Rising From the Ashes: The Chronicles of Caymin (8 page)

Ash translated, and Cíana smiled, looking proudly around at the others.

To Diarmit, Beanna said,
“This one eats enough for three.”
The others laughed raucously as Ash told the group what she had said.

“So you have a trained crow,” Gai said.

Beanna hopped onto his knee, and Ash was pleased to see him jump.
“Tell this one I have seen him in the forest, practicing his magic. He knows of what I speak. Tell him the forest is restless and will not allow him to continue.”

Ash repeated Beanna’s words as the crow flew back to her shoulder. Patches of scarlet rose in Gai’s pale cheeks.

“What does that mean?” Cíana turned to him. “What is the bird talking about?”

“It’s nothing,” Gai said, but he looked at Ash and Beanna shrewdly.

“So that’s how the badgers taught you?” Méav asked. “You can talk to them?”

Ash nodded, reaching up to stroke Beanna’s feathers.
“Thank you.”

The crow gave her ear a gentle tug with her beak and flew off into the night.

The others looked at Ash with new respect. Cíana reached up and ran her hand over the short hair covering Ash’s head. “Did you keep it short when you lived with badgers?”

“No,” Ash said, smiling. “I had no means of cutting it. I asked Enat to cut it for me.”

“Ash?”

They all jumped at the sound of Enat’s voice.

“It’s time for us to leave.”

Something in Enat’s tone made Ash feel she had done something wrong. In silence, she followed Enat back to their cottage.

“Sit,” Enat said, indicating a stool near the hearth. She stirred the fire and took an adjacent stool. “What happened tonight?”

Ash told her all that had occurred. She frowned in puzzlement. “I have never felt anything like what I felt when Gai did not believe me.”

Enat watched her through narrowed eyes. “You were angry. I felt it.”

“Angry?”

“You were annoyed, displeased. You wanted to make him sorry for what he had said.”

Ash looked at her, realizing Enat was right. “Yes. I had never felt that before.”

“And you used your power, your ability to communicate to call a creature to you and prove him wrong.” Enat’s voice was gentle, but Ash hung her head in shame.

“Yes.”

Enat was quiet for a long time, staring into the flames. “Ash, you’ll be tempted many times to use your power to impress people, to make them fear you or like you. You may even be tempted to use it against others.” Ash opened her mouth to protest, but Enat held up a hand. “You must learn when to use your power and when not to. Animals like the badgers you lived with are simple creatures. They care for their own; they are hunter or hunted; they raise their young and send them out to raise more young. Humans are more complicated than that. We can choose to do good or evil. We can –”

She stopped at the blank expression on Ash’s face. “Never mind. Go to bed. It’s late.”

Ash went to her sleeping mat and pulled her old cloak over her. As she drifted to sleep, she wondered what Beanna had meant, what she had seen Gai doing.

Ash woke to the sound of a soft rain falling. She lay there, still feeling troubled by all that had occurred the evening before.

“You are awake?” Enat was at the fire, stirring a pot. “Come and eat.”

She dished out some porridge into a bowl. This new delight had become one of Ash’s favorites, sweetened with a bit of honey. She sat next to Enat, dipping her fingers into the porridge. Enat cleared her throat and held out a wooden spoon. Ash scowled. Eating with her fingers was so much easier than this awkward implement. She grasped it in her fist and scooped some porridge into her mouth.

They ate in silence until their bowls were empty. Ash scraped the last of her porridge from her bowl while Enat poured tea into two cups. Handing one to Ash, she said, “Tell me what troubles you.”

Ash stared into the fire. “The others can do things I cannot.”

“And you can do what they cannot,” Enat said. “You will all learn. Méav, Ronan and the other older ones have been with us two or more winters. They have had time to study. Cíana, Daina and Gai are a little older than you. They have been here since last summer. Diarmit only arrived four moons ago. You will find your way with your magic.”

Ash cocked her head. “Beanna said she had seen Gai in the forest, practicing magic that made the forest restless. What did she mean?”

Enat looked at her sharply. “Did she say more?”

Ash shook her head.

“Gai is a king’s son,” Enat said.

“What is a king?”

Enat sighed. “There is so much you don’t know.” She paused. “Among humans, there are clans, like yours. They gather together to protect what they have, but they often want what others have – land, wealth, crops. And they will fight to take it from one another.”

A distant memory flashed through Ash’s mind – shouts and the clanging of weapons and screams of pain – and then it was gone.

“The leader of a clan is a king, or a woman may be queen,” Enat continued. “So Gai is the son of a leader. His older brother will become king in his time, and Gai will be expected to return and help him rule with his magic.”

Ash looked at her. “He would use magic to control other humans?”

“He might. This is what I was trying to explain to you last night. Evil is when you use your power to deliberately harm others rather than help them. And not just those with magic. Those without magic can also be evil, using force to make others do their will.”

“Is Gai evil?”

“No,” Enat said quickly. “Not yet. But there is an emptiness in him. He was not raised with love as you were. His mother died when he was born, and his father and brother had little time for him. He has had to make his own way, and he feels a need to prove himself. Gai may even become king himself if his brother dies.”

She looked at Ash with thoughtful eyes and reached for the empty bowl sitting at the girl’s feet.

“When this bowl is empty, there is room to fill it with anything – porridge or muck. Good or bad. But if I fill it first with porridge, there is no room left for anything bad. Gai is like this bowl right now. If we can help to fill him with goodness, there will be no room for evil.”

Ash looked puzzled. “How can we do that?”

“You feel you are missing something compared to the others because you were not raised in a human family, but you also were not tainted by the bad things people can do to one another. You are different, in a good way. You can help the others, including Gai, to see things differently. Teach them the way Broc and Cuán taught you.”

CHAPTER 5

Elements

A
sh’s training began in earnest after that night. Neela and Ivar were their teachers most days, taking the young ones into the forest and teaching them more of the herbs and plants there, teaching them how to control their magic.

“It will be different for each of you, how you tap into your power, but one thing is true for all. You’ll find it easier here,” said Neela. “The life-force of the forest will aid you. If you were to go out into the world as you are now, it would be difficult for you to harness your power. You probably could only perform magic by accident.”

Ash was reminded of the night she had healed Cuán, and knew that it had only been in the terror of that night that she had been able to channel the ability to heal him.

Neela took them this day far from the village. As they walked, Ash wondered again how extensive this forest must be. Neela led them deep into a grove of oaks, and asked them each to go to a tree. They spread out while Neela herself went to the largest tree in the center of the grove.

“This tree is the mother of this grove,” she said, laying her hands on the massive trunk. “All of these trees are her children. All came from acorns she dropped over the winters. Listen.”

She closed her eyes. Ash sat at the base of her tree and laid her hands on its roots. She knew what these ancient trees felt like from her lessons with Enat, but even she was surprised to feel echoes of Neela’s touch come to her like a tiny shiver of awareness in the tree she clasped.

Cíana next to her gasped as she felt it also. They smiled at each other.

“Each tree is still connected to the mother tree and to the others,” Neela explained. “They communicate with one another, much as we do. We cannot cut one without doing harm to the others. This is true in every forest.”

The other apprentices looked perplexed as they struggled to feel something. Neela went from one to the next, whispering, laying her hands over top of theirs, guiding them. Ash watched as Neela went to Gai. Remembering what Enat had said to her, she was curious to see whether he would feel the power of these beings. She could not hear what Neela said to him, but Gai closed his eyes and laid his hands again on the tree where he stood. His pale face at first was expressionless, but as he felt and listened, his features softened. A look of wonder came over him, and when he opened his eyes and met Ash’s gaze, for just a moment, it was like looking into the soft eyes of a deer. Almost immediately, the softness was gone, replaced by his usual hard expression.

“That was amazing,” said Daina a short while later as they began their trek back to the village. “It reminded me how small we are.”

“It reminded me how hungry I am,” said Diarmit.

Cíana laughed. “You’re always hungry.”

Diarmit shrugged. “Aye.” He eyed Ash as they walked. “Why do you limp?”

Ash felt heat rise in her cheeks.

“Leave her alone,” Cíana said.

“Why? I’m only asking,” Diarmit said.

“My leg was burned,” Ash said. She pulled up her legging and showed them. “It will not straighten. Nor my arm.”

Cíana winced. “Does it hurt?”

Ash shook her head. “Not unless I try to force it.”

“Can you run?”

Ash grinned at Diarmit. “I can beat you back to the village.” And she took off with her strange lopsided gait that nevertheless was light as a rabbit as she ran through the underbrush rather than along the trail, scrambling under branches and hopping over roots and rocks, arriving back at the village well before Diarmit and the others.

“Now I’m hungrier than ever,” Diarmit huffed as he bent over, his hands braced on his knees.

“We thought you might be.”

Ash turned to find Enat standing at the door to the largest building. No one lived in it. It served as a space for teaching or meetings of the elders of the village or a place to tell stories if the sky was raining or snowing. Today, a large pot hung over the fire and lured them inside with the smell of food.

The older apprentices were already gathered. Ash had not spoken to them since the night of the full moon, and she eyed them curiously.

Diarmit hurried over and spooned a large portion of stew into a bowl. The others followed. A platter of freshly baked loaves sat on a table long enough for all of them to be seated on benches on either side. Ash stood and waited until Enat was seated with a bowl before taking a seat herself.

She raised her spoon to her mouth, glad now that Enat had insisted she learn how to use it, but paused as she sniffed. “Deer?”

Enat nodded. “Yes.”

After the lesson of the morning, a few of the others paused their eating.

“Did you hunt?” Ash asked.

Ivar frowned. “Aye, we hunted.”

“Why?” Gai asked from down the table. “Don’t badgers hunt?”

Ash looked at her bowl and did not respond.

“You told me you ate meat,” Enat reminded her. “We have honored the spirit of this deer, giving thanks for his sacrifice in order that many may eat. We’ll make use of every bit of him, so that his death is not a waste. When we die, our bodies will likewise go to replenishing the life of the earth. So ’tis for all living things.”

The eating gradually resumed, and Ash ate silently. In her mind, she thanked the deer again for his sacrifice. She had never thought about this when she and the dogs scavenged meat from the village. The hunting was already done, and she was doing what she had to to live, but she had never killed. She had stolen eggs. She supposed the birds she’d stolen from considered that killing. She wondered if she would ever be asked to kill, and she wondered how she would respond.