Water (18 page)

was that inconvenient question again, pressing up to the front of her mind and making her stupid,

making her incapable of so much as saying “Good day” in return: Why had the Guardian chosen

her?

She had not expected the Guardian to be small and round—a full half-head shorter than Tamia,

who was not yet grown to her full height—nor to have short charcoal-and-chalk-white-striped

hair that flew wildly round her head like the clouds Tamia knew as mares’-tails, and black eyes

bright as a bird’s. But she knew at the same time, without any doubt, once she had looked into

those eyes, that this woman was Western

Mouth, the Guardian who had called Tamia to apprentice, and that she had been waiting for her.

The woman smiled—a smile just for Tamia, as the trader’s nod had been just for her—and

Tamia, not accustomed to smiling, smiled back. “Since you want to know so badly, my dear,”

the Guardian said, “it is for many of those things you are worrying about that I chose you. I want

someone whose worth is plain to me, but not to everyone else, so she will not pine for what she

has lost; and I want someone who has your cleverness, and deftness, and perception, and who is

accustomed to looking around for things to do, and finding them.” She said this half-laughing, as

if it were a joke of no importance, or as if it were so obvious it did not need repeating, like that

cheese was good to eat or the man who raised spotted ponies could also make love-charms. She

added more seriously, “Perhaps you would like to sit down and rest, and have a cup of tea and

look around you, and—we could have the rest of this conversation later.”

Tamia barely heard the end of this. Of course she could not sit down and rest, and drink the

Guardian’s tea, on false pretences, when the Guardian—for some reason—thought she was

welcoming her new apprentice, and Tamia knew she was not. Tamia thought, The things I am

accustomed to looking for are floor-sweeping and child-minding and animal-tending things. Not

Guardian things. And no one has ever called me clever, or deft, or perceptive.

Perhaps the Guardian saw some of this in her face, for after it seemed that Tamia would make no

answer, the Guardian went on: “I have been here alone for a long time, and I have forgotten that

some of the things I know not everyone knows. Oh, the high, grand Guardiany things—I know

you don’t know them yet. But you will have to notice the other things for me, because I will not,

and tell me to teach them to you. My first command to you is that
you must tell me
when you

don’t know something. There is no shame to not knowing something—no, not even after the fifth

time of asking and being told! There are many things much too hard to learn in one telling, or in

five. Even in the beginning. And even the easiest of the easy ones, there are so many easy ones,

you will forget some of them sometimes too. You won’t be able to help it. But you are to learn to

be Guardian after me. You do understand that, do you not?”

Tamia gulped, and nodded.

The Guardian looked away from Tamia for a moment, and Tamia thought sadly, Now it comes.

Now she will tell me the thing that I know I cannot do, and I will have to tell her so. But the

Guardian only said: “And—are you willing?” The woman seemed suddenly smaller, and less

round, and her eyes were not so bright, and her hair fell against her skull, like ordinary hair. “I

will not keep you against your will. If you would prefer to return to your village, you may go—

and with my thanks for making this long walk to speak to me yourself, instead of sending your

answer with the trader. I might have come to you, but I have never liked mountain-climbing, and

I’m getting old for it besides; and I did want to see you face-to-face—even if your decision went

against me.”

Tamia bunked, and listened to the woman’s words again in her head, cautiously, and realised she

meant them, meant just what she had said. “Oh, no! No, I do not want to go back.” She did not

mean to add, “They are glad to be rid of me! Especially since I have been called to the Guardian,

which is a great thing for them to be able to say,” but she did, because there seemed to be no way

not to tell this woman the whole truth.

The woman was looking at her thoughtfully, the faintest line of a frown between her eyes. “I

could send you to another village—I could send you with enough of a dowry, a dowry from a

Guardian, that you would be able to marry comfortably.”

Involuntarily Tamia heard her stepfather saying, Magic does not have a mouth to put food into, a

back to shelter from storms! She shook her head to clear it of her stepfather, and looked around.

There were trees surrounding the meadow, and the final peak of the Eagle rose above them, and

the clouds overhead looked like galloping horses, as clouds often did to Tamia, and what Tamia

had left yesterday was lost behind the many windings of the narrow path. She thought about

what the Guardian was offering her—she stopped herself wondering why she was offering it to

her, or she would stick there and never go any further in her thinking. She raised her hand and

tapped herself on the breast, feeling the solidity of her own body, the faint hollow echo when she

struck high on her breastbone; and she thought, No, I am not dreaming. The sweat of her climb

still prickled down her back, and stuck her hair to her forehead.

She thought of being able to marry someone like Bjet, or Grouher; of having a house of her own;

she thought about having yelling babies of her own; she thought about washing-day in her

mother’s home. She thought about having her own smallholding, and a pony to plough it that did

not have to be hired out to other farmers for the money it would bring.

It would be a great thing, to come from somewhere else with a dowry a Guardian had given her.

It would be a great thing, and perhaps, if she were lucky, it would make her great with it. But she

would never belong to the place that took her in. Better, perhaps, to be a Guardian; and for the

first time since the trader had brought the news to her stepfather’s door, her heart lifted a little,

and her mind sat up and looked around and thought, Hmm, to be a Guardian, how interesting.

How ... exciting.

Something odd was happening to her face; her mouth couldn’t seem to decide whether to turn up

or turn down. The small round woman was smiling at her quite steadily. “It’s beginning to sink

in, is it, my dear? You bring it all back to me, looking at your bright young face—I was where

you were once, you know. I couldn’t begin to imagine why the Guardian had chosen me, and I

thought it must be some mistake. It isn’t, you know. We Guardians make mistakes—are you too

young to remember “what happened to poor White North and Stone Gate?—but we don’t make

mistakes about picking apprentices. You might say we can’t, any more than you can wake up in

the morning without having a yawn and a stretch and going to look for breakfast. Which isn’t to

say that you can always demand or predict what breakfast is going to be. Will you tell me what

you are thinking, my dear? I might be able to help.”

Tamia looked round again, and this time she saw the little house with a peaked roof close to the

edge of the clearing nearest the Eagle’s final summit; a great hollow yew twisted around one

corner of the house, cradling a dark invisible haven in its bent limbs; and there were stones of

various sizes laid out in a pattern in a wide, shallow pool of water that lay round both it and the

house. The water glittered, and something like tiny stars twinkled on the biggest stones. “I am

frightened,” Tamia said to the Guardian. “But I would rather stay here, with you.”

The Guardian’s smile turned a little wistful. “It is wise of you to be frightened. Being a Guardian

is ... well, it is hard work, but you are not afraid of hard work. It is things other than hard work

too, and you will learn them; and some of them are frightening.” She patted Tamia’s shoulder.

“That’s a hard thing to hear right off isn’t it? But it’s as well you should know at once. Mind

you, many more things are not frightening, and I’m afraid I must tell you that very many of these

are no more—and no less—than boring. Appallingly, gruesomely boring. As boring as washingday, and cleaning out chicken-houses.

“But oh! I am glad you have chosen to stay. It does not happen often that an apprentice refuses

the position, but it has happened. Four Doors, who is the oldest of us, remembers it happening

once when he was an apprentice. It has taken me a long search—and fourteen years’ further

waiting—to find one someone who would suit me. I am grateful not to have to begin the search

again.” She laughed at the blank look on Tamia’s face, and took her arm. “Come see the house. I

have your room half-ready; I thought you would like to do the other half yourself. And perhaps

you will finally let me make you that cup of tea? It is true that I have forgotten much of what it is

like to be fourteen, but 7 think you need a rest.”

Weeks passed in a kind of enchanted blur. Tamia had never worked so hard in her life—but she

had never eaten so well, dressed so well, slept so well—been so interested in everything—nor so

noticed in her life either. The good food and the clothing, and the knowledge that she could go to

bed early any evening she was too tired to stay awake—and in her very own room, shared with

no one!—were merely glorious; the being noticed was rather odd, and unsettling. She wasn’t

used to it; and then, to be noticed by a Guardian ...

She loved the Guardian almost at once; but that also meant she wanted, that much more than if

she had only liked or admired her, to please her, and so she went in terrible fear of doing

something wrong, of making her unhappy—it was too hard to imagine her angry to fear making

her angry. And she couldn’t believe that she didn’t daily, hourly, prove to the Guardian that she

was not as clever or as quick or as hardworking as the Guardian needed her apprentice to be.

“How long, d’you think,” the Guardian said matter-of factly one day at lunch, “before you will

stop waiting for me to realise I’ve made a dreadful mistake and send you away? I told you that

first afternoon that this is not the sort of mistake Guardians make, and I have seen nothing since

to make me suspect that I’ve just erred in a new, tradition-confounding way, and will go down in

the annals of history as the only—well, the first, anyway—Guardian to have made a mistake in

choosing her apprentice.”

Tamia kept her eyes on her plate.

“Eh?” said the Guardian. “How long?”

Tamia raised her eyes slowly, but kept her face tipped down. She knew that tone of voice; it

meant the Guardian wasn’t just talking to make conversation. She was really waiting for an

answer. Tamia didn’t have an answer. “I don’t know,” she said, very quietly, to her plate.

“Well, I would like you to find out, and give me a date. Because it is very tedious to me, and I

can’t imagine it is giving you much pleasure either. Try assuming that you belong here—just as

an exercise, if you like. Like making rainbows or slowing down every thousandth rain-drop or

turning clouds into horse-shapes is an exercise.”

Tamia grinned involuntarily at this last reference to her new favourite game. She glanced over at

the water-garden that lay around the house and the old yew. It was a beautiful bright day, and

warm in the little pocket of valley where the Guardian’s house stood, although there were

mare’s-tail wisps blowing overhead, and the tree-tops were singing in the wind. The Guardian

and her apprentice were having their lunch outdoors. Ordinary flat grey stepping-stones led

through the water from the foot of the house-stairs, and next to the yew tree stood a tiny table

and two chairs. Making rainbows and tweaking rain-drops and doing things with clouds began

with rearranging the stones in the water-garden, in their shining bed of gold grains, fine as sand,

and strangely shaped gold pebbles.

Tamia stood up slowly, and walked to the edge of the pool. There were a lot of stones she still

did not know the uses of, but she was beginning to develop a feel for the ones that had uses; it

wasn’t quite a hum, like a noise you heard in your ears, and it wasn’t quite a touch or vibration

you felt against your hand when you held it near them, but it was a little like both together. She

walked slowly round the edge of the water-garden, looking at various stones, and the way the

tiny irregular fragments of their bed caught the shadows and turned them golden. Near the corner

of the house she came to an area where there was no pressure at all against her ears or her skin or

her thought from any of the stones. She knelt down and, after a moment of holding her open

hands above the surface of the water, picked up two. The water was cool, as it always was,

although the sun had been on the water-garden most of the morning. She held the two stones

quietly for a moment. These would do. No, better than that. These were good ones. They

gleamed with atoms of gold too small to see; only their twinkle gave them away.

She came back round the corner of the house, and knelt down near the little table where lunch

was laid, in a curve of the pond-edge that allowed them their island. She ran her fingertips along

the pebbly edge, drew them into the water; then she made a tiny hollow in the pond-bottom—