“Sent me ... what?”
“Our servants. Our friends. Murzemire Hornloss, the Seer. Cat Candleshy, Demon. Sarah Shadowsox, Sorceress. Bets Battereye, Tragamor. Margaret Foxmitten, glorious Queen, Tess Tinder-my-hand, Midwife. She who delivered you”
“The old dams.” I was struck dumb.
“Yes, Jinian Footseer. The old dams.” Was there, could there be amusement in that voice? “The Wize-ards.”
I took up the cup, then set it down, noting that it was almost empty, feeling the wet on my trousers where I had spilled it. “Then Mendost ... Mendost knew. Garz, he knew? They all knew I was not of Stoneflight Demesne?”
“Of course they knew. How could they not know? Was Eller of Stoneflight Demesne a woman who concealed her feelings? Was she secretive, quiet, sly?”
I remembered Mother’s rages, her loud furies, during which she would scream anything that entered her head. Those at Stoneflight had kept it from me, yes. They had not wanted me to know. But Garz and Mendost had known.
The Dervish went on, “We bid her be silent. We paid her well. But if she would not honor one agreement with us, why would she honor the other? In this case we did not judge well whom we chose. The time closed about me, and there had been recent ... distractions.”
Something in me hurt. “When you do that, how do you know, how can you say who is mother and who is not? Whose child anyone is? How do you know!”
“Intent,” she said. One word. It tolled like a bell. “Intent, Jinian Footseer. It was my intent to beget and rear a child, and that made the child mine. Before ever you were conceived, there was that intent. And so, no matter how it is done, the intent is all that matters. And if there is not that intent, until that intent, nothing else matters, for the child, however begat or born, belongs to no-one and has no parent.”
I thought back to childhood. Humiliation and pain. Loneliness assuaged with wandering in forest places. Beast and bird and tree and flower. The Old South Road City. Grompozzle. Misquick. Murzy. The old dams. Things and bits, places and times. Had it been ... had it been dreadful? Or merely uncomfortable from time to time? Would I have changed it? Become someone else? Not myself as I had learned to be?
“It’s all right,” I said at last, amazed to find that it was perfectly true. “I would not be other than I am.”
“Even without known Talent?” The Dervish had turned away from me to peer out the window where the lily flowers swung in the sunlight. They would have chimed had they been bells. Almost one could hear them.
“Even ... even without Talent can I still be Wize-ard?”
“Most certainly. Many without other Talent are.”
I took a deep breath. On the turf the lily bells swung, up and down, tossing their heads. They had no Talent, either. They merely were. So.
“I will be content,” I said. “I will be content.”
“And cease weeping?”
I wondered how she knew, not realizing my face bore tracks and tracks of it, dirt and tears mixed. “I will cease weeping, Dervish.”
“And get on with your work. Now that you know the nature of the illness here, there is much healing to be done.”
“Is this task truly mine?” I looked out upon the road I could see, realizing how much of it was hidden. It was a very great task. A great burden.
“Yours and none other. Perhaps this is what was foreseen by my kinswoman. Perhaps some other purpose is served here, but you feel, as do we, it is a purpose for good. Yes. It is your task. In that, the Oracle spoke true. If you meet the Oracle again, Jinian Footseer, remember that it always speaks the truth, but never all the truth, and that its speaking comes most often to pain, and malice, and death for someone. Remember that.”
There was pain in the Dervish’s voice. I wondered if she would touch me. I thought not. Could she touch anyone without bringing that pain? She trembled once more, saying, “In future time, I will come to you again. In future time, you will come to me.”
She did not touch me. I think she would have said something more but could not. Then she spun, spun, and spun away, whirling down the road to the north, the open road, the road I had built again. There were so many things I should have asked Bartelmy of the Ban. Things, perhaps, a girl might ask her mother. And I had asked nothing. Nothing.
There was a pool nearby. I wanted to see who I was now and went there to be astonished at this ashy, red-eyed creature with the tangled, dirty hair. I stared at it for a long time. It was not I, not Jinian Footseer. So, I set about turning it into myself. There was soaproot in the marsh. There were warm springs there as well. There were sandy-bottomed pools, and I had a comb in my kit. Clothes dried in the sun. Boots dried by the fire. Steam and smell of wet hair. All in a dream that said, “Whatever you are, you are Jinian. So be her.”
And at last another look in the pool to see whether she had returned. And she had, clean and neatly combed, hair braided into coils as Murzy had braided it when I was a child. I was not quite comfortable with the eyes. They were still very red and did not look accustomed to themselves, not yet.
Very well, Jinian, I told myself at last. You are what you are, now get on with it. On my hearth was the design I had drawn, the one the forest had showed
