The Dark Mirror (22 page)

After that he excused himself and went up to the oaks to sit alone awhile. It seemed the right thing to do, even if Tuala was away and would not return
until after the solstice. If he sat quietly in her favorite spot, Bridei reasoned,
she might feel his presence close to her although she was at Oak Ridge, so far down the Glen. The magic of place was like that. Bone Mother held all of the land together; her body
was
the land, supporting and linking the life that dwelt on it. If he sat here among the oak roots, just as if he were Tuala herself, and thought of the way the tree stretched down, down into the core of the earth, perhaps
his thoughts could travel from one part of Bone Mother’s body to another, from Pitnochie to a small safe place in the forest where Tuala, too, sat thinking and dreaming.
It’s all right
, he told her.
You’ll be coming home soon
. With his eyes closed, he could see her small, anxious face, her big, strange eyes.

“I seem to keep finding young persons under trees,” said a brisk voice. “What it means,
I cannot say. Bridei, isn’t it? I arrived too late to greet you last night.”

Bridei leaped to his feet, brushing the earth from his clothing, and extended a hand in polite greeting to the old woman who stood before him. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t see you coming. Yes, I’m Bridei.”

“And I am Fola; I’ll save you the embarrassment of having to ask. I’m generally to be found at Banmerren, where
I run an establishment in which young women learn the ways of the goddess in all her forms. I have a message for you.” She pulled out a length of much-worn ribbon, which had once been blue, and put it in his hand.

“Oh.” He recognized it instantly; he’d refastened that plait more times than he could count. “You came here by Oak Ridge?”

“My business took me to that part of the Glen, yes.”

“Is
Tuala all right?”

“Of course. Why would she not be?”

There were several possible answers to this:
because she’s little, because she didn’t want to go away, because she’s afraid of Broichan. Because she can’t get to sleep without her story
.

“It is a long way,” Bridei said.

Fola smiled. “You’ve been trained by a man with a great talent for not answering questions,” she commented. “Your sister
seemed to be in good health. She was evidently missing you, although she did not say it in so many words. She will be happy to return to Pitnochie, I think.”

Bridei nodded and slipped the ribbon in his pocket. “She’s not actually my sister,” he said.

“No?”

“Not exactly. We are both Broichan’s foster children.”

Fola smiled. “I doubt very much if that’s the way Broichan would see it,” she observed.

Bridei said nothing. This was probably another test; it was a harder one, for with this sharp-nosed, bright-eyed old woman there was no telling which answers were the right ones. One thing was certain; he would tolerate no criticism of his foster father, even though Broichan had sent Tuala away.

“Perhaps not,” he said cautiously. “But we are, all the same. I was sent here by my father, to be
educated. Tuala was sent here by the Shining One herself.”

“To be educated?”

“For a purpose,” Bridei said. “And I am trying to teach her. She can count up to fifty now and knows quite a bit of the ritual and lots of stories. But there isn’t much time for it.”

“I’ll speak to Broichan,” Fola said crisply. “The situation’s ridiculous. She must share your lessons. Much of it she won’t understand,
but she’ll soak up what she can.”

Her confidence was impressive. Bridei doubted very much that Broichan could be persuaded to agree, but he did not say so. “Tuala would like that.”

“I know. Now tell me, Bridei. I know the story of how you found her. I know you understand her background, what she is and where she came from. I’m not sure if you understand how difficult that could be for her later
on. Think about it. Think about how it will be when you’re grown up and Tuala’s grown up. Consider the world the two of you will have to live in. What will she do? What can her life be?”

Bridei was not sure what the wise woman meant. “Here at Pitnochie, everyone loves her.” That part was not quite true. One could not associate the word
love
with Broichan himself. “She’s happy here. She belongs
here.”

“You will not live here forever, Bridei. One day you will be a man, following your own calling, making your own journeys. It seems to me you are the center of this small girl’s world. Where will she be without you? People are wary of the Good Folk. Tuala will not always encounter kindness in the wider world of men.”

“What do you mean?” Bridei asked, taken aback. “Are you, too, telling
me I should have left her in the snow? I’m not going to listen to this—” He was suddenly angry.

“I’m not
telling
you anything,” Fola said quietly. “Take my questions on
face value. There are no lessons in them and no judgments. All I want is a considered answer.”

Bridei made himself breathe in a pattern until the anger passed. He made himself look the wise woman straight in her dark, penetrating
eyes. “Tuala’s strong,” he said. “She’ll tread a path of her own choice. Her life can be anything she wants it to be.”

“And you?”

“Me? I will help her and protect her, and make sure she isn’t lonely. Like a brother, only not a brother.”

“I see. What of your own life? What if your path takes you far away, and you cannot fulfil this responsibility to a small sister who is not a sister?”

Bridei
frowned. “My foster father hasn’t told me yet what he intends for me. Of course I might have to go away for a bit—Talorgen said I can stay at Raven’s Well—but Tuala will be bigger by then. And when we’re grown up we can have our own house. It would have to be near the forest; Tuala needs the trees close by”

“Mm,” Fola said, lips twisting in a wry smile. “Most of the time one tends to forget how
young you are, Bridei. Broichan’s brought you up to speak like a scholar and to listen like one as well. Just occasionally I see the boy underneath, and I recognize that you are still just that: a boy. Tell me, what is it that
you
want? What future would you desire for yourself?”

The only way to answer this was with the truth. “To bring the kingdoms of the Priteni back together,” Bridei said
simply. “To make Circinn part of Fortriu again. To bring back the proper observance of the old faith, so all of us honor the ancestors as we should. To drive out the Gaels and bring peace. That’s what I want to do.”

“Anything else?”

It took a moment before he realized she was joking. He felt his cheeks flush. “It sounds too grand, I suppose; how could I even hope to begin? It is a task for a
great leader. I understand why you would laugh at me. But you did ask, and I gave a truthful answer. Those aspirations should be in the mind and heart of every man and woman of Fortriu. We should all strive for them.”

Fola nodded. “I wasn’t laughing at you, son,” she said. “I salute your courage and your ideals, and I pray that you live to achieve them. Now I have another question for you.”

It had been a difficult conversation. Bridei was hard put to guess what might be coming next.

“Tell me,” Fola said, “what if Broichan were to send you back home to Gwynedd?”

Sudden horror gripped Bridei. Did the wise woman know something Broichan had not told him?

“You are lost for words at last, after dealing so expertly with the rest of my interrogation. Now why is that, I wonder?”

“Did he
say that?” Bridei blurted out, despite himself. “Is he going to send me back?”

She regarded him, solemn as an owl. “Don’t you want to see your family?”

He bit back the first response,
my family is here, my family is Broichan and Donal and Tuala
. “Of course,” he told her politely.

“I don’t believe you,” said Fola. “Your every utterance is hedged about by caution, save for when the conversation
touches on something you truly care about. Then your face changes, your eyes light up, and you stop talking like a careful old man or an obfuscating druid and give me a little glimpse of yourself. What’s important to you is Fortriu and the Glen; the Shining One; and, of course, the child the goddess placed in your care. You’ve forgotten Gwynedd. How long have you been at Pitnochie, seven, eight
years? I doubt if you can even remember what your parents look like.”

Bridei bowed his head.

“It must have been lonely,” she said quietly.

“I was all right.”

“Hmm. But you made sure it wasn’t like that for her. Yes?”

“Broichan is a good foster father. The best.”

“And you are a loyal son. Foster son. Very well, Bridei, you’ve acquitted yourself admirably; he’s trained you expertly in this
kind of combat. Your little sister’s pretty good at it, too, for all she’s not much bigger than a hedge mouse. You know the solstice ritual’s a kind of test, do you?” She turned her sharp eyes suddenly on him.

“Yes,” Bridei said. “Of what exactly, I’m not sure. I’ll just have to do the best I can, and hope the gods will show me the way”

“I’ve no doubt at all that they will do just that,” said
the wise woman.

TUALA KNEW ABOUT
the solstice. Bridei had shown her how to watch the sun, when Midsummer Day was drawing close, how to check its position
against a point such as a tree or stone until the morning its rising moved back to give its journey a narrower arc. A sunrise vigil was kept for three days in a row, and
each of these days had its particular ritual observance. Back home in Pitnochie, Broichan would enact the solemn ceremonies with Bridei to help him. Here at Oak Ridge the recognition of the year’s turning was slight. There was a spring not far from the cottage, and they walked there when the morning’s work was done, the two older women, the younger one, and Tuala herself, with the little cat, Mist,
keeping pace in the undergrowth, here crouching still, here sprinting ahead, her tail a whisper of gray amongst the curling fronds of bracken and fern. The water welled up between stones and spilled into a small, round pool over which elder trees stretched long, spindly branches. Each of the women tied a scrap of colored cloth there—Tuala would have done the same, but she had lost her ribbon again,
and had nothing else to use—and Brenna and Tuala together made a pattern of white stones by the water’s edge. They spoke a simple prayer to the goddess; even this, Brenna’s mother and aunt did with sour faces and grim eyes. Tuala had never seen such sad people, such angry people. There were lots of things to smile about, even when you were lonely: the sun coming out, the pattern the ferns made
around the mossy rocks, the nice, damp smell of the little clearing, the whisper of the goddess’s voice . . .

“Can I stay here a little bit longer?” she asked Brenna. “Just a bit? I can see the house from here; I’ll come straight back, I promise.”

Already, the older women were walking home along the path. Brenna hesitated.

“I promise,” Tuala said again, trying to look like the most obedient
child in the world.

“All right,” Brenna said. Her face had a happier look now it was nearly time for Cinioch to come and fetch them home; her eyes were hardly red at all, and she summoned a wan smile. “You’ve been a good girl, Tuala. Be careful; don’t get your clothes wet.”

“Yes, Brenna.”

In fact, Tuala had been here several times already, accompanied only by Mist. Since the morning she had
discovered, accidentally, that scrying was in fact remarkably easy and that she hardly needed to practice at all, the pool had called her strongly, and she had spent as much time crouched here gazing into its shadowy waters as she had in the cradle of the oak’s ancient roots. The first time, she’d been looking in the water for fish; before she had
a chance to see if there were any, there’d been
the image on the surface, a picture of trees and sky and forest paths, not a reflection, for what she saw was the hill above Pitnochie, and there in the middle of the little pool were Bridei and his pony Blaze, riding out to Eagle Scar. All that she had to do to keep the image was stay quite still and breathe in a pattern. It wasn’t difficult at all.

As she visited the place more often and looked
in the pool at different times and on different days, Tuala saw some images that worried her. They were things that could not be
now
, that must be
long ago
or
yet to come
. It was a pity Bridei was not here; she had so many questions she needed answers for. Why were people so cruel to each other, why did they have fights and arguments and get angry, when it never solved anything? Who were the red-haired
warriors she kept seeing in the water, with calm, cold eyes bent on death? Was the young man there, the one with brown curls and a light in his face like a flame of courage, really a grown-up version of Bridei himself? And if so, why did she never see herself? Was it usual, when scrying, to have a strange, prickling sensation, as if all around the small glade where the spring emerged from
the earth there were invisible, silent watchers?

They were here again today. Tuala could feel it: a ring of eyes fixed on her, a circle of beings centered on her. She could see nothing beyond a faint shimmering in the air, a slight disturbance of the way things were. Her eyes told her there was nobody there. Yet she knew she was not alone. When she knelt down by the pool, under the elder tree
with its cargo of little scraps of wool, strips of leather, faded bits of ribbon, the offerings of season after season’s wayfarers, she could feel them kneeling by her, opposite her, behind her, following her every movement, breathing her every breath, as if she and they were one and the same.