Featured Short Story
by Derek Leman
If you haven't met me yet, let me say "hello." I'm Derek Leman and I'm an up-and-coming fantasy writer. Sure, I've been around a while. Okay, 53 years. A long while. But in the world of fantasy literature I'm just developing my portfolio. So far I've published one short story in an anthology and I'm writing short stories related to the world of Haral, the setting of my forthcoming novel, The Darkening.
From time to time I will offer a free short story here. In this one, "Ninshuel and the Healing Root," I take you back about a millennium before the events of The Darkening (which will be book 1). Shouldn't witches be sort of scary? But also wonderful? Can they be "good witches" and frightening at the same time?
Oh, I should say thanks for stopping by and . . . if you haven't already please sign up for my email updates and I will make sure you get the first and best information about developments in Haral and my other writings.
Ninshuel and the Healing Root
by Derek Leman
Witches, they call us. They fear our magic almost as much as death. Almost, but not quite. Our teas and liquors and balms save their lives and so they call on us.
Our cures sometimes cause pain. Sometimes they fail. Death is not easily defeated and the healer is blamed as much as praised. But these are not the only reasons they fear and loathe us.
Most of all they shudder at the thought of being under a curse, of seeing demons in their dreams, of having their crops wilt and wombs shrivel. Where does our spellcraft come from? Will calling on our powers anger the gods?
But we did not ask for these powers and we venerate the goddesses and gods with them. Our own wombs have shriveled and none of us bear children. It is our private doom but even that adds wood to the fires of their trepidation.
A noble family of Enkimmu had called me into the city. A young soldier led me through the narrow streets to the noble quarter. Someone was ill or injured, or so I thought. But when a middle aged woman greeted me at the door, I could not detect illness. Only embarrassment and a certain nervousness. They ushered me inside quickly, lest anyone would see whom they had called to their house.
“Nana-meshti,” the woman said to me. I could hardly have been more surprised that a wealthy woman like her would know the honorific used among us. She wrung her hands, nibbling the inside of her bottom lip. “My granddaughter, we think she may be like you . . . touched by the goddess, a wise woman or something more.”
I peered into the dark room to my right where a young woman clutched a girl tightly. She was perhaps four or five, best I could see through the mother’s embrace. I looked the grandmother in the eye. “And the men of your family think she is cursed or touched by demons?”
I saw her nod affirmation as I turned quickly to judge the mother’s reaction. Her chin was quivering, eyes averted.
“My daughter’s husband has sent her away, sent her back to us.”
I knew the whole story. As she told it, my mind was elsewhere. A man of status fears a powerful woman, a woman who might disrupt the status quo. It had not been so hard for me or for my mother, since my father was only an impoverished canal forman. But some of my sisters had lived this story.
As the grandmother spoke, the mother stood. Coming into the light, I saw the girl’s long, dark hair and the mother’s knuckles pressed white into her back. The grandmother stopped her narration and watched us both.
Looking at her feet, the mother spoke. “Please, you must let me come with her. I will serve in any way I can.”
“No,” the grandmother stepped forward, almost putting herself between us. “Tell her, Nana-meshti, her place is here with us.”
I looked back and forth between them. Any woman, goddess-touched or not, could read their emotions. Holding out my hands I said, “Let me see the girl.” It was a test. Was the mother ready to trust me?
She brought her to me, perhaps hoping her obeisance would win her a place among the sisters. I saw Kishar’s face for the first time in that instant. Beautiful eyes, like a faun, large and well-proportioned. Her smooth, dark skin and high cheekbones marked her as a true beauty.
If I’d known what they summoned me for, perhaps I would have come with a gentler plan to test the girl. I set her down, intent now on her thoughts. I detected excitement, as of someone finally reaching what they’d desired for a long time. She would not be a wise woman, but clearly something more. “Will you trust me? I will not hurt you.”
She nodded, looking up with wide eyes and lips held back from a smile.
Quickly I made a binding spell, the spirit of the earth surging through me, pushing down on her toward the ground. Not enough weight to injure her, but I did it firmly, in a way that would be alarming and disorienting to a common girl.
She laughed and pushed back at me, unaffected by my spell, and then leapt easily into my arms. Her power met my power and I felt pure elation coming from her.
The grandmother was shaking her head, the word “no” forming on her lips. This was not the life she would have chosen for her granddaughter, nor for her daughter. The mother only held her head down and looked up at me, imploring, compliant.
Kishar remained untroubled and I realized she was fingering my necklace of wooden beads as though I were a familiar aunt. As if I was a normal woman, one graced to have a family and children. I felt a loss and a gain all at once, a surge of unexpected emotion. Kishar would find many aunts and mothers and grandmothers among us.
I looked at the grandmother, whose eyes were wide. “Your daughter should come with her. It’s what is best.” I saw her shoulders lower, her chest deflate. Tears sprang up so quickly, I felt as if I’d wronged her. I reached out, put my hand on her cheek. We looked into each other’s eyes and she saw it.
The girl’s life is what mattered, the life of the young. Not the old.
As the mother gathered her things and gave the soldier a burden to carry, I thought about the grandmother. I am not heartless. “You will be able to come. Any time. They are not lost to you.”
Her granddaughter was a witch. Her daughter would be living amongst witches. She’d learn, as many others had, that witches are women too.
The mother clung to Kishar’s hand as we walked. A family servant came, towing along a two-year old. And I realized the mother was pregnant. Not one, but three children were coming to live in our reed house by the river with seven childless women.
This was going to make the sisters happy, very happy.
# # #
Kishar had been with us for half a year now, a bright child and as powerful as any goddess-touched girl I’d ever seen. Her mother, Siduri, was ready to give birth any day.
My boiling pot simmered with a blend meant for sleeping draughts. I was concentrating on blending flowers, leaves, chopped roots when a concerned voice broke into the room.
“Nana-meshti!” I turned to my young sister, standing at the edge of the pavilion. She’d not slept well. None of us had. The two-year old had been up and down all night crying. “Liwwir is still holding her ear and crying!”
Noise carries in a reed house shared by eight women and two children. I admit I’d been happy to find work outside today to escape the stress. A gorgeous toddler, almost three, Liwwir held the hearts of eight women now. I knew they were concerned. I saw it in their heavy-lidded eyes and pinched lips.
“Ninshuel,” she put her hand on my shoulder, “if anything were to happen to her —”
“She’s barely sick yet,” I protested.
“But it’s an earache!” Her eyebrows knitted together and her forehead creased.
These women would tolerate no risk to their beloved child. Their devotion almost matched Siduri’s. And no wonder, all of us had been deprived of children for so long.
We made brews to ease pain, salves to help wounds heal, liquors and teas to induce sleep. We knew root, flower, and tree. The power of the earth opened itself to us in many forms. Ettu had perfected a tea to ease coughs from redwort, honey crystals, and lemon sedge. We’d saved many lives.
But for all our skills and spells and powers, we could not save everyone. We came when called on, but sometimes returned in shame. Corrupted wounds could defeat our powers. Wet coughs might exceed the relief of our magicked teas and compresses. But with children, it was earaches. Always earaches. And nothing made us hold our heads lower.
I turned to look back at my young sister and found three others standing there with her, waiting for my answer. I held up my hands in surrender. “There is a wizard near Gazakku. I will seek him out.”
# # #
My journey downriver confirmed what I’d long known. Enkimmu was dying. Once the banks of the Naharis were teeming with people and reed houses, fishing boats and boys casting nets from wharfs of stone and flimsy piers of cypress wood.
That I remembered from childhood, some thirty years or more ago. I rarely went to Gazakku and had not seen the deterioration of the river for four or five years. Huge bars of silt diverted the once mighty flow. The stumps of old cypress piers stood now on dry land and the river channel ran through what I suspected used to be fields of barley or fishing villages.
I saw families living on an old stone wharf, now far from the water, with a line of fish meat smoking over a fire of dried reeds. As I came north there were even fewer people and no boats until I approached the ports of Gazakku.
I crossed in front of the city gates. The fields were few and sparsely populated with green stalks of barley like grass on the plains. I walked among the rows and spent the better part of that first day drawing life from the earth into these sickly stalks. I felt the sickness in the ground, salt and sand where rich soil had once been.
I slept among the fields and encountered very few workers that first day and night. After I’d gone a few miles past Gazakku’s gates I began to see better signs of life. Small villages had grown up here recently. Pitiful houses of mud brick, constructed by people with broken pride, stood beside fields that were healthy but undersized. Large dunes of sand surrounded small, fertile valleys.
An old man, with wrinkled, deep-brown skin, beckoned me to his morning fire. “Welcome, traveler,” he held out a clay cup of steaming barley tea. I gratefully accepted, seating myself on a bench of mud bricks.
“I know you are a witch of Enkimmu,” he said.
I kept my eyes on the fire, sensing no hostility here. “And yet you welcome me with your tea and your generosity,” I said. “May the goddess reward you.”
“I have been seeking at the temple of Kerrohm,” he replied. “And only yesterday brought him meal offerings. Now he has sent you.”
A shiver ran through me. “How may I help your people, wise sir?”
He stood and looked behind him, whistling for one of the young men. In a short time there was a small crowd of people of varying ages. They brought out some curds and made barley cakes. They served me the finest breakfast I’d had in a long time.
The people spoke little and I detected a sadness in their eyes. Two younger men supported the elder as he led me into the fields. I looked on silently where he led, watching for whatever he wanted to show me. He took a stalk in his hands and motioned me to look closely.
“The god sent you,” his eyes were wide and face serene, “to cure this.”
I saw the blight. What could I do but help? These people had a need. As worried as I was about Liwwir, I remained with these people two days.
On the morning I was to leave, the elder brought out a small package wrapped in fine wool. With the help of two young men he took a knee before me. “Nana-meshti, you have saved us.” He paused a moment and I was choking up inside. “Please take from us this gift.”
I held the fine scarf in my hands, unwrapping it to find a copper headband set with a jasper stone. I extended my hands to him, shaking my head, offering it back.
He put up his hands, palms out, in front of his face. “I will not take it back, Nana-meshti.” The young men lifted him to his feet. “My wife used to wear it to banquets, when we had a home in Gazakku and when I was a scribe for the king.”
“I should have known you were a learned man, Aplaa,” I said. “May the goddess give you many happy memories of your wife!”
“I see her every day . . . in them,” he pointed to those standing around, his children and grandchildren.
I left them with two clay jars, one with a balm for wounds and another with a blend of tea magicked to ease pain. They watched me walk east until I disappeared over the ridge of dunes.
# # #
The wizard, Ipqatum, had a village at an oasis two days east of Gazakku. Plainsmen made pilgrimages here and an altar to many gods stood in the center of the village.
I saw palm trees on the horizon and the air was hazy in the hot morning sun. I drew closer, less than a mile away, and saw that a single figure in yellow waited for me there. He looked almost regal, in a bright yellow wrap, medium in height I judged, but standing straight as a young terebinth.
The nearer I came the more I felt something else. He was aged but had the strength of youth. His greyish-white beard contrasted with reddish-tan skin, but it was beyond physical appearance. He held a shepherd’s rod loosely in his hand and also a skin of water, which I assumed was his hospitality for me.
He’d known I was coming. I believe he knew long before I saw the palm trees. “Welcome, enchantress.”
At the sound of his voice I nearly fell to my knees. His strength was not only in the earth, like mine, but extended above into the realm of incomprehension. It was the closest I ever came to meeting a god.
“Your perception runs deep,” he said and I felt as if my spirit was open to him. “As with all the sisters of earth powers, you comprehend living things to the bottoms of their being. We are much alike except that where you see deeply, we see the wider world, a broader horizon.”
“You know about our powers?”
Ipqatum took a seat on a boulder and motioned her to do likewise. “I have lived five lifetimes of men and met other sisters like yourself.”
“Five lifetimes!”
“None of the sisters I have met have been quite like you, Ninshuel. You are organizing a community, laying down principles that will be followed for many lifetimes to come. Building a way for enchantresses and healers.”
He was like a god. “You have seen what I do?”
He handed me the waterskin. “Our kind often sees present happenings.” He kept his eyes on me while I took a drink of water so cold and clear, it had to be from the fountain of a god. “Would you like to see for a little while?”
I felt both apprehension and curiosity. I was heady from the draught of enchanted water. As usual, curiosity won out against my best protective instincts. I nodded and he rose, approaching slowly. He touched two fingers to my forehead, his fingers large and gentle, and mouthed strange syllables I did not understand.
At first nothing happened. Then I began to perceive everything at once, no living thing or detail of the landscape escaping my notice. The sky and ground and all the air around us became almost part of me. I knew every insect and blade of scrub grass. I felt the spirits of all the men, women, and children living at the oasis. I knew every plant, its kind and those of its kind spread through the whole area.
Then I discerned patterns. The streams of the four winds above and a river between us and the stars. I perceived the depths below us and I was drawn down in my spirit, below the earth, to the subterranean waters. There was a pool beneath the earth.
In the surface of that pool I began to see something. A vision.
A man in regal clothing sat on a dais of black stones, soldiers surrounding him, while an assortment of people knelt before him, their hands tied behind their backs. I saw a field of sedges and small shrubs, with a cluster of dark green plants and tiny purple flowers in the center. And I saw Liwwir, running and laughing. She had fully recovered, thank the Mother! But then I saw inside many homes in and around Enkimmu. I saw the sick in their beds, some dying, and some perhaps with hope to recover.
I awoke from my trance to find Ipqatum looking deeply into my eyes. “I saw what was shown to you,” he said. “Where you are going, there is danger. As for this plant you seek, it is a root. Spindlewort. It grows near Eklon. May you find what you seek and use it for the good of many.”
I rose to speak, but two young men approached with a wrapped bundle. “We send you away on your journey with some hard cheeses and dried fruit,” the wizard said. “May the goddess speed you on the road.”
I was of two minds at that moment — to stay at Ipqatum’s oasis and learn more about the river between us and the stars — to see if, perchance, a sister of earth powers could have sight like a wizard. Or to hurry to my goal.
Ipqatum’s will prevailed, because now, having found the healing root, I could do no less than hurry, so that lives could be saved.
As I turned to leave, Ipqatum spoke again, “Beware the king of Eklon. He is the one you saw in the vision with captives kneeling before him. He does not allow strangers to enter his land and even pays his subjects to inform his soldiers when travelers come passing through.”
Thus warned, I made my way to Eklon.
# # #
Wrapped in grey wool, so as not to be seen, I crossed the flat ground a few hours before dawn. I saw no patches of grass or plant life on my approach, nowhere that spindlewort might be found. It must be nearer to the city or beyond it, I thought.
I passed through the first of the small houses, not yet to the piddling pile of stones that the “king” of Eklon called a wall. Small man. Big acts of cruelty. I felt I knew him already.
I carried a rod of wood, longer than my arm, a shepherd’s rod. I could call upon the power of the earth beneath my feet and make the rod light as a blade of grass or heavy as solid bronze. I could use it as a weapon. Seeing the people kneeling and tied up, I felt a rage against this king who kept people away from his city with death and fear.
Nearing the wall, I clung to the shadows in the dim light of stars on a night with no moon. Only sparse grass grew on this side, the northern side. Perhaps along the southern approach to Eklon I’d find more vegetation and the healing root I came for.
Circling, I found a gate, unguarded, and entered the tiny settlement Eklon called a city. The desert air was cold and I smelled animals and piss pots in the small confines where a few hundred people slept. From shadow to shadow I crept, unchallenged. Maybe the mighty ruler of this fortress assumed no one would dare come at night.
I saw the spring that gave life to this village and what must be the palace, the largest house, unremarkable as it was. Where would the king’s troops hold prisoners? Where might I find the family I’d seen tied up and trembling before him?
I did not know how close dawn might be so I did not linger inside the walls, but made my exit and circled the wall to creep unseen to the southern side.
It was not far until I found them, guided by the sound of jackals fighting. The townspeople had made a shallow pit, a hollow in the rocky-sandy soil. The jackals fled before me but I felt their presence nearby, hovering, waiting for me to leave. Nine bodies. I did not go into the pit to examine them, but it seemed there were three men, two women, two girls, and two boys.
Stoned and left to rot in a shallow grave. This was the hospitality of Eklon.
I stood there, feeling murder in my bones. I could drag the king of Eklon from his tiny palace of stone and throw him in this grave. But I’d come here for a reason.
Liwwir had recovered, my vision told me. But there were others, all the time, who needed this healing root. So many more we could save, unlike this family who’d been beyond help. My rage burned and temples pulsed. The first hint of light peeked over the eastern edge of Haral as I finally gathered myself from the edge of the pit and began to look for vegetation.
“What woman travels alone?” he said. My heart, only just calmed from fury, now raced from surprise and fear. He stood to my left, about ten paces off. Turning I saw another man to my right and I sensed one more behind me.
“She carries a stick,” said the one behind. “Does she know how to use it?”
“That’s a fine wool you wear,” said the first man again. He wore a hooded wrap, dyed brown, and held a long knife in his left hand. “My wife would like it.”
I made the rod in my hand change weight, from light to heavy and back again. They’d not expect me to fight and they’d surely underestimate my weapon. I could also bind them to the earth, weigh them down, make it hard for them to move.
“She’s a fighter, this one,” said the man behind me.
“Would your wife like my cloak?” I asked.
“She would. And if you have enough, maybe we’d let you go.”
“Stand in front of me, then,” I said, making my voice hard, more confident than I felt. And they did.
I laid my wrap on the ground in front of me, wearing only the linen shift Iltani had made for me.
“What’s in your sack?” the second man asked.
“I have enough to ransom myself if you are honorable men.”
“Let’s see then and we will decide.”
I took out the headband with the jasper stone, watching their reaction carefully. The hooded man’s eyes went wide for a second. He’d not expected to gain something this valuable. He motioned for me to go and I turned and walked away, resisting the urge to look back. But I did not hear steps behind me and soon I was over a low ridge and walking in a large field of wild grass and shrubs.
I found a shrub to crouch behind and watched, as the dim light grew brighter. I shivered in the chilly air, missing my cloak badly. But though I waited the better part of an hour, they did not follow me.
A few small houses were out here in the fields. I saw people at their morning work and crawled so as not to be seen. I watched one house for another half an hour and saw only one old woman tending to a line of drying laundry on which I also saw bundles of herbs left out to dry. I decided to risk approaching her.
Without turning her back, she spoke firmly, “They will follow. They won’t let it rest.”
I turned quickly, looking behind, but saw no sign of being followed. “I’m sorry,” I said, looking for a route to escape. “I didn’t mean to bring trouble to your door.”
She turned from her work, a wrinkled, intelligent face, with dark penetrating eyes. I smelled sage and rosemary coming from her mud brick hut. “You are a woman of power. They can’t see that. They fear me a little, because my reputation is known. But you . . . you’re just a woman to them.”
The herbs. Her intelligence. Her confidence. She was goddess-touched. I sensed power about her, probably less than my own, but formidable nonetheless.
“I will —.”
“You will come inside and have some tea. They fear me and will not bother you here.”
She brought me inside and a pot of herbs was simmering, which I had smelled from outside the door. “Sage and rosemary,” she answered my unasked question. “I like the scent.”
She took off another pot from the fire, with a dark, bitter tea that we shared for a few minutes in silence.
“How can you serve in this place, where a king takes people’s lives just for passing through?”
She was sitting on a wooden stool, cradling her bowl of tea in both hands, blowing the top to cool the liquid inside. “I don’t serve the king, but the people. And I was here long before Laqip killed the chieftain who came before him. I’ve been here through many changes. You are not from among the sister-equals at Ektum?”
“Enkimmu,” I replied. “I came to find an herb which I have heard called spindlewort. Do you know it?”
“I do,” her eyebrows came together. “Does it have powers I’m unaware of?”
“So a wizard told me.”
“Ipqatum?”
“The same.”
“Ah,” she nodded her head. “He would know. This is a great gift you have brought me. What can spindlewort do?”
We talked for an hour. She had been midwife and healer for years, living in the same hut, supplied by the families in the area with curds, fruit, bread, and honor. The king’s men feared her because the locals told them she could lay a curse on anyone she had a mind to.
“They are ruffians,” she said, finished now with her tea and sharing a few almonds with her guest. “But they are not all bad. If only they’d been taught better. Please be gentle with them if you can, but don’t risk your life.”
I promised her I would. She pointed me in a direction where I was sure to find plenty of spindlewort. “Here,” she held out a light grey scarf, a very large one. “It’s not a full wrap, but you will look more respectable and be almost warm at night.”
We hugged and I set out, in bright sunlight over a country of sandy, rocky soil and frequent copses of vegetation. Spindlewort, she told me, liked the grassy meadows where it would be well-watered by dew.
They had waited for me, less than a quarter mile from the wise woman’s hut. The leader stepped out from behind a bushy acacia tree. I did not see the others but knew they could not be far off.
“You must be a lord’s wife,” he said. “How could he let you walk alone?”
I stopped by a small boulder and stood with my back to it, protected partially on one side. It was the best defense I could mount at the moment. He took a step toward me and I let my senses flow into the earth, feeling the weight of the soil around me and black bedrock not far below.
I drew from that weight and let it pull him down. His smile changed in an instant, mouth going wide, forming words that never came. In a second he was on his knees struggling to keep from falling prone.
“She’s a witch!” he shouted.
While he was still shouting, one of his companions came out with a sling circling for a shot. I had no doubt he was excellent with it. “Stop!” I said.
Then the blow came. Not the sling, I realized. A heavy stick to the small of my back. The third man had snuck up on me and now my breath exploded out and I fell to my knees, stunned. Then he put the stick over my head, on my neck, and pulled back to cut off my air. I dropped my shepherd’s rod, braced my hands on the stick, and protected my throat the best I could.
I made the stick heavy and pulled straight down at the same time, putting my head forward toward the ground. He lost his grip and now it was in my hands. Light as grass, I whipped it up over my head and behind me. Heavy as bronze, it struck him in the stomach and knocked him back.
I stood and threw the stick at the one with the sling. Just before it struck him in the chin I made it heavy and heard his jaw crunch. He yelped in pain and fell writhing to the ground.
One injured. One stunned. But the leader was coming at me now, long knife in hand. I was weaponless, my rod having fallen from my hand in the surprise attack. His eyes were desperate. They’d not expected me to be any trouble for them.
I pressed him to the earth until he was lying prone, fighting it in vain while the weight of my power squeezed the breath out of him. Three men to attack a lone woman? Men who worked for a murderous king? What mercy should I show them?
I kept my concentration on the leader, lying prone and slowly suffocating under all that weight. But at the same time I snatched up my rod and turned, just in time, to find the one who’d choked me advancing with the same heavy stick.
My rod whistled, light in my hand, and crunched —heavy as stone — into his forearm. A sickening crack shook him to his bowels and he whimpered and fell. The front half of his forearm flopped uselessly. I raised my rod to finish him and he had nowhere to go.
A sling stone struck my hip, and I went down in anguish, to one knee. The slinger’s jaw was bent at a dreadful angle and his whole face was covered in blood. I saw determination in his eyes.
I released the leader to concentrate on this new attack. He was already circling the cling again and I knew he would kill me. I made the stone he was slinging light as a leaf and raised my rod for another throw, just like the one that had broken his jaw. He put up a hand in front of his face, terror in his eyes.
“Be gentle to them,” she’d asked of me. “They’re not all bad.” One was whimpering, holding his broken arm. Another protected his face, preparing to meet death. The leader had just risen from ground, mouth open and eyebrows drawn together, looking at his cowering friend.
I saw them now, more like boys than men. I no longer saw greed in their eyes, nor lust. I thought I saw something else, perhaps a kind of repentance.
I rose shakily, my hip aflame with pain. Opening my bag I pulled out a small clay jar and drank a little of the liquor contained inside. Strength and warmth flowed into my arms and legs. My hip settled to a dull ache.
The leader kept his distance, grateful to have his breath back. The other two, injured, were no longer a threat.
“This king you serve,” I said to the leader, “he is not worthy of your service and honor.”
His face changed, from concern to grim acceptance. He nodded.
“The healing woman is my friend,” I told him. “Go to her and she will help you. If you trouble her or if you continue to serve this king, I will hear about it when I return. If you think the healing woman can lay a curse on you, imagine what I can do.”
I stood tall and they looked at me in pain and terror. The leader held out the headband with the jasper stone toward me, but I did not see my cloak. I took the headband from his outstretched hand and retrieved my other belongings. I carefully gathered their weapons, laying them in a small pile, and walked away.
# # #
I stopped by the healer’s hut on my way back to Enkimmu. It was no problem beating the men back there, since they traveled with injuries more serious than mine. Between my lower back and hip, both bruised and stiff, I dreaded the idea of walking for days. But I had enough of the curative liquor to get me far from here.
Her name, which I had failed to obtain in my initial visit, was Daris. I left her with a tablet of power, one that generated fear, and I taught her the syllables to say. She’d be feared even more now, when she wanted to.
Then I limped out onto the plains. I’m sure I looked like a woman fleeing from violence, hobbling alone with a finely made linen shift missing the expected woolen wrap. Still I was thankful for the scarf, telling myself it added at least some respectability.
I made camp, such as it was, in a copse of shrubs and low-lying trees. The scarf was my only covering and my arm was my pillow. I had one sip of curative left for the morning.
When morning came, I almost could not rise. The muscles in my lower back clinched. The pain in my hip was almost unbearable. Yet I managed to stagger along until near midday when a sight filled me with hope.
Tents. Not a large encampment, but one where I could find food and water. Where I could rest a few days, even though I felt the urge to get back to my sisters and to the children.
He sat in the doorway of his tent looking east, the direction from which I came. When I drew near, he stood and a woman came up beside him with a bowl of water and some dried fruit.
Soon I was sleeping on a reed mat. My hosts were gracious and must have thought something terrible had happened to me. At twilight, she shook me awake.
“You should eat, dear friend.” Her hair was dark as the night sky. Grey eyes with a hint of purple peeked out under a cream-colored scarf.
“I can repay you —.”
She held up a hand. “Gods forbid. Others gave us aid when we fled Enkimmu. How could we do any less?”
We shared a stew of onion, barley, and beans, full of herbs and flavor, with bread and curds. Five men and eight women gathered in the circle, with two small fires and an assortment of children. They all waited for me to speak.
“Friend,” one of the men spoke up, “how did you come here alone?”
I explained who I was. Among the people of the plains, goddess-touched women were not feared. They looked all the more concerned, however, for who could do this to a woman of power?
“And you found the root you were searching for?” asked the woman in whose tent I had slept.
“I did. Would you like to see it?”
She nodded and other women came near, also wanting to see. I removed a bundle, cheap flax cloth wrapped around a root ball of a particularly vigorous spindlewort plant I’d retrieved from Eklon.
“How does it do it’s magic?” The woman’s eyes were big as drinking bowls, her gaze intent on the seemingly inert little plant.
“There is hidden power in many small things,” I explained. “Some can draw out the magic, turn an insignificant leaf or root or seed into a substance that can do wonders. It takes knowledge and also the gift.”
One of the youngest of the women spoke up, “A midwife stopped my bleeding with some bitter tea.”
“That was yarrow, made into a strong tea,” I answered, “and she must have gotten it from a wise woman or been one herself.”
We talked until the stars were bright about herbs, barks, seeds, and roots. Many of the women told me about their aches and pains. I promised in the morning to help them make sleeping tea, if they could find me the right flowers.
Right before I made ready to spend the night on the reed mat, the woman of the tent asked me, “Honored friend, can you find water?”
“Of course,” I yawned.
“My husband will speak to you in the morning.”
Morning came and I once again found my back locked rigid in a spasm and my hip aflame with pain. My hostess helped me roll over and massaged the areas gently, giving some relief and allowing me to join them for a breakfast of parched grain and a little goat cheese.
Everyone had their duties and I was left alone by the tent entrance. The man of the tent approached me mid-morning and he smelled like goats, but was pleasant enough in his manner.
“Honored one,” he lowered his head a moment out of respect, “all of the women have been talking about you.”
“Your wife said you needed to talk to me about finding water?”
He pulled up a stool and cradled a bowl of water, taking sips periodically as he spoke.
“We are not people of the plains, honored one. Or at least we have not always been. And the last two years have been hard.
“We left a comfortable house near the river in Enkimmu. I kept accounts and recorded trades along the river. But year over year the amount of trading decreased and the need for scribes like me diminished.”
I nodded, following his story and reflecting on the decline of Enkimmu.
“I would not wait to be left destitute and without hope.” His eyes lowered to the ground and his shoulders slumped. “I thought we could make a comfortable life out here.”
“But you seem to have a lot here,” I said.
He held up his hand, looking me in the eye. “Don’t be fooled, honored one. I brought some wealth with me and from time to time I make trades with others out here on the plains. We are not living off of our flocks, but buying food and water rights to supplement ourselves. And my means are running out.
“That’s why we are here, in the driest part of the land, with sand and rocks and hardly any goats. Here we can live in peace, but we don’t have enough. Or at least we won’t when my means of bartering run out.”
I nodded to show I understood.
“But if we had a well.” I saw his eyes watering and he raised his eyes. “We’ve prayed again and again to Ragon and to the Mother. We’ve hired well-diggers. We want to make this land usable, to have others come and barter with us. But I’ve failed, honored one.” He turned his head aside, struggling to continue. “My wife — she had fine things. All traded away now. She does not complain. My oldest son has grown and gone back to the city. I have a daughter of age to marry, but no dowry.”
I held up my hand. “You’ve said more than enough, kind friend. Of course I will help you. There is water out here and I know all the places to find it.”
He looked at me with wide eyes, his mouth drawn together. I saw him shudder and release a breath. He stood, took my hand in both of his. “We will offer a kid to the Mother tonight and say prayers for you, honored one!”
He left to prepare for an evening with a sacrificial feast and I rose to begin searching the area. As much as it hurt to walk, I felt a sense of purpose. Soon I had found no less than four good places to dig, marking them with stones.
They would have a public well and at least one secret place as well. I knew enough about life on the plains to realize secret wells were the most valuable of all.
# # #
On the fourth day, when I was feeling good enough to walk again, the whole encampment was busy with well-diggers and gathering stones to build around the well opening. I watched them all morning long and thought of my travels since I’d left the sisters and children.
In the cities, we were distrusted. Out here on the plains, our abilities were welcomed. The powerful thought in terms of status and domain, reputation and strength.
I’d been overeager for acceptance, I suddenly realized. To be understood. Welcomed.
They valued hospitality out here on the plains, welcoming and gathering. Yet even among the clans status and reputation held their place. To have a well. To be a waystation for others.
That was it. We lived to serve but we would be well-served, the sisters and I, by stronger reputation. Daris got by in Eklon because they respected her.
Yet she lived in the shadow of a king who brought death thoughtlessly, who was feared for his ruthlessness. The imbalance of power there bothered me. The people at Eklon feared the king more than the woman who could actually help them.
So I said my goodbyes at the evening celebration and held back from the wine and ale. I felt happiness for this little clan in the dry area of the plains. But I had a purpose elsewhere.
Four days had improved my back and hip. On the fifth morning I set out early, at sunrise, with only essence-of-willow to dull the lingering pain. I figured I could be at Daris’s hut before sundown or not long after, considering how slowly I had limped the other direction.
When I arrived, the sun was reddish-gold behind me and shadows were long. It had been a mild day on the plains and already the air was cooling. I approached her door, smelling the rosemary and sage already. Her favorite scents.
“Nana-meshti,” she bowed her head as she came out to welcome me. “Is everything alright?”
“No,” I said. “Not at all.”
Her eyelids narrowed and her head tilted to one side.
“I mean,” I held out my hand to hers, catching it up in mine, “it’s not alright that these people fear the king more than the witch!”
Her eyes went wide. She wanted to say something, I could tell.
“We will have to do something about it, won’t we?” I said. “Are you going to invite me in?”
She did and we stayed up far too late into the evening. I was glad to see she had her own curative brew and I slept peacefully and whole the entire night.
She woke me before dawn and we walked to the edge of town. I still had no proper cloak, which was not the image I wanted to portray. But Daris knew a family and called on them for a favor, having done them many. The woman of the house loaned me a fine woolen wrap, dark and striped with blue.
In the light of dawn we entered the city gates, where a few people were already gathered.
No one challenged us. Daris was known to them. I set down two bowls, containing nothing but sand and set to gathering sticks so Daris could light a fire before a standing pillar. Starting with a small oil lamp which she’d brought, she caused the bundle to go up in flames with a roar.
People began to notice. One ran from the square and others began to stand back. I made myself light as leaves and leaped up onto a wall as high as my head. Daris set the boiling pot over two stones by the fire.
I began reciting words of power and poured out the two bowls of sand. The air filled with dust and I made it swirl around the square, continuing my recitations.
Daris’s water was not yet hot when the first soldier came to challenge us. I kept my concentration on the swirling dust and nodded to Daris, who took out a clay tablet — the one I had given her. She quickly spoke the incantation and at the same time caused the fire to blaze up again.
I saw the soldier melting in fear and those gathered around began backing further away, caught between fascination and terror. Three more soldiers walked up and I concentrated the swirling air into a dust devil, sending it straight at them.
I pelted them with sand, hard enough to draw blood, and they fled before it.
Daris’s water was near boiling and she cast a handful of herbs into it. A noxious odor rose in the steam and I caught it in the wind, circulating it around the people gathered to watch.
Daris stood on a bench near the standing pillar — just as we had practiced — and spoke more words of power. I stood guard atop the wall with my dust devil. Her incantation of fear still hung in the foul-smelling air. But she bid the onlookers come closer and listen.
“A curse is laid this day on Eklon,” she said, “by the mouth of Daris, goddess-touched.”
More soldiers, about four of them, tried to enter the square, but the people blocked their way. I lifted my rod and let the wind die down. The left side of the gate leaned out a little. Just enough.
I made it heavy and it began to fall. The soldiers leapt back.
Daris raised her voice again. “These gates will not be rebuilt and this curse will not be lifted,” she said in a voice strong despite her age, “until the people of Eklon put down their king and send him away, naked and alone.”
At that moment, the king arrived. A short, burly man, his face was lit with wrath. He had a small contingent of slingers with him, slingers to take down a few bothersome witches.
Daris was ready and so was I. She had not learned to work with the spirit of the earth, but she knew a mind blank spell. The slingers tried to attack, but I made their sling stones alternately light and heavy. They were in disarray, unable to help the king at all.
So Daris walked within two paces of the king of Eklon, reciting words all the while, but holding back the final half line. Interrupting her incantation she asked the king, “What gave you the right to take power in Eklon and lift yourself up over all these gathered here?”
Raising himself up, looking as if he might strike the witch himself, the king tried to answer. But Daris spoke the final hemistich and he went pale. He kept opening his mouth, as if he had something to say, but he was dumbstruck.
“I will ask again,” she said, “how do you raise yourself up above the people of Eklon?”
By now he was gibbering and drooling, the onlookers pointing at him and talking among themselves.
More soldiers walked up and those already gathered began to form around the king.
But a man in the square, who’d been present the whole time, stood in front of them. People began to gather behind him. “Shishit,” he said loudly to the king, “we should never have welcomed you. Daris is right!”
He and the other men seized the king and beat him, while the soldiers looked on. They tore his garments from him and carried him outside the city gates.
I leapt down from the wall and stood beside my sister. I whispered in her ear, “They will fear you and love you.”
We embraced and I walked away, leaving the borrowed cloak in her hands. None of the soldiers threatened me as I walked right through them.
# # #
I wanted the spindlewort to be part of Kishar’s legacy. She was young, untrained, but powerful.
We tended the mother plant eighteen days. I let her reach out with her will to the seedling, showing her how with some terebinth shoots. I felt her power enduing the plant with vigor and speeding its reproductive process. Tiny tendrils spread under the earth forming a network that would become a healthy patch of dark green plants and tiny purple flowers.
She was disappointed on the eighteenth day when no shoots had yet come up out of the ground. “Did I do something wrong?” she looked down at her sandals.
I took her gently by the chin. “You did everything right, Little One. You’ll see.”
Each day we examined the plants. I knew Kishar checked on them even when I was not around. On the morning of the twenty-seventh day she came out to the field where I was tending the herb garden.
“Nana-meshti! Nana-meshti! Come look!”
Her chin was raised and a broad smile covered the width of her face as I looked down at the circle of green coming up around the mother spindlewort. There were dozens of shoots.
“These will become a healing medicine like no other, Little One,” I told her. “And you will make it with me. I will show you how we draw out the powers of the plants and increase them.”
She put her tiny hand in mine and stood silent. We looked down on her spindlewort patch for a while without speaking. Then she suddenly broke the silence.
“Nana-meshti?”
“Yes?” I looked down and saw her face serious now.
“Do you hear the goddess speak sometimes?”
I couldn’t help but smile, remembering my own childhood and coming to terms with the way I was different from other girls. “No, Little One. I do not.”
“Even in your dreams?”
“No, not even in my dreams.”
She put the forefinger of her other hand to her lips and looked up at me. “But why do they call us goddess-touched?”
I knelt so as to be at eye-level with her. “Because, Little One, look at what you can do. Other girls cannot. You can draw life from the earth and put it into plants to heal and grow them or into medicines that can help people or animals. You can draw heaviness from the earth into something and you can put heaviness back into the earth to make yourself light or make something else light. You can call up a wind or a fog.”
She nodded at me, as if she understood. And I knew her keen mind. Even at five years old I believe she could grasp these things.
“And when people see that you can do these things, they think, where does this power come from? How could something this wonderful be in this little girl?”
She squinted her eyes. “And they just say the goddess touched us but they don’t know it?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “What we are is too wonderful not to be from the goddess. She has power over the life of the earth. It must be her that gives it to us. Only the Mother of mothers is wonderful enough to explain Kishar.” I touched her in the center of her chest and smiled.
She did not relent. Her eyes were still squinty and her lips twisted. “But if we’re wonderful, if the goddess is wonderful, how is it that they fear us?”
I admit I was taken aback. I’d not expected this conversation to happen so young. I considered what my teacher had said to me: “They fear what they do not understand.” It hadn’t satisfied me and it wouldn’t her either.
I stood, looking off to the west, where the sun had begun its descent. I felt her standing beside me, rapt with attention.
“That is what a god is, Little One.”
“A god?” she asked in her tiny voice.
“A god is wonderful but any time we hear in the stories about those who met the god, they were always afraid. They are wonderful but fearsome. And we are a little bit like them.”
“How are we like them?”
“People know that they may recover when they are sick or they may grow worse. A mother knows her womb may produce a child or her womb may be closed. They pray to the god or goddess and wait to see what will happen. They come to us when they need a healer or when no babies will come.”
She stirred a little beside me. “I don’t understand, Nana-meshti. Those are wonderful things. Those won’t make someone afraid.”
“You’re right, Kishar. But they know if we can heal, we can make sick. If we can help a mother get with child we can make a womb barren. We can lay a curse. We can give off an aura of fear. I will show you how.”
I felt her take my hand in hers. We stood together looking at the sky for a while until she broke the silence. “Will people be afraid of me?”
I knelt again in front of her, looking into her eyes. “I will make sure of it, Little One. I will make sure of it.”
Our cures sometimes cause pain. Sometimes they fail. Death is not easily defeated and the healer is blamed as much as praised. But these are not the only reasons they fear and loathe us.
Most of all they shudder at the thought of being under a curse, of seeing demons in their dreams, of having their crops wilt and wombs shrivel. Where does our spellcraft come from? Will calling on our powers anger the gods?
But we did not ask for these powers and we venerate the goddesses and gods with them. Our own wombs have shriveled and none of us bear children. It is our private doom but even that adds wood to the fires of their trepidation.
A noble family of Enkimmu had called me into the city. A young soldier led me through the narrow streets to the noble quarter. Someone was ill or injured, or so I thought. But when a middle aged woman greeted me at the door, I could not detect illness. Only embarrassment and a certain nervousness. They ushered me inside quickly, lest anyone would see whom they had called to their house.
“Nana-meshti,” the woman said to me. I could hardly have been more surprised that a wealthy woman like her would know the honorific used among us. She wrung her hands, nibbling the inside of her bottom lip. “My granddaughter, we think she may be like you . . . touched by the goddess, a wise woman or something more.”
I peered into the dark room to my right where a young woman clutched a girl tightly. She was perhaps four or five, best I could see through the mother’s embrace. I looked the grandmother in the eye. “And the men of your family think she is cursed or touched by demons?”
I saw her nod affirmation as I turned quickly to judge the mother’s reaction. Her chin was quivering, eyes averted.
“My daughter’s husband has sent her away, sent her back to us.”
I knew the whole story. As she told it, my mind was elsewhere. A man of status fears a powerful woman, a woman who might disrupt the status quo. It had not been so hard for me or for my mother, since my father was only an impoverished canal forman. But some of my sisters had lived this story.
As the grandmother spoke, the mother stood. Coming into the light, I saw the girl’s long, dark hair and the mother’s knuckles pressed white into her back. The grandmother stopped her narration and watched us both.
Looking at her feet, the mother spoke. “Please, you must let me come with her. I will serve in any way I can.”
“No,” the grandmother stepped forward, almost putting herself between us. “Tell her, Nana-meshti, her place is here with us.”
I looked back and forth between them. Any woman, goddess-touched or not, could read their emotions. Holding out my hands I said, “Let me see the girl.” It was a test. Was the mother ready to trust me?
She brought her to me, perhaps hoping her obeisance would win her a place among the sisters. I saw Kishar’s face for the first time in that instant. Beautiful eyes, like a faun, large and well-proportioned. Her smooth, dark skin and high cheekbones marked her as a true beauty.
If I’d known what they summoned me for, perhaps I would have come with a gentler plan to test the girl. I set her down, intent now on her thoughts. I detected excitement, as of someone finally reaching what they’d desired for a long time. She would not be a wise woman, but clearly something more. “Will you trust me? I will not hurt you.”
She nodded, looking up with wide eyes and lips held back from a smile.
Quickly I made a binding spell, the spirit of the earth surging through me, pushing down on her toward the ground. Not enough weight to injure her, but I did it firmly, in a way that would be alarming and disorienting to a common girl.
She laughed and pushed back at me, unaffected by my spell, and then leapt easily into my arms. Her power met my power and I felt pure elation coming from her.
The grandmother was shaking her head, the word “no” forming on her lips. This was not the life she would have chosen for her granddaughter, nor for her daughter. The mother only held her head down and looked up at me, imploring, compliant.
Kishar remained untroubled and I realized she was fingering my necklace of wooden beads as though I were a familiar aunt. As if I was a normal woman, one graced to have a family and children. I felt a loss and a gain all at once, a surge of unexpected emotion. Kishar would find many aunts and mothers and grandmothers among us.
I looked at the grandmother, whose eyes were wide. “Your daughter should come with her. It’s what is best.” I saw her shoulders lower, her chest deflate. Tears sprang up so quickly, I felt as if I’d wronged her. I reached out, put my hand on her cheek. We looked into each other’s eyes and she saw it.
The girl’s life is what mattered, the life of the young. Not the old.
As the mother gathered her things and gave the soldier a burden to carry, I thought about the grandmother. I am not heartless. “You will be able to come. Any time. They are not lost to you.”
Her granddaughter was a witch. Her daughter would be living amongst witches. She’d learn, as many others had, that witches are women too.
The mother clung to Kishar’s hand as we walked. A family servant came, towing along a two-year old. And I realized the mother was pregnant. Not one, but three children were coming to live in our reed house by the river with seven childless women.
This was going to make the sisters happy, very happy.
# # #
Kishar had been with us for half a year now, a bright child and as powerful as any goddess-touched girl I’d ever seen. Her mother, Siduri, was ready to give birth any day.
My boiling pot simmered with a blend meant for sleeping draughts. I was concentrating on blending flowers, leaves, chopped roots when a concerned voice broke into the room.
“Nana-meshti!” I turned to my young sister, standing at the edge of the pavilion. She’d not slept well. None of us had. The two-year old had been up and down all night crying. “Liwwir is still holding her ear and crying!”
Noise carries in a reed house shared by eight women and two children. I admit I’d been happy to find work outside today to escape the stress. A gorgeous toddler, almost three, Liwwir held the hearts of eight women now. I knew they were concerned. I saw it in their heavy-lidded eyes and pinched lips.
“Ninshuel,” she put her hand on my shoulder, “if anything were to happen to her —”
“She’s barely sick yet,” I protested.
“But it’s an earache!” Her eyebrows knitted together and her forehead creased.
These women would tolerate no risk to their beloved child. Their devotion almost matched Siduri’s. And no wonder, all of us had been deprived of children for so long.
We made brews to ease pain, salves to help wounds heal, liquors and teas to induce sleep. We knew root, flower, and tree. The power of the earth opened itself to us in many forms. Ettu had perfected a tea to ease coughs from redwort, honey crystals, and lemon sedge. We’d saved many lives.
But for all our skills and spells and powers, we could not save everyone. We came when called on, but sometimes returned in shame. Corrupted wounds could defeat our powers. Wet coughs might exceed the relief of our magicked teas and compresses. But with children, it was earaches. Always earaches. And nothing made us hold our heads lower.
I turned to look back at my young sister and found three others standing there with her, waiting for my answer. I held up my hands in surrender. “There is a wizard near Gazakku. I will seek him out.”
# # #
My journey downriver confirmed what I’d long known. Enkimmu was dying. Once the banks of the Naharis were teeming with people and reed houses, fishing boats and boys casting nets from wharfs of stone and flimsy piers of cypress wood.
That I remembered from childhood, some thirty years or more ago. I rarely went to Gazakku and had not seen the deterioration of the river for four or five years. Huge bars of silt diverted the once mighty flow. The stumps of old cypress piers stood now on dry land and the river channel ran through what I suspected used to be fields of barley or fishing villages.
I saw families living on an old stone wharf, now far from the water, with a line of fish meat smoking over a fire of dried reeds. As I came north there were even fewer people and no boats until I approached the ports of Gazakku.
I crossed in front of the city gates. The fields were few and sparsely populated with green stalks of barley like grass on the plains. I walked among the rows and spent the better part of that first day drawing life from the earth into these sickly stalks. I felt the sickness in the ground, salt and sand where rich soil had once been.
I slept among the fields and encountered very few workers that first day and night. After I’d gone a few miles past Gazakku’s gates I began to see better signs of life. Small villages had grown up here recently. Pitiful houses of mud brick, constructed by people with broken pride, stood beside fields that were healthy but undersized. Large dunes of sand surrounded small, fertile valleys.
An old man, with wrinkled, deep-brown skin, beckoned me to his morning fire. “Welcome, traveler,” he held out a clay cup of steaming barley tea. I gratefully accepted, seating myself on a bench of mud bricks.
“I know you are a witch of Enkimmu,” he said.
I kept my eyes on the fire, sensing no hostility here. “And yet you welcome me with your tea and your generosity,” I said. “May the goddess reward you.”
“I have been seeking at the temple of Kerrohm,” he replied. “And only yesterday brought him meal offerings. Now he has sent you.”
A shiver ran through me. “How may I help your people, wise sir?”
He stood and looked behind him, whistling for one of the young men. In a short time there was a small crowd of people of varying ages. They brought out some curds and made barley cakes. They served me the finest breakfast I’d had in a long time.
The people spoke little and I detected a sadness in their eyes. Two younger men supported the elder as he led me into the fields. I looked on silently where he led, watching for whatever he wanted to show me. He took a stalk in his hands and motioned me to look closely.
“The god sent you,” his eyes were wide and face serene, “to cure this.”
I saw the blight. What could I do but help? These people had a need. As worried as I was about Liwwir, I remained with these people two days.
On the morning I was to leave, the elder brought out a small package wrapped in fine wool. With the help of two young men he took a knee before me. “Nana-meshti, you have saved us.” He paused a moment and I was choking up inside. “Please take from us this gift.”
I held the fine scarf in my hands, unwrapping it to find a copper headband set with a jasper stone. I extended my hands to him, shaking my head, offering it back.
He put up his hands, palms out, in front of his face. “I will not take it back, Nana-meshti.” The young men lifted him to his feet. “My wife used to wear it to banquets, when we had a home in Gazakku and when I was a scribe for the king.”
“I should have known you were a learned man, Aplaa,” I said. “May the goddess give you many happy memories of your wife!”
“I see her every day . . . in them,” he pointed to those standing around, his children and grandchildren.
I left them with two clay jars, one with a balm for wounds and another with a blend of tea magicked to ease pain. They watched me walk east until I disappeared over the ridge of dunes.
# # #
The wizard, Ipqatum, had a village at an oasis two days east of Gazakku. Plainsmen made pilgrimages here and an altar to many gods stood in the center of the village.
I saw palm trees on the horizon and the air was hazy in the hot morning sun. I drew closer, less than a mile away, and saw that a single figure in yellow waited for me there. He looked almost regal, in a bright yellow wrap, medium in height I judged, but standing straight as a young terebinth.
The nearer I came the more I felt something else. He was aged but had the strength of youth. His greyish-white beard contrasted with reddish-tan skin, but it was beyond physical appearance. He held a shepherd’s rod loosely in his hand and also a skin of water, which I assumed was his hospitality for me.
He’d known I was coming. I believe he knew long before I saw the palm trees. “Welcome, enchantress.”
At the sound of his voice I nearly fell to my knees. His strength was not only in the earth, like mine, but extended above into the realm of incomprehension. It was the closest I ever came to meeting a god.
“Your perception runs deep,” he said and I felt as if my spirit was open to him. “As with all the sisters of earth powers, you comprehend living things to the bottoms of their being. We are much alike except that where you see deeply, we see the wider world, a broader horizon.”
“You know about our powers?”
Ipqatum took a seat on a boulder and motioned her to do likewise. “I have lived five lifetimes of men and met other sisters like yourself.”
“Five lifetimes!”
“None of the sisters I have met have been quite like you, Ninshuel. You are organizing a community, laying down principles that will be followed for many lifetimes to come. Building a way for enchantresses and healers.”
He was like a god. “You have seen what I do?”
He handed me the waterskin. “Our kind often sees present happenings.” He kept his eyes on me while I took a drink of water so cold and clear, it had to be from the fountain of a god. “Would you like to see for a little while?”
I felt both apprehension and curiosity. I was heady from the draught of enchanted water. As usual, curiosity won out against my best protective instincts. I nodded and he rose, approaching slowly. He touched two fingers to my forehead, his fingers large and gentle, and mouthed strange syllables I did not understand.
At first nothing happened. Then I began to perceive everything at once, no living thing or detail of the landscape escaping my notice. The sky and ground and all the air around us became almost part of me. I knew every insect and blade of scrub grass. I felt the spirits of all the men, women, and children living at the oasis. I knew every plant, its kind and those of its kind spread through the whole area.
Then I discerned patterns. The streams of the four winds above and a river between us and the stars. I perceived the depths below us and I was drawn down in my spirit, below the earth, to the subterranean waters. There was a pool beneath the earth.
In the surface of that pool I began to see something. A vision.
A man in regal clothing sat on a dais of black stones, soldiers surrounding him, while an assortment of people knelt before him, their hands tied behind their backs. I saw a field of sedges and small shrubs, with a cluster of dark green plants and tiny purple flowers in the center. And I saw Liwwir, running and laughing. She had fully recovered, thank the Mother! But then I saw inside many homes in and around Enkimmu. I saw the sick in their beds, some dying, and some perhaps with hope to recover.
I awoke from my trance to find Ipqatum looking deeply into my eyes. “I saw what was shown to you,” he said. “Where you are going, there is danger. As for this plant you seek, it is a root. Spindlewort. It grows near Eklon. May you find what you seek and use it for the good of many.”
I rose to speak, but two young men approached with a wrapped bundle. “We send you away on your journey with some hard cheeses and dried fruit,” the wizard said. “May the goddess speed you on the road.”
I was of two minds at that moment — to stay at Ipqatum’s oasis and learn more about the river between us and the stars — to see if, perchance, a sister of earth powers could have sight like a wizard. Or to hurry to my goal.
Ipqatum’s will prevailed, because now, having found the healing root, I could do no less than hurry, so that lives could be saved.
As I turned to leave, Ipqatum spoke again, “Beware the king of Eklon. He is the one you saw in the vision with captives kneeling before him. He does not allow strangers to enter his land and even pays his subjects to inform his soldiers when travelers come passing through.”
Thus warned, I made my way to Eklon.
# # #
Wrapped in grey wool, so as not to be seen, I crossed the flat ground a few hours before dawn. I saw no patches of grass or plant life on my approach, nowhere that spindlewort might be found. It must be nearer to the city or beyond it, I thought.
I passed through the first of the small houses, not yet to the piddling pile of stones that the “king” of Eklon called a wall. Small man. Big acts of cruelty. I felt I knew him already.
I carried a rod of wood, longer than my arm, a shepherd’s rod. I could call upon the power of the earth beneath my feet and make the rod light as a blade of grass or heavy as solid bronze. I could use it as a weapon. Seeing the people kneeling and tied up, I felt a rage against this king who kept people away from his city with death and fear.
Nearing the wall, I clung to the shadows in the dim light of stars on a night with no moon. Only sparse grass grew on this side, the northern side. Perhaps along the southern approach to Eklon I’d find more vegetation and the healing root I came for.
Circling, I found a gate, unguarded, and entered the tiny settlement Eklon called a city. The desert air was cold and I smelled animals and piss pots in the small confines where a few hundred people slept. From shadow to shadow I crept, unchallenged. Maybe the mighty ruler of this fortress assumed no one would dare come at night.
I saw the spring that gave life to this village and what must be the palace, the largest house, unremarkable as it was. Where would the king’s troops hold prisoners? Where might I find the family I’d seen tied up and trembling before him?
I did not know how close dawn might be so I did not linger inside the walls, but made my exit and circled the wall to creep unseen to the southern side.
It was not far until I found them, guided by the sound of jackals fighting. The townspeople had made a shallow pit, a hollow in the rocky-sandy soil. The jackals fled before me but I felt their presence nearby, hovering, waiting for me to leave. Nine bodies. I did not go into the pit to examine them, but it seemed there were three men, two women, two girls, and two boys.
Stoned and left to rot in a shallow grave. This was the hospitality of Eklon.
I stood there, feeling murder in my bones. I could drag the king of Eklon from his tiny palace of stone and throw him in this grave. But I’d come here for a reason.
Liwwir had recovered, my vision told me. But there were others, all the time, who needed this healing root. So many more we could save, unlike this family who’d been beyond help. My rage burned and temples pulsed. The first hint of light peeked over the eastern edge of Haral as I finally gathered myself from the edge of the pit and began to look for vegetation.
“What woman travels alone?” he said. My heart, only just calmed from fury, now raced from surprise and fear. He stood to my left, about ten paces off. Turning I saw another man to my right and I sensed one more behind me.
“She carries a stick,” said the one behind. “Does she know how to use it?”
“That’s a fine wool you wear,” said the first man again. He wore a hooded wrap, dyed brown, and held a long knife in his left hand. “My wife would like it.”
I made the rod in my hand change weight, from light to heavy and back again. They’d not expect me to fight and they’d surely underestimate my weapon. I could also bind them to the earth, weigh them down, make it hard for them to move.
“She’s a fighter, this one,” said the man behind me.
“Would your wife like my cloak?” I asked.
“She would. And if you have enough, maybe we’d let you go.”
“Stand in front of me, then,” I said, making my voice hard, more confident than I felt. And they did.
I laid my wrap on the ground in front of me, wearing only the linen shift Iltani had made for me.
“What’s in your sack?” the second man asked.
“I have enough to ransom myself if you are honorable men.”
“Let’s see then and we will decide.”
I took out the headband with the jasper stone, watching their reaction carefully. The hooded man’s eyes went wide for a second. He’d not expected to gain something this valuable. He motioned for me to go and I turned and walked away, resisting the urge to look back. But I did not hear steps behind me and soon I was over a low ridge and walking in a large field of wild grass and shrubs.
I found a shrub to crouch behind and watched, as the dim light grew brighter. I shivered in the chilly air, missing my cloak badly. But though I waited the better part of an hour, they did not follow me.
A few small houses were out here in the fields. I saw people at their morning work and crawled so as not to be seen. I watched one house for another half an hour and saw only one old woman tending to a line of drying laundry on which I also saw bundles of herbs left out to dry. I decided to risk approaching her.
Without turning her back, she spoke firmly, “They will follow. They won’t let it rest.”
I turned quickly, looking behind, but saw no sign of being followed. “I’m sorry,” I said, looking for a route to escape. “I didn’t mean to bring trouble to your door.”
She turned from her work, a wrinkled, intelligent face, with dark penetrating eyes. I smelled sage and rosemary coming from her mud brick hut. “You are a woman of power. They can’t see that. They fear me a little, because my reputation is known. But you . . . you’re just a woman to them.”
The herbs. Her intelligence. Her confidence. She was goddess-touched. I sensed power about her, probably less than my own, but formidable nonetheless.
“I will —.”
“You will come inside and have some tea. They fear me and will not bother you here.”
She brought me inside and a pot of herbs was simmering, which I had smelled from outside the door. “Sage and rosemary,” she answered my unasked question. “I like the scent.”
She took off another pot from the fire, with a dark, bitter tea that we shared for a few minutes in silence.
“How can you serve in this place, where a king takes people’s lives just for passing through?”
She was sitting on a wooden stool, cradling her bowl of tea in both hands, blowing the top to cool the liquid inside. “I don’t serve the king, but the people. And I was here long before Laqip killed the chieftain who came before him. I’ve been here through many changes. You are not from among the sister-equals at Ektum?”
“Enkimmu,” I replied. “I came to find an herb which I have heard called spindlewort. Do you know it?”
“I do,” her eyebrows came together. “Does it have powers I’m unaware of?”
“So a wizard told me.”
“Ipqatum?”
“The same.”
“Ah,” she nodded her head. “He would know. This is a great gift you have brought me. What can spindlewort do?”
We talked for an hour. She had been midwife and healer for years, living in the same hut, supplied by the families in the area with curds, fruit, bread, and honor. The king’s men feared her because the locals told them she could lay a curse on anyone she had a mind to.
“They are ruffians,” she said, finished now with her tea and sharing a few almonds with her guest. “But they are not all bad. If only they’d been taught better. Please be gentle with them if you can, but don’t risk your life.”
I promised her I would. She pointed me in a direction where I was sure to find plenty of spindlewort. “Here,” she held out a light grey scarf, a very large one. “It’s not a full wrap, but you will look more respectable and be almost warm at night.”
We hugged and I set out, in bright sunlight over a country of sandy, rocky soil and frequent copses of vegetation. Spindlewort, she told me, liked the grassy meadows where it would be well-watered by dew.
They had waited for me, less than a quarter mile from the wise woman’s hut. The leader stepped out from behind a bushy acacia tree. I did not see the others but knew they could not be far off.
“You must be a lord’s wife,” he said. “How could he let you walk alone?”
I stopped by a small boulder and stood with my back to it, protected partially on one side. It was the best defense I could mount at the moment. He took a step toward me and I let my senses flow into the earth, feeling the weight of the soil around me and black bedrock not far below.
I drew from that weight and let it pull him down. His smile changed in an instant, mouth going wide, forming words that never came. In a second he was on his knees struggling to keep from falling prone.
“She’s a witch!” he shouted.
While he was still shouting, one of his companions came out with a sling circling for a shot. I had no doubt he was excellent with it. “Stop!” I said.
Then the blow came. Not the sling, I realized. A heavy stick to the small of my back. The third man had snuck up on me and now my breath exploded out and I fell to my knees, stunned. Then he put the stick over my head, on my neck, and pulled back to cut off my air. I dropped my shepherd’s rod, braced my hands on the stick, and protected my throat the best I could.
I made the stick heavy and pulled straight down at the same time, putting my head forward toward the ground. He lost his grip and now it was in my hands. Light as grass, I whipped it up over my head and behind me. Heavy as bronze, it struck him in the stomach and knocked him back.
I stood and threw the stick at the one with the sling. Just before it struck him in the chin I made it heavy and heard his jaw crunch. He yelped in pain and fell writhing to the ground.
One injured. One stunned. But the leader was coming at me now, long knife in hand. I was weaponless, my rod having fallen from my hand in the surprise attack. His eyes were desperate. They’d not expected me to be any trouble for them.
I pressed him to the earth until he was lying prone, fighting it in vain while the weight of my power squeezed the breath out of him. Three men to attack a lone woman? Men who worked for a murderous king? What mercy should I show them?
I kept my concentration on the leader, lying prone and slowly suffocating under all that weight. But at the same time I snatched up my rod and turned, just in time, to find the one who’d choked me advancing with the same heavy stick.
My rod whistled, light in my hand, and crunched —heavy as stone — into his forearm. A sickening crack shook him to his bowels and he whimpered and fell. The front half of his forearm flopped uselessly. I raised my rod to finish him and he had nowhere to go.
A sling stone struck my hip, and I went down in anguish, to one knee. The slinger’s jaw was bent at a dreadful angle and his whole face was covered in blood. I saw determination in his eyes.
I released the leader to concentrate on this new attack. He was already circling the cling again and I knew he would kill me. I made the stone he was slinging light as a leaf and raised my rod for another throw, just like the one that had broken his jaw. He put up a hand in front of his face, terror in his eyes.
“Be gentle to them,” she’d asked of me. “They’re not all bad.” One was whimpering, holding his broken arm. Another protected his face, preparing to meet death. The leader had just risen from ground, mouth open and eyebrows drawn together, looking at his cowering friend.
I saw them now, more like boys than men. I no longer saw greed in their eyes, nor lust. I thought I saw something else, perhaps a kind of repentance.
I rose shakily, my hip aflame with pain. Opening my bag I pulled out a small clay jar and drank a little of the liquor contained inside. Strength and warmth flowed into my arms and legs. My hip settled to a dull ache.
The leader kept his distance, grateful to have his breath back. The other two, injured, were no longer a threat.
“This king you serve,” I said to the leader, “he is not worthy of your service and honor.”
His face changed, from concern to grim acceptance. He nodded.
“The healing woman is my friend,” I told him. “Go to her and she will help you. If you trouble her or if you continue to serve this king, I will hear about it when I return. If you think the healing woman can lay a curse on you, imagine what I can do.”
I stood tall and they looked at me in pain and terror. The leader held out the headband with the jasper stone toward me, but I did not see my cloak. I took the headband from his outstretched hand and retrieved my other belongings. I carefully gathered their weapons, laying them in a small pile, and walked away.
# # #
I stopped by the healer’s hut on my way back to Enkimmu. It was no problem beating the men back there, since they traveled with injuries more serious than mine. Between my lower back and hip, both bruised and stiff, I dreaded the idea of walking for days. But I had enough of the curative liquor to get me far from here.
Her name, which I had failed to obtain in my initial visit, was Daris. I left her with a tablet of power, one that generated fear, and I taught her the syllables to say. She’d be feared even more now, when she wanted to.
Then I limped out onto the plains. I’m sure I looked like a woman fleeing from violence, hobbling alone with a finely made linen shift missing the expected woolen wrap. Still I was thankful for the scarf, telling myself it added at least some respectability.
I made camp, such as it was, in a copse of shrubs and low-lying trees. The scarf was my only covering and my arm was my pillow. I had one sip of curative left for the morning.
When morning came, I almost could not rise. The muscles in my lower back clinched. The pain in my hip was almost unbearable. Yet I managed to stagger along until near midday when a sight filled me with hope.
Tents. Not a large encampment, but one where I could find food and water. Where I could rest a few days, even though I felt the urge to get back to my sisters and to the children.
He sat in the doorway of his tent looking east, the direction from which I came. When I drew near, he stood and a woman came up beside him with a bowl of water and some dried fruit.
Soon I was sleeping on a reed mat. My hosts were gracious and must have thought something terrible had happened to me. At twilight, she shook me awake.
“You should eat, dear friend.” Her hair was dark as the night sky. Grey eyes with a hint of purple peeked out under a cream-colored scarf.
“I can repay you —.”
She held up a hand. “Gods forbid. Others gave us aid when we fled Enkimmu. How could we do any less?”
We shared a stew of onion, barley, and beans, full of herbs and flavor, with bread and curds. Five men and eight women gathered in the circle, with two small fires and an assortment of children. They all waited for me to speak.
“Friend,” one of the men spoke up, “how did you come here alone?”
I explained who I was. Among the people of the plains, goddess-touched women were not feared. They looked all the more concerned, however, for who could do this to a woman of power?
“And you found the root you were searching for?” asked the woman in whose tent I had slept.
“I did. Would you like to see it?”
She nodded and other women came near, also wanting to see. I removed a bundle, cheap flax cloth wrapped around a root ball of a particularly vigorous spindlewort plant I’d retrieved from Eklon.
“How does it do it’s magic?” The woman’s eyes were big as drinking bowls, her gaze intent on the seemingly inert little plant.
“There is hidden power in many small things,” I explained. “Some can draw out the magic, turn an insignificant leaf or root or seed into a substance that can do wonders. It takes knowledge and also the gift.”
One of the youngest of the women spoke up, “A midwife stopped my bleeding with some bitter tea.”
“That was yarrow, made into a strong tea,” I answered, “and she must have gotten it from a wise woman or been one herself.”
We talked until the stars were bright about herbs, barks, seeds, and roots. Many of the women told me about their aches and pains. I promised in the morning to help them make sleeping tea, if they could find me the right flowers.
Right before I made ready to spend the night on the reed mat, the woman of the tent asked me, “Honored friend, can you find water?”
“Of course,” I yawned.
“My husband will speak to you in the morning.”
Morning came and I once again found my back locked rigid in a spasm and my hip aflame with pain. My hostess helped me roll over and massaged the areas gently, giving some relief and allowing me to join them for a breakfast of parched grain and a little goat cheese.
Everyone had their duties and I was left alone by the tent entrance. The man of the tent approached me mid-morning and he smelled like goats, but was pleasant enough in his manner.
“Honored one,” he lowered his head a moment out of respect, “all of the women have been talking about you.”
“Your wife said you needed to talk to me about finding water?”
He pulled up a stool and cradled a bowl of water, taking sips periodically as he spoke.
“We are not people of the plains, honored one. Or at least we have not always been. And the last two years have been hard.
“We left a comfortable house near the river in Enkimmu. I kept accounts and recorded trades along the river. But year over year the amount of trading decreased and the need for scribes like me diminished.”
I nodded, following his story and reflecting on the decline of Enkimmu.
“I would not wait to be left destitute and without hope.” His eyes lowered to the ground and his shoulders slumped. “I thought we could make a comfortable life out here.”
“But you seem to have a lot here,” I said.
He held up his hand, looking me in the eye. “Don’t be fooled, honored one. I brought some wealth with me and from time to time I make trades with others out here on the plains. We are not living off of our flocks, but buying food and water rights to supplement ourselves. And my means are running out.
“That’s why we are here, in the driest part of the land, with sand and rocks and hardly any goats. Here we can live in peace, but we don’t have enough. Or at least we won’t when my means of bartering run out.”
I nodded to show I understood.
“But if we had a well.” I saw his eyes watering and he raised his eyes. “We’ve prayed again and again to Ragon and to the Mother. We’ve hired well-diggers. We want to make this land usable, to have others come and barter with us. But I’ve failed, honored one.” He turned his head aside, struggling to continue. “My wife — she had fine things. All traded away now. She does not complain. My oldest son has grown and gone back to the city. I have a daughter of age to marry, but no dowry.”
I held up my hand. “You’ve said more than enough, kind friend. Of course I will help you. There is water out here and I know all the places to find it.”
He looked at me with wide eyes, his mouth drawn together. I saw him shudder and release a breath. He stood, took my hand in both of his. “We will offer a kid to the Mother tonight and say prayers for you, honored one!”
He left to prepare for an evening with a sacrificial feast and I rose to begin searching the area. As much as it hurt to walk, I felt a sense of purpose. Soon I had found no less than four good places to dig, marking them with stones.
They would have a public well and at least one secret place as well. I knew enough about life on the plains to realize secret wells were the most valuable of all.
# # #
On the fourth day, when I was feeling good enough to walk again, the whole encampment was busy with well-diggers and gathering stones to build around the well opening. I watched them all morning long and thought of my travels since I’d left the sisters and children.
In the cities, we were distrusted. Out here on the plains, our abilities were welcomed. The powerful thought in terms of status and domain, reputation and strength.
I’d been overeager for acceptance, I suddenly realized. To be understood. Welcomed.
They valued hospitality out here on the plains, welcoming and gathering. Yet even among the clans status and reputation held their place. To have a well. To be a waystation for others.
That was it. We lived to serve but we would be well-served, the sisters and I, by stronger reputation. Daris got by in Eklon because they respected her.
Yet she lived in the shadow of a king who brought death thoughtlessly, who was feared for his ruthlessness. The imbalance of power there bothered me. The people at Eklon feared the king more than the woman who could actually help them.
So I said my goodbyes at the evening celebration and held back from the wine and ale. I felt happiness for this little clan in the dry area of the plains. But I had a purpose elsewhere.
Four days had improved my back and hip. On the fifth morning I set out early, at sunrise, with only essence-of-willow to dull the lingering pain. I figured I could be at Daris’s hut before sundown or not long after, considering how slowly I had limped the other direction.
When I arrived, the sun was reddish-gold behind me and shadows were long. It had been a mild day on the plains and already the air was cooling. I approached her door, smelling the rosemary and sage already. Her favorite scents.
“Nana-meshti,” she bowed her head as she came out to welcome me. “Is everything alright?”
“No,” I said. “Not at all.”
Her eyelids narrowed and her head tilted to one side.
“I mean,” I held out my hand to hers, catching it up in mine, “it’s not alright that these people fear the king more than the witch!”
Her eyes went wide. She wanted to say something, I could tell.
“We will have to do something about it, won’t we?” I said. “Are you going to invite me in?”
She did and we stayed up far too late into the evening. I was glad to see she had her own curative brew and I slept peacefully and whole the entire night.
She woke me before dawn and we walked to the edge of town. I still had no proper cloak, which was not the image I wanted to portray. But Daris knew a family and called on them for a favor, having done them many. The woman of the house loaned me a fine woolen wrap, dark and striped with blue.
In the light of dawn we entered the city gates, where a few people were already gathered.
No one challenged us. Daris was known to them. I set down two bowls, containing nothing but sand and set to gathering sticks so Daris could light a fire before a standing pillar. Starting with a small oil lamp which she’d brought, she caused the bundle to go up in flames with a roar.
People began to notice. One ran from the square and others began to stand back. I made myself light as leaves and leaped up onto a wall as high as my head. Daris set the boiling pot over two stones by the fire.
I began reciting words of power and poured out the two bowls of sand. The air filled with dust and I made it swirl around the square, continuing my recitations.
Daris’s water was not yet hot when the first soldier came to challenge us. I kept my concentration on the swirling dust and nodded to Daris, who took out a clay tablet — the one I had given her. She quickly spoke the incantation and at the same time caused the fire to blaze up again.
I saw the soldier melting in fear and those gathered around began backing further away, caught between fascination and terror. Three more soldiers walked up and I concentrated the swirling air into a dust devil, sending it straight at them.
I pelted them with sand, hard enough to draw blood, and they fled before it.
Daris’s water was near boiling and she cast a handful of herbs into it. A noxious odor rose in the steam and I caught it in the wind, circulating it around the people gathered to watch.
Daris stood on a bench near the standing pillar — just as we had practiced — and spoke more words of power. I stood guard atop the wall with my dust devil. Her incantation of fear still hung in the foul-smelling air. But she bid the onlookers come closer and listen.
“A curse is laid this day on Eklon,” she said, “by the mouth of Daris, goddess-touched.”
More soldiers, about four of them, tried to enter the square, but the people blocked their way. I lifted my rod and let the wind die down. The left side of the gate leaned out a little. Just enough.
I made it heavy and it began to fall. The soldiers leapt back.
Daris raised her voice again. “These gates will not be rebuilt and this curse will not be lifted,” she said in a voice strong despite her age, “until the people of Eklon put down their king and send him away, naked and alone.”
At that moment, the king arrived. A short, burly man, his face was lit with wrath. He had a small contingent of slingers with him, slingers to take down a few bothersome witches.
Daris was ready and so was I. She had not learned to work with the spirit of the earth, but she knew a mind blank spell. The slingers tried to attack, but I made their sling stones alternately light and heavy. They were in disarray, unable to help the king at all.
So Daris walked within two paces of the king of Eklon, reciting words all the while, but holding back the final half line. Interrupting her incantation she asked the king, “What gave you the right to take power in Eklon and lift yourself up over all these gathered here?”
Raising himself up, looking as if he might strike the witch himself, the king tried to answer. But Daris spoke the final hemistich and he went pale. He kept opening his mouth, as if he had something to say, but he was dumbstruck.
“I will ask again,” she said, “how do you raise yourself up above the people of Eklon?”
By now he was gibbering and drooling, the onlookers pointing at him and talking among themselves.
More soldiers walked up and those already gathered began to form around the king.
But a man in the square, who’d been present the whole time, stood in front of them. People began to gather behind him. “Shishit,” he said loudly to the king, “we should never have welcomed you. Daris is right!”
He and the other men seized the king and beat him, while the soldiers looked on. They tore his garments from him and carried him outside the city gates.
I leapt down from the wall and stood beside my sister. I whispered in her ear, “They will fear you and love you.”
We embraced and I walked away, leaving the borrowed cloak in her hands. None of the soldiers threatened me as I walked right through them.
# # #
I wanted the spindlewort to be part of Kishar’s legacy. She was young, untrained, but powerful.
We tended the mother plant eighteen days. I let her reach out with her will to the seedling, showing her how with some terebinth shoots. I felt her power enduing the plant with vigor and speeding its reproductive process. Tiny tendrils spread under the earth forming a network that would become a healthy patch of dark green plants and tiny purple flowers.
She was disappointed on the eighteenth day when no shoots had yet come up out of the ground. “Did I do something wrong?” she looked down at her sandals.
I took her gently by the chin. “You did everything right, Little One. You’ll see.”
Each day we examined the plants. I knew Kishar checked on them even when I was not around. On the morning of the twenty-seventh day she came out to the field where I was tending the herb garden.
“Nana-meshti! Nana-meshti! Come look!”
Her chin was raised and a broad smile covered the width of her face as I looked down at the circle of green coming up around the mother spindlewort. There were dozens of shoots.
“These will become a healing medicine like no other, Little One,” I told her. “And you will make it with me. I will show you how we draw out the powers of the plants and increase them.”
She put her tiny hand in mine and stood silent. We looked down on her spindlewort patch for a while without speaking. Then she suddenly broke the silence.
“Nana-meshti?”
“Yes?” I looked down and saw her face serious now.
“Do you hear the goddess speak sometimes?”
I couldn’t help but smile, remembering my own childhood and coming to terms with the way I was different from other girls. “No, Little One. I do not.”
“Even in your dreams?”
“No, not even in my dreams.”
She put the forefinger of her other hand to her lips and looked up at me. “But why do they call us goddess-touched?”
I knelt so as to be at eye-level with her. “Because, Little One, look at what you can do. Other girls cannot. You can draw life from the earth and put it into plants to heal and grow them or into medicines that can help people or animals. You can draw heaviness from the earth into something and you can put heaviness back into the earth to make yourself light or make something else light. You can call up a wind or a fog.”
She nodded at me, as if she understood. And I knew her keen mind. Even at five years old I believe she could grasp these things.
“And when people see that you can do these things, they think, where does this power come from? How could something this wonderful be in this little girl?”
She squinted her eyes. “And they just say the goddess touched us but they don’t know it?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “What we are is too wonderful not to be from the goddess. She has power over the life of the earth. It must be her that gives it to us. Only the Mother of mothers is wonderful enough to explain Kishar.” I touched her in the center of her chest and smiled.
She did not relent. Her eyes were still squinty and her lips twisted. “But if we’re wonderful, if the goddess is wonderful, how is it that they fear us?”
I admit I was taken aback. I’d not expected this conversation to happen so young. I considered what my teacher had said to me: “They fear what they do not understand.” It hadn’t satisfied me and it wouldn’t her either.
I stood, looking off to the west, where the sun had begun its descent. I felt her standing beside me, rapt with attention.
“That is what a god is, Little One.”
“A god?” she asked in her tiny voice.
“A god is wonderful but any time we hear in the stories about those who met the god, they were always afraid. They are wonderful but fearsome. And we are a little bit like them.”
“How are we like them?”
“People know that they may recover when they are sick or they may grow worse. A mother knows her womb may produce a child or her womb may be closed. They pray to the god or goddess and wait to see what will happen. They come to us when they need a healer or when no babies will come.”
She stirred a little beside me. “I don’t understand, Nana-meshti. Those are wonderful things. Those won’t make someone afraid.”
“You’re right, Kishar. But they know if we can heal, we can make sick. If we can help a mother get with child we can make a womb barren. We can lay a curse. We can give off an aura of fear. I will show you how.”
I felt her take my hand in hers. We stood together looking at the sky for a while until she broke the silence. “Will people be afraid of me?”
I knelt again in front of her, looking into her eyes. “I will make sure of it, Little One. I will make sure of it.”