The Amber Legacy (3 page)

Meg waited for more predictions, but the old man was silent. Irritated by his silence, her attention drifted from the grey stone tabletop to the cave’s dark and cluttered walls. Weird things hung from myriad hooks and wires—dried animal and bird carcasses, rusted weapons and farming implements, assorted string, cloth
and hessian bags, all bulging with odd contents; sticks, clothes, dried plants. The cave stank of a putrid mixture of offal, rotting vegetable matter and sweat. Towering in the shadows near the entrance was a stuffed fully grown grey kangaroo. Why would anyone want to keep dead, stuffed animals? she wondered. Bored, she refocussed on Samuel, and was astonished to find him still staring at the crystal. ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Hey. Old man.’ He did not respond. Sweat beaded on his furrowed brow. ‘Hey!’ she yelled. The rat sat up and stared inquisitively.

Samuel’s body jerked, as if he’d pulled away from an invisible hold, and he nearly fell off his low wooden stool. He gulped in deep, desperate breaths like someone resurfacing from being underwater for almost too long, but his wild gaze did not diminish. To Meg, he half-whispered, ‘You are pursued by the shadows of death, girl. The weight you will carry is more than any mortal should bear. But bear it you must.’

His cold gaze made her extremely uncomfortable. ‘Well?’ she blurted.

‘The crystal knows you,’ he told her. ‘It sings to you.’

‘What does
that
mean?’

‘Ask old Emma for more,’ he replied. ‘I’ve told all I dare. I didn’t expect you to come here.’ His bony hand closed over the amber and its thin gold chain, and he thrust it into the threadbare folds of his ragged green robe. Fixing her with a fierce expression, he said, ‘Go!’

‘But—’

‘Go!’ he screamed, thrusting his arms wildly forward. ‘Go!’ The cigarette and rat cartwheeled to the floor, the rat scurrying for cover.

Meg was glad to escape the dank, stinking cave. Samuel was a lunatic. She emerged in a dappled glade, breathing the fresh midmorning air, and peered into the brook by the old man’s cave. It was an enigma. It
always had water, even in the harshest days of Fuar. If magic was real, it could explain the brook’s persistence, but she also knew how underground springs worked and this had to come from one.

Her mother was waiting where the water trickled over smooth brown rocks, catching flashes of the morning sunlight. In her yellow smock and dark green apron, her dark blonde hair loose about her shoulders, Meg decided that her mother was still beautiful, despite the ravages of working hard on a farm and the struggle of giving birth to four children. Little blond-haired Peter squatted on the ground, fascinated by a hopping insect-chasing blue bird. Sunfire watched her expectantly. White butterflies danced erratically above a patch of emerald moss. ‘Well?’ Dawn asked.

‘I can’t believe you made me walk all the way out here just to listen to this crazy old man,’ she complained. ‘Do you seriously believe in all this stuff?’ She beckoned to Sunfire whose jaw dropped open to unfurl a pink tongue as he trotted to her side.

‘But what did he tell you?’ Dawn asked. ‘Was it exciting? Will you travel? Will you find true love?’

‘Oh,
Mother
!’ Meg gasped in exasperation. She slumped to sit on the soft grass on the bank of the brook and Sunfire dropped beside her. ‘He didn’t say anything about who I’m going to marry.’

Dawn sat and took Meg’s hand. ‘So what did he say? Tell me.’

Meg paused, partly to catch her breath, partly to tease her mother, before she said, ‘He didn’t say anything I wouldn’t expect to hear. He said I’m going to meet people. Some people are going to be nice to me, some aren’t.’

‘Is that all?’

‘I’m supposed to see old Emma. He said something really weird about the crystal singing for me, but he
wouldn’t explain. Only that I had to see old Emma if I wanted to know more. It didn’t make any sense. He tried to impress me by scaring me.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘It doesn’t matter. Can we go?’

‘Are you telling me everything he said?’

Meg glared at her mother. ‘If there
was
something really good, I’d
tell
you,’ she replied, annoyance bristling.

Dawn sighed and stroked her daughter’s long red tresses. ‘I was hoping…’ she began and trailed off.

‘You were hoping he’d say I had the Blessing, weren’t you? Or that I was going to marry a famous or rich man and have lots of wonderful babies? But I don’t have the Blessing, and I’m not marrying anyone famous or rich. That’s what all those stupid ballads and stories say. You know the ones I mean. Poor little pigherd boy becomes great sword-wielding hero and the new king. Village girl is swept away by lovestruck prince. Well, that doesn’t really happen, and it’s definitely not me. I’m sorry I disappoint you, all right? But this is who I am.’

Dawn looked crestfallen. ‘Do you really think I’m so desperate to have a daughter who is going to be whatever you said then?’

‘You keep taking me to the soothsayer.’

‘I just want my daughter to be happy. Is that
too
much for a mother to ask?’ She took Meg’s arm and pulled her close.

Meg acquiesced and accepted the affection, but when she’d had enough she pulled away, and said, ‘Can we go now?’

H
e was buckling on his sword. She stood in the shed doorway. ‘You’ll have to take care of your mother while I’m away,’ he said, tightening his belt. ‘You’re thirteen. You can work in the fields and drive the bullocks. Your little brothers can help.’

‘Why are you going?’ she asked. ‘Aren’t there enough soldiers already?’

Her father put his hands on her shoulders. His shock of red hair framing his bearded face, his dark green eyes serious and sad, he told her, ‘The Queen has called for volunteers, Meg. The war isn’t going our way yet. The Rebels have been reinforced by some of the barbarian chieftains. That’s why I’m going. So are other men from our village. I have to go. We can’t let the war come to our homes.’

‘When will you be back?’

He chuckled. ‘With all of us going, we’ll whip the Rebels and be back for harvest.’ He kissed her forehead. ‘I won’t be away long, you’ll see.’

She watched him walk towards the village, Daryn and Mykel trotting eagerly in his wake, the boys wondering what great adventure their father was undertaking while they tried to touch his sword.

Meg stopped chopping the carrot and stared out the open window at the fallow field. That was how she last remembered her father. She recalled his parting words with fondness and bitterness, because he’d marched away two years ago, and hadn’t returned. Like her mother, she waited for word from him, but it never came. The war ebbed and flowed somewhere in the kingdom, in places foreign to the people of Summerbrook. News of battles won and lost crept into common discussion whenever carters and travellers and minstrels passed through, but the war was always somewhere else. Samuel constantly warned that the war would descend upon them all, but the old man was wrong. The war was a long way away. A voice interrupted her daydreaming. Dawn stood with a broom, her left eyebrow raised in question. ‘Sorry, Mum, I didn’t hear you,’ Meg apologised.

‘I asked when you were going to see old Emma.’

Meg quickly finished chopping and dropped the carrot with a splash into the blackened cooking pot. ‘I thought you said you were going to let it go.’

‘It’s not going to hurt to find out what she’s meant to tell you,’ Dawn argued.

‘It costs a silver shilling to see her.’

‘I can give you one.’

‘And what are we going to use to pay Pan Baker for the flour? We need every penny we have.’

‘I can get money from selling vegetables at the market tomorrow,’ Dawn replied. ‘I’ll get you a shilling. Go this afternoon.’

‘
Mum
!’ Meg growled, infuriated, but her mother was already retreating to her bedroom to fetch the money.

When Dawn returned, she pressed the silver coin into her daughter’s hand. ‘I promise I won’t ask again, if you go this one last time.’ Her appealing expression was so
ludicrous that it broke Meg’s determination, and she burst into laughter. Dawn laughed with her, and as she caught her breath she asked, ‘So, you’ll go?’

‘Yes, mother, I’ll go,’ Meg confirmed, untying her apron. ‘But tomorrow morning, all right? I’ll do the chores first. Can you make sure Daryn and Mykel clean up the vegetable patch? And where’s Peter?’

‘Your brothers are fishing. They took Peter with them.’

Meg flung down her apron. ‘They don’t do anything anymore!’ she said angrily. ‘Where are they exactly? Are they watching Peter?’

‘I’ll go get them,’ Dawn said, determined to appease her daughter. ‘You go to Emma’s tomorrow.’

Meg glared fiercely at her. ‘This is the last time. Promise?’

‘The last time.’

‘Promise?’

Dawn hesitated, sighed, and said, ‘I promise.’

Bright blue. The mounted warrior’s armour shone with a strange light as he rode through the ranks of fighting soldiers, passing through the thick knots of writhing bodies as easily as a boat gliding through still water. He twirled a heavy battleaxe in his left hand as if it were a dagger. She was there, but she was not in the battle, just watching as if it was a play. The warrior in shining blue armour bore down on a lanky, weak-looking soldier, the axe whirling menacingly. And then she was looking into the face of a dead person, the face of a handsome young man with light blond hair, and the vision filled her with immeasurable sorrow.

Some dreams were bizarre. The vision of the blue-armoured warrior had no correlation with anything that she knew. When she woke, the sky was a soft grey,
waiting for the sun to rise and splash its warmth and colour across the landscape. She struggled out of bed, dressed, and left the house. Her mother and brothers were still asleep as she began the morning chores of milking and feeding the cow, and releasing the chickens from their coop.

Old Emma had lived at the edge of Summerbrook in a two-roomed cottage for as long as Meg could remember. In fact, Dawn said that Emma was an old woman even when Dawn was Meg’s age. There were stories that she had come to Summerbrook as a solitary young woman, and she had never married or shared a relationship. She had no children. Everyone felt sorry for her because she was alone, but everyone also knew that she had deliberately chosen a lonely life. The villagers agreed that she had the ability to cast true magic because she had Jarudha’s Blessing, and that what Emma revealed to people was simple and true. And she was entrusted to identify the Blessing if it appeared in anyone in the village.

Meg passed through the village centre with Sunfire at her side, acknowledging people. Summerbrook was small. Everyone knew everyone. No one had secrets, and those who tried to keep them were quickly embarrassed by village gossip. A young man, labouring at repairing shingles on the stables beside Archer’s Inn, called out, ‘Good morning, Meg,’ as she passed.

She waved, replying ‘Good morning, Button,’ and hurried on. Button Tailor was a year older than Meg. He was handsome, she admitted privately, and she liked how he wore his long dark hair tied back when he was working. He was apprenticed to Beam Carpenter because he was the second son of Needle Tailor, and Needle’s firstborn, Cloth, was learning his father’s trade, leaving no place for Button. Beam Carpenter
didn’t have a son to pass on his trade to, so he was happy to take on Button as his apprentice. Dawn had pointed Button out to Meg as a young man who would make a good husband—a recommendation that kept her from being overly interested in his overtures. Marrying and having children wasn’t her priority, especially while her father was away. She had a farm to manage.

The morning was already hot. She crossed the bridge, glancing down at the glassy river before she diverted onto a narrow walk that eventually reached the cluttered, overgrown wild herbs and flowers of Emma’s garden. She weaved along a gravel path to the old crone’s unpainted and decaying front door.
This is the last time
, she reminded herself.
This time my mother will have to accept that I do not have the Blessing. Magic belongs to fairy tales.

She knocked, and while she waited, Sunfire foraged in the undergrowth, startling a pair of rosellas into flight. Meg watched the patches of yellow, red, blue and green flash towards the gum trees higher up the hillside, before she knocked again, and waited, playing with the silver shilling Emma charged for her services. A shilling was enough to buy five days’ flour or pay a workman for a day’s labour. With no father to work the farm, and two lazy boys, and a toddler, money was not easily come by. They grew enough to feed themselves, and sometimes enough to sell as market produce. Dawn took in seamstress work to raise copper pennies when they were in dire need. That’s how Meg learned all of her needlework and fabric skills. A silver coin was a waste for the lies of an old woman. When there was still no answer, she turned to leave. It was getting hot, there was work to do at home, and she knew she would have to scold her brothers again for their slackness. Her mother was too
easy on them. Uncertainty in her heart, she knocked on the door a final time. ‘No one can say I didn’t try,’ she muttered to Sunfire, whose inquisitive snout was raised as if to question her intentions.

‘That is true,’ a voice rasped. Meg spun to her left to find a white-haired woman, hunched by age, smothered in a multi-coloured robe made from assorted patches of animal skins and fabric, standing beside a wild, scraggy and massive lavender bush. ‘Patience, young woman, is a virtue too few know the value of possessing,’ Emma said, as she approached, using a twisted and rough mallee branch for her walking cane. ‘If you’d knocked twice and gone, I’d have known you weren’t here for any good reason. Three knocks is a sign that the visitor means to visit.’ She paused at the door, squinting up, studying Meg. ‘Jon and Dawn Farmer’s girl. You’ve grown into a rare beauty,’ she said, and shook her head. ‘Too beautiful for these parts. Beauty’s wasted in small villages like Summerbrook.’ She eyeballed the dingo. ‘So you’ve come to watch over your mistress?’ Sunfire cocked his head, amber eyes staring back at the wizened old crone. ‘You’re a clever one,’ she said, and petted his head. She reached for the gnarled wooden door handle, and as she opened it, she said, ‘You’ve come to know what I can tell you, so you’d better come in.’

Meg motioned to Sunfire, ordering ‘Stay,’ as she went to follow Emma inside.

‘He can come in too,’ Emma told her. ‘He has a right.’ The dingo tipped his head again, as if he was listening to the old woman. ‘Come on,’ she invited. Sunfire’s long pink tongue appeared, and he trotted through the door ahead of Meg.

The interior was dark and the ceiling low, and it smelled of jasmine. The two windows that opened to the outside were shuttered, gaps spilling narrow shafts of sunlight across patches of the floor and jutting angles
of furniture. The air spun with sparkling dust motes. As she entered, a sudden thrill sparkled along Meg’s spine, reminding her of the sensation she’d felt in old Samuel’s cave. Emma’s shadowy figure shuffled through the room and a dull light emanated from the corner where she paused. She revealed a glowing stone cupped in her hands, which she set on a table, announcing, ‘A little light is always useful.’

The glowing stone surprised Meg, but she knew there had to be a clever trick to the source of light; a ruse the old woman used to enhance her image as a maker of magic. The soft light gave form to the furnishings. Two high-backed, padded chairs pressed against the black wood oval table. One wall became ramshackle shelving, overflowing with books and yellowed parchments. A black door led into the cottage’s adjoining room.

‘Sit,’ the old woman instructed, and when Meg hesitated, she repeated the order, adding, ‘I’m about to have rosemary tea. Want some?’ Meg politely declined. ‘Suit yourself,’ Emma said, and turned to the small hearth in the corner. She knelt, coughed and rubbed her hands, and a small fire flickered into life. She suspended a fire-blackened water pot above the fire and dropped rosemary sprigs into it. Sunfire shoved his snout under her arm and she scruffed the big dingo’s smooth ears. Satisfied with the attention, Sunfire retreated to lie on a small rush mat at the entrance door. ‘So,’ Emma began, as she took her seat, ‘what has that silly old fool told you?’

‘How do you know someone’s said anything to me?’ Meg asked.

‘What did he say?’ Emma replied calmly.

Meg outlined the essence of Samuel’s fortune telling. ‘And he finished by saying that the crystal was singing to me.’

Emma rose, and bent to lift the steaming water pot from the fire. As she removed it, the fire went out. She filled a yellow cup before returning to her chair. Holding the cup at her lips, she blew softly across the top of her tea, and stared into space. ‘Well?’ Meg asked.

‘Patience,’ Emma said, and sipped at her beverage. ‘Are you sure you don’t want some? It’s good for relaxing.’

Meg shook her head, irritated by the old woman’s slow manner. Her attention shifted to the room. Like the soothsayer’s cave, the old woman’s cottage was cluttered with a weird assortment of items. She spotted books. No one else that she knew in the village bothered with reading, except Saltsack Carter who did his sums for work costs and customer orders on paper. A multitude of jars were stacked along shelves around the hearth. She counted five battered travel chests pushed against the walls, and large ochre-coloured pottery jars of assorted shapes were scattered around the room. A stuffed kookaburra was mounted on a tall perch, and a red fish swam in a glass bowl on a grey marble pedestal.

‘He said the crystal was singing to you. Are you sure that’s what he said?’

‘Perfectly sure,’ Meg replied. ‘In fact, he said the crystal knows me. What’s that mean?’

‘How did he react?’

‘When?’

‘When he told you this about the crystal?’

‘He was scary—a little. He ordered me out of his cave.’

‘What did he do with the crystal?’

‘He snatched it up as if he—’ she stopped, trying to find the word to describe what the old man had done.

‘As if he was afraid you were going to take it away from him?’

‘Yes!’ Meg realised. ‘That’s what it was like. Which is stupid because I don’t care about his little slice of amber. It’s not worth anything. And I don’t steal.’

‘No,’ Emma agreed. ‘That’s very true, Megen Farmer. You are a good and honest girl. I’ve seen you and I’ve heard people talk about you.’

‘Who?’ Meg demanded, curious.

‘Different people,’ Emma answered. ‘Who said what isn’t important. Who else have you told about this?’

‘Mum. But I haven’t told her everything.’

‘Anyone else?’

Meg screwed up her face. ‘Why?’

‘I need to know who else knows.’

‘Why?’

Emma coughed, and sipped at her tea. She sighed, and said, ‘Why did your mother send you to me?’

‘Samuel told me to come,’ Meg replied.

‘Yes he did, but you wouldn’t have come if your mother hadn’t insisted. So why is she so keen for you to bring me this news?’

Meg didn’t like the old lady’s interrogative manner, and considered leaving. She didn’t have to be here. But the old lady’s eyes—eyes that seemed warm and friendly despite the stern and haggard face in which they sat—compelled her to answer. ‘You’re right. I didn’t want to waste our money. I don’t believe in the stuff everyone else believes in, especially prophecies. I’ve never seen one come true. I think people like you and Samuel just take money and tell people what they want to hear.’