the more potent for having been suppressed all this time. Gerda had grown a spine, not sitting down in the snow and weeping until someone found her and took pity on her, but marching over inhospitable territory with every intention of getting there by herself. The difficult part of all of this was over.
Of course, she was not going to count this over until the lovers were reunited and on their way home together. Many a Godmother had been tripped up by being too confident of the happy ending.
She rubbed her hands together to warm them. No matter how hard she tried, she was never quite able to keep herself completely warm here. She was about to get up when the glass clouded again.
She blinked to see her mirror-servant appear in the depths of it. He hardly ever used this mirror. He hated it, actually. Despite appearing as nothing but a disembodied head, he swore the mirror made shivers run down his spine.
“Jalmari,” she said, looking at the blue-shadowed apparition, closely. “Have you…done something to your hair?”
The head somehow removed its hood, though there were no visible hands. What was revealed was a bizarre — at least to Aleksia's eyes — mound of white hair with tight rolls over each ear and some sort of tail with a black ribbon tying it back.
“What in the name of all that is holy is that?” she asked, astonished. Jalmari stared back at her. “It is the highest of fashion in the Frankish Court.”
“It looks like something died on your head,” she replied, too astonished by the sight to be anything except blunt.
Jalmari sniffed. “Well, since you need me so seldom, I have been taking the opportunity to educate myself in the ways of some of the other Kingdoms. No one would take me seriously in Frankovia if I didn't wear my hair this way.”
“No one will take you seriously here if you do,” she muttered, amused. “So to what do I owe the favor of an appearance?”
Jalmari became intensely focused, so much so that his absurd hair vanished, leaving him with his normal curly black locks. “You wished to find information about your imitator, Godmother Aleksia,” he replied. “Well — this is what I have found — ”
Outside of being able, like Aleksia herself, to see and hear anything in a place with a mirror in it, Jalmari's one powerful ability was to see directly the magic that The Tradition gathered about its instruments and pawns. Something about this particular river valley and village was aswirl with that magic. So Aleksia was looking through every reflective surface she could find in order to —
“ — but Mother Annuka,” said a tearful voice, as the vague shapes in her mirror coalesced into two women of the Sammi, standing outside the doorway of one of their log houses. It must be harvest season by the look of things. The leaves of the trees above their heads were gold, and the sky was a crisp and chilly blue. One of the women was a stunningly beautiful girl, a maiden by the fact that she wore her hair uncovered and loose, with a studded headband of ribbon confining it, while the other wore a square felt hat with bands of card-woven decoration, or perhaps embroidery, around the hem. Both were dressed the same: in a woolen, high-necked dress with more fanciful bands decorating it at the neck, along the arms and at the hem, and aprons also decorated with embellished bands. The dresses were so short that, in many lands, they would be considered scandalous, which only made sense for someone who spent all Winter traipsing about in the snow. A dress that ended below the ankle would only end up soaked and sodden, heavy and ruined besides. In towns where roads were trodden down and paths swiftly cut, you could wear a long dress. Out here, where a “village” might consist of three huts, you adapted. So beneath the dresses, both wore woolen breeches, finished at the bottoms with yet more colorful bands, tucked into felt boots. In the deepest Winter, those boots might be sheepskin or reindeer hide rather than felt. The older woman's costume was black, the younger, a golden brown, and the style marked them as the Sammi, people who herded reindeer in the most northern regions of Karelia.
So…why was the mirror showing her these two? There had to be a reason. When she was seeking like this, the mirror never showed her anything without a good reason.
“ — Mother Annukka,” the girl repeated, only a step from tears, her face a virtual mask of fear, “this is scarcely the time for music!”
The older woman was holding a lovely wooden kantele, a harp used mostly by the Sammi, and she gave the girl a sharp glance. Her eyes were a very piercing blue, and Aleksia found herself wishing that she actually knew this woman. Her face had a look of strength, bravery and wisdom about it. “Have you ever seen any true sorcery, Kaari?”
The girl shook her head, and wiped her eyes. “No, only things like casting the runes, and the little household magics. You are the only Sorceress I know. Everything else I only know from tales.”
“The greater Magies that I know all work through music,” the one called Annukka said, tuning the kantele with practiced fingers, one ear cocked to the sound as she plucked the strings too softly for Aleksia to hear. “Shaman use the spirit-drums, Wise Women and Wonder-smiths the kantele. So be still and learn.”
Annukka's fingers moved deftly over the strings, and she began singing. Her voice was low, and very strong, though not loud; pleasant, but by no means the level of a great musician or a bard. Yet there was power, great power, behind it. Even through the mirror, Aleksia could feel it. “Oh, Road that leads out from my door,” she sang, “Who led my son to seek his fate. Now I command you to tell me where his wyrd has led e’er ’tis too late.”
Now the girl probably could not tell this — and surely thought the woman was daft for singing to a road — but the power behind the song took even Aleksia aback. This was a Wise Woman indeed! For those with the eyes to see it, power flowed around her, golden as honey, as if she was immersed in a swirling river of light.
The dust of the road stirred, the fallen leaves moved as if twirled by an errant breeze.
Leaves and dust began to fall into a pattern; Aleksia felt the hair on her neck prickle, and the girl stepped back a pace, her mouth forming into a little O of surprise. Then there was a kind of grinding noise, and a face gradually formed out of the dust, the bared earth, with the leaves settling into its hair and lips.
