When at last Jynna had a clear view into the shadows, she saw that it was an old woman, an Eandi by the look of her. The stranger knelt on the ground in a small open area. And arrayed around her in several curving rows, like a rainbow, were woven baskets of all shapes and sizes. The woman was whispering something to herself, but Jynna couldn't make out what it was. Moving a bit closer, she saw that the woman bled from a wound on the back of one hand, and that she held what looked to be dark mud in the palm of the other. Jynna still couldn't hear, so she took another step into the shadows, and doing so, she stepped on a dry twig, which snapped under her weight.
The woman looked up sharply, her dark eyes finding Jynna immediately.
"Who are you?" she demanded.
Jynna took a step back and started to run away.
"Wait!" the woman called. "I'm sorry! You startled me!"
Still the girl ran.
"My name is Licaldi!"
She nearly stumbled on a tussock of grass, but she righted herself, and kept running.
"I can show you magic! That's what I was doing!"
Jynna slowed, then stopped. Magic. She was Y'Qatt. So was everyone in Tivston. But that didn't mean that she didn't know about magic. But she'd been so sure that the woman was Eandi.
She turned and took a tentative step back toward the trees. As she did, the old woman emerged from the shadows. Jynna knew right away that she had been right: The woman was Eandi. So how could she do magic?
She carried a small basket in one hand-the hand that bled. The other hand hung at her side, but when she stepped into the sunlight something glinted there. A knife. Again Jynna backed away.
"It's all right," the woman said. She halted and held up the blade, a smile on her wizened face. "This is for me, not for you."
There was still a good distance between them, and Jynna felt reasonably certain that she could run faster than the old woman if she needed to. "You're Eandi," she said, watching the stranger closely.
"I'm Mettai," the woman told her. "Do you know what that means?" Of course. She'd heard her father and mother speak of the Mettai. They were Eandi sorcerers who used their blood to do magic. But her parents spoke of them the way they did of the horsemen of Naqbae or the warriors of the T'Saan clan, as if they lived leagues and leagues from Tivston. What was this woman doing here?
"Yes," Jynna answered. "I've heard of the Mettai. Is that why you're bleeding?"
The woman glanced at her hand and after a moment licked away a streak of blood. "Yes, it is. Blood magic." She held up the knife again.
"That's why I need this. A Mettai can't conjure without her blade." "What kind of magic are you doing?"
The woman beckoned to her. "Come here and I'll show you." She smiled again. "I won't hurt you."
Jynna walked back toward where the stranger was waiting for her, but she stopped several paces away, well out of reach of the old woman's blade.
"Good girl," the woman said. "Now watch this."
She dropped to her knees with an ease that seemed to belie her aged appearance and carefully placed the basket on the grass just in front of her. Then she laid the blade on the cut she'd already made on the back of her hand and pulled it slowly across the wound, wincing slightly as she did. Blood began to flow from the cut again, but before it could run away over her skin, the woman caught it on the flat edge of her knife. She carefully switched the blade to her wounded hand, then stooped, ripped away a clod of grass, and pulled out a handful of earth from the hole it left. Mixing the blood from her knife with the earth in her hand, she said, "Blood to earth, life to power, power to thought, flowers to basket."
After a moment, the bloody mixture in her hand began to swirl, as if stirred by some invisible hand. Once, twice, three times it turned in her hand. As it began to go around a fourth time, the old woman, with a light flick of her wrist, cast the mixture at the basket. But rather than merely splattering the lovely weaving, the dark mud appeared to turn to tiny flower petals, or shards of colored glass, or droplets of water shining with the colors of the rainbow.
And suddenly the basket, which had been empty an instant before, was overflowing with blooms. Aster and columbine, larkspur and lupine, snapdragon and pennyroyal, and others Jynna didn't know. Her fear of the woman forgotten, the girl ran forward and knelt opposite her. She started to reach out to touch the petals, but stopped herself.
"Can I touch them?" she asked.
"Of course, my dear. They're quite harmless."
She touched the lupine and the snapdragon. They felt real. Leaning forward, she inhaled, the scents of the blooms filling her lungs. She gently rubbed the leaves of the pennyroyal and then sniffed her fingers. They smelled cool and fresh, like the mint she often found growing beside the stream in her village.
"They're beautiful," she whispered.
"They're yours, if you'd like them," the woman said. "The basket, too."
"Did you make the basket?"
"Yes, I did."
"With magic?"
The woman smiled and shook her head. "No, I wove all my baskets by hand."
"But you were doing magic on them before."
The woman's smile changed, the way adults' smiles did when they were annoyed but didn't want to show it. "What do you mean?" she asked.
"Before, in the trees, before you saw me. You had your baskets out and your hand was bleeding, and you were speaking to yourself, like you did just now when you made the flowers."
"You saw that, did you?"
Jynna nodded. She wanted to get to her feet again and put some distance between herself and the stranger, but she didn't know how to do it without seeming rude.
The woman looked at her bleeding hand and took a breath. After a moment she licked the blood away again, as she had in among the trees. She lifted her gaze, her eyes meeting Jynna's.
"The truth is," she said, "I weave my baskets entirely by hand, and usually I dye them by hand as well. But I've been wandering a long time, making new baskets as I go, and I don't have all my dyes with me. So occasionally, I have to color my baskets using magic. That way I can get gold enough to continue my travels. Do you understand?"
Jynna nodded.
"I usually like to keep this a secret," the woman went on. "We Met- tai aren't well liked by the other Eandi. They don't like our magic. But you being Qirsi and all, I didn't think you'd mind too much."
"Actually, we're Y'Qatt."
"Y'Qatt! Really!" the woman said, as if she'd never met one of Jynna's people before. "So then you don't use magic."
"Not at all."
The woman frowned. "Oh, my," she said, looking back toward the trees. "Do you think that means that no one in your village-what village is this, my dear?"
"Tivston."
"Tivston," she repeated. "Do you think this means that no one in Tivston will want to buy my baskets?"
Jynna shrugged. "I don't know. People buy things from Qirsi peddlers when they come through. Not that they come through that often, but when they do."
The woman turned slightly toward the trees and smiled, as if they were sharing a secret. "Would you like to see my baskets?"
"All right," Jynna said, shrugging again.
She followed the stranger back into the shade. The air felt cooler here, and damp.
"What's your name?" the woman asked.
"Jynna."
"That's very pretty. I'm Licaldi."
"I know. You said that before."
"Did I? Oh, yes, I suppose I did."
"Licaldi is a pretty name, too," Jynna said, and not only because she thought it polite to do so.
"Thank you, my dear."
They pushed through the low branches of the trees until they reached the small open area where her baskets were still spread in a small arc.
Jynna had never thought much about baskets. They were what she used to carry dirty clothes to the stream, or where her mother placed a loaf of bread when others joined their family for the evening meal. So she really didn't know much about baskets or weaving. But as far as she could tell, these were the most beautiful baskets she'd ever seen. They had been woven perfectly, and even in the shade of the trees, their colors seemed to glow, as if lit by the sun. Was that the magic Licaldi had mentioned?