Zypheria's Call (A Tanyth Fairport Adventure) (42 page)

She examined the trap and realized that it had been sprung and the bait gone. Some kind of gray-brown object was locked under the killing bail. She held it up and thought it should be familiar but she couldn’t quite place it. She looked up at Cook with a frown as he lowered the hatch again. “What is this?”

“Why, mum, I thought you knew what hard tack looked like,” he said with a grin.

She examined it again and realized it was the corner of a hard tack biscuit.

“Your lil friend must have dropped a wafer on the trap, sprung it, and then stolen the bait,” Cook said, pointing at the trigger. “See? No bacon grease. It’s licked clean.”

Tanyth felt her heart rate returning to something like normal.

Cook handed the trap to Mr. Groves who turned it over in his hands.

“I’m sorry, mum,” Cook said. He placed a hand on her shoulder and looked into her eyes, something like awe and contrition painting his face. “You really can see this in your dreams, can’t you.”

Tanyth nodded and felt a shiver run down her back at the thought of being in the dream when the trap struck.

Groves handed the trap back. “Thank you, Cook. Please don’t do this again.”

He took the trap from him. “I won’t, sir.” He grinned at it and shrugged. “She’s too smart to fall for it now, anyway.”

Tanyth chuckled and followed Mr. Groves back to the captain’s cabin.

“Are you all right, mum?” the captain asked with a glance at his son.

“Yeah, thank you, Captain. I just had to talk to Cook about a bit of bacon.”

The two men shared a glance that Tanyth pretended not to notice.

Tanyth and Rebecca finished sorting through the last of her notes on the twelfth day of the voyage. The final item was a notation in Mother Dogwood’s hand dated some twenty years before. After many seasons at the bottom of her pack, even being transferred from pack to pack as Tanyth wore them out over time, the folded parchment was brittle, but still legible.

“My dear Tanyth.

“Your warmth, good humor, and determination should hold you in good stead. It’s a long and winding road you have before you. There is so much more to the world than I can teach you now. It falls to you to discover where your path lies and to determine whether or not you have the will to walk it.

“Most of us start out late in life and I envy you the opportunity to start walking so early. I can tell you that the path is worth walking. I suspect you will find this before you get to the end of the path and I am writing to tell you two things:

“First, I feel honored to have been the one to point you down the road.

“Second, you’ll know when you reach the end of the path. Until you do, keep moving.

“May the blessing of the All-Mother guide you and the strength of the All-Father protect you on your journey.

“Blessed be. Agnes.”

Tanyth read the simple note three times and then stood to look out the tiny porthole at the surging sea outside—the sparkling, blue-green ocean blurring from the moisture in her eyes.

“When did you slip this into my papers, you sly old vixen?” she murmured. In her mind she added, “And why?”

“What is it, mum?” Rebecca asked.

Tanyth handed the note to the young woman. Rebecca held it up to the light to read.

On its surface the note was little more than a message from the past, a note from a part of her life that seemed almost incomprehensibly distant. Yet, in its simplicity and in the fact that it was the last souvenir in the bundle of her life, Tanyth felt an immense weight.

“How nice,” Rebecca said.

“There’s a message there,” she said. “If I’m only clever enough to read it.”

Rebecca looked down at the brittle page once more. “A message, mum?”

Tanyth nodded.

“What kinda message?”

Tanyth leaned against her bunk, not even aware of the rocking of the ship any longer. “That’s the question, isn’t it, my dear?”

“What makes you say so, mum?”

Tanyth chewed her lip and held out a hand to take the paper back. “Well, Agnes Dogwood lived on the outskirts of the village. When I left my husband, I ran to her.”

Rebecca’s eyes never left Tanyth’s face and she nodded for Tanyth to continue.

Tanyth took a deep breath and blew it out before speaking again. “I was a mess. The bruises were only part of it.” In her mind, with the physical reminder of her beginning in her hand, the fall day seemed so clear. “I was scared. Scared that Roger would find me. Scared o’ what people would say, me runnin’ away from my husband like that. Scared o’ what I was going to do next, how I’d get by in the world.”

Tanyth read the letter again.

“When I showed up on her doorstep, Agnes Dogwood didn’t ask any questions. Didn’t even seem surprised to see me, now that I think of it.”

“Was she the healer, mum?”

Tanyth nodded. “Midwife, sometimes healer. I thought she knew everything about plants and most things about people.”

“And did she?”

“Well, she knew a lot about what grew around the village, right enough, but there was a lot that I couldn’t learn there. That was a hard winter, the one I spent with Agnes. I helped out by choppin’ firewood, cookin’ now and again. Fetched her water. Just the chores ya need to do ta keep a body and soul together through a long winter.”

Rebecca nodded.

“Nobody said anything about my livin’ there. None of the people from the town. Not even them that came to the house lookin’ for healin’.”

“Your husband never came lookin’ for ya?”

Tanyth started to shake her head, but stopped—an image long forgotten, rising to her mind’s eye. “He came to the door once. Mother Dogwood wouldn’t let him in. Wouldn’t let him talk to me.” The image was of an angry-faced Roger casting invective on the white-haired old lady in the door. She just shook her head and closed the door in his face. “I don’t know how, or why, but I never spoke to him again.” Tanyth focused on Rebecca’s smiling face. “Odd, really.”

“Not so odd, mum. Not if she’d had your kinda powers.”

“Oh, tut, girl. I’ve no kind of power.”

Rebecca shook her head, giving Tanyth a sly smile. “You keep tellin’ yourself that, mum. You might convince some, but you’re having the Mother’s own time convincin’ yourself, ain’t ya?”

Tanyth looked at the paper once more. “She seemed to think I was goin’ on a long trip.”

“And she was right, wasn’t she?”

Tanyth nodded. “She started me on the road twenty-some winters ago and now I find this?”

“It was there the whole time, mum. You just never looked.”

Tanyth nodded. “Guess I never thought much about stoppin’ before.”

“Stoppin’, mum?” Surprise made Rebecca’s eyes go wide.

Tanyth shrugged and looked out the porthole again. “Frank’s a good man. I could do a lot worse.”

Rebecca sighed. “Yes’m. He is and you could.” She tugged the paper from Tanyth’s unresisting fingers. “But this? This is why you need to keep goin’, mum.”

Tanyth looked at the girl, so young, so earnest, and laughed. “Not because I’m having dreams? Not because I see things in animals’ eyes?”

Rebecca shook her head. “And not because your prayers come true, either, mum. That’s all beside the point.” She rattled the paper in Tanyth’s face. “This woman knew somethin’. Somethin’ she didn’t tell you. Somethin’ you need to find on your own. And I’d bet ya biscuits to bedbugs that she had that power herself.”

The outburst rocked Tanyth back on her heels. “Prayers come true?”

Rebecca blinked and shook her head once. “Well, yeah. You don’t remember? The storm?”

“That was just a bit of protection, nothin’ to that.”

Rebecca shook her head. “I was watchin’, mum. You and your little prayer was somethin’ to see and whatever power you got, you don’t seem ta know how to control it. You don’t even think you have it!” Rebecca took a deep breath and Tanyth saw her eyes filling up. “After, when Mr. Groves brought you down and tucked you in, you looked so weak, mum. So fragile. You was barely breathin’. It was like you spent your whole life out there on the deck. I was afraid, then, mum. Really afraid.”

“I thought the storm was gone.”

“No, mum. Afraid you were.” Rebecca fumbled in her pocket for a hanky and used it to wipe her eyes and swipe her nose.

“I was what? Gone?”

Rebecca nodded.

Tanyth stared at the younger woman for a long moment. “Well, I’m not.” The words sounded stilted and muffled in the small room.

Rebecca nodded again. “You coulda, though, mum.” She tucked her hanky away in her pocket and looked up at Tanyth. “That’s why you gotta keep goin’, mum. You gotta find this Gertie Pinecrest woman. She knows. She has to know. She’s the last, right?”

Tanyth gave a half shrug. “Last one I know of. She may know somebody else.”

Rebecca shook her head. “No, mum. She won’t. Don’t you see?”

“You think that she’s the end of the path that Agnes Dogwood was talkin’ about?”

Rebecca gave her a look of exasperation. “Don’ you, mum? Really?”

Tanyth took a deep breath and pulled her lower lip between thumb and forefinger in thought. “Well, it’s easy to find reasons when you look back like that, my dear,” she sad after a few moments of staring out at the ocean again. “Don’t mean the reasons were there to begin with. Just that they look like it in hindsight.”

“But, mum, you are on this path. Things are happenin’ to ya. Things that ain’t exactly normal?”

Tanyth gave a small nod. “I could be goin’ mad. Old people do, sometimes.”

“Young people do, too, mum. Live long enough in a city like Kleesport and you’ll see plenty of ’em. Point is, you’re not goin’ mad.” Rebecca pointed at the sea outside. “You did that, mum. You stopped that storm and I’d bet you’re behind this new current the captain is so concerned about.”

Tanyth’s face wrinkled into a grimace of denial. “That can’t be. I don’t know anythin’ about currents and winds and all that.”

Rebecca stamped her foot. “No, you don’t, mum, but that don’t mean you’re not callin’ on powers that do. Powers you got ideas about. Powers that might kill you the next time you call too much, pray too hard for stuff you don’t understand.” Rebecca’s eyes filled again and she stopped to fumble for her handkerchief once more.

Tanyth took in a deep breath and blew it out her nose. “Well, I didn’t say I wasn’t gonna keep goin’, did I?”

Rebecca looked up, hope in her eyes. “No, mum. You just said you was thinkin’ about stoppin’.”

Tanyth rubbed her own nose and gazed out at the water. “Come all this way. May as well see what ole Gertie has to say for herself,” she muttered.

Rebecca surprised her by wrapping her in a warm hug.

“Now, there’s ’nough o’ that,” Tanyth said, hugging back and then releasing the young woman. “Let’s get this stuff picked up now and re-wrapped before eight bells, shall we?”

Together they carefully re-bundled the papers and notes, separating teachings and eras with bits of cloth and leather. Tanyth marveled anew as they reviewed her own words and those of her teachers. She found a wealth of pressed leaves and drawings. Each tiny sketch recalled not just the plant, but the circumstance of the drawing and the use of the material. Connections swirled in her mind as notions half-forgotten in her past suddenly linked up with ideas as fresh as Ravenwood’s pine needles.

Just as they finished wrapping the bundle, the bosun rapped on their door to fetch Rebecca to duty. With a grin and a final hug, she skipped out leaving Tanyth to consider the matter while gazing out of the small round porthole at the gleaming sea beyond.

When she went to dinner with the captain and Mr. Jameson that evening, she hardly tasted the food and returned to her bunk afterward without being able to recall a word of their conversation.

“Hope you weren’t rude, you old fool,” she muttered as she pulled her bedroll around her against the chill and soon drifted off into sleep.

The dream seemed familiar but she couldn’t place why. A tree stood in silhouette against a pale, gray sky. As the dream unfolded, the stark outline blurred and took on a pale green light. As she watched, new leaves unfolded and filled in the gaps between the branches until the whole tree stood revealed in the fullness of summer foliage, lush and green against a gray sky.

“Why is the sky gray?” she asked her dream.

The gray sky turned dark and the lush green turned charcoal against the backdrop of night.

Night seemed to last for a very long time in her dream, without even the face of the All-Father to brighten the scene.

As the night faded to rosy dawn, she remembered the tree, knew its shape. Something was missing. Something was wrong.

She woke in the morning light streaming through the porthole and a cheerful ding-ding from the ship’s bell.

“Where’s the owl?” she muttered.

“Wozzat, mum?” Rebecca’s sleep muzzied voice came from across the compartment.

“Nothin’, my dear. Just mumblin’.”

“Mmm.”

She lay there for a moment, remembering the tree from another dream. The same tree, she was certain, but that tree had been in the fall. It had bled leaves and the leaves had fallen to fertilize a new season’s growth but only after lying fallow under a blanket of snow. There had been a small bird near the bole of the tree, a tiny owl. The owl had called to her from her dream. Because of that dream, she’d decided to stay in Ravenwood for the winter. There had been blood aplenty and some of it her own.