested it was not forgotten, even if she was now ready to forgive.
‘Sorry Luda, could I have a moment with Nan,’ Evie said looking across the table to see Nan was now prepared to show the eyes she’d been hiding since Evie had walked in.
‘Of course – I’ll go and get some fresh air, I’ll, um… I’ll be back in a bit.’ Evie and Nan raised their hands lightly in acknowledgement as he left.
Nan leaned across the table. ‘I’m sorry Evie. It was probably too soon to say anything. I just…’
‘It’s not about that,’ Evie said. ‘I need to tell you
something and I want you to promise not to throw it back at me or talk about true magic or any of that stuff. This is important – I need to know.’
Nan nodded and Evie glanced quickly behind and moved her chair closer to the table edge.
‘When I was in the Spirit World I didn’t just see Aldrwyn. I saw… the earth and the forest and the wind and water. They sort of, came alive.’
‘We all see different things, Evie,’ Nan said, ‘things that are familiar to us – but we know them as the spirits. Of earth, forest, wind, water, life, death, and more – all things have a spirit.’
‘I see that Nan, but there was more. I blacked out in there and when I woke again I was somewhere else, not in the Spirit World and not here.’
Nan was now leaning in closer so that Evie could talk more quietly.
‘I can’t remember it all but I remember clearly that I saw my mother. She was calling me. She’s alive – I felt it. And she was trying to tell me where she is, I’m sure of it.’
Nan lifted the sleeve of her cowl so that it rested on the table top. She pushed aside the bowl that had caught under it, and cleared the table to lean in further, until her cocked ear was just inches from Evie. ‘Go on, I’m listening.’
‘She was in a house. A small stone house – not much bigger than one of the huts here. The house was sat in a circle of earth with a small lake. The whole thing was no bigger than the top of Cran Dy, smaller even. But it was really clear, and I know it’s a real place and that is where she is. I have to find it.’
Nan pulled her sleeve closer to her now and leant back very slightly. ‘Do you have any idea where it might be?’ she whispered.
‘No – I hoped you might. But I need to find out. I have to find her. She was telling me to come.’
‘What will you do?’ Nan said, her curiosity now making her forget her whispering and speak up.
Evie sat back. ‘I guess I should start in Wyrra – ask around if anyone knows of such a place. There was something else too. She handed me a ball.’
