Fool's Errand (11 page)

“To any who can read,” Jinna amended my words.

“That is true,” I conceded.

She cocked her head at me and smiled. “I don’t think I approve.”

I was startled, not just that she disagreed with such a thing, but that she could do it so pleasantly. “Why not?”

“Perhaps knowledge should not be available to all. Perhaps it should be earned, parceled out from master to worthy student only, rather than committed to paper where anyone who chances upon it may claim it for himself.”

“I confess to some of the same doubts myself,” I replied, thinking of the Skill-scrolls that Chade now studied. “And yet I have known of cases in which a master died an untimely death, and all she knew went with her, before it could be passed on to her chosen pupil. Generations of knowledge were lost in one death.”

She was silent for a time. “Tragic,” she admitted at last. “For though masters of a skill may share a great deal of knowledge, each has his own secrets, destined only for his own apprentices.”

“Consider someone such as yourself,” I went on, pushing my advantage in the discussion. “You practice a trade that is as much an art, woven of secrets and skills shared only by those others who practice hedge-magic. You have no apprentice at all that I have seen. Yet I would wager there are aspects of your magic that are yours alone, ones that would die with you if you perished tonight.”

She looked at me for a still moment, then took another sip of her brandy. “There’s a chill thought to dream on,” she replied wryly. “Yet there is this also, Tom. I have no letters. I could not put my knowledge in such a form, unless someone such as yourself aided me. And then I would not be certain if you had truly put down what I know, or what you thought I had told you. That is half of teaching an apprentice: making sure the youngster learns what you said, not what she thinks you said.”

“Very true,” I had to agree. How often had I thought I understood Chade’s directions, only to come to disaster when I tried to mix the concoction on my own? Another little ripple of uneasiness went through me, as I thought of Chade trying to teach Prince Dutiful from the scrolls. Would he teach what some forgotten Skillmaster had committed to paper, or only his understanding of it? I pulled my thoughts back from the unsettling notion. I had no duty there. I had warned him; that was as much as I could do.

Conversation lagged after that, and Jinna soon sought rest in Hap’s bed. Nighteyes and I went out to shut up the chicken house for the night and make our evening round of our smallholding. All was well and calm in the peaceful summer night. I cast one longing look toward the cliffs. The waves would be lace-edged silver tonight. I forbade it to myself and felt Nighteyes’ relief at my decision. We added more green alder branches to the slow fire in the smokehouse. “Bedtime,” I decided.

On nights such as this, we used to hunt together.

That we did. It would be a good night for hunting. The moon will make the game restless and easy to see.

Nevertheless, he followed me as I turned back toward the hut. Regardless of how well we both recalled it, neither of us were the young wolves we once had been. Our bellies were full, the hearth was warm, and rest might ease the dull ache in Nighteyes’ haunches. Dreams of hunting would have to suffice tonight.

I awoke to the morning sounds of Jinna ladling water into a kettle. When I came out into the kitchen, she had already set the kettle to boil over the stirred fire. She looked over her shoulder as she was slicing bread. “I hope you don’t feel that I’ve made myself too much at home,” she offered.

“Not at all,” I replied, but it did feel a bit odd. By the time I had seen to my animals and returned with the day’s eggs, hot food was steaming on the table. When we had eaten, she helped with the tidying up.

She offered me thanks for the hospitality, and added, “Before I go, perhaps we might do a bit of trading. Would you consider a charm or two from my stock in exchange for some of your yellow and blue inks?”

I found that I was glad to delay her leaving, not only because her company was pleasant, but because I had always been intrigued by hedge-magic. Here was an opportunity, perhaps, for a closer look at the tools of her trade. We went first to my workbench in the shed, where I packaged up pots of yellow, blue, and a small quantity of red ink for her. As I sealed the pots with wooden stoppers and wax, she explained that using colors on some of her charms seemed to increase their efficacy, but that this was an area in which she was still making discoveries. I nodded to her words, but much as I longed to, I refrained from asking more details. It did not seem polite.

When we returned to the house, she set the pots of dye on the table, and opened her own pack. She spread a number of her bagged charms on the table. “What will you choose, Tom Badgerlock?” she asked with a smile. “I have charms for verdant gardens, for hunter’s luck, for healthy babes—that’s small use to you, let me put that one back. Ah. Here’s one you might find useful.”

She whisked the cover off a charm. As she did so, Nighteyes let out a low growl. His hackles stood as he stalked to the door and nosed it open. I found myself backing away from the object she revealed. Short rods of wood marked with shrieking black symbols were fastened to each other at chaotic angles. Ominous beads were dangerously interspersed with them. A few tortured tufts of fur, twisted and fixed with pitch, clung to it. The object both offended and distressed me. I would have fled if I had dared take my eyes off it. I abruptly felt the wall of the cabin against my back. I pressed against it, knowing that there was a better path to escape, but unable to think what it was.

“I beg your pardon.” Jinna’s gentle words came from a vast distance. I blinked, and the object was gone, mantled in cloth and hidden from my sight. Outside the door, Nighteyes’ low growl rose to a whistling whine and ceased. I felt as if I had surfaced from deep waters. “It had not occurred to me,” Jinna apologized as she thrust the charm deep into her pack. “It’s intended to keep predators away from chicken houses and sheep pens,” she explained.

I got my breath back. Her gaze did not meet mine. Apprehension hung like a miasma between us. I was Witted, and now she knew it. How would she employ that knowledge? Would she merely be disgusted? Frightened? Scared enough to bring destruction down on me? I imagined Hap returning to a burned-out cabin.

Jinna suddenly looked up and met my eyes as if she had overheard my thoughts. “A man is as he is made. A man can’t help how he’s made.”

“That’s so,” I muttered in response, shamed at how relieved I felt. I managed to step away from the wall and toward the table. She didn’t look at me. She rooted through her pack as if the incident had never occurred.

“So, then, let’s just find you something a bit more appropriate.” She sorted through her bagged charms, stopping sometimes to pinch at the contents to freshen her memory of what was inside. She chose one in a green pouch and placed it on the table. “Will you take one to hang near your garden, to encourage your green things to prosper?”

I nodded mutely, still recovering from my fear. Moments ago, I would have doubted the power of her charms. Now I almost feared their potency. I clenched my teeth as she unveiled the garden charm, but as I stared at it, I felt nothing. When I met her eyes, I found sympathy there. Her gentle smile was reassuring.

“You’ll have to give me your hand so I can tune it to you. Then we’ll take it outside and adjust it for your garden. Half this charm is for the garden, and half for the gardener. It’s that which is between the gardener and his bit of soil that makes a garden. Give me your hands.”

She seated herself at my table and held her own hands out to me, palms up. I took the chair opposite hers and, after an awkward hesitation, placed my palms atop hers.

“Not that way. A man’s life and ways are told in the palms of his hands, not the backs.”

Obediently, I turned my hands over. In my apprentice days, Chade had taught me to read hands, not to tell fortunes, but to tell a man’s past. The calluses of a sword differed from those of a scribe’s pen or a farmer’s hoe. She bent close over my hands, staring at them intently. As she scanned my palms, I wondered if her eyes would discover the axe I had once borne, or the oar I had wielded. Instead, she studied my right hand intently, frowned, then transferred her gaze to my left. When she looked up at me, her face was a picture. The smile that twisted her face was a rueful one.

“You’re an odd one, Tom, and no mistake! Were they not both at the ends of your arms, I’d say these were the hands of two different men. It’s said that your left hand tells what you were born with, and your right hand what you have made of yourself, but even so, such differences in a man’s two hands I’ve seldom seen! Look what I see in this hand. A tender-hearted boy. A sensitive young man. And then . . . Your lifeline stops short on your left hand.” As she spoke, she let go of my right hand. She set her forefinger to my left palm, and her nail traced a tickling line to where my life ended. “Were you Hap’s age, I’d be fearing I was looking at a young man soon to die. But as you’re sitting there across from me, and your right hand bears a nice long lifeline, we’ll go by it, shall we?” She released my left hand, and took my right in both of hers.

“I suppose so,” I conceded uncomfortably. It was not only her words that made me ill at ease. The simple warm pressure of her hands gripping mine had made me suddenly aware of Jinna as a woman. I was experiencing a very adolescent response to it. I shifted in my chair. The knowing smile that flickered over her face discomfited me even more.

“So. An avid gardener, I see, one devoted to the knowing of many herbs and their uses.”

I made a neutral noise. She had seen my garden, and could be speculating based on what grew there. She studied my right hand a bit more, sweeping her thumb across it to smooth the lesser lines away, and then cupping my fingers in her own and encouraging my hand to close slightly to deepen the folds. “Left or right, it’s not an easy hand to read, Tom.” She frowned to herself, and compared the two again. “By your left hand, I’d say you’d had a sweet and true love in your short life. A love that ended only in your death. Yet here in your right hand, I see a love that wends its way in and out of all your many years. That faithful heart has been absent for a time, but is soon to return to you again.” She lifted her clear hazel eyes to mine to see if she had scored true. I shrugged one shoulder. Had Hap been telling her tales of Starling? Scarcely what I would call a faithful heart. When I said nothing, she returned her attention to my hands, her gaze going from one to the other. She frowned slightly, raising a furrow between her brows. “Look here. See this? Anger and fear, shackled together in a dark chain . . . it follows your lifeline, a black shadow over it.”

I pushed aside the uneasiness her words roused in me. I leaned forward to look into my own hand. “It’s probably just dirt,” I offered.

She gave a small snort of amusement and shook her head again. But she did not return to her ominous peering. Instead she covered my hand with her own and met my eyes. “Never have I seen two palms so unlike on the same man. I suspect that sometimes you wonder if you even know who you are yourself.”

“I’m sure every man wonders that from time to time.” It was oddly difficult to meet her nearsighted gaze.

“Hm. But you, perhaps, have more honest reason to wonder it than others. Well,” she sighed. “Let me see what I can do.”

She released my hands, and I drew them back. I rubbed them together under the table as if to erase the tickling of her touch. She took up her charm, turned it several times, and then unfastened a string. She changed the order of the beads on the string, and added an extra brown bead from her pack. She retied the string, and then took out the pot of yellow ink I had traded her. Dipping a fine brush in it, she outlined several black runes on one of the dowels, bending close over it to peer at her work. She spoke as she worked. “When next I come to visit, I expect you to tell me this has been your best year ever for plants that bear their fruits aboveground where the sun ripens them.” She blew on the charm to dry the ink, then put away both pot and brush. “Come, now, we have to adjust this to the garden.”

Outside, she sent me to find and cut a forked branch at least as tall as myself. When I returned with it, I found she had dug a hole at the southeast corner of my garden plot. I set the pole in it as she directed, and filled in the hole. She hung the charm from the right fork of the branch. When the wind stirred it, the beads rattled gently and a small bell chimed. She tapped the bell with a fingertip. “It discourages some birds.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. This is a good spot for one of my charms. It pleases me to leave it here. And when next I come, I shall be interested to see how well it has worked for you.”

It was the second time she had mentioned visiting again. The ghost of my court manners nudged me. “And when next you come, you shall find yourself as welcome as you were this time. I shall look forward to your visit.”

The smile she gave me dimpled her cheeks more deeply. “Thank you, Tom. I shall certainly stop here again.” She cocked her head at me and spoke with sudden frankness. “I know you are a lonely man, Tom. That won’t always be so. I could tell that, at first, you doubted the power of my charms. You still doubt the truth of what I can see in the palm of a man’s hand. I don’t. Your one true love is stitched in and out and through your life. Love will return to you. Don’t doubt that.”

Her hazel eyes met mine so earnestly that I could neither laugh nor frown at her. So I nodded mutely. As she shouldered her pack and strode off down the lane, I watched her go. Her words tugged at me, and hopes long denied struggled to grow. I thrust them away from me. Molly and Burrich belonged to one another now. There was no place for me in their lives.

I squared my shoulders. I had chores to do, wood to stack, fish to put by, and a roof to mend. It was another fine summer day. Best use it while I had it, for while summer smiles, winter is never far away.