During my slow recovery, I remembered what Mother had said to Murzy. “She’ll get better or she won’t, and that’s all anyone can expect.” There was nothing unusual in her attitude or tone, neither more nor less interest about me than might have been there at any time previously. It was just then, every sense sharpened by the fever and the pain, that I understood the meaning of it. The meaning was, “Jinian will die or she won’t, and who cares?”
I think I cried over this. There’s a vague memory of Murzy holding me on her lap in the rocking chair—me, a big girl of nine or ten—as though I were an infant. Later it didn’t seem so important. It was just the way things were, as thunder is loud or lightning unselective. No point arguing with the thunder or threatening the lightning. Just seek cover and wait. That’s probably how many young ones survive childhood. Seek cover and wait.
The next thing I remember especially is when Murzy look me on an expedition. All the old dams were going out to pick herbs and fungi, bitty here, bitty there, to last us the cold season when nothing would be growing. Our teacher was off on a trip to visit his relatives up near Harbin. The boys were off into the hills, and when Murzy suggested to Mother I be let go with them, she said, “Oh, take her, Dam Murzy. Take her for heaven’s sake. Now if Garz and Bram would get themselves off, we’d have some peace around here.” Considering Mother was the one who usually disturbed whatever peace anyone else might have, I thought this was a bit overstated and started to say so. I hadn’t been disrupting anything and was in a mood for considerable self-justification toward this woman who had not even cared whether I died. Murzy, however, caught me by the back of my jerkin and bore me out of the room on a flood of “Thank you, ma’am’s”. Next thing I knew I was in the wagon with six dams and the horses clattering us off down the road to the forest.
It’s a bit difficult to tell just what happened next, because it was and it wasn’t much. We went on for a bit on the road, with the old ones singing the funny song about two lovers in a briar patch and all the odd rhymes to the last line, “And he scratched it!” Then we turned into the forest road and they fell quiet. Three of them got down from the wagon. We came to the forest bridge.
Forest bridge is a small high wooden one, curving up from one rocky mossy wall to another rocky mossy wall over the tinkly torrents of Stonybrook. There are ferns in the walls, and a cool, wet smell even on hot afternoons. So ...
One old woman, I think it was Tess Tinder-my-hand, whispered something into the air, then set foot on the bridge, stamping her foot, so, just a little. Bridge drummed, bowom. Second old woman whispered, set her foot, bom bom bowom. Third old woman set foot on the bridge, bom bom bowom wommmmm. And then quiet. Horses quiet. Wagon quiet. All the old women quiet, waiting. I crept down from the wagon, bunwit still, sneaky, crept out onto that bridge. Old women set their feet, bom bom bowom wommmm, and just when the echo was starting to come up from below I set my foot down quick, and the echo came wom wom bawom bom bom with a sound of laughter in it. I kept right still then, listening while the laughter went on. There was something living down there, under the bridge. Then the old women began singing about Larby Lanooly, and old Murzy shook up the horses to come over the bridge, in a rum-a-rum-a-rum of hooves, and we got back in the wagon and that was that.
When we came to the groves, though, old Murzy look me by the hand to each of the old women, putting my hand in each one’s old hand, saying, “Welcome our sister, our child, for today she begins upon the Way.” When I’d done it with all six of them, she took me aside, speaking to me for the first time without the baby-talk “tha’s, as she would to a grown-up person. “Jinian, girl,” she said, “you’ve the wize-art. In part, at least, and none know whether the whole will come until it comes. Now you must promise me something or the sisters and I’ll be gone come night and come not nigh you again.”
“Where will you go?” I remember I asked this, more curious about that than about what she might say next.
“Away,” she said flatly, and I believed her. “Now listen. What we tell you is secret. What we teach you is secret. What you learn from us is secret. You do not talk about it. Not to your mother, not to any in the Demesne. Not to your lover, come that time, or your husband or child, come that time as well. To one of us, yes, if you see the star-eye and hear the proper words. Otherwise, never.”
Well, I had no lover, that was sure. And I wasn’t inclined to tell anyone at the Demesne anything important, nor Mother anything at all, important or not. So I gave her my hand and promised, she putting the little star into it as I did so.
“Always keep this safe, Jinian. It is a sign to tell any Wize-ard anywhere that you are one of us, a sister in the Way, but most times you don’t go dangling it out where the world can see it and ask questions. Long time ago it was called the Eesty sign, and some still call it that. So, if one of us asks are you Wize-ard, or are you star-eye, or do you carry the
