Red Mantle

by Maria Turtschaninoff

  Maressa and Lenna are not very pleased about having to share me with all the other children, and Maressa in particular is getting up to all sorts of mischief to show her discontent. Several of the children have a very difficult time sitting still and listening, because it is not something they have ever done before. But there is one boy called Édun—Tauer’s grandson and elder brother to little black-haired Naeri—who is my special favorite. I know that a teacher should not have a favorite pupil, but you could not resist Édun, Jai. He has big, brown, almost completely round eyes and curly brown hair, and though he rarely speaks, he never takes his eyes off me. He can already read better than both Maressa and Lenna.

  Akios is somewhat disappointed that he cannot join in the school. There is far too much to do on the farm. I practice reading with him in the evenings, if I have the energy.

  But there is so much else to be done—as if the school were not enough in itself! Since the Iron Night the villagers’ attitude toward me has changed. I worried that they might fear me or consider me even more of a freak after what I did that night. And it is true that they certainly do not see me as one of them, but now they are glad of my presence. Many who previously turned to Tauer now come to me with their ailments, injuries, pregnancies, lame goats and whatever else. I help them as much as I am able. Sometimes I really can help, while in some cases the best I can do is provide a little comfort or sound advice. I am understanding more and more what an important role all Tauer’s strange prescriptions and rituals play in his work to help others. My little herb garden is in constant use, and I spend a lot of time weeding and caring for it because I foresee needing a lot of dried herbs this winter. I try to find time to make concoctions and salves as well, to keep in store, but it is difficult to fit everything in.

  It has been a fine summer, with enough rain and plenty of heat and sunlight, but I have not had much time to enjoy it. I barely took part in the summer offering this year; I contributed only a little nut bread that I had baked (which came out nothing like Sister Ers’s nadum bread) and went home early. Géros is betrothed to Tunéli now. The wedding is to take place in autumn after the harvest. I saw them dancing together before I went home. I wish them all the best. Personally, I was too tired to dance. Honestly, Jai, I swear, I felt no sorrow, nor even wounded vanity! It is only that I am so very tired all the time.

  I am happiest in the early mornings when I go to my little schoolhouse and the grass is still damp with dew and the birds are so full of life that it seems the whole forest is singing. Then, for a while, I can enjoy the beauty of the Rovasian summer. Mowing season grows near, and the school will have to close its doors for a while, for the children will be needed at home on the farms. I must say that I am looking forward to it, for I have so much to do all the time that it will be a relief not to have to think about the school, at least for a while.

  I have my mule and goats to look after as well. They provide me with fertilizer for my garden, and I have become skilled in milking the elder goat and making delicious cheeses. Mother said recently that I make better cheese than she does, which is no small praise. Some days ago Akios and I were out in the forest collecting birch branches to dry as winter feed for the animals. I took the opportunity to pick some wild plants as well, both the edible sort and those with healing properties. The school was closed, so we were free to stay out all day. Gray Lady was with us, loaded with panniers, and once again she was being impossibly obstinate and trying to drag me deeper into the forest. But people say that there are soldiers in these parts, so we dared not venture far. They still have not found us, thanks to the shield I have created.

  In the evenings I still walk around the village, however tired I may be, with my white wooden staff in hand, beating protection into the ground.

  Your friend,

  My dear Ennike Rose,

  I am writing this at the edge of the forest, where I have come for a little peace and quiet. I can see the village from here, slightly below me on the other side of the stream and fields. I do not believe anyone can see me. My brown trousers and unbleached linen shirt blend in with the pine-tree trunks. The afternoon sun is blazing, and I have pulled my headscarf over my eyes, just as Sister Loeni always used to chide me for. My skin has turned very brown from all this summer sun. A warm, dry, spicy smell is seeping out from the grass all around and from the smooth yet rough bark of the pine behind my back. I am trying to save paper by writing in small letters—I hope you can read my writing.

  You are welcome to read this letter aloud to Sister Eostre. I specifically want to tell you both about what has happened with Marget.

  I am ashamed of my behavior toward her. I feel I have betrayed her. She was my friend before I left Rovas. Why did I turn my back on her?

  So I have started visiting her more. She has been glad of my company, I believe, for she has mainly stayed at home since she was taken by the soldiers. I have not been able to think of anything redemptive to say to her, no way to erase what has happened. But we have spoken about everything imaginable. She has shown interest in my time at the Abbey, and I have told her about our lessons and so forth. It has been beneficial for me also. I miss you so much, my sisters.

  She never speaks of Akios anymore, nor do I see her embroider anything for her bridal set. I asked her cautiously about it one evening after the Iron Night, when we were doing laundry together in the stream, because I was concerned that perhaps she feared that he would reject her because of what happened.

  “I can’t bear the thought of any man,” she said simply as she pensively wrung out one of her father’s shirts. “I mean no offense to Akios, but I find men vile now.”

  “I felt the same way when I first left the Abbey,” I said slowly. “Men’s voices scared me. They still do at times, if I am honest.”

  “What was it that happened there?” she asked, and brushed her damp hair from her forehead.

  So, for the first time, I recounted in detail what happened at the Abbey when the men came, when the Goddess used the Rose’s body as her channel to spare the other sisters and novices from the men’s violence. I told her about the men in the crypt who meant the junior novices harm. I told her about the man who stabbed me, about the blood, and the door to the realm of the Crone.

  She listened calmly, without taking her eyes off my face. Around us the summer birds were singing from the green birches, the sun seemed not to move from where she hung above the forest edge, and our laundry lay forgotten on the stones. It was wonderful to talk about all of this with someone who listened without judgment.

  When I was finished she leaned forward and took hold of my hands. Her brown eyes looked steadily into mine.

  “I felt it, as we walked around the fields, Maresi. I felt an immense power in you, and in the earth. No one can withstand such a force. No soldiers. No one. I want to learn about it, Maresi. I want to be able to do all that you can do.”

  “I will teach you all I can,” I said solemnly. “Not even I know how I do it all, nor whether it can be taught. But I will try.” I smiled at her, and it warmed my heart to think that I might be able to help her. “Sister Marget.”

  Since then Marget has followed me everywhere. She has become my shadow, just as I was yours when I first came to the Abbey. I am doing my best to be as good to Marget as you were to me. She seems filled with some new energy, like a strong wind that knows precisely which direction it is blowing. She has started coming to my school. There are many who raise their eyebrows at this, and I know that her parents are far from pleased. Marget is not of school age—she is of marrying age. She ought to be sewing linen and embroidering aprons and visiting the neighboring houses that are home to young men of the right age. But Marget does not care about what she ought to be doing. And I am glad of her company.

  Now I must return home and help Mother with the cooking.

  Yours,

  Venerable Sister O,

  We have had a good summer. The weather has been favorable for the harvest, after t
he Iron Night. I have been extremely busy with work, and we have had plenty of food to eat. More of Mother’s chickens have brooded and our flock has grown. We ate the cockerels, which was a rare luxury. My garden has provided us with beans and peas and an array of vegetables, and I am now the person the villagers turn to for advice concerning ailments and worries, which means my family is always receiving gifts (a basket of eggs, wild strawberries from the forest, a small firkin of salted meat, a freshly caught trout, a few cubits of home-woven linen fabric). I have taken on many responsibilities that I never imagined when I left the Abbey: draining abscesses; pulling shoulders into alignment; brewing anti-wart medicine; alleviating severe moon-blood cramps; helping women prevent further pregnancies; helping others to conceive; smearing ointments on the aching backs of old men; helping to bring a child into the world. However, the most difficult cases are when I have been unable to help. I had to tell Péra and Tunéli’s grandmother that there was nothing I could do to save her sight. Árvan cut himself badly with a knife, and though I prevented him from bleeding to death, I could not save his finger.

  Tauer is pleased to share the burden of responsibility for the villagers’ health. His elderly father takes up a lot of his time, and the people of Jóla still rely on him for advice rather than me. He has enough work as it is.

  Now it is harvest, which means I have closed my school for the time being. I am delighted with the school, though it has cost me a great deal. I want my school to become the equal of yours. I want to think that you would be proud of me. You always maintained composure, answered all of our questions, and knew how to teach us. I use the same methods as you: reading or reciting to the children, then asking them to relay what they have just heard, and discussing it together. I spell out words and have them repeat them back to me. I try to help them see things contextually and holistically. Though I struggle to stay as calm and collected as you when the littlest ones have trouble sitting still and start running around chasing bees that have erred into the schoolhouse, or pulling each other’s hair, or crawling around pretending to be kittens.

  Today a shipment arrived at our farm from Jóla. All the households whose children I have taught gathered together two sacks of rye flour, a jar of honey, two chickens, four skeins of wool in gray and green and—the most precious thing of all—a score of beeswax candles. Our own village also paid handsomely for my teaching, and even included payment for the education I am expected to give this winter, weather permitting. Mother and I have been busy all day unpacking everything and organizing the storehouse and larder.

  Our relationship is different now that I know that I am protecting the villages with my walks. Mother no longer speaks ill of my school. She can see that I have continued protecting the village, and she is pleased that I am contributing to the food stores. But I am bursting with unanswered questions. How did Mother know what I was doing when even I did not understand? And why does she avoid my questions on the topic? She only coughs and turns away.

  I spoke to Náraes about it not long ago. She knows Mother better than I do, after all; they have been together this whole time. Mother and I lost a lot when I traveled away. Náraes was sitting and sewing Maressa’s trousers (she has asked to wear trousers now, like me) and raised her eyebrows when I brought up the subject of Mother.

  “You know she’s always been a bit of an odd one,” she said with a shrug. “She isn’t from these parts after all, so she’s never really fit in. I don’t think she wants reminding of her former life. She always says that what’s done is done and there’s no use dwelling on it.”

  Mother is not from Sáru or any of the nearby villages. I always knew that, of course, but it is not something that I often think about. Her hair is a lighter brown than that of most Rovasians, which Akios also inherited. We have never met our maternal grandparents or any of Mother’s relatives.

  “Where does she come from?”

  Náraes snipped off the thread and inspected the trousers critically. “Maressa wears out the knees quicker than I can sew them up. It wasn’t like this when she wore skirts! Mother comes from somewhere in the west, but she’s never said where.”

  Náraes was not especially interested in discussing Mother, so I brought my questions to Father. I wanted to talk to him in a place where Mother would not hear, so I sought him out that afternoon as he was sharpening his scythe and ax behind the woodshed. He was grateful for help with the grindstone.

  “I found your mother in the forest, you know that,” he said, and smiled at the memory. “You all loved hearing the story as littl’uns.”

  “But surely that was just a story,” I said. “She cannot have appeared out of nowhere.”

  He examined the scythe’s edge and shook his head. “Not sharp yet. Well, she did. It was winter and the ground was hard with snow. I’d skied out alone to hunt. This was in the time of the previous nádor, not the one you grew up with, but his father. The one they called the chicken-hunter, because . . .”

  “I know why he was called that.” I could not listen to that chicken story one more time. “You skied out and the moon was full so you stayed in the forest for a while and found something in one of the traps. At first you thought it was a little bear.”

  “She growled like one,” he said, and I could hear the tenderness in his voice. “And was dressed in layers of furs. But it was your mother, so it was, and I had to spend a long time calming her down before I dared approach and free her from the snare. Then I took her home, and me and my mother took care of her until she came around and got a little meat on her bones. She was so thin, she probably wouldn’t have survived long alone in the forest. But it all worked out and we married the following summer.”

  “But where did she come from? What was she doing there in the forest in the middle of winter?”

  “I asked a few times, at first.” Father stood up straight. “But it soon became clear that she didn’t want to talk about it, so I stopped asking. And it wasn’t easy to ask her much to begin with ’cause she hadn’t learned our language. Then, as time passed, it didn’t seem so important.”

  I stopped turning the handle. “She spoke a different language?”

  Father nodded. “But she soon learned ours, and you’d never know it wasn’t her first language. She soon learned all of the customs and traditions of Rovas as well. I doubt it even occurs to people anymore that she isn’t from here. It doesn’t to me.”

  “She never tells me anything! She knows about all sorts of things that I have never learned about. And she has acted so strangely toward me ever since I came home—distant and cold!”

  In that moment Father looked aged and stooped in a way I had never noticed before.

  “Did you know that your mother tried to get you back? The same evening you left she rushed out with neither hat nor cardigan. Akios and Náraes were alone in the house and told me when I came home. I ran after her, not knowing where to search. I found her the next day. She was still walking, but had no idea where she was. She barely recognized me. When I got her home she was frozen through and lay in bed for many a day. We didn’t think she’d make it. I’m not sure she even wanted to. That chill that she picked up has never really left her. When you came home to us I thought she might get better, but I think it’s too late for that.”

  He rubbed his eyes. “She blames me for sending you away. She let herself be persuaded but then regretted it. She’s never forgiven me.”

  This was another thing I had never realized before. There is so much that I do not know about my parents, Sister O. It is as if I am seeing them for the first time.

  Your novice,

  Most Venerable Mother,

  Summer continues, but the cooling air and darkening evenings indicate the coming autumn. Tauer has predicted a cold autumn and early winter. Yet I know that we will manage; our stores are filled to bursting.

  We will manage, but I do not know what will become of everybody else. Venerable Mother, I am continually learning new things here in Rov
as, seeing things that I had been blind to before, and what I see strikes fear in my heart. I have been so intent on protecting my village that I have had no concept of what is happening in the rest of the land. I have willingly closed my eyes.

  ϖ

  About ten days ago a beggar came to our village and went from house to house. He came to us last, as the sun was setting. We gave him the typical beggar’s bread, and then Mother served him a bowl of porridge and I cut him a decent wedge of goat’s cheese. He sat on the bench outside the door and devoured it all greedily, though he must have been given food at the other houses as well. He was unwashed and long-haired, his beard hung down to his chest in a tangle of brown and filth, and he did not smell good. His skin was sunburned and dirt was deeply ingrained in the lines of his face. Mother wanted nothing to do with him, but I had to shell a basket of peas to dry for winter, and preferred to sit outside so as not to make a mess inside. So I sat next to him and tried to breathe through my mouth.