10 #3
Priestess Morgana, with the woods in sight beyond the tilled fields, walked faster and faster on her long legs.
Braithe began to fall behind, and Idhri, though he could have kept pace with the priestess, slowed to stay beside Braithe.
She glanced up at him and with a little breathless laugh said, “You don’t have to. ”
“You shouldn’t walk by yourself. I don’t think it’s safe.”
“Do you not?” Sometimes she sounded so much like the priestess she startled him.
“I don’t.”
“Well. You could be right. Who knows what these people think of us?”
“I like working in Emma’s garden, helping her with the hoeing and watering, but this…” He waved a hand at the fields and the workers. “There is so much to do, and it’s going to be hot in an hour.”
Braithe tilted her head to gaze up at him. They had fallen even farther behind the priestess. “What do you think of all this?” Braithe asked. “Of course you never meant to come, but now you’ve seen the White City, the fae council, and so many things that are strange.”
“I do think it’s strange,” he said. “But it’s also sort of—sort of familiar.”
“Familiar! Really?”
“I had this feeling, when we first went into the guesthouse, that I knew where everything was. Then, in the council chamber—it was as if I had been stared at like that before. Emma never does that. Master Hugh doesn’t, either, nor do any of the people who come out from Camulod to hire the boat or to buy eggs from Emma. ”
“You like your life with them, I think,” Braithe said. Her eyes were very blue in the morning sun.
“I do,” he replied. “But I don’t think they’ll like finding out I’m a half-blood.”
“Surely they will not care!” Braithe declared. “Why should they?”
“Everyone here seems to hate it.”
“Yes, but that’s a—what’s the word—that’s a prejudice. They want everyone to be like themselves. They resent—or fear—anyone who is different.”
“No wonder they’re bored,” Idhri said.
“That is very wise, Idhri,” she said, and added,
The one who has everything
Possesses nothing.
He puzzled over that for a while, then gave up. “What is that? I don’t know what it means.”
“It’s one of the stanzas recited in the Temple. Its meaning will come clear to you in time.”
He wasn’t sure that was true, but it gave him something new to think about as he walked.
Absorbed in their conversation, he didn’t notice when they left the cultivated fields behind and wandered down an overgrown path through a meadow of grass and some yellow flower.
“Yarrow,” Braithe said, pointing. “And over there is a patch of juniper. Those berries are almost ready to be harvested. I wonder if anyone comes out to forage? Juniper berries are good for stomach upsets.”
Idhri looked ahead and abruptly stopped. “Braithe. What’s the priestess doing?”
Braithe, pausing beside him, followed his gaze.
Not far ahead, Morgana stood beneath a holm oak.
A short-billed sparrow perched on one of her shoulders.
A fox sat at her feet, gazing up at her, black tongue lolling.
Her hand was extended, the palm turned up, and Idhri narrowed his eyes to see what she held.
The long tail of a wood mouse hung, gray and smooth, from her hand.
Its small, pointed snout was lifted so she could gaze into its eyes.
They were two disparate, mismatched creatures, the tall, lean priestess and the tiny gray animal, frozen in some sort of mystical communication Idhri couldn’t guess at. His scalp prickled with wonder.
He glanced down at Braithe, but Braithe was gazing at the priestess, her lips a little apart, her eyes shining. When Idhri moved a foot, she put her hand on his arm. “Wait, Idhri,” she whispered. “Let us stay right here for now. This is what she came for.”
“Oh.” Idhri had thought the whole outing was about fresh air, a nice walk, a change of atmosphere.
As he looked more closely at Priestess Morgana and the creatures around her, he saw that the priestess’s face was alight with joy.
She wasn’t smiling—she rarely did, in truth—but she looked blissful.
He had not seen her features so relaxed, her shoulders easy, her whole attitude one of peace.
He murmured, “Isn’t she afraid that mouse will bite? ”
“No.” Braithe spoke confidently. “It’s her way of communing with the Lady, our patroness. She will have learned something when she’s done.”
“The animals are speaking to her?”
“In a way, yes.”
Idhri asked, a little fearfully, “Do you do that, too?”
Braithe stifled a laugh with her hand. “Oh, no, not me. I’m just a handmaid.”
Idhri made no comment, but he had heard the councillor warn Braithe not to use her magic in the council chamber. She had denied having it, but Emerlyn had dismissed that quite casually, as if it were obvious Braithe possessed her own magic. He wondered if Braithe was even aware of it.
And then there was Adamo, a half-blood, who evidently had at least enough magic to speak a cantrip. Did that mean that he, Idhri, might have some magic?
There was so much he didn’t understand, so many confusing ideas swirling around him. They made him feel slow and stupid, though he knew he wasn’t. If he could just draw back the black curtain hiding half his mind, perhaps he could make sense of it all. Maybe remembering would set him free.