by R. K. Hart
‘Come,’ he said gently. ‘Wipe your face, warrior. You have training.’
***
It was another week before Lida heard from the Kali; she was washing dishes in a bucket of soapy water, and almost dropped a teapot when her voice came.
Now is the time, Sivasdotter, the Kali called. Her words echoed outside Lida’s mindshield, overlain with an image of a place Lida knew.
Lida lay the teapot carefully aside and quietly slipped out, leaving Alys and Ella to their card game, her hands sweating as she shrugged on her coat and gloves. Her stomach tried to creep up her throat.
Even though Lida knew where the Kali was waiting, it wasn’t easy to find. The snow shifted everything, obscuring landmarks and changing the shape of the world. She wasn’t sure that she liked things being so inconstant.
The Kali had walked away from the city and towards the base of the mountains to the east, and was sitting cross-legged on a rocky outcrop partially sheltered by a copse of white birches. Her back was straight and her braid was very neat; she regarded Lida levelly as she shivered.
‘You are scared, Sivasdotter.’
It wasn’t a question. ‘Yes, lady.’
The Kali’s sapphire eyes were bright, and startling against the snow. ‘But you came anyway.’
‘Yes, lady.’ Lida toyed with the hem of her coat.
‘What is it that you need from me?’
‘Whatever Siva left for me.’ Lida thought for a moment. ‘And anything else that you can spare.’
The Kali gave a slight smile, and gestured for Lida to sit. She chose a flat rock, brushing away the snow, and pulled her hood tight around her face.
The Kali looked up at the mountains. ‘You must understand,’ she began, ‘that Siva never told me anything. All I have, I gleaned from watching, and from speaking with her, and from time. I tell you this so you know that everything and anything I tell you may not be the full truth. It is my truth, from what I saw, what I heard, what I experienced. Do you understand?’
Lida didn’t - not really - but she nodded anyway.
The Kali blew out her breath in a steamy cloud. She reached to take Lida’s hand. Her fingers were warm, even through their gloves, and Lida went very still at the gesture; it was one Maya made when she gave bad news.
‘Siva was my mother’s advisor,’ the Kali said.
Lida frowned, thinking that Siva must have started when she was very young - what did advisors do, anyway? - and the Kali’s mother must have been very old. The Kali heard the thought and shook her head.
‘I have gone into my memories many times. I am sure that the first one I have of your mother comes from when I was four summers old.
‘She cared for me, just as she cared for Aaron and Katrin, telling me stories and playing games with Bethan and I and tucking us into bed at night. She never aged, peti etoile, for the whole time I knew her. When she cared for me as a tiny cila, she was a young woman. When I was a young woman, she was a young woman. When I became a mother -’ her grip tightened for a moment on Lida’s hand ‘- she was still a young woman.’
Lida opened her mouth, then closed it again.
‘I knew that she was powerful. I am certain of this: she had been in the north, in Brinnica, for a very long time, and all that time she was the young woman I knew.
‘And yet of course she was not Brinnican. She spoke our language as if she’d been born in the snow, and she fought as well as any warrior. She did not much like hunting, but she was still good at it, her feet silent as a leopard. But how could she be Brinnican, with her skin and hair and eyes?
‘And she spoke Erbidan, did you know that? The island people guard their language as a precious secret; I doubt even your handsome archer would speak to you in his own tongue. Siva would treat with the envoys when they came as if she’d been born on grey stone. But Erbidans are fierce and proud and hardy; for all her temper, Siva could not be one of them, either: she was too gentle under all the fire.
‘When I was older, and I saw a Myrae ship for the first time, that puzzle seemed solved. She had their skin and their curls - you look just like her, did you know? - but her eyes, little star, her eyes were not sea maiden eyes, even though she walked as if she were stepping across the deck of a ship. The sea called to her, I know, and she craved it, but in all the time I knew her she never once prayed to Eianna, and every Myrae captain I have known has lived for their goddess.
‘I never asked where she came from, never asked where she was before she came to us. No one ever asked her. It was some unspoken thing, a secret we knew we had to keep, as if in the knowing she would unravel and be lost. And as much as I loved her, and as curious as I was, I think I was afraid to know the answer.’
‘How could that possibly be?’ Lida burst out. ‘How could she be so old, and unchanged? You must have remembered wrong.’
The Kali squeezed her fingers gently, and Lida flushed as she remembered to whom she was speaking.
‘As I said, this is as I remember it. She was a strong healer, that much we knew; the only explanation I can offer, even after all this time, is that it was her gift.’
Lida stared at her. ‘Is that possible?’
The Kali shrugged. ‘My daughter once brought a man back whose heart had stopped for many minutes. My son can weave a shield that arrows cannot breach.’ She paused. ‘You can skip across the minds of the dreaming. An unchanging body does not seem so strange, in context.’
Lida didn’t answer, though she wondered how much the Kali knew about her gift, and whether she realised it had been Lida who had clumsily shot arrows at Aaron’s illae-shield. The snow began to fall more thickly, rustling as it brushed through the branches above them.
‘Do you know who trained her?’ she said at last.
The Kali shook her head. ‘No. I know only that she was strong; stronger than she showed, I think. I had never seen a healer such as she, until my daughter awoke to her power.’ There was an unmistakable ring of pride in her voice. ‘I never knew of Siva’s other gift, until my son told me. I was furious with her, for training Aaron in such things without my permission. He thought it was a game. But for Siva, it was more. She apologised to me, sincerely and fully, but she did not stop. I had only ever heard of those skills in stories. There were no dreamers in Brinnica.’
Lida bit the inside of her cheek. She wanted more time to think. She wished that she’d had a chance to plan her questions, as Maya would have done. ‘Do you know her family name? Or anything about them?’
‘Her family name? No. Not that she ever told me, not for sure. But one time - just one time - she mentioned her mother. It took a bottle of my best whiskey, and I still do not know whether I heard correctly. She called her Aimee. You know what that means in our language.’
‘Love.’ Lida repeated the name, tasting it. ‘Aimee. Aimeesdotter.’
The Kali nodded. ‘You know, I think, that Siva named you after a star?’
Lida frowned. ‘Yes.’
‘Siva’s grandmother told her it was the brightest star in the sky. But, cila, tell me: what is the brightest star in our sky?’
An odd shiver passed over Lida; she had never really thought about that part of Siva’s letter. ‘Kaia. The brightest star in our sky is Kaia.’
The Kali inclined her head. ‘I have thought on this almost every day since your father wrote to tell me of Siva’s death. He was with her at the end, though I imagine he has never told you of it. Your name was the last thing on her lips. She was insistent, Cathan wrote, even as she died.’ The Kali gently detached her hand from Lida’s and brushed away some snow that had settled on her knees. ‘I still do not know what to think.’
Lida closed her eyes and cracked her knuckles. ‘Siva told Cathan to go to the Myrae if he ever needed help. Do you think I should go? Perhaps they will know more.’
‘Perhaps.’ The Kali studied her closely. ‘I think your mother needed you to come here first.’
Lida shook her head. ‘I think I made
a mistake. I should have gone with Maya. I am grateful to you, lady, but I am not sure any of this has helped. I have more questions than ever.’
The Kali cocked her head. ‘Have you learned nothing, while you have been here?’
Lida went still as she realised. ‘Oh, gods,’ she whispered, her heart thudding in her ears. ‘I’m so slow. The thing she left me. It wasn’t you at all. It was Aaron.’
‘I think so, peti etoile.’ The Kali smiled. ‘There were no other dreamers, and so she taught him everything she could.’ She shook her head. ‘She knew that you would come. She knew what you would need. Before you ever were, she knew that you would dream.’ She inhaled softly. ‘Do you know what happens on a soul walk?’
Lida shook her head, dazed.
‘We meditate. We listen to the earth and the water and the wind. We ask them questions, we listen to their answers. We try to hear their messages. We seek our ways forward.’ The Kali’s eyes were very serious. ‘I would not ignore my son’s other lessons, cila. I would not think it strange if Siva had known that you would need them, too.’
Lida shifted uneasily, realising that she meant Aaron’s training. ‘Is there anything else you can tell me, lady?’
‘Siva was kind. And generous. And fierce. She loved me as a child, and she loved me when I grew into a woman, and she loved my children, too. She loved Brinnica, almost as much as she hated the cold.’ The Kali laughed, a deep, throaty sound. ‘She spent almost as much time at the hot springs as I have heard you do.’
She told Lida of the little things, the things that built a picture of a woman Lida had never known. Siva loved chamomile tea, and she had a favourite dress, long-sleeved and made of Eilin linen, and she would wear it the whole of spring, only swapping it for something else when it needed to be washed. She would make a lip stain from cranberries and bees wax and wear it every day, with tiny sea pearls through her ears, or emeralds for celebrations.
‘She was vain,’ the Kali smiled, ‘but not entirely. She hated people touching her hair, but of course no one in the north can boast curls like that, and the children could not resist. She suffered it until they were old enough to understand they should not touch without permission, and if they crossed her in this thing, her temper was a thing to behold.
‘She favoured a staff in the training ring, and she was quick and sure on her feet. She loved dancing and singing, and her favourite foods were roasted chestnuts and wild raspberries.
‘It was one of the first things Cathan offered her.’ The Kali laughed again, her eyes soft at the memory. ‘A tiny bag of chestnuts he’d gathered himself, all the way from the eastern plains. Siva took them as if they were her due, then walked away from Cathan with her nose in the air. It drove him wild. We ate them later in her tenat.’
‘How did they meet?’
The Kali’s eyebrows rose in surprise. ‘Silly man,’ she said after a moment. ‘He ought to have told you, although I know very well that the things that hurt the most are the most difficult to talk about.’ She sighed.
‘He had come up from his village on the Little Buck; the journey had taken two months. He was to apprentice to a healer, Hagar, on the recommendation of an old friend of hers; he was very lucky, as Hagar is most careful in her choice of apprentices, and rarely takes them on.’ She glanced at Lida, who looked at the ground.
‘He arrived on the day I was made Kali. There was a crowd at the Court, and the wreath was barely on my head when there was a commotion at the back; a man had collapsed. I pushed my way through to see him, a stranger, thin and exhausted-looking and covered in dust, lying in a tangle on the grass. I thought he was dead.’ She smiled.
‘Siva pushed me aside, and had him carried to her tenat. The colour had gone from her face and I thought it was simply with worry, but I think she knew who he was to her the moment she laid eyes on him, that too-tall, skinny boy with the bright auburn hair. He was unconscious for some time. Siva sat with him, waiting. She did not need to; there were a handful of other healers who would have taken the job, and the wreathing celebration was in full swing. It was unlike her to miss an opportunity to dance, but she gave one up for him.
‘He fell in love with her the moment he woke. That was no surprise; Siva never lacked admirers. They tread lightly around each other for months, as Cathan recovered and his body regained its strength. Siva took his healing seriously, though all he really needed was rest and a month’s worth of meals. He would have lain his heart at her feet, but for some reason Siva shied away. I knew she loved him, and she knew she loved him, but it was as if she could not bring herself to take that final step, so she held him at arm’s length. Sometimes it is the last step that is hardest to take.’
The Kali chuckled, brushing some snow from her cheek. ‘Then Hagar finally let Cathan near her precious horses. She would not let a soul touch them, you must understand, so this was an unheard honour. And her stallion, Foud, who would lash out at anyone who looked at him the wrong way … Well. Cathan looked at him, and Foud looked back, and Cathan lifted his chin, and Foud …’ She laughed again. ‘Foud followed Cathan around for the rest of the day like a lovesick puppy. Apparently, that meant something to Siva - or perhaps Cathan gave her the same look - for she left him l’peti mor that night, and that was that.’ She flicked Lida a look that Lida could not read. ‘He understood, I think. Sometimes, all wild things need is someone to understand them. Cathan always knew that.’
Lida shook her head. ‘It’s so hard to imagine my Da like that.’
The Kali gave a half-smile. ‘Young, you mean? In love? It is always hard for younglings to imagine that the old have walked the same paths they walk, have thought the same thoughts and felt the same things in their hearts. It is always hard for the young to imagine that we still walk those paths, that we still think those thoughts, and that our hearts only get fuller as the years pass.’ She sighed. ‘Your father was very handsome. We breed warriors, not workers, and although Cathan did not fight, he was strong and fit and tall. There were others who wanted him, others who waited, but Siva had claimed him so fully his eyes never once strayed.
‘I do not say it was perfect, but it was something close, for them. They argued all the time. They were both stubborn and proud, and Siva had such a quick, fierce temper. But their fights were like squalls on the sea: wild and mean but swift and over quickly, always entirely forgiven.
‘Sometimes, I think Siva would provoke him on purpose.’ The Kali snorted, and Lida stared at her; she hadn’t imagined that Kalis would snort. ‘She always left her tenat a mess, and it drove Cathan mad.’
‘Why did they leave Brinnica?’
The Kali looked down at the snowy ground. ‘It was Siva’s decision,’ she said quietly. ‘Cathan would have lived with her anywhere, I think. But Siva decided she would go south, and so south they went. I tried not to think about it for a long time.’ She lay her hands deliberately in her lap. ‘But I think she wanted to be warm again, before she died.’
Lida blinked. ‘You think she knew, even then?’
The Kali considered her. ‘I think she knew.’
The old guilt rose in Lida, crushing and stabbing. The Kali reached out and gently touched her cheek.
‘No, cila. Siva had lived longer than she should. The day she met your father … it is difficult to explain. She always had an otherness about her, an apartness, even with those she loved. It faded the day she met Cathan. I think she knew from that first moment.’
Lida looked away from the Kali’s sad eyes, tears welling in her own. They watched the snow fall.
‘What do you think I should do?’ she asked at last, sniffing.
‘Grow strong in your gift. Use it in every way you can. Treasure what you have of your mother. Go to the Myrae.’ The Kali smiled. ‘I think you may find that you have much of the Isle in you.’
Lida nodded, then gathered her courage. ‘Lady … will Katrin be Kali?’
A muscle clenched in the Kali’s pale cheek. ‘The aine will dec
ide. There are no precedents for this.’
Lida shivered and brushed a small pile of snow from her lap. The Kali stood and offered her a hand.
‘Come, cila, we should go back. You should be warm and safe when the snow comes.’
‘Does it ever stop?’ Lida muttered.
The Kali laughed. ‘No. It is inexorable, much like my son.’
Lida flushed. ‘I am sorry for what I did at the springs.’
‘Why?’ said the Kali. ‘My mother would have whipped the skin from his back for such a thing. What you did is far more fitting. He will heal.’ Her eyes went to Lida’s hands. ‘It is a powerful weapon and a solemn responsibility, to have such a gift. If you will accept my advice, I would counsel you to use it infrequently and well.’
‘Infrequently, I can promise,’ Lida said.
The Kali chuckled. ‘I do not speak in my son’s defence, for what he did is indefensible, but I will give some context. Your mother told Aaron that he would marry her daughter, her peti etoile.’
The flush stole from Lida’s cheeks to cover her entire face. She laughed nervously. ‘That explains a lot.’ She met the Kali’s eyes. ‘I care for your son, lady. But Siva was wrong.’
‘Yes.’ The Kali smiled. ‘I never told him that Siva had two daughters. I knew that you would come and so I advised him to wait. I thought that if he knew you had a sister, he would go south to find you both.’
Maya. It suddenly made far more sense, all of it: she was as beautiful as he, as wild - in her own way - and, more importantly, Maya had a tongue of silver and a backbone of steel. She would never be cowed by Aaron, never be beaten down by his sheer force of will; he would find himself dancing to her tune, not the other way around. That was who he was waiting for, and why he was so often perplexed by Lida, and why he had kissed her, though he hardly seemed more interested than she.
Gods, Lida thought. What might have happened if both Cathan and the Kali had been honest? Would she have met Aaron when he showed up at Cathan’s door? Would he have trained her at all, or just stepped straight to Maya’s side, with no thought of teaching her little sister to navigate the dreamscape? Or would Lida have met him when she made her own way to Brinnica, before her gift was evident, and too young to be of interest anyway? Would she have floundered in the white place forever, never knowing the fullness of her gift, the joy of it, the intoxicating flood of power and the chance to help others, even in a small way?
