In the Darkest of Days
Timmain and the hunters, elves and wolves both, brought us meat, not much in that cold, cruel season, but enough to survive on until they would return again. Sometimes they were gone for many days, but the game was always worth the wait - birds and beasts and little furry creatures barely a mouthful each, yet they seemed almost a feast in our hunger. Any meat we could get, we cooked on our fires and ate. Timmain took her share raw and bloody, the warmt of life in its veins still, and though she said she only ate alone to spare us the sight of her violent eating, we knew by her sparse frame that the portion she allowed herself was always smaller than anyone else's meals. Always she led us like a loving mother would, ignoring her own needs while her children were hungry.
Even Kaslen could not make the plants bear fruit during the white cold, but instead she was using her union with the sleeping green world to locate acorns and nuts and other edible things under the snow. Many others helped her as best we could, learning to know and guess where we might find a sour-flavoired but nourishing root or a squirrel's secret hoard of nuts long forgotten by its furry owner.
The firestarters kept the fires going to keep the chill away from the caves that had become our shelter. And the rest of us – we sewed each other warm clothes from the animal hides to protect us from the biting, icy winds, melted snow into water, made weapons, tools and dishes to use, and we went out and foraged for firewood and fished in the river and gathered what little food we could find.
Each did their part, each had their own gifts to bring to keep us alive from day to day. We were seldom idle, for there was always work to do, there was never too much food, never too much firewood. At the end of each short day we fell asleep exhausted and shivering in each other's arms, bundled up close together for warmth, covered with all our furs. Our dreams were of what we had lost and of the many enemies this world contained – the humans, the weakening of our magic, the predators, illness, death, and most of all the merciless white cold that just kept getting colder and colder.
My healer-magic was almost totally gone, blown away by the cruel gales of fate that stranded us, but what little I had I used with all my fervour, and what I learned of herbs and bandages was acquired not so much from my faded healer-sense as from the greatest of all teachers on this new world – trial and error.
I made teas to ease a sore throat, poultices to cure aches, and I looked after those who fell ill - those bitten by the cold in their fragile toes and fingers I helped recover with no lasting damage, those brought down by sudden fevers I cared for, seeing they were kept warm and that, if food was scarce, they at least had enough to drink.
And Sefra...
Sefra liked the night more than the day, so she often worked while the rest of us slept, and took little naps in the daytime. No-one ever chided her for laziness, for they knew she worked at night, doing her fair share of all tasks, but I was the only one she allowed in her confidence, letting me see what else she did. Partly it was because I spent most my days at the cave and could harldly have failed to notice, and partly it was because we had been friends for a world's age, and in this ship-wrecked primitive new life I had become one of Sefra's many lovemates.
Sefra was often found sitting in a quiet corner of the cave looking at a broken tool or dish, not asking the maker for advice but instead studying it until she understood the fault and then fixing it or giving up and starting to make a new one instead. But it seemed to me that my friend, always a proud one in her quiet, unceremonious way, was not satisfied with her own work – although she worked as hard as any other, or harder, for she demanded much form herself, she did not have any special gift of skill or magic to give her people, and that bothered her. She did her best in the mending-crafts, but she was no maker nor shaper – her handiwork served in its function well enough but was seldom as beautiful to look at or as smooth to the hand as work done by those most skilled or gifted in the particular craft. There was more such work that there were skilled workers, however, and thus her gifts were always very welcome.
It was not our thanks she desired – Sefra was in fact happier when no-one knew it was she who had helped them. I remember one evening seeing her sit deep in the shadows, knotting a broken fishing-net whole again more by feel than sight, and the next day Deir woke up with the net he had torn on an underwater log whole again beside his sleeping-furs, and asked all around who was the secret helper that had spared him many an hour's work, thus giving him more time for what he did best, fishing, but Sefra had sworn me to silence and he never learned the answer to the riddle.
All of us who had some special talent and many who didn't got these little gifts from Sefra, and most of us did not guess who was the secret helper, for surely she alone could not have enough time to do all those little jobs that suddenly just did themselves. I would turn to change a poultice and find the water for the tea my next charge required already boiling. Kaslen's torn fur cloak was sewn together overnight. Gibra's worn basket vanished and was replaced by a new one, and so forth.
Sometimes I fancied Sefra might have a secret magic for making time stretch longer for her, but I seriously doubt it. More likely she perfected the art of catching a wink of sleep in any spare moment she had, and doing without for most of the early morning hours – for she was never beside me when I woke.
Often Sefra came to my furs in the middle of the night, and we spoke a while in sending before drifting off to exhausted sleep, or, sometimes, catching a certain spark from each other's eyes to kindle the sweet flames of joining.
In her sendings she told me that she wished she was like me – that she had some special gift like my scraps of herbal healing sewn together with just enough magic to know by instinct what cure was best for each aiment, or even like Kaslen's amazing treeshaping that could ripen raw nuts and make many useful things like bows literally grow in trees. It was hard for her – she had, after all, been one of us. One of the Circle of Nine. In the ship she had had a function, and even when she announced the grievous news that we had cone awry a full turn of the spiral in time, she was still fulfilling her function as Timekeeper.
But now, or so I thought, although she never said it, there was no reason to keep time anymore. We knew what time we were in, and it was the wrong one, and we had no ship to take us where we belonged. And Time was Sefra's greatest gift. It had seemed to me when we still flew free among the stars that Sefra had a second heart, in her soul of souls, that beat not the changeable rhythms of blood, the tides by which we lived now under Timmain's guidance, the time of hunting and eating, of joining and parting, green and red, life and death, from heartbeat to heartbeat, but a different pace entirely, perfect in its unchanging, steady pulse – the time of the stars.
In our ship Sefra had needed neither eyes nor windows to know where the stars were, and when they were. But the ship was lost and much of our magic with it, and now Sefra had to bend her neck and look up to be certain where the stars and moons were in the sky, although she did not look up at them with the surprise I saw for instance in Kalil's eyes when he first saw Child Moon partly covering Mother Moon. When Sefra glanced at the sky, often I looked into her eyes and saw there satisfaction that the stars were exactly where she had expected them to be, as well as a calm wonder that they were even more beautiful than she had remembered them to be.
I told her what I saw in her eyes, again and again I reminded her that she had not lost her talent, she was still who she had always been. And I told her that the little gifts of help she gave us when all put together made a worthy gift indeed, and gave us much joy in that grim and dark time.
And she told me there still wasn't enough joy in our lives – she missed the carefree laughter of the green and warm season, they playful moods that used to take over all of us, making us frolic in the river together when bathing and laugh and play like children. Sefra was always the first to splash someone with cold water those sunny days, and usually the one getting splashed was I. Of all of us she was the quickest to laugh and joke, and the most mischievous, pulling many a grand joke on us, in those days that though full of work and hardship seemed golden and long-lost now in this white-cold that offered little respite and no cause for mirth. Baths were quick and ice-cold, an ordeal one went through at great recluctance and only when one really had to.
And Sefra missed the joy most of all, and the energy she had once used in jests and teasing she now employed doing little favours that required no special skill, only time and patience to learn them, and all this she did for one reason only – to see us smile, to surprise us with small pleasures that warmed our hearts and maybe make up for past jests like tying Kalil's jacket into a high treetop or giving Gibra a nutshell that instead of the nut contained a live centipede. And if Sefra had usually escaped the blame in that green and sweet time, even more often she now escaped the thanks, by her own choice.
Again and again she told me it wasn't enough. She told me we were burdened by much fear. She told me the days just kept getting shorter and darker. She told me she wanted to give us a grand gift, to give us a moment of perfect happiness, of laughter and celebration.
And that was all she told me, and I tried to help her think of such a gift, not realizing that she was already planning one – for she kept it hidden, she wanted it to be a surprise for me as well.
She even went as far as to deliberately mislead me, acting as if some project or other was the important one, the great gift. Oh, she was clever, my Sefra. She set a bunch of traps and made a big business of checking them daily, and sometimes she caught something but usually returned empty-handed, and once with a swollen wound on her hand, laughing through her tears:
"Some hunter I am – it was a squirrel that bit me!"
She tried her hand at fishing, making loose-knotted nets for big fish with the obvous result that her catches were few and far between but always noteworthy and much appreciated. This pursuit she gave up when she returned one afternoon, her soaking-wet hair and clothes freezing on her. When I had helped her into dry furs and seated her beside the fire with a cup of warm broth, she stammered through clicking teeth:
"I fe-fell th-through th-thin ice, bu-burro-we-wers ta-take it-t! And wh-what d-do I g-get fo-for my-my tro-toub-l-le?" She took her boots and poured from one a considerable amount of water, and from another, more water and a tiny little fish squirming on the floor. I knew by the glint in her eye when she killed the fish and ate it raw that she had felt it struggling there, and planned the scene of its discovery, and that the laughter the sight got from us was almost worth the icy bath and the freezing walk home.
In retrospect, I suppose I should have guessed. I should have known Sefra would not settle for any temporary gift, not even the biggest fish in the river, for even that would one day be all eaten up, leaving only bones to remember it by when next we hungered. Not Sefra, for she was never content with just the song of the world that Timmain taught us. Her soul knew the heartbeat of Time itself – if she was planning a great gift, it would have to be something lasting.
I did notice one strange habit of hers. Every morning she rose a while before sunrise, every evening she stayed up at least until the sun had set and the first stars had come out, and those times, if the sky was clear or the clouds had even the tiniest gaps between them, she stood alone at the cave mouth, doing nothing, staring up into the stars. It was rare for any of us to stand still so long in those darkest and coldest of days, and so I wondered, but I did not ask her, because I thought I knew what she would answer. I thought she was simply resting her eyes in the sight that had always given her most pleasure – the stars. If I had asked she might have thought I was gently chiding her for wasted time, which I of all people of course had no cause to do, knowing how much she did in secret. And so I watched Sefra and Sefra watched the stars, and neither of us spoke to anyone of what we saw.
And then came the right time for the Gift.
One morning Sefra turned her back to the sunrise-reddened sky, and looked me right into the eyes, and woke us all with her sending:
**The days are growing longer! The white cold will end, the darkness will be conquered by light, and the green will awaken to sing with us once again!**
Sluggishly our people woke, wondering about the meaning of the words, some grumbling groggily and declaring they did not like the interruption to their dreams, and I told Sefra:
**I don't think they all understood your sending. They're still half asleep.**
She answered me calmly:
**So it is with worlds as well, Aerth. It will be a while yet before the white cold realizes it is losing the battle and withdraws its chilly fingers from the land. The green still sleeps, but the sun is calling it to wake.**
And so she sent again:
**I have measured the nights by the stars, and the nights have finally begun to grow shorter. The world has reached a point in its orbit after which this piece of it will be turning slowly towards the sun again, just as it has been turning away from it.**
Finally they understood. Cheers and joyful sendings filled the cave, as one by one our people shared this brightest and best of gifts in those darkest of days: hope.
While the rest of us, even Timmain, had lived from hand to mouth, day by day, the Timekeeper had been faithful to her function. She had watched the stars and measured how much the wheel of the sky turned between each sunset and sunrise. She had remembered all she had ever learned of worlds and their orbits, and she had waited until she saw what she expected to see, so that there would be no chance of mistake – for perhaps she had not until then quite got over that she had not when we were betrayed noticed soon enough the time was wrong – and she had achieved exactly the effect she wished – that day was the happiest in a long time, and the memory of it and the hope she had given us will last as long as we live, as long as Timmain will remember for us, as long as the Scroll in the Lost Palace records all our deeds.
The certainty of days growing longer again made all the difference. The promise of plenty was enough to make some joy and laughter trickle from the future green growing time into the present – the usually quiet and serious Gibra sang while working, the surly Kalil smiled, and kept smiling even when Kaslen told him she had lost one of the mittens he had made for her, and we all went out of our way to help each other, and shared of what little we had much more than usual.
That day we paused often in our work to breathe in the beauty of the sunlight on the hoarfrost in the trees, to listen to the sounds of snow and wind, to taste the food in our mouths with new passion. Kaslen gathered some grass seeds and fed them to twittering little birds, and none of us thought the food and effort wasted. And Sefra? Her laughter rang the loudest and her delight knew no bounds when she mixed some water in the powdery snow to make snowballs, and I think you can guess what she did with them and who got the first one in his face...
The white cold season was no longer only an enemy – it seemed to be reborn with new beauty to our eyes when we knew it would end, like all things on this world end. When the sky darkened our spirits did not grow heavy – we knew the night would be one night less from the many that still stood on the path to the long bright days, and each night would be shorter than the previous form now on. We gathered around the fires and sang and told stories, and even with the hunters gone some of us howled their joy in unpracticed but earnest voices.
Either we were simply in luck or the ripples of rejoicing reached even Timmain, for the hunters returned that same night with two kills, a stag and a ground-hog, and we had ourselves a true feast.
Timmain, in her elven shape for once, asked Sefra to stand and she did, but blushed and did not know what to say. I noticed she was not wearing her silver star-shaped crown, and I wondered if it had fallen during the furious snowball wars of the afternoon and decided at once that I would look for it the next day. But then Gibra stepped up, holding the crown, once just a fanciful bit of metalshaping designed to impress the future-time humans, now Sefra's most beloved ornament, a reminder of her soul's brother who was lost in the chaos of that fateful day of betrayal and who was last seen wearing an identical crown on his head.
The crown had been polished anew and Gibra gave it to Timmain, who laid it ceremoniously on Sefra's silver hair and used a drop of her magic to make the metal shine for a moment with brilliant white light. And Sefra was so overjoyed and surprised that she forgot to be embarrassed and laughed in innocent delight, and then Timmain kissed her and told her:
**The Circle is broken, and the night is cold, but you, Sefra, remain Timekeeper, and you have given us back what we had lost. No thanks will ever be enough, no other gift will mean anything without the hope you have shared with us. Let this crown that reminds you of your sorrow also remind us of who you are, and let us never forget to hope in the darkest of days – for in hope all things become possible and what was broken may yet be mended.**
And Timmain took her half-wolf, half-elf shape and stood and spoke to us in radiant half-wordless sending, and she sang of what we knew before by her example and of what we had now learned, thanks to Sefra, and made it all come together.
We understood, finally, that in addition to the green and red songs of the growing things and the moving things, of life and death, there was a dark-and-bright song of day and night, of the bitter cold night when the green rested and the red grew silent and grim alternating with the sweet warm day when the green bloomed and the red sang and danced, and both were necessary. The world was not dead or dying – it had simply gone to sleep. And when we sang with Timmain, and listened to the worlds within the world that she opened to us, we saw at once what had been there all the time – the buds yearning to be leaves and flowers and the seeds waiting for rain and sunlight, and the many animals that slept in their caves, also waiting, the animals we had hardly seen all season such as bears and spikebacks and snakes – all asleep, hibernating.
Nature dreamed, and for one night, we shared its dreams.
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