Strands of Starlight, page 9
“Never mind,” said the carver, waving his hand as if to chase off an annoying fly. He pulled several knots loose. “But that's why we have a statue of the Lady in the church instead. Kay asked me, though, as a favor, if I might carve some panels to go behind the altar. And as a favor, I agreed. Providing, of course, that I chose the subject matter.”
“Being very naive and foolish,” said Kay, who was starting to worry, “I assumed David would carve something edifying. From the lives of the saints, or something like that.”
“Well,” said David. “Something like that.” He reached back to his belt, pulled out a knife, and sawed through the bindings. “Anyway, since I wound up working for the Church after all, I decided to commemorate the first attempt.” He climbed up a ladder to the top of the panels, cut the last knot, and held the canvas with his hands. “The final finishing will take a little while, but I wanted to get some opinions.” They were all waiting. David shrugged a little. “Well, here it is.”
He dropped the canvas.
Varden smiled. Kay put his hand to his mouth. Andrew laughed.
“Are you really taller than Varden?” said Andrew. “Or is that vanity?”
“I made them stand back-to-back,” said Charlotte. “David's taller.”
“How about Alban?” Andrew pointed.
“Oh,” said David. “I don't really remember how tall he was. So I guessed. Varden and I were both taller than him when Varden was through, though.”
Kay still had his hand over his mouth. He was not sure what to say.
“Kay?” David sounded worried.
Kay dropped his had after a while. “They're . . . lovely,” he said. “It will take some getting used to. And it'll remind me to watch my step.”
“I meant no offense.”
“None taken.” Kay stepped a little closer, looked at the first, then at the second panel.
“Varden?”
The Elf was smiling. “Your style has changed since that day. Did you know that, David? I do not think any of your folk could carve as you do now.”
David blushed. “I can't take any credit for that. I mean . . . after all, when . . . when She's touched you like that. . . .” His voice trailed off, and he looked sheepish. “Do you like it?”
“It is beautiful,” said the Elf. “Is it appropriate, though, for a church? What do you say, Kay?”
Kay shrugged. He felt outnumbered. Sometimes he wished that his God were not so exclusive and demanding. “I can't say that it's inappropriate,” he said truthfully. “And if people laugh during my sermons now, I can blame it on the panels.”
David sighed. “Good. You'll have these by Yule. I don't want to rush them.”
Kay was examining one part of the second panel. Gently, hesitantly, he reached out and touched one figure in particular. Sometimes he wished . . .
“Varden.” The Elf came to him. Kay indicated the figure, set off from the rest of the scene by a field of stars. “Is that really what She looks like?”
The Elf was silent for a while. “To David. Everyone sees Her a little differently, Kay.”
“Is there any chance . . .” Kay faltered, felt his face grow hot. “I mean . . . could I . . .?”
Varden understood. “Someday, my friend.”
***
Andrew stayed to visit with David and Charlotte. Varden and Kay walked toward the village together. “I heard what you said about Miriam,” said the Elf.
“About her healing Michael? I must say I was glad.”
“For Michael?”
“For both. I didn't want to lose my brother. And . . . as for Miriam . . .”
“Has she been a trial to you?” Varden spoke quietly, understandingly.
Kay shrugged. “I do the best I can, Varden.”
“You do very well. You are a credit to your race and to your priesthood.”
“She might be improving.”
“She might,” said the Elf. “But then again, she probably is not. Is that not what you mean, Kay?”
The priest shoved his hands into his sleeves. “Are you reading my mind, Varden?”
“The tone of your voice tells me of your doubts.” Varden glanced at him, eyes flashing.
Kay rubbed at his beardless cheeks. Varden always talked about healing and helping, but what could one do when someone was so firmly set against both? “I worry, Varden. I lose sleep at night. There's so much anger and rage and despair in her that I wonder sometimes if I'm going to go to her room some morning and find that she's hanged herself.”
“I do not think you need to worry about that, my friend,” said Varden. “She is too determined to survive at all costs, if only out of spite. But despair, anger, rage: all of those can combine, as we both know, to produce a life that is much, much worse than any death.”
“Like the Leather Woman.”
“Think of it.”
“I try not to. I was only fourteen at the time, but I still remember Da's hands. I can't imagine the amount of hate that must have gone into her spell in order to do that.”
“But, my friend, consider her now.”
Kay stopped in the middle of the field, almost frightened. “What are you saying?”
Varden folded his arms. The light in his eyes was troubled. “When I healed Miriam, I linked with her. I felt as she felt, knew what she knew, was raped along with her.”
Kay waited.
“Roxanne has taught me a great deal,” said the Elf. “My people know compassion. I have learned pity. I do not know if that is a good thing. But I saw something else when I healed Miriam: she is on some kind of path. She has something to do, and she cannot do it out of despair or anger.”
“What does she have to do?”
“I do not know, Kay. I can see only so far.”
Kay exploded. “Varden, what you're talking about is madness.”
Varden eyed him. “At present, my friend, I am not talking about anything. We must wait and see what Miriam does.”
Kay heard a shout and turned to see Charity running toward them, skirts flying, hair loose and streaming. She was laughing.
He sighed. A butterfly.
Chapter Nine
If Kay noticed that Miriam of a sudden grew quieter and more thoughtful, he did not say anything, and she was glad of that. She needed time to think slowly, to put together snatches of information, to acquire more.
Jaques Alban.
There were a thousand fates that could have befallen him. He could have become lost in the forest. He could have decided—and Miriam would have sympathized with him—that Saint Brigid was simply too much to handle and fled. He might even have been murdered by a villager who had reached the limits of his tolerance. But there was also that one other possibility: that the Elves had indeed intervened, that Jaques Alban was no more because he now rooted among the ferns and wild turnips of Malvern Forest, transformed by inhuman energies into a pig.
Where before her anger had been a hot cloud in her brain, it was now a focused lance of fire aimed directly at the heart of the man who had raped her, fueled by an almost mad hope that—
She hardly wanted to think it, much less utter it. It was too fragile. It might scatter like leaves before the wind, or disperse like smoke. Before she put it into words, she had to be absolutely certain.
Varden worried her. That first evening when, newly healed, she had awakened in bed, his words to her had been of reconciliation to her fate. Her only link with the Elves, her only chance at success, Varden would probably oppose her plan. But he had said that he had touched her mind, had linked with her, had himself lived through her violation. Surely that meant something. Surely that would be some leverage for her, a flaw in that seemingly impenetrable tranquility in which he wrapped himself.
He came tot he priest's house one morning, looking for her; and he found her in the stable tending Esau. The little pony had not seen much traveling in the last six weeks, but he seemed content to be made much of by the village children who took him for rides out to the forest and back.
“Blessings upon you this day,” said the Elf. “How is the good beast?”
Miriam looked up from brushing Esau's shaggy red coat. “Good morning,” she said. “He's well.” It occurred to her that she should be more polite to Varden, if only because he had healed her—not to mention her ulterior motives. She attempted a smile, but it came out crooked.
The Elf did not appear to notice. “Good.” He stood just inside the door of the stable, waiting.
“I'm . . . I'll be done here in a minute, Varden. Did you want something?”
“Will you walk with me today, my lady?”
My lady. The title made her eyes narrow. In the course of her life, she had been child, girl, wench, healer, bitch, occasionally mistress, but never my lady. “Where?”
“Into the forest. I would that you see something this day.”
“What's today?”
“Beltaine,” said the Elf. “Or so Roxanne would call it. My people call it something else.”
Esau snorted as though to tell her that she had not finished brushing him and he was feeling lopsided. “Roxanne mentioned that you two are lovers,” she said as she went back to work. “Is that true?”
Varden lifted an eyebrow at the change in subject. “It is, Miriam. That is well-known in the village.”
“But it's not well-known that she's a witch.”
“That is so.”
“What would happen if people found out?”
“Possibly some might fear,” he said. “I daresay, though, that if Saint Brigid can accustom herself to Elves—and to healers—she can also accept a witch.” His starlit eyes were on her. She wondered how far Alban had pushed the Elves.
“Well,” she said, “I don't think that will happen.”
“Nor do I.”
She finished up Esau with several broad strokes. “I'll come with you. Let me clean up.”
Varden bowed slightly and stood aside as she went into the house. In her room, she poured water from pitcher to basin and washed off the horsey smell of the stables. As she dried herself, she looked at the pole near the bed where the two gowns that Roxanne had made for her were hanging. The witch had finished them a week ago, but Miriam had not yet worn either. She was about to pass them by again, but after hesitating, she took one down and pulled it on.
It was the deep green of dark forest leaves, and Roxanne had woven a trim of meadow flowers into the hems. It fit her perfectly, even flattered her, and it reminded her of Charity's clothing. But Charity was bright: pure colors and vivid flowers. Miriam was subdued, the colors muted. Charity was the butterfly, Miriam the moth.
She wondered for a moment what bright, elven flame was luring her, and to what end.
Varden was waiting at the front door. He bowed and offered his arm, and she took it. Together they went through the town and out across the fields to the forest, but Miriam stopped at the edge of the wood, eyeing the shadows beneath the leaves.
“Are you afraid?” said Varden.
“The last time I entered this forest, I wound up wishing I hadn't.”
“Be at peace. You are safe here.”
“Where are we going?”
“I want to show you something.”
His courtesy was impeccable. She was suspicious. “Is this how Jaques Alban disappeared?”
Varden blinked. “Alban? Why do you speak of him?”
His words might have concealed nothing . . . or everything. Miriam shrugged. “You said Roxanne calls today Beltaine. What do you call it?”
“Arae a Circa,” he said. “Day of Renewal.”
“What renewal?”
“I will show you. Come. Please.”
After a moment, she nodded. The trees surrounded them, the path twisted and turned, and the ground was spotted with shadow and sunlight. The air was alive with spring, scented with the odor of leaf and blossom.
And Miriam sensed the bond between Varden and the forest. His forest, she might have said. Tree and flower, stone and earth, he was a part of them all, and they of him. His garb of gray and green, foreign as it was in the town, fit in among the mossy trunks and rippling streams, and if he touched a bush or a branch, it was with the air of greeting family and friends.
A sparrow hawk dropped out of the sky as they crossed a meadow, and it swooped across the grass and lit in a tree. “Blessings,” said Varden, and the bird nodded its head, then mounted into the sky with quick wing beats.
The path rose slowly, ascending a gentle slope that gradually turned into a small hill. At the top was a cluster of beech and poplar trees.
The morning was well along when they finished their climb. Miriam gasped at the sight that lay below and before her, for on one side of the hill, the trees fell away to give a clear view to the northeast. Malvern Forest stretched off for miles, an apparently endless sea of tossing, gleaming leaves, the young sun glinting and shimmering in the greenery and the fresh, morning breeze singing through the myriad branches.
Spring was at its peak, ripe with the newness of a reborn world. This was a time of flower and leaf, but not of fruit. The harvest was still only an expectation, still merely potential. The world reveled in its youth.
Varden stood beside Miriam. “We call the day Arae a Circa, that is, Day of Renewal. This is a time when new paths are chosen, new decision are made, changes in life are contemplated.” Miriam turned to him and stared: his already feminine face had softened even more. He looked like a woman.
The sunlight wove about him in a shimmering aura. He stooped to pick a flower, straightened, and proffered it to her. She took it, but she held it uncomfortably, as though it were a symbol of something she was not certain she wanted.
“You've brought me to holy ground,” she said.
“Holy?” said Varden. His face still held the glow of womanhood. “This place is cherished by my people. Perhaps that is the same thing.”
“Why are we here?”
“Renewal,” he said. “I come at this time of year to find it, and I thought that, maybe, you might also.”
She lifted her eyes, but this time she looked beyond the forest. Malvern did not go on forever. In the direction she faced, it gave way to the dairy lands of Adria. To the north was Hypprux, and Aloysius Cranby . . . and many memories. Farther was Maris, where she was born. Memories again.
And somewhere out there walked the man she wanted to kill, who was, in a sense, emblematic of her entire life of violation and pain.
“There's only one way I'm going to find renewal,” she said.
“How will you do that, Miriam? Are you skilled with a sword?”
“I can learn.”
“Can you not forget?”
She nearly snarled at him. Forget? Forget eighteen years? Forget her entire existence? “No.”
“Can you not leave it in the past, go on and not look back?”
“No!” The word bounced off the surrounding trees and fell into silence. “Somehow . . . I'm going to find him and kill him. There's no renewal for me until then.”
“My lady—”
“Dammit, Varden: he took my soul. I want it back.”
“Will killing him restore your soul?”
The aura shone about him, shading into hues of blue and silver. Miriam was struck by the thought of the powers he wielded, and she felt cold at the thought of what she contemplated asking. “You helped me before,” she said. “Will you help me now?”
“I am not sure that there is help for me to give. What kind of help could I give you?”
She nearly asked him, then and there, but she stifled the words. Instead she said: “You want me to give up? Should I settle down, Varden? Find a nice man to marry a nasty little woman with scarred legs and a heart to match? You touched my mind. Do you think I can? Do you?”
His voice was so soft as to be inaudible, but she saw his lips move. “I do not.”
She turned her back on the endlessly rolling forest, dropped the flower. “Then don't expect me to find renewal out here. For me, renewal comes at the tip of a sword.”
“Perhaps it will, Miriam.” The voice startled her: it did not sound at all like Varden. She looked. He was wrapped in thought, the aura still bright about him, his garments no longer green and gray, but shining blue and silver. She seemed to see beyond him then, to a grassy plain that lay bathed in starlight.
The aura faltered, shifted, faded. “I am sorry to inconvenience you,” Varden said simply.
“Thanks for trying to help,” she said. “You shouldn't, though. Not this way, at least.”
“It was something I had to do.”
“Why?”
“I told you,” he said as they descended the hill. “When I healed you, I felt what you feel. I know your pain. This is how my people deal with the year's accumulated sorrow. We renew. We restore ourselves.”
“So you've forgotten all about it now?”
“I have not. I have put it into perspective. Pain strikes, and it departs. Winter is followed by spring, which leads to summer. All things must pass, even the Elves.”
“Even my anger?”
“Even that, unless the world is changed.”
“It'll change.”
Varden was silent.
They continued. The sun climbed toward the zenith, and the day grew warm. When they came in sight of the town, Miriam, saw that buntings had been unfurled from the balconies and towers. Green, red, blue, they flapped and rippled in the breeze. “What's going on?”
“The first of May,” said Varden. “Roxanne honors her Goddess, the Elves renew and offer homage to the Lady, and human folk praise the holiness of the Virgin.” He smiled as he looked at the pennants and streamers. “And who is to say? All three might be the same.”
“You're very open-minded.”
“Is there another way?” he said gently.
His words irritated her. “Tell me,” she said. “Were you so damned accepting of everything when Jaques Alban was priest?”
“It was difficult at time.”
“Or impossible?”
“It was difficult, no more,” said Varden. “Nothing is impossible: there are merely differing degrees of probability. Alban was a trial, to be sure. He threatened Andrew, and he attempted to exhort a crucifix from David.”
