The River's Gift Read online

  Already the hoof was nearly normal size again, and she wondered what he thought he was going to do now. Other than charge her—and she did have the nail-puller to defend herself with—he couldn't hurt her. She already knew what he was; he could not possibly beguile her onto his back so that he could carry her off to drown her. Was it possible that he was grateful? A creature of Faerie, purportedly with neither heart nor soul?

  He took another step towards her, his head down.:You helped me, mortal child. You didn't have to, you could have chased me away, but you helped me even though I was rude and angry. Why?:

  She didn't really know the answer to that herself, so she shrugged. "I suppose because you were in pain and needed help," she replied. She thought for a moment, then added, tentatively, "You didn't ask to get an iron nail in your foot. The stories about your kind aren't very—flattering, but as far as you doing anything, I haven't heard of anyone being drowned in this river by a Kelpie.. . ."

  The Kelpie nickered, clearly laughing at her. :I prefer to frighten the silly fools. Drowning them would taint the water, mortal child.:

  She reflected that anyone who saw a magnificent black stallion running loose would know her Papa had no such animal and leave it alone, recognizing the Kelpie for what it was, or would be a thief who deserved what he got for trying to steal a valuable animal.

  "I wish you'd stop calling me 'mortal child,' " she added with a touch of irritation. "How would you like it if I called you 'soulless demon'? My name is Ariella."

  The Kelpie stepped back a pace, his ears going straight up with surprise, and she recalled that names were supposed to give magical creatures power over each other. Well, nothing to be done now.

  :My name—: he began hesitantly, :You can call me Merod.: It probably wasn't his "real" name, but it was one he would answer to, and that was good enough. "I'm glad I was able to help you, Merod," she said with a decided little nod. "And if you feel any obligation towards me for that help, you can discharge it simply by not drowning anyone from Swan Manor."

  He nickered again, green eyes flashing with mischief. :That's a poor bargain for you, asking me to do only what I would be inclined to do anyway, Ariella.:

  "And I hardly have the means to compel you to do anything, do I?" she countered as he tossed his head with merriment. "And honestly, I have everything I need or want right here in the forest."

  He pawed the water, sending sparkling drops flying in every direction, then whirled on his heels and dashed into the deepest part of the river, vanishing beneath the rippling water. She stared after him, then laughed breathlessly.

  A Kelpie! She had seen, touched, spoken with a real creature of magic! She hugged her arms to her chest as if she clasped the secret to her. From this moment on, nothing would ever be the same.

  The odious Magda was nowhere to be seen when she slipped back into the Manor. Thankful, she went directly to her sun-filled room and hurriedly changed out of her woods-running clothes. With great regret, she dusted the last traces of the forest off herself and put on the silken hose, the leather slippers, the fine, white linen chemise, and the heavy amber gown with its train and encumbering folds of wide skirt. With a sigh, she tucked her hair into a net and adjusted her linen veil over it, then donned the jangling chatelaine belt that Magda insisted she wear. Her "real" clothing went back into the chest at the foot of her bed, hidden under her outgrown gowns and linens.

  She seated herself at her embroidery frame in the window-seat overlooking the garden-court and picked up her needle just in time; she hadn't taken more than three stitches when puffing and shuffling from the room next in hers signaled that Lady Magda had finally arisen from her nap.

  Ariella shook her head, as the next few moments brought the querulous call of "Ariella? Ariella? Where are you, child?"

  "At my frame, Lady Magda," Ariella called back, and she waited for Lady Magda to make her stately appearance.

  The round-topped wooden door squeaked open, and Magda moved ponderously into Ariella's brightly lit room, squinting at the light. "Child, are you sitting in the sunlight again? You'll spoil your complexion, I've told you a hundred times! And you'll fade your work."

  Since Ariella didn't particularly care whether the altar- cloth she was working on was ever finished, much less if the colors were faded, she held her tongue.

  Lady Magda looked nothing like her cousin, Ariella's father; where Ariella's Papa was thin and dark, Lady Magda was plump and florid, of no more than middling height, with squinting, short-sighted blue eyes and a mouth like a pinched-up purse. Although she had not taken holy orders and apparently had no intention of doing so, she always dressed in nunlike gray, black, and white, heavy gowns which were far from comfortable in the heat of summer, so that her face was always red and damp with perspiration.

  The Lady moved ponderously into Ariella's room, her eyes shaded with one hand against the sunlight. She cast a critical eye on Ariella's indifferent sewing and made a tsking sound. "Next to nothing done, as usual! I suppose you've been daydreaming again! Well, let me hear you recite your lesson."

  Ariella would have preferred lessons in history, Greek, not mathematics, but Lady Magda's learning was not in any of those fields. Her "lesson" was the next in an interminable number of saints' lives which Ariella was to learn by heart each day. Since these pious bits of prose were hardly complicated, varying only in the details of how each saint met his or her (usually spectacularly painful and gory) end, it was quite easy for Ariella to rattle her day's lesson off to Lady Magda's reluctant satisfaction without ever having to put much effort into learning it.

  The Lady sniffed as Ariella finished, and she shook her head. "At least no one can claim you are ignorant!" she said plaintively. "Though what a well-bred lady would make of your needle-skills, I'm at a loss to say! Off with you, child. Pray bring your Papa to the hall; it's almost time to dine."

  Ariella gladly left her embroidery frame and flew across the room to the door as Lady Magda bleated, "And don't run! A lady does not run!" quite uselessly behind her.

  Her Papa would be in his study, working with his steward. He took care with even the smallest details of the needs of his small-holders and serfs and the crops and beasts they raised for him. If someone had a sick child, he knew about it and had sent to learn if the family needed anything. If someone suffered a blight, then the portion that came to the Manor was reduced or eliminated for that year. And as a result, in a good year, no one begrudged the Lord his share, and often little additional gifts in the way of flowers and herbs, game, nuts, or wild berries found their way to the Manor's kitchens.

  Lord Kaelin and his steward were just closing up the great books in which all the accounts and doings of the Manor were recorded when Ariella presented herself at his door, not the least out of breath. Lord Kaelin turned at the sound of her light footstep, smiling and holding out his hand.

  "My Wild Swan!" he exclaimed fondly, as he always did. "Come to make certain I eat, eh?"

  The steward smiled, and slipped out of the room without saying anything, as Ariella seized her father's hand and kissed it, then cuddled into his embrace. "Of course, Papa," she replied as he stroked her hair. "If I don't come in remind you, you'll spend all day in this dark little hole!" She lowered her voice. "Papa," she continued plaintively, "can't we send Lady Magda home? She doesn't teach me anything that the Abbot couldn't. And the Abbot has more learning than she does."

  "But the Abbot cannot teach you the skills of a lady—" Lord Kaelin began.

  "Nor do I need them!" she replied instantly. "I've no intention of ever leaving Swan Manor and you."

  Her father simply shook his head and rose to his feet. "We'd best be getting down to the great hall," was all he said, and she knew that once again she had lost this particular argument.

  The next day, when she returned to the forest, she wondered if she would see the Kelpie again and was a little disappointed when she reached the riverbank and he did not appear. But when she had finished with t
he last of her large patients, she felt a tugging at the hem of her skirt.

  When she looked to see what it was, she got something of a shock. Holding on to her hem was the oddest little creature she had ever seen in her life. It looked rather like a little man, and rather like a tangle of ancient briar root, all clothed in a patchwork garment made of leaves carefully stitched together.

  The little creature pulled off his hat when he saw he'd gotten her attention, and then he coughed. It was a nasty sound, indeed, and she immediately knew it wasn't a healthy cough.

  "If ye please, mum," the little man said hoarsely. "If ye'd be havin' anythin'—"

  "Of course!" she replied, instinctively dropping down into a crouch so that her face was level with his. She fished out her packets of herbs and made up two sets, tying them up in two large leaves with a bit of grass. "Here," she said, handing him the first, done up in plaintain. "You take this, put it in boiling water, and breathe the steam as often as you can. Then you take this"—she handed him a packet done up in a dock leaf—"and you make tea with it, and drink it with lots of honey. Wrap up in wool and keep yourself very warm, and if the cough hasn't gone off in three or four days, come back and see me."

  The little man's gnarled, brown face was flushed with gratitude. "Thenkee, mum," he said, and then—vanished. She hadn't even blinked her eyes, and he was gone.

  She stood up, slowly, and turned when she heard something like a chuckle behind her.

  There stood Merod, coat shining blue-black in a shaft of sunlight driving down through the tree-canopy.:He won't be the last of your patients, mor— Ariella,: the Kelpie said in her mind.:They trust you now.:

  "Because I didn't hurt you?" she asked, settling herself on the riverbank and dangling her feet in the cool water.

  :Because you kept your word,: Merod corrected her.:And now both Underhill and Overhill are open to you. Now you may come and go, and look and know, and no door shall be locked against you.:

  So it proved, as the summer days passed and Ariella found herself playing physician to a bewildering variety of uncanny creatures. She splinted broken bones, treated wounds, and dosed fevers. She tended odd little babies, in cradles that looked to have been grown rather than carved, for croup and colic and all the little ailments that made human babies fretful. She learned that when you tend to a tree-spirit, you must also tend to her tree; that an otter-maid is as full of mischief as a "natural" otter; and that a sylph could only take in medicine through the air. All of her charges healed with unbelievable swiftness, and it wasn't often that she needed to use her magical powers to mend them, for they had a touch of that gift themselves. It was only when the hurt was caused by the hand of man—usually due to the touch or presence of iron—that she had to exert that touch of healing to set things right.

  Over the course of time, Merod thawed, and soon they were true friends. Indeed, she had never had a real friend, for there were no young people of her own age and rank anywhere near Swan Manor, and Lady Magda would not consent to let her even speak with those below her, as she used to do when she was a child. Of course, all the young people of her age were far too busy working in the gardens and fields, tending flocks and herds, and hard at labor at loom, dairy, kitchen, or elsewhere to have any time for friendship with Lord Kaelin's daughter. She had not realized how lonely she was until she met Merod, who seemed to be the tacit leader of all of the Faerie hereabouts.

  There were none of the Great Ones of Faerie present in her forest, somewhat to her disappointment; according to Merod, there was too much Cold Iron about for them to be comfortable, so she never saw any of the tall, proud, and fearfully beautiful Elvenkind. But the lesser spirits were here in abundance.

  :It is because your father treats the land with kindness, and he is generous and thoughtful,: Merod told her as they strolled together along the bank of the river one sunny day.:And he treats his people with kindness. They are happy, the land is happy and healthy, and we can flourish. Other places are not so good for us.:

  "How is that?" she asked.

  :Where there is greed and misery, such dark thoughts drive us away—and sometimes open the doors of Underhill to the Dark Faerie.: Merod wouldn't say anything more than that, but she didn't need him to elaborate. She had heard enough tales, both from traveling musicians and horn the people of the Manor, to know what he was talking about. The worst that Merod's kind ever indulged in was a bit of mischief, throwing a bit of a fright into someone who deserved it. But there were others—the Kelpies who did drown wayfarers, the Night Hags, the Willowisps that lured the lost into bogs to perish, a hundred and one other nasty creatures who seemed to live only to cause misery and death. If Merod was to be believed—and he'd been truthful with her up to now—the presence of these creatures was due as much to the ill-doing of humans as it was to their own will and desires.

  That was certainly cause for some uneasy thoughts. Were mortals as much the cause of their own misfortune as all that? It made her feel obscurely guilty.

  "Have you ever seen any of the Great Ones?" she asked, to turn her mind elsewhere.

  He laughed. : Of course! I have been here far longer than your kind. Long before sheep ever grazed on the Downs, the Great Ones came to this river to bathe and hold revels. I would take them for rides beneath the waves—they cannot drown, of course, and they thought it fine sport. And one day, one of them even gave me a gift. Shall I show it to you?:

  She flushed with excitement. "Oh yes! Please!"

  He plunged into the water and soon returned bearing a green silk pouch in his teeth.:Open it,: he urged, placing it in her hand. She obeyed, and three transparent spheres, filled with a rainbow mist, as fragile as bubbles, rolled into her hand.

  She gazed at them, half afraid to touch them with her fingers.

  :You can't hurt them, they won't break, not until I want them to,: Merod told her, and emboldened, she rolled them in her hand and held them up to the light, entranced by the opalescent colors that played inside.

  "What are they?" she asked.

  :Wishes—of a kind,: Merod told her.:The Great Faerie never give anything without conditions attached, and they are inclined to twist everything into a riddle. I haven't the faintest idea why I was given these in the first place. The Great One told me that I might want them one day—but that the first one would make me mortal, and the other two had to be shared.: He tossed his head and snickered.:Ive never seen a reason to want to be mortal, and I doubt I ever will, so they're really rather useless. I have magic enough for everything I need!:

  "That's certainly true," Ariella agreed, rolling the spheres back into their pouch and handing it back to him. "I'm sure I wouldn't know what to do with them. But they're lovely to look at."

  :That's why I keep them, instead of giving them to one of the nixies to play with,: he told her, and he plunged back into the river to replace his treasures in their hiding-place.

  She continued to walk slowly along the bank, knowing that he would come out of the water beside her wherever she went.

  :By the way,: Merod said, emerging again from the river and resuming the conversation as if it had never been interupted, :Why were you so late today?:

  Ariella made a face. "Lady Magda got it into her head that if she worked on that stupid altar-cloth with me, I'd probably make more progress, so I had to sit there sewing until she began to yawn and couldn't keep her eyes open anymore."

  Merod stopped, and she turned to look at him. :You know, I've never understood why you waste your time with that nonsense when you're needed elsewhere. The other mortals here need your healing, too—why do you spend hours making patterns in thread?:

  "Because Lady Magda says—" she began. :ls it wrong to help others?: Merod asked. "Well—no." Ariella fidgeted uneasily, for Merod had put his finger—well, hoof—on exactly what bothered her the most about Lady Magda's decrees. For some time now, she had wanted to offer her healing skills to the folk of the Manor, but Lady Magda absolutely forbade her to "mingle" with th
e common people except at harvest, when every hand was needed, hers included. "No, and it seems to me that it's really wrong to be spending time on such foolery and fripperies when there are people who need help."

  :Has this woman power over you? Can she compel you to remain indoors? Or is it only that you fear her disapproval:

  Ariella grimaced. "She'd tell Papa—" she began, then shook her head. "If I was just running off to play in the forest, it would be different, but I can't see how Papa would be angry if I were helping the sick." She raised her head and looked Merod straight in his wicked green eyes. "I see what you're thinking. And you're right. It's time I stood up for myself."

  He tossed his head, and drops of water flicked off his mane; she could tell he was pleased. :You're becoming less like a silly mortal maiden and more like one of us every day,: was all he said, then he did something he had never done never done before. He reached out and touched her cheek with his soft nose, exactly like a kiss, and she felt a tingling, a warm thrill pass through her. He pulled back shyly, and she put her hand to her cheek, and neither of them said a word about the moment—but all the way home that evening, she kept putting her hand to the spot on her cheek where he had touched her in a kind of wonder.

  The next day, when the lesson had been recited and I ,ady Magda announced that she and Ariella were going to work on the altar-cloth, Ariella shook her head.

  "Not today, Magda," she said carefully, trying to make certain that her tone remained polite. Without another word, she went straight to the carved wooden chest at the loot of her bed and took out her old clothing, laying it on the bed.

  "What do you mean—" Magda began. She blinked at the sight of the old dress. "Lady Ariella! Where did you get that rag? Give it to me at once, and I'll take it to—"

  "These are my working clothes, Magda," Ariella said levelly. "I can hardly go among the workers to tend to their ills dressed in a fine gown, now, can I?"