The Amber Legacy (7 page)

With a harrumph, Emma got to her feet with her walking cane and shuffled forward three steps. She flexed her arms and wrists and fingers and coughed, held out her right hand, palm skyward, and concentrated, moving her lips silently. A familiar shiver rippled along Meg’s spine. A tiny flame flickered to life in Emma’s palm and slowly grew until it was a small fire, burning, enveloping her entire hand, licking at her wrist, her sleeve. Meg stared in disbelieving horror. She leapt up, but Emma waved her left hand over her right and extinguished the flames. ‘How did you do that?’ Meg blurted.

Emma swayed, as if overcome with exhaustion, and Meg took the old woman’s arm to steady her. ‘Sit me down again,’ Emma said. Settled, she rubbed her forehead, sighing heavily, perspiration pooling in the creases of her skin. She blinked, drew a breath, and said, ‘I don’t have the Blessing, but I can do little things.’

‘Like what else?’ Meg asked, her amazement metamorphosed into ravening curiosity.

Emma snorted and flashed an ironic grin. ‘How many spells do I have to cast to convince you that there is magic?’

‘It was just—just so incredible!’ Meg exclaimed. ‘You made fire out of nothing.’

‘Not exactly nothing,’ Emma replied. ‘Fire is air. You can’t make fire from water or from earth. There are rules. There’s an immeasurable mountain of knowledge to be scaled before you can do even the simplest of spells.’

Meg shrugged, her mood dropping from elation to despondency, as if a cold cloud shadow engulfed her sunlight.

‘What brought on that look?’ Emma asked.

‘I’ve tried making spells. I told you. Remember? I can’t.’

Emma laughed. ‘That’s because you don’t know what to do yet. You can’t just throw a spell. It takes training—sometimes years of learning first. You have to be able to read and write, and you have to be patient while you take risks. You have to learn about the elements and chemicals and the relationships between them all and how words, when they’re spoken in the right sequence and at the right pitch, can set up a resonance and make events happen that ordinary people call magic. You’ll make more mistakes than have successes for a very long time.’

‘Who taught you what to do?’

‘My mother, but she didn’t have the Blessing. What there was of it in my family line passed through her to me. But she could read and she learned what to do so that she could teach me, in case I had any of the Blessing. As it turned out, I had a small residue, enough to perform the simplest spells, but not enough to be more than a clever soothsayer. I was never a Potential.’

‘Will you teach me?’

Emma took Meg’s hand. ‘You may not have the Blessing at all. Samuel thought he saw that you are a Potential in the crystal, and that’s why he’s left it for you. The crystal comes from another place, another time, and it amplifies the psychic abilities of anyone who truly has the Blessing.’

‘Psychic?’

‘Magic comes from the mind’s ability to focus and force the physical world to either change, or appear to change. Your mind is a powerful energy force.’

‘Then why don’t you use it?’

‘The little touch of the Blessing that resides in me is not enough. If Samuel saw true, you might have a greater amount. But I’m making no promises, girl, no promises. All I offer at first is a little learning. It won’t be easy. You’ll need patience. And you cannot tell anyone else about this. You saw Samuel’s cave. There are evil people who want what you have.’

‘Who?’

‘The same people to whom you must go if you really have the Blessing.’

‘Who?’

Emma shook her head. ‘Until I know for certain that you are a Potential, some things I can’t tell you for your own good.’

‘But who killed Samuel?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Emma, sadness flooding her
voice. ‘But they didn’t get what they thought they would find. Samuel was too clever for them.’

‘What if they’re still around?’ Meg asked, looking to see if Sunfire was alert. The dingo was snoozing in the shade, oblivious to a magpie that was feasting on worms nearby.

‘I very much doubt they would still be here. My guess…no, I’m sure, they would’ve believed Samuel was the only one who might have what they wanted, and when it wasn’t found they left.’

‘All this is about the crystal?’

‘Keep it safe,’ Emma warned. ‘No one else must know that it is in your keeping.’

‘What will I tell my mother?’

Emma gazed at Meg and said, ‘You won’t tell her anything yet. What you know now is for you and me alone. Understand? This is for us. I want you to promise me that.’

Button Tailor was waiting by the swimming hole. She was late. The sun was already low on the hilltops and they would have precious little time to walk together before darkness drove them home. She walked quickly to meet him and apologised, telling him that her errands had taken longer than she’d anticipated.

‘I know how that happens,’ he said, ‘but you’re here and so it doesn’t matter.’ And his smile melted her fear that she’d annoyed him by coming late. She saw his eyes rest on the fragment of amber crystal on the fine gold chain around her neck. ‘I didn’t see that the other day. Were you wearing it?’

‘No,’ she said, her hand rising to touch the object, and tuck it away. ‘It’s a—family heirloom. I don’t wear it very often.’

‘Which way?’ he asked, gesturing in random directions.

‘This way,’ she decided, choosing to head along the riverbank, away from the eyes of Summerbrook’s gossips.

They walked along the winding path, Sunfire wandering behind like a chaperone. Meg wasn’t sure how to begin a conversation, but Button rescued the silence. ‘I saw your brothers fishing by the bridge.’

‘They should have been stacking firewood at home. Mother will be annoyed.’

‘I can drop by tomorrow to help stack the wood,’ he offered.

‘I’ll get them to do it,’ she said. ‘It’s their job.’

‘Do they listen to you?’

‘What’s that meant to mean?’

Button laughed. ‘No offence meant. I just mean I know that boys don’t like being bossed by their sisters, especially older sisters.’

‘And how do you know that?’ she asked.

‘I have two older sisters, remember? Lucy and Jen.’

She laughed. ‘Now I feel sorry for you.’

‘But I don’t feel sorry for your brothers. They should be respecting a sister as clever and as beautiful as you.’

She blushed, and looked at her feet to hide her embarrassment. No young man had ever told her she was beautiful—at least, not in the manner Button used. It sounded strange, but it was very flattering.

‘Do you watch the sunset?’ he asked.

She looked up to the west. ‘Most evenings,’ she said. ‘The colours always make me relaxed and happy.’

Button stopped to stare at the sinking sun, and Meg paused beside him. ‘I used to think the sun was going to set the trees on the hills alight when I was little. Sometimes it looked like it had.’ He turned to her, and said, ‘It’s as if your hair is on fire, and your skin is amber.’ He raised his right hand and his fingers brushed gently against her cheek to push aside a loose lock of her glowing red hair.

She shifted uncomfortably, and stepped away from
his reach, saying, ‘I forgot to brush Nightwind. We’d better start back.’

Button smiled, lowering his hand. ‘So you have called him Nightwind.’

‘I liked the sound. You were right. It suits him.’

‘What’s that?’

Meg turned to where he was pointing. Through the trees at the outer edge of the village a dozen horses were walking steadily, their riders masked by the lengthening twilight shadows. ‘Soldiers, I think,’ she said, her voice dropping to a wary whisper as her mind raced through the possibilities. One made her skin crawl with fear. What if Samuel’s killers were returning?

‘I have to go,’ Button announced.

‘Why? What’s wrong?’ She recognised the men as Queen’s soldiers and her fear weakened.

‘Nothing. I just have to go.’ And instead of heading towards his home, Button jogged along the riverbank path, into the bush, leaving Meg wondering why he was running from the Queen’s soldiers.

In the dream, she was disembodied and in darkness. She thought at first that she’d woken up but hadn’t opened her eyes, yet when she concentrated on opening them nothing changed—she was awake in the dream and there was nothing to see. But she felt something—a presence—no, something more, something immense.

I am in you and all of you, a deep voice said.

Who are you? she asked.

I am everything.

But what is your name?

I have many names. I am all names. Call me what you choose. I am still who I am.

I don’t understand, she said, but her voice seemed to melt into the darkness.

When she woke, she was clutching the amber crystal in her left hand. It was already sunrise and the kookaburras were warbling jubilantly in the gum trees. The dream—full of darkness and the voice—stayed solid like the crystal. She would decipher its meaning somehow.

‘Of all the pains we must endure,
love hurts deepest when it is unrequited.
Don’t talk to me of what you have felt,
for I know this pain in its purest form.’

TRANSLATED FROM ‘BEYOND THE ETERNAL LONGING’
,
AN EPIC POEM BY ASHUAK POET LAK ASHARA
,
IN THE SECOND DYNASTY

‘
A
s long as men go a-wandering, And maidens are so sweet, There’ll always be a fresh rose plucked, By men who can compete For a young girl’s charming smile, For a young girl’s charming smile.’

Meg hesitated at the half-open door, held by the raucous singing within, and she tried to ignore the lecherous grins of the soldiers who were leaning on the hitching post outside Archer’s Inn, chewing tobacco. Sunfire’s ears flattened and his hackles rose. The Queen’s soldiers had commandeered the inn the previous night, and had been drinking copiously, entertained by minstrels who travelled with them. Her mother said that the village men were bickering over who should berate the soldiers for their uncivil behaviour, but no one wanted the responsibility. Meantime, the belligerent and demanding Queen’s men were holding Fletcher Archer, his wife and their three children hostage in their tavern, forcing them to endlessly serve food and ale and spirits. Feeling sorry for the Archers, Meg’s mother sent her protesting daughter with a basket of freshly baked bread and cake to feed the hapless family.

‘Want the door opened wider, gorgeous?’ offered a rakishly thin, sparsely bearded soldier at the entrance. He glanced down at the dingo that stared back at him.

‘Thank you,’ she replied. She clutched the basket close to her chest, as she eased past the young man whose breath reeked of alcohol and vomit, and Sunfire slid in behind her.

‘What have we here?’ a harsh voice asked as she entered the smoky common room.

‘Another beauty,’ a second answered. ‘Come and sit on my lap, girlie.’ Meg’s morning sunlight blindness dissipated. At least ten men sat or stood around the three square tables that normally furnished the room. A motley crew—a mixture of young and older men, all unshaven and, from the pungent pervasive odour of humanity underlying the smell of stale ale and smoke, they were all in desperate need of a good bath. The man who’d offered a lap was lean, like an underfed dog, and his eyes shone with his hunger. ‘Come on. I won’t bite you,’ he said.

‘Don’t believe him,’ another man warned, and the group laughed.

‘Her dog might bite you, though, Lambcutter,’ a pudgy-cheeked soldier observed. The soldiers laughed again.

There were two young women with the men. Axle Wheelwright sat on a soldier’s knee, her tunic unlaced and open, exposing her breasts, her dark hair dishevelled, and she glared at Meg as though she resented her intrusion. The second, Leafy Wood, a plain mousy-haired girl Meg’s age, the third daughter of Henry Wood, the village woodcutter, stood behind a sitting soldier, her arms dangling around the young man’s neck, and she was laughing at Meg, like the men. ‘What’s in the basket? More food?’ a hook-nosed soldier asked.

‘It’s for the Archers,’ Meg told him.

‘They’re not as hungry as us,’ the soldier insisted, as he rose and reached for the basket.

Meg pulled the basket away and Sunfire growled menacingly. ‘The food isn’t for you.’

‘Whoa-ho! Spirited!’ the soldier declared, grinning. ‘Come on, girl, let’s have some sport from you.’

‘Touch me and I’ll kill you,’ Meg snarled, her anger flashing. Sunfire stepped between them, his teeth bared.

‘Will you now? You’ll kill me, will you?’ The soldier laughed, and his companions laughed as well.

‘She won’t kill you, Gardner, but the dog will,’ someone else quipped. The soldiers laughed again.

‘And what’s your name?’ Gardner asked.

‘My name isn’t for your foul mouth.’

The soldier snorted and, turning to Axle, asked, ‘What’s your friend’s name?’

‘Megen Farmer,’ Axle explained, ‘and she thinks she’s too good for everyone else.’ She screwed up her face in contempt.

‘Flame-haired Meg,’ said the soldier. ‘Fiery. Foreign name, too. I think you’d be a fine piece of flesh in the sheets.’ He moved closer, his lips curling with anticipation, his hand reaching out. Meg tensed, prepared to swing the basket to ward him off, but Sunfire leapt, latched onto the man’s arm and dragged him off balance. Gardner wrestled his arm loose and kicked, but Sunfire dodged effortlessly, and took up guard again between Meg and the soldier, snarling viciously. ‘Looks like your bloody dog needs some lessons,’ Gardner said, shaking blood from his wrist. He drew his sword.

‘Gardner!’ A blond, thickset individual, who had been leaning against the bar, straightened up and strode towards Meg’s harasser. Gardner sighed heavily and stepped back, glancing once at Meg to grin evilly as he
sheathed his weapon. For a moment she wondered if these men had been Samuel’s killers. The man who intervened looked warily at Sunfire. ‘I’m Leader Stone,’ he said to Meg. ‘Please excuse Gardner’s poor manners. He’s been a long time at war. I’ll take your basket into the Archer family. If you’re not interested in staying, it might be wise to go home now.’ He held out his hand to accept the basket. Sunfire growled quietly.

‘Will you give the food to the Archers?’

‘You have my word,’ said Leader Stone, and his eyes sparkled beneath his bushy blond eyebrow ledge. His expression satisfied Meg. She passed the basket to him. ‘I’ll take it straight in to them,’ he said. ‘But I’ll wait until you leave safely,’ he added, casting a wry smile in Gardner’s direction. The disgruntled soldier forced a false smile in return.

Back in the fresh morning air, Meg headed for Button Tailor’s house. Clay Potter nodded as she passed his house. She crossed the bridge, glad to be away from the soldiers. Her father had gone to join the army, but she was certain he would never act like those men. Except perhaps Leader Stone. He seemed nice enough.

The Tailor house was a three-roomed place, with a colourful array of flowers in the front garden. Brightday Tailor was digging in her vegetable patch, at the side of the house, and Meg glimpsed her husband, Needle Tailor, bent over a task in his shed. ‘Hello, Brightday,’ Meg called as she reached the dark-haired woman.

Brightday straightened and brushed moist earth from her hands. ‘Meg Farmer,’ she said with a broad smile. ‘What brings you here this morning?’

‘I was looking for Button.’

Brightday’s expression clouded. She beckoned Meg to come closer, and whispered, ‘He’s not here. If the soldiers or anyone else asks, tell them Button went south some time ago.’

‘Why?’

‘They’ll take him away, Meg. They’ll force him to join the army. That’s why they’re here. They’re looking for young men like Button.’

‘What about Loaf Baker? Or Oak Carpenter?’ Meg asked.

‘All the boys have left the village. If the soldiers can’t find anyone, they’ll move on. You have to pretend you haven’t seen any of the boys for several cycles.’

‘But why take them away?’

‘The war isn’t going as well as the Queen would want. She needs more men to join her armies.’

‘What are you going to do with that horse you found?’ Needle Tailor asked, as he emerged from the shed.

She’d forgotten that Nightwind’s presence would interest the soldiers. ‘I haven’t thought about it,’ she responded.

‘They’ll want to take it back,’ Needle reminded her.

Meg excused herself and walked briskly home, keeping to the left of the road as she passed Archer’s Inn. The soldiers stared again, so she moved purposefully, Sunfire loping protectively by her side. The day was heating up as usual, yet the air felt heavy. When she looked up, shielding her eyes with her hand, she saw that the sky was sharp blue and clear—but to the west there was a bank of dark cloud and her spirit rose. Rain—at last. She avoided her mother and headed for the yard where the grey horse was tethered. She unhitched the dark leather halter from a hook on the side of the pale wooden railing and opened the gate. ‘Come on,’ she crooned as she fitted the halter and reins over the horse’s head. She loosened his hobbles and led him out. Her brothers were nowhere to be seen. Dawn was inside the house. Only Sunfire was watching, ears pricked, anticipating.

Her safest option was to take the horse deeper into the bush. A gully a short distance away, at the foot of the first big hill, had a dry rocky creek bed that only flowed in the heaviest rains during the season of Shahk, and there was plenty of tree shelter. Nightwind would be safe there for a day or two. She tied the reins to the branch of a small tree by the grain shed and fetched a bucket of water. Then she untied Nightwind, and quickly led the horse away, with Sunfire trotting in her wake.

By the time she returned, having secured Nightwind in the gully, the midday heat was stiflingly humid and the storm clouds were looming. Her mother asked her to find her brothers, and get them to cut and stack firewood. She searched the usual fishing spots along the river, but eventually found Daryn and Mykel loitering outside Archer’s Inn. ‘You’ve wood to cut,’ she said.

‘We’re watching the soldiers,’ Daryn protested.

‘There’s nothing to see,’ she said. ‘Come home.’

The boys acquiesced reluctantly. ‘They were packing to go,’ Daryn told her as they walked towards their home.

‘And they won’t be missed,’ she said.

While the boys worked on the wood stocks, Meg took little Peter to feed the chickens and ducks. ‘I can feed them myself!’ he declared after a few moments, and he pulled away from Meg’s guiding hands. She laughed and watched the boy scatter his tiny handfuls of seed for the eager birds. As she watched, she ran her left hand over her tunic, tracing the delicate chain line beneath, and the thin outline of the amber crystal. Emma had told her that it was a rare magical item.
What is its magic
, she wondered? Lightning flashed in the approaching bank of storm clouds, followed by a distant rumble. Little Peter squinted at the sky. ‘Will there be a storm?’

‘Yes,’ she told him. ‘We’d better put the animals in the barn.’ The rains were coming and she was excited because the hard field would soften for the first run of the plough.

The wind howled through the trees. Lightning flashed. Thunder rolled across the valley. Meg lashed the door to the grain shed to stop it banging and struggled towards the house, squinting to make her way through the gloom. It was still late afternoon, but the storm clouds had brought a heavy darkness. She’d helped other villagers herd livestock to shelter, but many of the animals that grazed on the common were still loose. Another lightning strike almost blinded her and the thunderous boom vibrated through the earth. With a sharp crack, to Meg’s dismay, the gum tree near the grain shed toppled and a limb tore away a small segment of the thatch roof as the falling trunk crushed a trough. Caught between anger that the tree had wrecked the roof, and relief that it hadn’t collapsed completely onto the shed, she clenched her fists as another flash of lightning lit the farm like daylight. A heavy raindrop hit her forearm. Another thudded against the ground. And another. The drought-breaking rains had come.

Inside the house, her mother was placing pots where the rain was already dripping through the thatched roof while her brothers were pressing their faces against the wooden shutters, watching the rain in the bursts of lightning. Sunfire was curled before the fireplace. ‘The wells will be full again,’ Dawn said, as she adjusted a pot to catch the raindrops. ‘Are all the animals under shelter?’

‘All I could find,’ Meg replied, shaking out her red hair. The rain was thundering against the roof, new leaks springing through the thatch, sending Dawn scurrying
for more containers. And then Meg remembered the horse. ‘There’s one more I have to check!’ she yelled, heading for the door.

Dawn stared in disbelief. ‘You can’t go out in this!’

‘I have to!’ Meg yelled. She unhooked her father’s oilskin coat from the pegs by the door. ‘It’s the horse!’

‘It’ll fend for itself!’ Dawn yelled. ‘Don’t be stupid!’

Meg swung the door open and plunged into the rain. Dawn stared after her daughter disappearing into the torrent. When Sunfire rose and trotted forward, Dawn ordered ‘No!’ and closed the door. The dingo looked up inquisitively, sniffed the air, and sank to wait for Meg’s return.

It’s like swimming
, Meg decided as she pushed through the rain. The harsh wind brought the rain slicing in at a sharp angle, squeezing through her coat’s narrow gaps, and the ground underfoot was treacherously muddy. She cursed herself for leaving the horse out in the storm. White lightning gave her an instant to orient, and she headed into the bush in the direction of the gully where Nightwind was hidden.

As good as her sense of direction normally was, she was quickly lost in the wild darkness and lashing rain. She blundered blindly into the ragged mallee bushes, scratched her face on an unseen branch, and slipped down the slope of a small hollow, landing on her backside in oozing slurry. Cold water and mud ran under her coat and soaked her trousers and tunic. A jagged lightning fork revealed that she’d missed the gully entrance by more than a hundred paces, but the silvery instant reoriented her.

She missed the horse several times, twice stumbling into the raging but shallow creek waters that had leapt to life with the storm. When a flash of lightning finally exposed him, Nightwind was cowering under a gum tree, soaked from the rain and terrified by the howling
wind and rabid lightning. ‘I’m sorry,’ she cried, as she tried to coax the frightened horse towards her, ‘I’ll take you back to shelter,’ but the horse shied from her reach. In desperation, she grabbed at the bridle. Startled, Nightwind reared defensively and lashed out, striking Meg solidly on the forehead with a flailing hoof. Clutching her head, she staggered three paces back in shock, and collapsed.

The bright light stunned her. She took a long time to adjust to it, until she realised she was staring directly into the sun. She looked away, to discover that she stood on a vast plain of grey dust under a sharp blue and utterly cloudless sky. Scattered randomly across the plain were twisted, angular leafless trees, white as if scorched by great heat. The intensity of the light and colours hurt her eyes. Her feet were immersed in fine grey dust. This was a place that had not seen the quenching and rejuvenating touch of rain for an immeasurable time. And then she heard the laughter—a deep, resonating, chilling sound that made the hair on her neck rise. Everywhere she could only see the endless sky and plain and white trees, no other sign of life, and the bodiless laughter echoed through her soul, extinguishing hope.