To Storm Heaven - Esther Friesner [38]
“Know her?” Misik echoed. “Why, we grew up together! All that time, and who would’ve thought it?
A saint for our playmate!” “A saint you pushed in the brook,” V’kal reminded him.
Misik glowered at him. “And a saint you used to call more thick witted than a shepherd!” “Friends, that doesn’t matter now.” Riker stepped in to patch things up before it all degenerated into pointless bickering. “I’m sure that she forgot about it long ago.” “So she would.” Misik nodded vigorously. “She could scarcely ascend to Evramur with a load of resentment in her heart, and over trifles. Patience and forgiveness, that’s the best road to bliss, according to the good teachings.” “Kindness, too,” V’kal put in. “No one kinder than Ma’adrys, while she lived among us. Always helping Mother Se’ar, always there to help nurse anyone ailing, always with her eyes high. She should have been made an oberyin. Pardon me for saying so, but Bilik did wrong to prevent her, and there’s not a soul in Kare’al but knows why he really did it.” “Bilik?” Troi pretended ignorance to draw him out.
“Our oberyin. He’s got a house just a little ways down the road from here.” “He was in love with her, that’s what,” Misik declared. “He knew that if he let her become an oberyin, she’d have to go off for the training. Then, when she was done, the Na’amOberyin would send her to care for some other village, who knows where?” “Yeh, they’d never let two trained oberyin live in a village this small,” V’kal said. “So he said she wasn’t good enough for the training, hoping that she’d stay put and marry him instead. I guess he knows better now! The gods will find their own.” “May we enter the shrine?” Troi asked.
“Please. Only not all at once.” V’kal caught Riker’s warning look and grinned. “Only because it’s so small and cramped inside, that’s why. You go on and look.
Misik and me, we’ll wait out here.” The interior of Ma’adrys’s abandoned home was even less prepossessing than the outside. There were no windows and no chimneyed fireplace. A ring of stones in the middle of the floor contained a shallow layer of ashes. The smoke from any fire kindled in that primitive hearth could only escape through the sootcaked hole in the roof. The bed was nothing more than a heap of straw stuffed into some coarse sacking.
A wooden chest against one wall displayed an arrangement of crude clay figures surrounding what looked like a small, round hand mirror.
Mr. Data drew his fingers over the mirror’s surface, then over the top of the chest. He studied the dust smearing his fingertips with close interest and began to pick up and examine the items on the chest one by one.
“Nothing’s been touched since she was taken,” V’kal piped up from the doorway. “That’s why it’s all so dirty in there. You mustn’t think she kept it so.
Always neat, she was. My mother said that it was a miracle she knew enough to keep a tidy house, growing up so wild as she—” A loud slap rang out and V’kal’s face disappeared from the doorway. “Don’t you dare go spreading such lies about me, you worthless creature!” The entrance to Ma’adrys’s hut filled with the stocky figure of a formidable older woman. “I never said one thing against holy Ma’adrys, so don’t you try saying ! did!
Wasn’t I always first to give her something decent to wear? Didn’t I feed her at our very table more times than anyone?” She stopped ranting long enough to peep into the hut and give the startled Away Team an ingratiating smile. “Your pardon, honored visitors. I was just looking for this ungrateful child of mine and Sekol told me he’d come up here to show you the blessed house where she once lived among us. I was so pleased to hear that he was turning his mind to holy things, I couldn’t keep from following after to hear him