The Dark Mirror (19 page)

BRENNA HAD SAID
, “Don’t go any farther than the holly bushes. I don’t want to have to go searching for you in the woods. There are wolves up there.”

But Tuala couldn’t obey. It was different here; wrong. The house was little and smoky, and Brenna’s mother looked at her through narrowed, suspicious eyes. Brenna’s aunt was even worse. She wouldn’t meet Tuala’s gaze at all and she kept making that
sign with her fingers, a sign that meant she thought Tuala was a bad thing, a wicked thing. Brenna herself was unusually subdued. Her mother didn’t approve of Fidich as a prospective son-in-law, what with his damaged leg and the fact that he farmed another man’s land, not his own. The first night, Brenna had cried herself to sleep.

The only thing that was the same was the forest. Here at Oak
Ridge, on the way up to the tall peaks called the Five Sisters, the trees hugged the cottage like an enveloping cloak. Brenna’s father had made a living cutting wood and ferrying logs down the lake on a barge. He had died in the forest, killed when he miscalculated the fall of an ash. Tuala thought that was only fair, considering, but she did not say so.

Brenna’s brothers had followed in their
father’s trade until both took opportunities to sell their services as fighters for King Drust the Bull. A good axe could be put to a variety of uses. Now it was a household of women and, at present, a place of angry words and bitterness. Each day, as soon as the
meager breakfast was over, Tuala fled out of doors and up to the place where the dark, prickly leaves of the hollies made a screen,
shielding the house from the wilder reaches of the woods. She’d sit there awhile, watching until it was clear Brenna had stopped checking on her, and then she would slip through, careful not to tear her skirt or tangle her hair on the prickles. A little farther up the hillside she had found a little hollow between the roots of an ancient oak, a tree similar in shape to her favorite one at Pitnochie.
When she tucked her skirt in and squeezed up small, she was just the right size to sit there and feel as if she was part of the tree and the tree was part of her. If she listened hard, she thought she could hear a kind of heartbeat in it, strong and deep; she could catch a voice, a huge, slow, old sort of voice that was telling her something remarkable and wise. What had the tree seen, all the
years it had held this hillside firm with its roots and shaded the smaller plants with its noble canopy? How many creatures had it nurtured, how many wayfarers sheltered? There were so many tales in all the time it had watched over the Glen, tales of lovers, quests, and journeys, stories of great battles, glorious victories, bitter defeats: this oldest of trees held all of it in its monumental memory,
humming the story to Tuala as she sat cradled by its feet. Sometimes, above and behind the deep narrative of the oak, she could discern other voices, high, ethereal, and mocking, or small, rustling, and furtive. She tried to shut those ones out.

At night she told herself the oak tree’s tales again to a background of Brenna’s smothered sobbing. It was not right. None of it was right. But Tuala
knew she must be good, whatever happened. If she was not good, Broichan would not let her go home and she might have to stay here forever, here where everyone was unhappy and there was no Bridei.

Brenna had been very firm about the need to stay unseen. They’d traveled early in the morning, barely waiting for sunrise to set off, and Tuala had worn a hooded cloak to conceal her face. Visitors to
the cottage at Oak Ridge were rare, for it was an out of the way place. All the same, Brenna had made herself quite clear. “Broichan doesn’t want you noticed. I’m not going to make you stay in the house; that’s asking too much of any six-year-old. But you mustn’t talk to strangers. Not a word, understand? If you spot anyone walking up or down the track, come straight back inside. It’s very important,
Tuala. If you attract any attention, you and I will both be in trouble.”

“It’s all right, Brenna.” Tuala had spoken with conviction, noting the shadows under the young woman’s reddened eyes. “I’ll be good.”

ON THE THIRD
day she was in her usual spot, crouched among the oak roots with one ear to the base of the trunk, listening
with her eyes closed. Her mind was full of the dark, slow voice of the tree. Then, all of a sudden, she was aware that something had changed. Tuala opened her eyes.

There was someone else sitting there as she was, someone not so much bigger than herself, gray-robed, hooded, a quiet, shadowy figure seated a little farther around the bole of the tree, leaning comfortably against a low arch of gnarled
roots. Whoever it was had come there without making a sound. Tuala’s scalp prickled. Was it one of the Good Folk, one of those who had left her on Bridei’s doorstep in the middle of the night? Did such a one count as a stranger? As she stared, motionless, the figure turned its head to reveal the features of an old woman, not a furrowed, wrinkled kind of face like Wid’s, but a small, strong
sort of countenance with a prominent, beaky nose and dark eyes like polished beads of obsidian. Tuala could not tell if this was a human woman or something else. Mindful of her promise to Brenna, she held her tongue.

“Good morning,” the stranger said.

It seemed rather impolite to respond only with silence. Tuala gave a nod.

“A fine place for listening: you’ve done well to discover it. And a
good place for a wayfarer to rest her feet awhile. You don’t object to my sharing it for a little?”

Tuala shook her head.

“You’re cautious,” the stranger said. “I understand that. Let me introduce myself. My name is Fola. I’m not of your kind; that much is obvious to you, I expect. Yet you don’t run away.”

Tuala’s heart gave a lurch.
Not of your kind
. . . that meant this was, indeed, one of
the forest folk, one of those tricky beings who showed you a glimpse of a white hand or a fluttering wing, a shadow of cobwebby cloak or a glint of silver hair then, when you tried to look properly, were gone as if they had never been. But no; that was wrong.
She
had come from the forest,
she
was the one who was Other. This woman, Fola, was from the human world, and thought she had stumbled on
a child of the Good Folk. Words of explanation sprang to Tuala’s lips,
I live with human folk, I live in a druid’s house
, but she bit them back.

“Not talking today?” Fola inquired calmly. “I expect you do understand me, for all that. I have a lot of interesting things to tell; that’s part of my work, teaching the young what wisdom I can. The world is changing fast. Things get forgotten if we
don’t work at them.”

Tuala nodded again. She had heard much the same argument from Bridei. He had told her that, in the south, many folk no longer performed the rituals to honor the gods; that people were forgetting the wisdom of the ancestors.

“Here in the forest you know little of such matters, I suppose,” Fola went on, hugging her knees with her neat, small hands. For a grown-up woman she
really was remarkably little; little enough to be quite reassuring. Tuala was so much smaller than everyone else at Pitnochie, even Bridei. “History is precious; ritual is precious. Lose that and we lose the knowledge of our own being,” Fola said. “Lose the thread of ancestry, lose the tales, and we are adrift without identity. How old are you, child? Perhaps that’s a silly question; you do not keep
time as we do.”

Tuala held up one hand, five fingers, and the thumb of the other hand.

“Ah. Six years old. An excellent age. With one ear you can still hear the magic of earth, sky, and ocean in its true, pure form; with the other, you can begin to comprehend a more formal kind of knowledge: logic, judgment, numbers, language, and signs. Or would do, if you were a human child and given the right
opportunities. The youngest of my own students are not so many years older than yourself. That interests you, I see; it makes your eyes sparkle. You are eager for learning?”

Tuala nodded vigorously. Her hands were clasped tightly together now. This was exciting; she could hardly wait to tell Bridei about it.

“If only . . .” Fola mused. “If only there were a place for one of your kind among us,
how much we could learn, both you and I . . . I would never attempt such a thing, of course. Have no fear of that. There’s nothing more cruel than taking a child away from all it’s known and loved, merely because someone believes it’s for the best. All of my students come to me willingly. You can’t learn unless your heart’s in it. Of course, some people do say education’s wasted on a girl.”

“It’s not!” Tuala burst out, for Broichan’s dismissal of her aspirations had left a wound unhealed within her. “I wanted to learn and I could have—Erip and Wid wouldn’t have minded—but he wouldn’t let me!” She clamped her mouth shut, but it was too late. She had broken her promise. She had spoken to a stranger.

Something in this speech had caused Fola’s gaze to sharpen. “Who wouldn’t let you?”
she asked carefully. “Come, child, it’s safe to tell me. I’m harmless.”

“Broichan,” whispered Tuala.

There was another pause, and then Fola asked, “And who is Broichan? Your father?”

Tuala shook her head. “No, he’s Bridei’s foster father. And Bridei’s getting an education, he spends all day learning, but when I asked if I could, Broichan was angry with me. He said all I need to know is cooking
and sewing. But I’m no good at those things. It isn’t fair.”

“What things are you good at?”

“Not fighting and sports. Bridei learns those: he’s the best archer at Pitnochie. I’m a good rider. Bridei taught me. And I’m sure I could do what you said, rituals, history, numbers, and languages. All I want to do is sit there while Erip and Wid are teaching Bridei. I’d be quiet. I wouldn’t interrupt
at all. But Broichan won’t let me. Bridei tries to teach me things, but he’s so busy, there isn’t enough time.”

“Interesting,” Fola said. “Was I wrong about you? About what you are?”

Reluctantly, Tuala shook her head.

“Yet it’s clear you do not live here in the woods.”

Tuala shook her head again, realizing she had already said far more than anyone would have wished, save the old woman herself.
Maybe Fola was not what she said at all. Maybe she was an enemy trying to set a trap. Hadn’t someone tried to kill Bridei once, long ago?

“What is your name, child?”

“Tuala.” That could hardly make a difference now.

“A splendid name, fit for a princess. This Broichan of yours has misjudged you, I think. Men can be rather prone to that, even the more intelligent ones. Now tell me. If you live
at Pitnochie, what are you doing all by yourself halfway up to the Five Sisters, in wolf territory?”

“You’re all by yourself in wolf territory, too,” Tuala pointed out.

“I’m grown up and responsible for myself. I answer only to the gods,” Fola said calmly. “You, as you mentioned, are six years old, and not the wild sprite I thought you at first, but a member of a druid’s household. Tell me,
did he send you away?”

A nod.

“Ah, yes. I see it clearly. An embarrassment. He took you in, he was
prepared to break the rules to that extent, but making it public is beyond him. That’s men for you, ever bound by convention.”

There was one point here that must be corrected. “Broichan didn’t take me in. Bridei did. The Shining One showed him where to find me.”

Fola was listening attentively.
“Bridei,” she mused. “The boy?”

Tuala nodded. “He’s bigger than me,” she said, “and very good at everything. Broichan said I would be in the way. That I would disrupt his education.”

“Did he now? Well, perhaps there was a grain of truth in that. So, I suppose you are staying away until after Midsummer, is that it?”

“How do you know that?” Tuala challenged. “And how did you know Broichan was
a druid?”

“I’m a wise woman, Tuala. It’s my business to know things. And now,” rising to her feet and shaking out her long gray cloak, “I must be on my way and hope the wolves decide they’re not hungry. Oh, I have something here that you might like. Where is it, now?” Fola had a pack with her, a bulging cloth bundle fastened with cords. “Here we are,” the wise woman said, reaching into a side
pocket and bringing her hand out full of something furry, gray, and unmistakably alive. “I found her on the way,” Fola said. “I already have a cat of my own, and Shade doesn’t take kindly to usurpers. This one should suit you; she has a marked streak of independence.”

Tuala took one look at the creature’s soft coat, its neat pink nose and big, strange eyes, and fell instantly in love. She reached
out her hands and brought the kitten, not struggling at all despite its period of confinement, in to snuggle against her breast. Its tail was like a brush, the hair long and feathery.

“She’s no farm cat, but a wild thing, a forest creature,” Fola said. “I think she’ll go with you, as she did with me. Like knows like. Now I must be off; it’s a fair walk to Pitnochie.”

Tuala, absorbed in her wondrous,
unexpected gift, took a moment to react. “Pitnochie? Is that where you’re going?”

Fola nodded, her lips curving in a little smile. “Indeed. Your druid is well known to me, but I’ve yet to meet the lad, his foster son. As for you, you’re a complete surprise. Any messages you want delivered?”