To Storm Heaven - Esther Friesner [0]
“DEATH!” OLD SE’AR MOANED, writhing in pain on her pallet. “Ay me, death is coming!” “Hush, you’re ill. Lie quietly,” the maiden soothed, kneeling on the hard floor of beaten earth. “You must save your strength if you want to get well, Mother Se’ar, you know that.” “Well…” The old woman repeated the word as if it were one of the local oberyin’s magical healing chants. She shook her head. “Do not lead me astray with false hopes, child. I am old. I know what I know; and I have always known when death would come.” A hollow chuckle escaped her fever-cracked lips.
Yes, she thought wearily. Death has been to me the best of friends. The best of husbands as well. Has not: death himself fed me, clothed me, provided for me all these years? I know when it will come, when the soul will leave the shell and find the glories of distant Evramur. Always before I have been right in my predictions, but always before it was another’s death I saw approaching. Aloud she said, “Now it is my turn at last.” “Don’t speak of that,” the maiden insisted. “Your time has not yet come.” “And how would you know?” A sudden burst of indignation flared up from the old woman’s fading spirit. She made a great effort, heaving herself up on one elbow, and stabbed an accusing finger at the girl beside her. “Don’t give yourself airs, just because I’ve taken you in. For your mother’s sake I’ve let you share my roof, my bread, the fear-offerings of our friends and neighbors, but you don’t share my gift! How dare you presume—” A sudden fit of coughing racked her bony body and she sank back down onto the sweatstained sheet. The reeking straw beneath the coarse cloth crunched and crackled.
The maiden got up swiftly, gracefully, and fetched a clay bowl full of fresh milk, the cream beaten back into it to fortify the sick woman. She set it to Se’ar’s lips and helped her drink. Only when the old woman had had enough and waved her off did she say, “I didn’t mean it that way, Mother Se’ar. I know I have no gift like yours.” She lowered her head as if in submission to the will of the gods, but beneath the.fringe of blue-green hair, her eyes blazed with resentment.
The old woman seemed not to have heard the girl’s words. Outside the hut the sun was setting, staining the sky pink and purple. Her life ebbed with the day’s dwindling light, but her thoughts were elsewhere.
I was never wrong, never. When I said that such a One wouM die, he was as good as dead. In time, the people knew this. Was I wrong to turn my gift to trade?
Ay, what choice did I have? I was widowed young, no sons to labor for me, my daughters all wed to shepherds even stupider than the usual run of such shell-skulls.
Well, I suppose it was the best they couM do, poor girls, with no dowry worth the name.
“A shepherd’s wife,” she mumbled. “Nothing lower could befall any woman.” Her eyes rolled aimlessly from side to side as her mind wandered.
The maiden at her side wrung out a cloth that had been soaking in a bowl of water nearby and laid it across the old woman’s brow. It soon turned warm and she gave it another cooling dip. “Be at peace, Mother Se’ar,” she soothed. “Let nothing trouble you.
You did what you had to do to live, as we all do. Don’t worry about it now.” Without warning the old woman siezed the maiden’s hands in an iron grip, pulling herself upright so that their eyes met. “You don’t understand!” she wailed. “I took what was holy and sold it as if it were milk or fleece or grain! Because I could foretell death, my neighbors thought that I could also forestall it.
They came to me with food and drink and cloth, begging me to spare the lives of their loved ones.” She paused, panting for breath as painful memories assailed her. Fools. Sorry fools. Those who were bound to die, died anyway, despite my silence. When that happened, I tom them it was because the gods willed it, and they had caused me to utter the doomed one~ name in dreams. How couM anyone prove otherwise?
Who wouM stand against the way of the blessed Balance? They did not understand, and I let them live on in ignorance