Snow Fields - Book Two of The Fields of Mendhavai Trilogy

Chapter Nineteen

 CHAPTER NINETEEN

Maudla hummed to herself as she drew the brush through my hair, helping it to dry, as we sat beside the fire inside my hut. Nania had just left my hands full of a large steaming bowl of hearty fish stew, and though I knew it to be too hot to eat, I shoved the first spoonful into my mouth, sucking in air to cool it as it burned on my tongue. Maudla tugged on the handful of hair she held and tsked at my haste before resuming her melody and the gentle, soothing strokes of the hair brush. The old woman hadn’t said a word since her approval of the results her strange plant medicine had given, yet somehow she did not need to; the love and pride she had for me practically rolled off her, washing into me.

Smiling, I closed my eyes and lowered the bowl to rest in my lap, telling my grumbling stomach to be patient. I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt so hungry, and I wasn’t sure if it was caused by the experience I had just had, or the nerves I was feeling over the coming day. I thought back over the plans we had laid out. Something didn’t feel quite right about them. Perhaps it was that Taphille had been so eager; I knew that he wanted to prove himself to his father and to the tribe. Maybe I was uncomfortable with the idea that the tribe’s warriors were not only not skilled at fighting against other men - and in such case, how could the be they pirates we'd once been harrassed by? - but that they had their qualms about taking orders from a woman, however experienced she might be. I’d have to ask Smythe to relay orders for me, on the morrow, so as to lessen the strike to their warriors’ pride. Still, there was something nagging me about the plans… a feeling of being completely unprepared.

Maudla set the hairbrush aside and ran her gnarled hands over my head in a petting motion for a moment. Then she scooted around to squat before me, took my face between her palms and kissed my forehead. She reached for the brush, picked up my free hand and wrapped my fingers around the handle, squeezing gently. Silently, with tears sparkling in her eyes, she stood and walked from the hut, letting the hide fall softly back into place.

After a moment of staring at the doorway, I held the gift up to the light. It was a boar-hair brush, and I wondered where she may have come across it, before I remembered that her husband had been a sailor and had often traded on Riis. The bristles were a light beige that complemented the dark wood. I turned it over and found the flat of the back beautifully carved with the striking image of a rearing black war-horse. My eyes flooded with tears as I rubbed my thumb over the carving. Lundir… How I missed my friend.

My stomach rumbled impatiently. Wiping the tears off my face with the back of my hand, I gently tossed the brush onto my sleeping pallet so I wouldn’t forget to pack it away, and then fell to my meal. My thoughts still jumbled around in my head. Memories of Lundir making me smile in one moment, and then, in another, fear would streak through me as I recalled the day I had prayed at Apethna’s shrine, and the new memory of the vision of the Goddess. If that had been real, if the pungent items Maudla had given me to eat had made it possible to commune with the Goddess, it would mean that I had been given a gift so great… I could not even fathom the meaning of it. To be given the responsibility of choosing whom to heal was difficult enough; but how was I to choose who to give life to?

RindaLady, Bashiir’s voice soothed the turmoil in my mind as I set the empty bowl aside and banked the fire. I do not believe that you choose who will live and who will die. Based on your past experiences, with Lundir, and with others, it is they who choose life or death. It is their will. You simply give them what they need – the energy to step away from the edge, or the peace and comfort to move to the other side.

I chewed my lower lip as I absorbed his words and thought back over all the times I had been in the presence of the dying, especially since I’d been given this gift. It hadn’t been my choice, and if it had been, my enemies would have died, and my friends would have lived. Lundir would surely be eagerly awaiting my return from this island; I smiled at my imagining of him leaping over his pasture fence to meet me at the portal, grooms and stable boys chasing after him.