What the Gulls Know
Disclaimer: All characters and locations herein are the property of Tamora Pierce. The plot and wording of this story are my own.
A woman stands on the porch of a solitary lighthouse watching waves break on a rocky beach. Not quite old yet, she is perhaps fifty, perhaps a little more, with her graying hair and worn face deceiving.
She re-wraps her gray shawl about her shoulders and keeps watching, breathing deep. She inhales, breathing in the smell of salt water, the sounds of the waves crashing on jagged rock, the feel of cold, salty wind whipping through her graying frizzles.
She reaches again for the scroll of paper beside her, from Dedicate Crane, the Dedicate Superior of Winding Circle temple community. And I'll be damned if I call him "Honored", too, thinks Tris, awakening the streak of hard obstinacy that was in almost all her friends, including the one she now mourned.
Looking down, Tris saw three horses picking their way along the stony beach, coming towards her lighthouse. Watching, she waved her hand at them. There were two riders and a packhorse. She went inside to get the door for them. As the letter from Winding Circle had said, Dedicates Briar and Silverbud were here for a visit.
Tris opened the door and first thing, felt a potted plant shoved into her arms. "I don't know what you brought it for, the sea-spray and the salt will do it no good," she fretted, setting the nearly two hundred year old Shakkan on the windowsill facing the shore. "Good to see ya, too, Coppercurls," replied Dedicate Briar. "How's the coastline?" he asked.
"Wet. How's the District?" she retorted.
"Blooming," said Briar with satisfaction. "Half of Hajra's poor are growing Rosey's tomatoes," he added with a grin. "Daj?" he called, sticking his head out the door to the wooden stairs from the coast.
Dedicate Silverbud of Winding Circle was called for the tiny, flowering shrubs she crafted out of precious metals, but her childhood friends always thought of her as Daja Kisubo, or Daja Idaram. She strode in solidly, hefting two sizable packs wrapped in oiled cloth.
"You'd bring in your precious Shakkan, but never the packs," she commented calmly, letting her baggage drop to the floor.
Tris looked at them. They weren't wearing habits. Both wore simple, practical clothes. Simple, practical mourning, she corrected herself. Briar wore black wool, the plain mourning of a commoner of the Pebbled Sea. Daja wore Trader mourning, bright red leggings and tunic. She noticed both wore Sandry's crests on their hearts. A lighter red anvil was stitched in silk on Daja's red tunic, with fine gold wire rimming it, and a green and silver vine on Briar's black shirt. She smoothed over her own crest, a yellow and gold forked lighting bolt on her gray dress.
"So quiet," said Briar.
"What's to say?" asked Tris softly. "I'm sorry I couldn't come to the funeral."
"We know you can't leave the lighthouse," said Daja comfortingly.
"We still have our grief, like at Winding Circle, but without Crane," added Briar.
"And Rosethorn," remarked Tris.
"She couldn't bear it. She needs to grieve alone," said Briar. "You know her, for her, doing all she can isn't enough if it doesn't save someone. And we did do all we could for Lark, both of us."
"That can't always be enough," said Daja sadly.
"It sounds as if Rosethorn isn't the only guilty heart at Discipline," commented Tris. "We could all use a little cheering just now."
"We brought some of Rosethorn's tea," suggested Briar, straightening up.
"Good idea. Some of the morning blend, never mind it's nearly noon." Tris put a kettle on the fire and set out four mugs.
"Setting one aside for Sandry?" asked Briar.
"No need to, she's almost here," answered Tris briskly, poking the fire and filling the kettle with water. "I hope you all brought warm clothes, it gets cold here by the coast." She set the tea to steep and went out onto the porch.
The three of them watched a small ship anchoring just across from the lighthouse, the wind whipping in their grief. A small boat detached from the ship and was rowed over and tied at the pier. Across the porch and down the steps they went, to greet Duchess Sandrilene II with a hug and a quiet smile.
"I suppose they'll be leaving guards here for you," said Tris.
"Of course," answered Sandry. "Ah, freedom," she added wistfully. "At least I managed to dissuade them from burdening me with servants."
"I trust they'll furnish for themselves," commented Briar skeptically.
"Tents and all," confirmed Sandry. "Let's go in, I'm freezing."
"Perhaps the sea-things made you a cup of hot tea," teased Daja in Tradertalk, and Tris frowned at her.
"It's not like I don't know enough to understand, by now," she said. "What for, then?"
"To make sure it stays that way, perhaps," suggested Sandry. "How are you all? I hardly get to hear from you, except for official reports," she complained.
"What's to tell?" asked Daja. "Two Dedicates and a hermit. You think any of us but you have a life of any sort?"
"How are the children, by the way?" interrupted Briar with false brightness.
Sandry sighed deeply. "All grown up. And I don't believe I like the feeling of having grandchildren. Can you imagine, baby Nika is almost five! Soon enough she'll be learning the spindle..."
"Because you must be the only Duchess in the known world who teaches her kids weaving," said Tris wearily.
"Personally," added Daja with emphasis, and they all grinned. It was hard to forget the young heiress who ordered spindles and looms installed in the citadel nurseries, and taught her small children the craft herself.
"Old grievances, indeed," replied Sandry with an impish smile that soon vanished. "Now Uraelle is pregnant with her first..." she said and trailed off, pausing to sit in from of the kitchen hearth with her mug of tea.
Briar nudged Tris. "You said to remind you," he said sweetly.
"Right, then," answered Tris briskly. She turned to Sandry. "I haven't forgiven you for naming your daughter Uraelle yet," she said tenaciously.
Sandry grinned. "But I'm going to ask her to name the child Lark, if it's a girl," she said, and her face twisted. Then Tris noticed how red her eyes were and she, too, felt the need to blink repeatedly. For a moment they all sat or stood quietly, drinking tea and remembering.
"Remember the last time we were here?" said Daja softly. Frostpine had lived to a ripe old age, and Daja had had trouble letting go. The time before that was before Tris had retreated to this secluded location. She'd attended Niko's funeral, at least.
"I can picture the next time," commented Briar painfully.
"Why don't we ever come here on good times?" wondered Sandry. "Only death and disease can bring us together anymore." She sighed and patted the little Copperbud plant by the fireplace.
"I can't leave," said Tris, "and you say you'll come but you never do, till something bad happens and you have to..." She didn't ask 'why don't you want to come?', but she thought it. She spun a thread of salty wind between her fingers absently.
"Well," said Sandry, gulping down her tea and getting up determinedly, "there's no use sulking about when there are dishes to be done and lunch to be made." She rolled up the sleeves of her white undergown, securing them at her elbows with silver ties. Tris got up to help.
"Get the bags up to the bedrooms, will you?" she asked Briar and Daja, grateful for something to do.
She and Sandry washed the dishes and made a pot of stew while Daja and Briar lugged their own packages, as well as Sandry's trunk and workbasket, to the bedrooms in the upper floors. When they came down, they sat down to the table for lunch.
They meditated, enjoying being close enough to feel the presence of the others, close by. Then Sandry got her workbasket and sat down to her embroidery, Tris got down one of her books and Daja set to braiding thin gold wire for her metal plants. Briar scanned the spines of the books on the bookshelf and, finding nothing new and interesting, took a basket and went walking down the beach to gather plants.
"I might be able to get these to grow at the Mire, by the stonbeach," he said before he left.
"This is nice," said Tris after a while, looking up from her book. "I wish it was always like ," she added wistfully. She looked back longingly to the careless days of her childhood, when all she had to worry about was pirate attacks and forest fires.
"We really should do this more often," admitted Sandry, cutting off a piece of blue silk thread.
"Come stay here!" said Tris pleadingly. "We could all be together again, for real, not just for funerals."
"With Lark gone, we're turning her workroom into a smithy. I can't leave Discipline, I'm needed there," answered Daja quietly. "And Sandry can't leave Summersea, you know that."
"And it's not the same there without you," added Sandry. "You drifted away from us. If you came back, I'd find someone else to watch the lighthouse. There are veterans of the Ducal navy who'd be glad of the job."
"There's a place for you at Discipline, Mistress Mage. Niko used to stay there all the time, between traveling," said Daja persuasively. "Please, come back. We'd be glad of your company, even Rosethorn."
"Even Crane?" asked Tris wryly.
Sandry slapped her shoulder reprovingly. "Play nice, you two," she said with mock severity.
"I haven't said I'd come, yet," answered Tris quietly. She put down her book and took to wandering the room restlessly. Here she peered up the spiraling steps to the upper floors, there she patted the blooming Copperbud. Finally she stepped out to the porch and gazed seawards.
Gulls screamed and called her, salty wind whistled an invitation. Gliding forth, she rushed north along the coast. Her first wind waited in Winding Circle, carrying smells of tangy metal, sweet roses and freshly woven cloth. A flock of starlings danced in the late-summer wind. A dog barked.
Tris/the wind blew wearily down the coast, and watched the graying figure leaning on a balcony, counting to seven thrice every minute. Her even breathing broke, and she opened her eyes. Still, she felt her first wind calling to her, smelling inexplicably of home.
"I don't know what to do," she confessed to the gulls. "Sky and sea are everywhere, but my friends only in one place." She walked across the porch and down the steps. Ignoring the Ducal Guard, she walked down the short pier, past the boat Sandry had arrived in and into her own little sailboat. Her gray shawl fluttered away as she raised anchor and sails and headed seawards.
The sailboat had always been more of an extension of home. She'd had it for so long, even before she'd retired to this single lighthouse on a rocky shore, it was a sanctuary of solitude, away from judging eyes. When that wasn't enough anymore, when even the sight of another sail on the horizon crowded her, she asked Sandry to give her this lighthouse. There she had always been happy. Alone with the wind and the gulls, she had a warm fire and every comfort inside, was first to meet any storm that came to these shores. She was soon soaked through and through from spray, but she was happy to be cold, shivering and covered in goose bumps.
Tris looked back. The lighthouse was a stone spear, and the guards bright specks. A wind whipped, and something gray fluttered from the porch and flew on the wind, coming towards her. She'd have thought it was a seagull, but it was the wrong color. Then she saw it was a length of gray wool, fluttering passively. She blinked rapidly; the sun was setting, and the light was dim. The shawl took its time reaching her, and when it did it landed on the sailboat's rim, folded its gray wings and screamed at her.
"Think I should go with them, don't you?" Tris asked the gull. "Well, you're just a gull, even if you did used to be my shawl. What do you know about these things?" The gull screamed in protest.
Tris turned the boat around and sailed back towards the lighthouse. The gull remained perched on the rim. She left it there and climbed back up to the porch. She swung the door open and stood looking in.
Sandry was working fine silver wire into the tiny blue loom she was embroidering on a black gown. Daja was twisting together braids of wire in a cyclone pattern. Briar was sorting seeds and clippings. They all looked up at her, expectantly.
"I think I'll do as Flutter said," Tris announced, and rushed upstairs to light the lighthouse beacon.