Leba began to wail.
Like an animal she howled, and two women put their arms around her and helped her to a bed. Marwen began to understand.
The old woman was leaning over Sneda with slow sore movements, smiling her blind smile and muttering and chuckling sweetly.
“The Taker?” Marwen said, her voice high and incredulous.
“Yes,” Grondil whispered, and there was fear and warning in the stillness of her voice. Perhaps she knew, before even Marwen knew, what would happen next, too quickly for her to intervene.
Marwen picked up the cold blood-smeared hand, and just as the Taker bent to touch Sneda’s foot, Marwen placed the severed member into the hands of the old woman. She was thinking of the eyes watching her use her magic to do glorious things that would earn her honor and love. She did not think of anything else. She placed her hands gently on the old woman’s fragile shoulders, turned her around and led her out of the cottage.
The Taker mumbled and chortled like a village aunty, smiling and nodding, and all the while she cradled the hand in hers, as though it had an arm and a person attached. Outside, Marwen let go of her shoulders and watched as the Taker shuffled around to the other side of the house and vanished.
Marwen returned to Sneda’s side and, putting aside Grondil’s hand, murmured the only spell of healing she had ever heard—the simple words Grondil had said over her scraped knees and stomachaches.
At once Sneda’s skin became pink and her breathing more regular.
“She is alive. The girl has saved her.” The words spread like wind, and in a moment the eyes were softer, and the coldness was gone. Sneda opened her eyes and mumbled incoherently. Amid sighs of relief, the eyes became decidedly warm.
But not Grondil’s.
In her eyes were fear and pain, a breathless unbelieving pain that she kept concealed from the people behind closed lips and half-closed eyes.
Grondil said to the women, “She will need broth, warm and wholesome. I will return to change the dressings.” She turned and left, Marwen following.
She would be very angry, Marwen knew. Grondil may even punish her. But before Marwen left, she had met Maug’s eyes, and he had looked away in shame. Whatever her punishment, it would be worth it.
When they arrived home, Grondil, in quiet calm movements, began gathering articles of food to the center of the table: sud-bread, dried fruit and waterphan.
Marwen stared. Her entire body began to prickle and sweat in premonition.
“What are you doing? Are we going somewhere?” Marwen asked. Grondil stopped and looked down, then resumed her task.
“I am not leaving, Marwen. You are. You must.”
The beating of her heart filled Marwen’s head. She could scarcely hear Grondil over the sound of it.
“I’m sorry,” Marwen said. She couldn’t hear herself speak but she could tell Grondil had heard. “I’m sorry! What did I do? It was my fault that it happened, Grondil—I had to do something. I saved her life, didn’t I?”
Grondil began gathering twine and utensils and blankets. “You saved her life, Marwen, yes. But it was all too late.
“Sneda will be an imbecile now, forever a burden to Leba, forever unable to care for herself. When the village sisters see what you have done, they will drive you away like an animal.”
Marwen’s shoulders shook. She forced her voice to calmness. “But you could stop them, Grondil. Please. Where will I go? Who will apprentice a soulless one? I don’t want to leave.” Marwen’s voice got quieter with every word until it was no more than a desperate whisper.
Grondil did not answer. With strong articulate fingers, she rolled the food into a blanket and took twine to bind it.
“I won’t go!” Marwen cried angrily. “You can’t make me!”
Grondil jerked the rope into a knot.
“Mama!”
Grondil stopped. She did not look at Marwen but down at her hands. Marwen saw they were trembling and stared at them until Grondil stuffed them in her apron pocket where she fingered something nervously.
“It is not only because of Sneda, child,” she said quietly. “You have robbed the Taker. She will be back. A life she was sent for, a life she will have, and now it will not be Sneda’s life but another she seeks. The Taker is old, caring not for youth, and blind, caring not for beauty. You should have been the Taker’s baby, but I hid you from her. Now you have touched her, and she will know where to find you. But she can be slow. You will go. Soon. Now.”
Grondil walked past her into the yard. A herd of wingwands grazed on the near slope and Grondil pointed.
“Of my three wingwands, I give you one. Choose your mount and return to me for your pack.” The sun shone in her eyes clear as water. “I must give you something else before you leave.”
“Who will apprentice me?” Marwen asked again weakly, but Grondil had already turned away.
She walked numbly toward the wingwand herd straggled on the slope, some eating, some sleeping, some uncurling their tongues into the shallow Stumble Brook. Grondil’s house was on the outer yarding of the village, and so Marwen avoided passing all but Tamal Deathsayer’s house. She stopped, remembering the day Grondil had cured his child’s fever and how he had smiled at her that day. But not since. No one noticed her, for they were busy rethatching the roof, and the straw dust billowed like yellow smoke. She touched the house as she passed, the mud bricks warm as flesh. The wind on her face chilled her teeth, sucked at the hem of her shift.
“It is time I left,” Marwen said aloud, so that her ears might agree with her mouth. “My magic has surpassed that of Grondil’s. I have tricked the Taker. I will not cast spells on knives and kitchen gardens. I have heard Grondil sing of the wizard in her prayers, and if he is a fable, I will know of it before the Taker leads me to her land. Perhaps, for me, the wizard will have a seeing and give me a tapestry....”
Thus Marwen consoled herself until she was among the herd. The wingwands had never seemed so large before. They lifted their wings in the blowing wind and snorted against the grass. Three of them turned and walked toward Marwen. She stroked the wing of Sheerpaz, tickled the rough cere at the base of Broomstraw’s antenna and ducked under Nightshade’s enormous girth. She checked their shelljoints for parasites with an experienced eye.
The wingwands had become Marwen’s friends when, as a child, she had played alone in the fields and hills. The creatures did not know that she was a soulless one, that she had no tapestry. At one time, when she had become aware of her magic and that it gave her power the other children did not have, she had used it to try and win the love of her peers. Then, instead of just fearing her, they also despised her. With time she had learned to embrace her loneliness and treasure it. Even so, there had always been Grondil and the wingwands.
It was a great thing to inherit a wingwand. Few families in the village owned one, and only the richest had two or three. In Marmawell their beauty was more prized than their usefulness. Only Trader Buflle ever used his beast to travel great distances, and it showed. The muscles at Peggypin’s wingbase were thick and bulbous, and her left eye ran with green fluid from an infection, a bit of dirt that had cut into her eye when in flight. On the slope newborn Butterbug looked like a yellow sundewsie with its petals fluttering in the wind; his mother, Rue-the-day, catching the pink rays of the Morningmonth sun like a stempellow in bloom, moved away from Marwen without alarm, calling her baby after her.
Plumbumble was Grondil’s favorite and Rainbow, Cudgham’s. Of Grondil’s three, that left Opalwing. She had a long slender body, cream-colored, but her wings were her great beauty. Almost transparent, they fanned out like iridescent veils, shattering light into soft prism shards. Marwen had rarely ridden her, for she was young and somewhat skittish, but Grondil had told her long ago that one day Opalwing would be her own, that she had chosen her especially for Marwen, had sent Buffle Spicetrader on a long search for her. Marwen spoke softly in the beast’s own language, and Opalwing sidled away. Again Marwen spoke to her, let the beast taste her skin, stroked her antennae until she was calm.