08 | A Time for Healing
As spring turned into summer, I noticed the strangest thing—The blossoms of the tree in the patio were gone, but in their stead tiny green bolls formed at the ends of short stems.
My mother and I stood in wonder underneath the tree squinting up to the many, many small fruits it was laden with. Others in our household, the Farmer servants most notably, had also been commenting on it.
"It appears that our tree and the scions are indeed of the same kind," she said, "only they are female and male."
"I used to believe that plants were none—or rather, both," I mused.
"Most are, but a few are a little more... special—"
"Spare me the witticism, if you please," I warned her, smirking.
She just laughed.
As the summer progressed the fruits became the size of walnuts, and with a similar green leathery husk as their outer coating. However, when I plucked one and opened it with a sharp knife, there was no nut inside, but five soft, pale seeds embedded in spongy white pulp. Neither seemed ripe—or edible, for that matter.
Still, it was a small miracle...
My mother's words after my ill-fated sparring had set something in motion within me, along with my cousin and her self-destructive settling of scores—and although her miscarriage might have been a coincidence, it had somehow felt connected with it all.
Eventually I had to admit that I was indeed punishing myself, and that it had to stop. If anything good was to come from the previous year, I had to start looking to the future—not in order to forget, but to move on and do something meaningful.
I returned to the turret the morning my cousin left us for the Citadel, and I officially became my mother's pupil.
She was a stern teacher, but also a good one, and she made it worth my while. We rode onto field trips out in the Plain and to the River banks where she showed me how to find the plants and ingredients she needed. Soon I accompanied her to the small square in front of the Citadel where, every once in a few days, she offered her services for free to anyone who asked her for help, rich or poor, Guardian or Farmer. She assigned the simpler cases to me, and watched as I cleaned wounds and bandaged sprains, or gave out powders to soothe an upset stomach.
She also put me in charge of purchasing such ingredients at the market as she could not find in nature. In the beginning I made a few stupid mistakes and was cheated at others, but eventually I knew enough about the merchandise to be no longer fooled even by the wiliest of traders.
However, I had an ulterior motive for going to the market.
Once, while out in the streets of the City, I thought that I had glimpsed the Traveller. I saw the man only for a moment, before he turned and was lost in the crowd. At first I had thought it an illusion, caused by one of my daydreams...
It was the one indulgence I allowed myself—thinking about him, and dreaming of him, every once in a while.
... but then it occurred to me that he might actually be there in the City! Not because of me, of course. But he would still need to purchase Spice, which was not to come by in the Hills, or the Miners would refuse to work.
When next at the market I made unobtrusive inquiries about a certain Miner smith, and I learnt that a man fitting my description had, until a few days before, been occupying one of the simple workshops that were built up against the walls of the compound. He had been there for half a dozen days then gone again without a word, and no-one had seen him leave.
It crossed my mind that he might still be there, possibly in his guise as a Farmer—and if so I had no means of recognising him because I had never seen him as a Farmer, nor as a Nomad or Fisherman. And with Farmers being allowed inside the City walls, he could walk right past me outside my door and I would never know!
But why should he come looking for me?—after all that happened in the Hills?
I shook my head to clear my thoughts. No, if he had been to the City, there was only one reason for it—Spice. And he would have been gone again the moment he had acquired a sufficient stock.
As my knowledge of healing progressed, I started to write an 'encyclopaedia' of medicines and treatments. I began by making notes on a scribbling pad when I found that the information I was trying to cram into my brain in a short time was getting too much. But the haphazard order made it hard to find things again. So I began to write each item on a single small card which I stowed upright in a wooden box, with partitions in between sections. As a system it was none too bad, because I could keep inserting new cards and put them in sequence.
I was still adding to it, sometimes making simple drawings to help me remember the specifics of a certain plant, and was working on a system for cross-references, when early autumn brought a change to our family situation.
My cousin returned from the Citadel. As suddenly as she had left in spring she was back again one morning.
We all welcomed her warmly—and yet we were cautious in her presence, wondering how much half a year spent in solitude had changed her.
She seemed subdued but calm, and when I eventually questioned her about her reasons for coming out of isolation, she answered me honestly and directly.
"My husband has asked to see me before he is to return to the north for winter," she explained. "I believe I owe him as much."
"Will you leave him for good?" I asked. She had had plenty of time to think about it, and I assumed that she had made up her mind.
"Yes."
"Are you still angry with him?"
"Not any longer." She was silent for a moment. "He wronged me. But I made him suffer for it without giving him an explanation... when all I should have done was tell him why I was hurt—and then cancel the wedding."
We are all a lot wiser in hindsight...
A sudden thought struck me and I blurted out, "Has it ever occurred to you that he might have had a very good reason for not disclosing his name?"
"What?—other than not trust me enough?" She smiled grimly. "No, not really."
"No, I mean, what if he was a..." I stopped dead. I had meant to say 'a Changer' and, yes, it would explain everything. But it wasn't for me to expose him, not without his consent—and not to his estranged wife. There was no way of telling how she would react; and after seeing his marriage go to pieces, the poor man didn't need to see his life shatter, into the bargain. For the present he was safe from detection. He had only ever lived in the City and in the north, both of them places where he wouldn't unexpectedly turn into anyone else in his sleep...
"If he was a—what?" my cousin asked. She looked at me strangely.
"Erm... what?" I faltered. "No, nothing... just some half-baked idea... Forget it."
"If you say so—" She clearly wasn't convinced.
Another Changer! How many of them were there, living amongst us, with no-one the wiser? Well, no-one but the Keeper of Secrets, of course. But why would he keep them secret?—unless...
My cousin's voice interrupted my thoughts. "I have meant to inform you that I have written to my husband since my return and explained my wishes. He will be here the day after tomorrow for the dissolution of our marriage... My father will be present as witness, as will my husband's brother. You don't need to attend—not unless you want to."
As it was I much rather didn't.
My cousin remained at her father's home, and I could tell that my uncle was glad of it. He enjoyed company, and with me spending so much time with my mother ever since spring, the house had been uncommonly quiet.
Over time my cousin resumed some of her former liveliness, and she went out in society, or visitors came to our house for dinner and entertainment.
In many respects it was as before, prior to my departure for the Hills. Two young girls helping each other dress for an evening with friends... and yet neither of us was the same naïve maiden any longer.
She had been through disappointment and bitterness. And I...
The quiet regret was still there and would, perhaps, never quite leave me—but I had come to accept that some things were not to be, and to accept my role in it.
I was looking to the future, and what I saw in it was me—as a healer. I still practiced with my weapons, but I practiced alone and more for the sake of the discipline it required than for self-defence. Still, to look after myself wouldn't be such a bad thing, especially as I wanted to travel—to see more of the Plain, and visit the Coast, the Desert, and the Mountains. My skills as a healer would be sought after, and so I could do as I pleased.
And it would be a good life.
In the middle of winter, when the icy gusts from the north swept through the streets of the City, the fruits dropped from the tree in the courtyard. As they hit the ground, their weathered brown husks broke up and they released five longish brown seeds.
Both me and my mother happened to be in the yard when the first of them fell down, and she was the one to pick up the cracked-open husk. She sniffed at it. Then she looked at me, her eyes wide in amazement. It startled me; I had never seen her truly taken by surprise by anything before.
"What is it?" I asked, alarmed.
She held the fruit under my nose. "Breathe in," she commanded. "Does it remind you of anything?"
It did. Though faint, it smelt of Spice.
"You mean, this might be..."
She shushed me. "Let's go inside and try something out," she said and led the way to the turret. Inside her living quarters she took the seeds and put them into a copper pan, and then she roasted them over the embers in the brazier. Soon the small room was filled with the distinctive aroma of Spice.
When the seeds had turned a dark brown, she put them into a mortar and quickly pounded them to a fine powder. She dipped one finger in it and tasted it with the tip of her tongue. She nodded, staring at me.
"But—" I had to clear my throat. "But the tree is full of them! This means that we've got more Spice than it takes to keep the entire City happy for a year!"
"Much more than that, I should think," she said. "What are we to do?"
"What do you mean?" I looked at her uncomprehendingly.
"This will ruin the whole Spice trade—and some people will not be happy with it."
I nodded slowly. "Moreover, it is unfair against the other Tribes... We wouldn't have a tree full of Spice if I hadn't taken that branch from the Hills in the first place—and now it may help the Guardians to keep the other Tribes under their thumb indefinitely, and without any cost to themselves."
"You mean 'ourselves'," my mother softly corrected me, "but apart from that you are right—"
"If it is this easy to grow Spice, it must never be the privilege of the Guardians alone!" I declared.
"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," my mother cautioned. "However, for the time being we must keep this our secret... and therefore we shall have a harvest now."
Laden with baskets, ladder, and a long-handled fruit picker we went back to the yard and we meticulously harvested every last of the small fruits. Back in the turret we freed the seeds from their husks and put them on a drying screen to get rid of any excess moisture that might spoil them. Roasting the lot was out of the question; the distinctive smell would have given us away.
"What are we to do?" I asked after I returned from throwing the empty husks onto the midden. Meanwhile my mother had tidied the workroom so that everything was back to normal—or looked normal, anyway.
"I think that, deep down, you have a fairly good idea," she said.
My mother was right. There was this niggling thought that, in my heart-of-hearts, I knew exactly what to do—I simply couldn't form it into a proper plan yet.
"Take your time, daughter... Think about it carefully, and when you are ready I shall help you see it through."
"Let's plant trees," I said one morning, not long after our harvest of Spice seeds. As usual I had come to see my mother in her workroom at the ground floor of the turret.
She looked at me expectantly. "So, that's your plan?"
"I should like to split the seeds into five equal parts, one for each Tribe, and then give them to as many people in each Tribe as possible, so that everyone can plant their own trees... Of course, it's not entirely fair; the others will only have small seedlings for years to come while we have a grown tree that's actually bearing fruit. On the other hand, the scions on ours may stop to thrive again, and wither—"
"And neither do you know if the trees will grow in every climate," My mother reminded me.
"They do grow well enough in the hidden valley in the Hills... and I believe that the Farmers can make anything grow. The Fishermen at the coast will just have to take their chances, as will the Nomads—though I guess the latter can always trade for their supplies in the west." I shrugged, a little helplessly.
"It means a lot of travelling," she said. "And carrying so much Spice comes at a risk of getting robbed on the road."
"I'll have to be clandestine about it, at least until most of the seeds are dispensed. However, it seems the best I can do with this unexpected windfall... And then, there's another matter—"
"You wish to return to the Hills." Of course, my mother would have foreseen this part of my plan...
"I took a branch from the hidden valley," I said, as if I was being entirely rational—as if there wasn't this strange giddiness inside of me. "It is only fair that I'll return one from our tree."
"So be it," she pronounced. "When will you leave?"
"Soon," I said. "Before spring, at the very least. It is almost a year since I returned to the City."
"Things change in a year—"
"I have no hopes other than promote reconciliation between Tribes."—'And, perhaps, make life a little easier for one particular Changer,' I added in the privacy of my head.
I had sold the carriage after my return to the City the previous winter; I had been reluctant to part with the mare who had been a gentle and reliable coach horse, but there had been no way for me to keep her in the City.
In my impatience to set out for the east I at first considered riding, but I would possibly be away for a long time, and the number of things I would be taking with me made it prudent to acquire another one-horse carriage. I eventually found one that would suffice my needs, and a gelding—somewhat bigger than the mare—to pull it. The horse dealer told me that he would also make a decent saddle horse, and after trying him on a short ride I found that I could indeed handle him.
I packed two wooden boxes; a smaller one for my clothes and my boxed encyclopaedia of medicines, and a much larger one containing a plethora of bagged dried medical herbs and roots, salves and tinctures, bandages and such—and below a sliding panel at the bottom, there was a spacious compartment that contained the Spice seeds. Hopefully the pungent smell of the medicines would disguise the scent of Spice.
And then, there was the lidded wicker basket of cuttings, strong new twigs from the female part of our tree, their bases wrapped in sand and sack linen to keep them moist.
I also took all my weapons. I had been reluctant about the spear, but in the end I decided to take it... Starting out as a Guardian fighter, I was now becoming a healer, but this didn't mean that being a warrior wasn't still a part of who I was. Besides, if nothing else, the spear had already proved to be a decent walking staff.
The night before my departure I bid farewell to both my uncle and my cousin. Neither of them knew about the real purpose of my mission. As far as they were concerned I would go to the Valley to scatter the ashes of my brother at the place where he had spent much of his adult life. Of course, my cousin the priestess eloquently voiced her disapproval, claiming that the only rightful place would be the Mountains and bemoaning the fact that his ashes hadn't been sent to the north already when the newly deployed Guardians had left in autumn.
It had indeed been my mother's wish for me to take her son's ashes with me, in order to find a resting place for him that he would actually have liked—and she was singularly unimpressed with her niece's ranting and raving.
"She's doing my bidding, and she's doing what is right... So, you may just as well stop with the diatribe," she said sternly and, turning away, she left my cousin to stare after her, open-mouthed.
On the morrow it was only my mother who waited for me in the courtyard as I emerged from the main entrance, with two Farmer servants following after me, carrying my boxes. The street outside my uncle's house was too narrow to admit a coach, therefore I had arranged for the livery stable to bring my horse and carriage to the little square halfway down the Mound.
The servants hoisted the boxes onto the small loading space below the box and secured them with belts, then they went back to the house. The stable boy had already left after receiving my coin. Then it was only me and my mother. We embraced for a long time, and my sorrow about this particular time in my life coming to an end was acute; a time of learning that had brought me closer to that remarkable woman than I should ever have thought possible. It suddenly struck me that, with all she knew and understood about me, I still hadn't told her one thing.
"Morvarid," I said. "That's my name." It meant pearl.
She looked at me, and then she smiled. "Of course," she said softly. "What else could it possibly be."
She kissed both my cheeks and my forehead, and then she sent me on my way. "Go find your destiny," she said, standing back and raising her hand in farewell.
It felt like stepping back two years in time as I arrived at the compound, looking for the company of traders heading east I had been told about. The only difference was that, this time, I was driving my own vehicle.
The carters gawked at me when I joined them in the compound, but as soon as I introduced myself as a healer, they became a great deal more forthcoming. Having a caravan accompanied by a healer was considered good fortune. Bruises and bites, both by mules and venomous creatures, were not uncommon accidents on the road—and besides, healers were known to distil their own alcohol.
I was asked about the latter as soon as we made camp on our first night. Out of concern that their greed for strong liquor might induce them to ransack my medicine box while I slept, I made a show of opening the lid in front of them all and telling them about the contents of the larger of the bottles.
"... and this here," I said, flourishing another bottle, "is another speciality... It contains lots—" I was stressing the word. "—of alcohol, but also the essence of a particular root. It's bitter as gall."
A groan went through my audience, together with comments of, "What a waste".
"It's applied when someone has partaken of anything poisonous—You are sure to lose the entire contents of your stomach after just one swig... And here..." At this moment I was interrupted by one of them exclaiming that healers were pitiless monsters at heart, spoiling perfectly good spirits.
From that moment on I may have been a little less popular with my travel companions, but at least my supply box was safe.
The second night we spent again at the hamlet just south of the Bend, and once again the elder accommodated me for the night. I managed to catch him alone for a moment and I took the opportunity to press five seeds into his palm.
"Plant them by the grove," I said in a whisper, "and look after them very carefully."
He seemed confused for a moment, but he didn't question me. Perhaps he caught a whiff of the distinctive scent because his expression suddenly changed and he carefully stowed my gift away. Then he gave me a grave nod of thanks.
The next morning he refused to take my coin for bed and board.
At the Village I parted ways with the trade caravan which continued on the Eastern Road. I, on the other hand, travelled further south, and I spent a good dozen days in the Valley, each night in a different place, surreptitiously seeking out the elders and giving them my small gift of Spice seeds.
I couldn't be certain that everyone of them paid heed to my words, but even if they didn't and some seeds were lost, I was confident that enough remained to grow into trees and—in time—provide for the Valley.
It was time for me to travel east. To the Hills.
I had no real plan what I was to do, once I would be arriving at the Gorge.
Go to the Settlement, or go into Town? I couldn't quite make up my mind as I followed the cart ahead of me along the Eastern Road. I had joined another merchant caravan, and its slow pace gave me another couple of days' reprieve.
Back in the Valley my course of action had been straightforward; but in the Hills none of the ordinary Miners would trust me. I would need to involve the Council of Masters—and the only person I could possibly turn to, and who could help me make the Masters hear me out, was the Smith.
Therefore I should go to the foundry first—before I lost my nerve.
When I approached the Town from the west, I saw that, on the southern slope of the Gorge, work for the water conduit was still in progress. Further to the east I glimpsed the structure of a new aqueduct. But the Town itself seemed less busy than I remembered it. Perhaps the miners were still on strike due to the shortage in Spice, and a lack of ore would slow down the entire industry.
I was aware that people in Town wouldn't be happy to see a Guardian face under such circumstances, and I tensed as I neared the market square and saw the Miners by the roadside stop and watch me pass by. Out of the corner of my eyes I was on the lookout for fists raised in threat, or hurled missiles.
None came, and I allowed myself a small sigh of relief as I entered the foundry yard. Before I was more than a few paces inside, I happened upon the engineer. He gave me a bland smile in recognition.
"What is your desire in coming here, lady?" he asked. The message read clearly as, You are not welcome, but I won't throw you out—yet.
"I have come to see the Master," I said. "Will you be so good and tell him that..."
"He is not here!" a stern female voice interrupted me. The Master of Divination stood at the top of the stairs.
Just my luck!—to come across the one person first, who was least inclined to exercise leniency.
"When will he be back?" I asked.
An expressive shrug was all the answer I got.
"Will you tell him, please, upon his return," I said, raising my voice so that everyone in the yard could hear me, "that the surveyor's sister wishes to speak with him. I shall stay at the tavern in the Settlement."
"As you please, lady," the engineer grumbled. But I was already turning the carriage around in order to head back to the mouth of the Gorge.
People in the Settlement remembered me well enough from the year before, when I had lived there as the surveyor's assistant. Therefore, having me return as a healer—albeit a pretty green one—caused quite a stir within the small community, and before the day was over I had my first patients. They were mostly women who came to me with such complaints as went beyond the expertise of their local midwife, but were too embarrassing for seeking out a male healer.
One of the women I was able to help was my former neighbour, and when I refused to accept her payment for my services, she asked me to join them for their evening meal, telling me in a confidential voice that food at the tavern was really not up to scratch.
I gladly accepted—anything, really, that would keep me from brooding over my next step with the Miners!—and so I spent an enjoyable evening with her large family. I knew that they cultivated wine on the slopes north of the Settlement. But I was astonished when it transpired that, rather than lord over an army of Farmers, they were in the habit of putting in a good days' work themselves—something that was unthinkable within the City. During my first sojourn with them I had never stopped to wonder what the local Guardians actually did for a living.
They had no particular sympathies for the Miners in the nearby Town, but there was mutual respect—from one toiler to another.
"But don't you hold a grudge against those Miners who besieged the Settlement last year?" I wondered.
The husband shrugged fatalistically. "It's always those higher up who decide," he said contemptuously. "But in the end it's the people at the bottom who suffer—both Miners and Guardians."
When I hadn't heard from the Smith for another two days, I decided to go to the hidden valley. It was a mild winter, and even though I did my best to store the cuttings in a cool airy place, I wouldn't be able to keep them alive for much longer. Besides, it was time; nature was about to awake. I would have to do the grafting without the approval of the Council of Masters, or lose my chance.
I went to the hidden valley on foot, just taking the wicker basket and some small tools with me—and my brother's ashes.
Because of my brother's esteem for the culture of the Farmers, my first impulse had been to find a resting place for him in the Valley. But throughout my recent travels I had never found a place that resonated with me; a place I felt confident that he would have particularly liked. And so his ashes had travelled with me to the Hills.
Setting out for the hidden valley that morning, it had suddenly occurred to me that, with its resemblance to the Valley, this might be just the place—an out-of-place patch of land for a person who had felt a misfit for most of his life. I was certain that he would have appreciated the irony.
I had been worried that I might need a ladder to reach the kind of new branches that I required as bases for the grafting, but when I finally reached the small copse I found that there were a few offshoots, two of them just a little higher than myself. Apparently, the male form of the Spice tree was producing runners...
I clipped the cuttings the same way I had seen my mother do it. Then I made an incision into the bark of the young tree, simultaneously inserting the cutting underneath the outer tissue.. I added another one on the opposite side, and then affixed them with raffia which I sealed with wax. A few of the cuttings I had brought from the City seemed to be withering, and I put them aside, not wanting to needlessly damage the trees, but there were still plenty left to give me hope that enough scions might survive.
I had brought a spade, and I was just about to cut a small hole into the sandy soil beneath one of the young trees I had treated, when a rough voice called out from behind, "What are you doing here?"
I whirled around, but relaxed again when I saw that he was a Farmer. "Who are you?" I said.
"It is you?" he exclaimed at the same moment.
I stared at him. Something seemed vaguely familiar about him, though I was sure that I had never seen that face before... but there was something in the expression of his face—
I dropped the spade and slowly approached him. His gaze never left mine, and at last I was certain.
"Jinari," I said when I was but an arm's length away from him.
I held out my hand and touched his cheek—felt his skin under my fingertips, warm and dry like baked earth. His hand covered mine as I leant in and, as our brows and foreheads touched, my arms went around his neck.
I don't know for how long we stood, unmoving. It was the strangest feeling and I was close to tears. That unknown Farmer in my arms who, somehow, was so familiar... Then I felt a ripple under my palms, and I knew that he was changing.
He gently unclasped my hands, and when he took a step back I saw that he was the Smith—and that his face was inscrutable.
"I believe that there are a lot of things that need explaining," I said in a low voice.
He nodded pensively. "Go ahead... we've got time—"
"But there is one more thing I need to do first."
I told him about my brother's ashes, and how I had decided to bury them here. "You knew him, and you liked him... I hope you approve."
He nodded again. "I did—and I do."
He watched me as I placed the urn in the small grave I had dug below the tree and as I covered it with soil and turf. Then I stood back and he stood beside me.
"I don't know what to say," I admitted helplessly.
He intoned a simple plaintive song in the Miner tongue, and even though I didn't understand the words, it was clear that it was a lament for the departed.
When he had finished he said, "The Miners believe that they are the rebellious children of the Ancient One who sleeps deep underneath the Hills. And after death they shall return to him... They face death with trepidation—and yet it is a homecoming of sorts."
Suddenly he seemed to notice the scions. He stepped forward and for just an instant I saw a flicker of the Farmer return as he said reproachfully, "What have you done to these trees?"
"This is part of the things I need to explain—amongst many, many other things," I said.
My story came out in a jumble, and it needed many of his questions, and much backtracking and starting afresh before everything lay open before him.
I told him about my brother—my other brother—and his eyes widened in surprise as I explained that he was another Changer, and what I had done to save him from himself...
"He's not a principled man, unlike you," I said, and I saw him wince as he remembered how—on one fateful occasion—he had thrown caution to the wind, "and he is weak—and yet I still believe that he has been more sinned against than sinning."
... I explained how the branch had eventually become part of another tree in the City and how, in the time it took for it to bear fruit, I had started to become a healer.
Eventually I told him about the Spice seeds—and about my plan.
"It will take years until the seeds grow large enough to bear fruit—how many years exactly no-one can tell, of course—and so I thought I should try to return what I took from the Hills." I pointed in the direction of the copse where I had tampered with the trees. During my lengthy explanations we had moved from under the trees out onto the meadow and into the late winter sun. "If all goes well, there will be new Spice seeds at the height of the next winter; not many, mind, but perhaps enough to keep those content who have the most need of them."
"And you've brought seeds for planting—"
"Yes. Four fifth of our yield. Well, three fifth now, because I've already been to the Valley... One fifth for each Tribe has been the plan, with the Guardians' share remaining hidden in the City with my mother until I have had a chance to visit all the other Tribes."
"So, you have become a healer—and a Lady Bountiful—"
He looked at me in wonder, and still I had the impression that he was holding back... and at last it occurred to me that, with all the words and explanations I had given him—and my voice was almost hoarse from all the talking—, there was one simple thing I had not thought of telling him yet.
"Morvarid," I said. "My name is Morvarid."
He kissed me then. Again and again... Kisses suffused with the impatience of long absence and the devotion born out of sorrow—each one sweeter than the one before.
We lost track of time as we held each other close, and I couldn't get enough of looking at him. Even though he remained the Smith, I saw those traces of the Others flicker across his face—some of them yet unknown—and I revelled in the sight of them all.
"Morvarid," he murmured against my lips, as if tasting my name. "What does it mean?"
"It means 'pearl' in the Old Tongue, the old Guardian language," I whispered back.
"Pearl?" The backs of his fingers gently caressed my cheek. "How beautiful... Pearl like your skin. It suits you."
I smiled wistfully. That's what I had thought for a few short moments at my Naming. That my name meant that I was a perfect specimen of a Guardian. I couldn't have been more wrong—
"Do you know how pearls come about?" I asked him. He shook his head. "It starts with a tiny piece of foreign matter entering the pearl oyster, usually a grain of sand. It is a constant irritant, but the oyster can't get rid of it. So it covers the grain by layer upon layer of nacre until it is smooth and shiny and much like the insides of its own shell."
"So?" He raised his heavy dark eyebrows in question.
"The point is that, no matter how beautiful, there is a flaw at the centre of each pearl... The core is tainted."
"Is this what you believe?" he gently asked me.
"It is what I used to believe—and until I left the City for the Hills two years ago I tried to prove my name wrong." I smiled at him. "But lately I have come to believe that what's at the core of me is not so much a taint but an opportunity. I shall never be fully one of them, because deep inside I question their doctrines." I looked at him then, and my eyes must have been bright with realisation. "It is doubt that makes us want to change things—Unlike you I cannot change myself, but I want to change this world, this strained relationship between Tribes..." I faltered.
"You are about to, I daresay." He smiled back at me, and it struck me how I had never fully realised how his Miner face brightened with his smile, bringing out a bit of gold in his eyes even in daylight.
"What if I'm wrong, and this brings about more hostility between Tribes rather than less?" I said with sudden apprehension.
"Neither you nor I can see the future—and I am glad of it," he said. "Those who can are not generally happier for it—" His face darkened as he was, perhaps, thinking of his mother. "—so all we can do is follow our heart... Your intentions are pure, and so is your heart. What more can you possibly do?"
We were quiet for a while, our hearts—with all their good intentions—full to overflowing.
"What will become of the two of us now?" I asked at last. "After you—and the Council of Masters—have helped me distribute the Spice seeds, I must be on my way again. There are still the Fishermen, and the Nomads—"
"I shall come with you, of course," he said—as if there was no doubt whatsoever about it; as if he wasn't a Master in charge of a foundry.
"We might be away for a long time," I cautioned.
"Forever, perhaps," he agreed, kissing me again. "Distributing your Spice seeds amongst those wily smuggling tribes will be child's play as opposed to sussing out Changers—"
"What do you mean?" I said, alarmed.
"I'm fed up with being one of a kind—an abomination," he said. "There are others out there, and I want to find them—and if there are as many as I am starting to believe there are, then it is time for us to reclaim our place in society."
"But it is dangerous!—You know the stories, don't you?"
"Then this is what we'll have to do—Change the stories!"
I laughed, a little awe-struck, at the boldness of his plan—but then, together, we might just dare it...
"But first there is something else—" His face grew solemn as he took both my hands.
"I pledge to be your companion, your friend, and your protector. I shall love you and cherish you until the end of my days—Will you be my wife, Morvarid?"
The pledge of the Handfasting.
I smiled at him through tears of joy as I replied, "I accept you as my husband with all my heart, Jinari, and I pledge to be your helpmeet, friend, and protector. I shall follow you as you follow me, and I shall love you until the end of my days."
I drew my knife and, first pricking my palm then his, we pressed our hands together, fingers entwined, and our palms slick with the mingling of our blood. As we stood there, the last rays of the setting sun bathed us in their golden light before the glowing orb disappeared behind the ridge. The valley became shaded and chill.
"This will have to remain our secret for a long time to come," I said. "Perhaps forever—"
His dark brows wrinkled. "But does it have to be?" he said. "You know, strange as it seems, intermarriage between Tribes is actually not prohibited. If only because no-one considered it possible to occur—"
"You checked?" I gaped at him. "When exactly did you check?"
"Just after you had arrived with your brother at the Gorge."
I laughed, incredulous. That he should have cared for me for so long!
"I presume that at the time you were thinking about us remaining in Town... and you simply wondered if there was any way for a Guardian and a Miner to be together," I said. "But things have changed now, haven't they? We'll be travelling the Plain, and I shall be seen with different men of different Tribes. People may consider me a shameless hussy! How is this to be reconciled with the continued existence of a husband?"
He smiled lopsidedly, saying, "Five different men—and they will all be me!" but I could tell that he was getting my meaning.
"And I am looking forward to meeting every single one of them," I replied with a saucy smile. "I'm feeling quite promiscuous already."
—