A candlemark later there was more warm tea to drink and some dried meat and slightly stale bread to share out. Dionne mentioned that they’d be out of the snow the next day and would be close to a town, High Meadow. Shay had never been so far from home, but she said, “Sometimes people come from there to buy our sheep.”
“Do you know how to herd sheep?” Rhiannon asked.
“No.” She didn’t want to tell them about the kids throwing rocks at her.
Dionne frowned. “What did you do?”
“I helped my mom pick the plants she used and helped her dry them.”
Dionne stood up and rummaged in her packs, which had been hung on a nearby tree. She drew out three bags of dried plants and handed one to Shay. “Do you know what this is?”
She opened the bag and smelled it. Then she touched the dried plants. “Sweet rose.”
“What did your mom use sweet rose for?”
“She made tea when people had headaches and used it in one of the salves that makes cuts stop hurting.”
Dionne nodded and handed her the second bag. “Don’t touch this one with your bare hands.”
“Nettle. She made soup with it, but she never let me touch it until it cooked. She also mixed it with other plants to make things for swelling.”
After Shay identified the third bag as fleawort, Dionne sat back on her haunches and looked at Rhiannon instead of at Shay. “It might work.”
Rhiannon was still for a moment, and then she looked at Shay and smiled. “Let’s try it.”
Shay was so busy thinking about her mom and plants, she didn’t think about what they meant for a long time. Besides, they hadn’t been talking to her. She would be patient.
They stopped in High Meadow and stayed at an inn, all three of them sharing one room. Rhiannon sang for the people in the inn while Shay and Dionne sat on a nearby bench and ate a thin stew that tasted like heaven even if it was only root vegetables and spices and water.
When she fell asleep that night, Shay told herself not to want anything, that what Dionne and Rhiannon had done so far was enough. Surely they would leave her here, and she could find something to do or someone to take her in. She should find a way to thank them in the morning.
After breakfast and some bargaining with the innkeeper (a woman here, fat and round and a little grumpy) Shay helped them gather up the tack and their bags from the room and stood out of the way while they got the horses ready.
The stable boy brought around a sturdy little red pony with a saddle and bridle already on it, and Dionne and Rhiannon grinned widely when he helped Shay up onto it. She had never been so surprised by anything good in her life. “His name is Apple,” the boy said.
“Is that because he’s red?” Shay asked.
The boy laughed. “He’s not that red, but he loves apples, and he’ll come all the way across the pasture for a little bit of one. Sometimes it’s the only way to catch him.”
Shay was afraid to ask if the pony was hers, but they rode away from town with Shay on its back and a long lead line between her and Rhiannon to keep them together. Maybe the women were going to let her stay with them after all.
The roads were clear now, and the going was still cold but dry. Apple’s hooves made a pleasant sound on the frozen trail, and Shay focused on that and talked to him, trying to ignore the way her legs and butt hurt from riding.
By the time they had been riding three more days, her legs didn’t hurt anymore, and she’d fallen in love with the pony and wanted her life to stay like this forever. She couldn’t bring herself to ask, so she did everything she could to help and was very careful not to do anything wrong.
They started going through bigger towns with places that made metal and fields of horses instead of sheep and guildhalls for people who built houses.
The roads became busier. And then they came up to the biggest place Shay had ever seen, one with wide cobbled streets and walls.
Haven.
It felt like seeing a story come alive. She gaped when she saw two Heralds ride out on Companions, and she understood for the first time what her mother had meant when she said Companions were nothing like horses. They were not; they were so beautiful she thought she might die of happiness for just seeing them.
As they wound farther into the city, Shay felt the good feelings shrinking inside her. A sadness filled her, completely against her will. She had nothing to offer here. If she couldn’t wash dishes in Little’s Town, what could she possibly do in Haven?
She patted Apple on the side of his neck, focusing on the mixed brown and white and red of his coat that looked simply reddish-brown from a distance. Focusing didn’t help, because she couldn’t possibly keep Apple. No one had ever said he was hers, and it made sense that they procured the pony so she didn’t tire out the other horses.
They pulled up outside a great big building that looked like the school from Little’s Town only bigger and grander and grown up. Students in gray and pale green streamed in and out of the building, everyone moving fast and looking smart and neat. Rhiannon still used a long lead attached to Apple’s bridle, and she came up and held Apple by the head, whispering sweet nothings to him. Dionne came around to help Shay dismount. She managed to get off without any more than the steady form of Dionne nearby, staying slow and careful in her movements so she wouldn’t embarrass the women by falling here, or herself by needing help with simple things.
Shay noticed that she was wearing the same clothes she’d started out in, and while they’d been washed once, that had been two days ago. Her pants had tears in the knees where she’d fallen. Her shirt had been mended in three places and smelled like horse and cold and the road, not right for Haven at all.
“This is the Healer’s Collegium.” Dionne took Shay’s chin in one hand and guided Shay’s face so that she looked Dionne in the eyes. “Are you all right?” she asked. “You look scared. There’s nothing to be afraid of here.”
Shay nodded, not willing to try to talk in case it made her lose control and loosed the tears she felt in the corners of her eye.
“We want you to come with us to meet someone.”
“Okay.” Her own voice sounded small, so she straightened her back and said it again. “I will.”
Dionne took Shay’s hand, and they followed Rhiannon down a twisty cobbled path worn smooth by many feet. They turned onto a thinner path and went through a wooden gate into a garden. Stone benches sat in each corner of a lovely little garden full of raised beds. Only a few were full now, since it was winter even in Haven. The bare beds lay fallow and ready for the spring, neatly raked and cleaned out. Shay’s mom had kept a few pots to grow herbs she couldn’t gather, but this was richness beyond imagining. Shay let go of Dionne’s hand and started walking through the beds that still had plants, smelling each one. Half were familiar.
When she turned around, Dionne had gone. Rhiannon stood by one the benches, looking like she was waiting for something or someone. Shay went and sat by her, and Rhiannon put a hand on her shoulder. Then she started singing one of the tunes she’d sung for Shay almost every night, the lullaby her mother had known. It calmed Shay and reminded her to stop her racing thoughts and fears and take things slowly. They waited a long time, but the longer they waited, the more Rhiannon’s song calmed her and chased away her worries about what people here would think of her. So she felt easy when Dionne brought out an older woman with a thin, sharp face and bright eyes. “This is the herb mistress for Healers. She likes to be called Janelle.”
Shay held her hand out. “I’m Shay.”
The woman’s handshake was warm, and neither soft nor too hard. “Dionne told me quite a lot about you. I’m sorry about your mother.”
“Me too.” The easiest shortest response she could make.
“Can you tell me what the plants out here are?”
Shay licked her lips, suddenly afraid she’d forget all the names. But she took is slow and easy, and managed to remember the names and how her mother used and cared for all of the plants she had seen before.
Janelle nodded at Dionne, then looked at Shay. “Would you like to stay and help me the rest of the winter?” She paused. “I could use a hand soon, getting the spring plants started.”
Shay didn’t react. Slow and steady.