A Journey of the Heart (22 page)

The room was growing cold. I put the shutter up.

"Go down and join them," she said. "I'll be all right."

"I'd rather stay with you. May I?"

"Of course." She looked pleased.

I sat down again on the chair by the hearth, and for a long time we listened to the singing.

"When I was a child, I used to love midwinter's night," the Lady said.

"All children love midwinter's night."

"Why is that?"

I thought back to the midwinter's nights of my own childhood.

"I got to stay up late," I said, "and everyone I loved gathered around the fire. We ate sweet cakes and roasted nuts dipped in honey. My mother held me on her lap while we sang songs and told stories. When I fell asleep in her arms, I had good dreams. In the morning there were gifts."

The Lady smiled. "I too loved midwinter's night, but for a different reason. Just as you did, I sat with my family by the fire. I only half-remember the songs and stories. I was always listening for something else. Outside the circle of firelight, a mystery surrounded us. I thought that if only I could remain within it long enough, I would learn its secrets. For me, the dawn always came too soon."

I had never felt anything like that.

"Sometimes I think we long for all the wrong things," the Lady said. "This world we see can seem so dark, even on a bright midsummer's day. What if our heart's desire can be found only in the dark?"

"But in the dark is death."

"Yes."

Her words made the skin prickle on the back of my neck. Of all nights, midwinter's night was not the time to call things out of the dark.

"I've always felt just the opposite," I told her. "That the light that shows the world to us conceals a brighter one."

"It does," she said. "I looked upon it once. It blinded me."

A new song began downstairs. We listened for a while. I must have dozed a little. When I opened my eyes, the Lady was watching me.

"I could almost believe you were your mother sitting there," she said.

"Am I so like her?"

"Not so like her as she is today, but you are the image of Tamnet when she was your age. The first time you entered my hall, I could hardly believe my eyes. As if a door had opened into the past, I thought I saw your mother, as I saw her all those years ago, coming to be fostered in my mother's house. Then I saw her standing next to you."

Although her tone was wistful, in her words I heard no more than a nostalgic longing for an absent friend. The night before she had been in agony. What could account for the difference, I wondered, between the woman she was then and the woman she was now? As soon as I asked the question, I knew the answer. Even in her agony, the woman who had held me through the night had hope. This woman had none.

The fire was now just a bed of coals. I reached for a few sticks of wood to build it up again.

"Let it burn down," the Lady said.

"It will be too cold."

"I'm well wrapped up. Come and sit here beside me. There are blankets enough for both of us." She patted the bed beside her. "Please."

I tucked her blankets more closely around her and wrapped another around her shoulders. Then I sat down on the edge of the bed. A cold draft blew across the floor. I drew my legs up onto the bed and sat cross-legged.

The Lady handed me a heavy blanket, and I snuggled into it.

"Are you warm enough?" she asked me.

I nodded.

"Put out the lamp," she said.

Only one lamp burned on the chest beside her bed. I pinched it out.

"What is the lesson of midwinter's night?" she said.

I smiled. While she lived, my grandmother had asked me the same question every midwinter's night of my life.

"It teaches us never to lose hope," I said.

"What is it that we hope for?"

"The return of light."

"What else does it teach us?"

This time her question puzzled me. My grandmother had never asked it. I didn't know the answer she wanted.

"Does this night teach us nothing about the dark?"

Then I remembered. My grandmother had sometimes asked me, what does the dark teach us?

"The dark teaches us to trust," I said.

"And what is it that we trust?"

"Life."

"And death?"

I was afraid to agree with her. Of course we trusted death. We trusted death to spare us the infirmities of age or the pains of an illness or an injury that is past healing. We trusted death to comfort us with forgetfulness of life's sorrows. We trusted that death was a passageway from life to life, and that the spirit, freed of the body it had outworn, would again clothe itself in flesh and time. In that way I trusted death, but Merin was speaking of something else.

She began to sing.

In the darkness of the womb, we are made.

It was the first line of a chant I had heard the grown-ups sing when I was a child. I had never heard it sung at midwinter. It was sung when someone died, or on a day of remembrance for the dead. It was meant to go from voice to voice, and now Merin waited for my response. I was afraid to sing it.

"Don't you know it?" she asked me.

I nodded.

"Sing it with me then."

Reluctantly I sang.

In the darkness of the womb, we are unmade.

Her voice answered mine.

In the darkness of the Mother's womb,

we are made and unmade and made again,

and so it will be until the world grows old.

She waited for me to begin the chant again.

In the darkness of the womb, we are made.

In the darkness of the womb, we are unmade.

In the darkness of the Mother's womb,

we are made and unmade and made again,

and so it will be until the world grows old.

We handed the words back and forth between us, and every time we began the chant anew, the melody changed, just a few notes every time, until what had been a lament became a song of joy.

"Listen," the Lady said.

I listened. No sound came now from the great hall. The winter world outside was silent too. From the corners of the room the dark crept closer.

"Feel how soft it is," she whispered.

I closed my eyes. The dark was soft and deep, and I could have fallen back into it and kept falling forever.

"There is no wanting here," she said.

It was true. I wanted nothing. Wherever I now found myself, neither cold nor hunger could afflict me. No pain could touch me here. Nothing to want. Nothing to fear. Nothing to hope.

I opened my eyes. By the last glimmer of firelight I saw a shadow fall over Merin's face. Then I saw the danger. She had been so close to death. Perhaps it lingered still, just out of reach.

But Merin had reached for it.

I touched her cheek. She gave a start, as if I had awakened her from sleep, and opened her eyes. On this darkest of nights I wanted to bring the light of truth into the darkness of this woman's heart.

"I know how much you loved her," I whispered.

Anger flashed in Merin's eyes. "I doubt that very much. I doubt that even she has any idea how much I loved her."

"I can't answer for my mother, but when you were ill, you mistook me for her. Without intending to, you revealed yourself."

Warily Merin waited to hear the rest.

"The light that blinded you still shines," I said. "I've seen you standing in the light."

"Who are you?" she whispered.

"I'm not the one you loved," I said, "but I am her gift to you."

The cold breath of that long night blew upon the dying embers of the fire, and by a light so dim I hardly knew if it showed me the world of light or the world of shadows, I saw her eyes bright with tears.

"You must live," I said, "so that you can share with her what you shared with me last night."

"And what was that?"

"The truth."

"The truth? What is the truth?"

"You love her still, as she no doubt loves you."

"How do you know your mother's heart?" she asked me. "Did she too reveal herself to you?" She knew my mother had done no such thing.

"I know she never loved another."

Merin was silent for a long time. At last she said, "It's a cruel thing you've done this night."

"Cruel?" I asked her. "Why?"

"You've taught me hope, and it has taken me half a lifetime to unlearn it."

I smiled. Hope is the first lesson of midwinter's night. It was this night that taught her hope even as she tried to redeem its promise of forgetfulness.

"It seems to me," I said, "that the cruelest thing would be to leave this world without the love you've found here."

"Little enough it's been," she said.

Although her bitter words made my heart ache, I chided her. "If you think my mother's love a small thing, you were never worthy of it. And surely hers is not the only love you've known."

"I know of no other."

"For what it's worth," I told her, "you have mine."

"I would never have guessed it."

In her voice I heard her disappointment that we had not been to each other what she had once hoped. Yet beneath her disappointment I heard something else. In my mind's eye I saw a child peering out at me from behind a door. If something frightened her, she would quickly pull it shut again.

"I never knew you," I said. "Until last night you never let me see you as you are. Now I understand a great many things I didn't understand before."

"Tell me," she said. "Just what is it you believe you understand?"

"I understand that you must have thought me very selfish. I have insisted on having my own way in everything, while you sacrificed the only thing you wanted."

"I don't suppose that means you'll do any differently in future."

"Probably not," I admitted. "I'm not capable of being that unselfish."

I felt her hand search for mine. When she found it, she held it tight.

"I wish your mother had been more like you," she said.

She didn't need to explain herself to me. I understood. If my mother had been more selfish, she might never have gone home.

I wished I could have known the young woman Merin loved. As much as I loved my mother, and as close as I had been to her all my life, the girl Merin loved was someone I had never met.

"Tell me about her," I said. "What was she like when she was my age?"

The Lady sighed. "She was just a country girl. There was nothing unusual about her. At first I thought I disliked her very much. I didn't understand why I couldn't keep my eyes from following her whenever she was in my sight."

"Why did you think you disliked her?"

"She was so simple, so innocent. The world seemed a drab place to me, but she found it fascinating. I must have been quite dour in those days. Your mother was the only one who dared to tease me. She used to laugh at me and call me silly names. She called me things like Dismal and Frown Face. She took me by the hand and led me into the light of a world no one else had ever shown me."

"She loved you."

"Yes. Much to my amazement, she did."

A cold draft blew under the door. It scattered the ash in the fireplace and brightened the embers for a moment. The light fell upon the Lady's face. She looked very tired.

"Sleep now," I said. "Sleep and grow strong again."

"Build up the fire," she said.

By the time I had a bright blaze burning on the hearth, she was asleep. I wrapped myself in a blanket, lay down beside her, and closed my eyes.

All through midwinter's day, while the feasting went on downstairs, I stayed beside the Lady. In her fever she had hardly eaten anything. Now she had no appetite, and a few spoonfuls of soup would satisfy her. I had to encourage her to eat, as one encourages a fussing child to take just one more mouthful. Sometimes I saw a flicker of amusement in her eyes. I think she made a game of it. I enjoyed her playful spirit, and I made tut-tut noises in pretended disapproval when she refused to open her mouth to take another bite.

When the room was warm enough, I helped the Lady move to the chair by the hearth. I bathed her, while her servant changed her bedding. Then we put her back to bed. Her servant offered to sit with her a while so that I could rest, but I sent her back downstairs to enjoy the holiday with the others. I felt such tenderness for the woman in my care that I couldn't bring myself to leave her side.

That evening, when she found me dozing by the fire, the healer woke me and insisted I go to my own bed for a good night's rest. When I awoke, it was midmorning, and everyone else was up and gone.

I wanted to talk with Namet, but when I went to her room, I found her napping. I was about to go downstairs to look for Maara when I heard a noise in her room. I lifted the curtain and looked in. She was sitting on her bed doing a bit of mending.

"I thought you'd be downstairs with the others," I said.

Although the holiday was over, there was still a good deal of feasting and merrymaking going on in the great hall.

Maara rolled her eyes. "One day of it was enough for me."

Her mock distaste for our boisterous holidays warmed my heart. I smiled.

"I've missed you," I said.

"Oh." She looked puzzled, as she tried to think of an appropriate reply.

Then I realized that midwinter's day had gone by and I hadn't given her her gift.

"Wait here a minute," I said, and went to get it from the companions' loft.

I had traded several of my best rabbit skins for a plain wooden brooch. I stayed up late every night for weeks carving an intricate design into it. When I gave it to her, she said nothing, but her smile and the way she ran her fingers over the design told me that it pleased her.

Then she gave me the gift she had made for me. It was a bow case made of goatskin, beautifully tanned and very soft. Unlike the stiff and heavy cowhide case I took to the frontier, this one was light and flexible. When I wasn't using it to carry the unstrung bow, it could be folded and put into a tunic pocket, while the other one had to be carried over the shoulder, where it was in the way.