The Wise Women

Chapter 9

Leonia didn't answer immediately. Her hair had come loose and fell in dark curls around her face. Wordlessly, she handed Nesta the reins, gathered it behind her head and twisted it into a knot. Nesta stared expectantly at her companion, at the line between her eyebrows, her unfocused eyes, her pursed lips. She felt her breath fall into rhythm with Leonia's.

They were on a path through the forest now. Whipped cream clouds parted and the early morning sun streamed through the leaves, dappling the horses in front with light and shade. It was early autumn - the leaves were starting to turn, yellow mixing with the green.

'Like you, Theresa has a particular talent that's very rare, almost unheard of, among Wise Women.' Keeping her eyes on the road ahead, she took the reins back off Nesta. 'Have you seen those wooden sculptures she makes?'

'Yes, I've seen them on her stall on Market Day. They're exquisite.' Nesta pictured them in her head - intricate carvings of fairies, elves, unicorns, dragons. 'They're so realistic you'd think they could come to life and fly away at any moment.'

'Aren't they? Well, she doesn't use a knife to carve them. She takes a block of wood, then sits in front of it, goes silent and visualises the form she wants to create. Then she asks the Tiny Ones to eat away all the excess wood until it becomes the figure she has in her mind.'

'I don't understand,' Nesta said. 'What exactly are they? How does she talk to them?'

Leonia wrinkled her forehead. 'It's hard to explain. You know when wood rots away? Well, Tess says it's the Tiny Ones who make that decomposition happen. They're so tiny you can't even see them but they can eat away at a solid block of wood until there's nothing left but a pile of sawdust. And somehow, no one knows how, Theresa can communicate with them. She says they're her friends and they adore her, so they do what she wants. She tells them to eat a piece of wood into a particular form which she's holding in her mind and they obey her.'

'The gate!' Nesta exclaimed, suddenly remembering. 'Last night when I came to see you, the City Gates were closed but there was a hole in one of them like a doorway. It looked like the wood had rotted away. That must have been Theresa and her Tiny Ones.'

'No doubt,' Leonia replied. 'It's a tremendous gift, but the trouble is she doesn't have complete control of it. The Tiny Ones respond to her moods and sometimes they act even when she hasn't consciously willed them to.

'It's a long story, Nesta, but seeing as you asked - Tess grew up on a farm in South Skaliff. She learned healing from an aunt who was a Wise Woman. She even came to the Village a few times. The Burned One was so fond of her and everyone was enchanted by the little wooden sculptures she made.

'But life was hard for her, especially at school. Her parents wanted all their children, girls and boys, to go to school.'

Nesta understood only too well. Her own parents had wanted the same, but in Skaliff, education was for boys. The only girls who went to school were the daughters of the rich and Nesta had been bullied for her rustic clothing and unpolished manners. The memory made her squirm in her seat.

'Tess was teased by the other kids because she only had one eye and she liked to keep herself to herself,' Leonia continued. 'One day the teacher accused her in front of the whole class of cheating in a test. He couldn't believe that a poor one-eyed girl could get top marks without cheating.

'She was humiliated and angry and even though she didn't wish it or visualise it, the Tiny Ones followed her anger and acted on it. They ate right through that teacher's front door and when he got home, opportunists had been inside and stolen all his valuables.

'Next day at school, things got even worse. The biggest bully of them all was Amanda Armstrong, the daughter of a wealthy landowner. She spread the story that Tess was an evil witch who'd used her powers to exact revenge on the teacher. Now even the few friends she'd had before turned away from her in fear and hatred. She became a pariah. That night she went to bed full of anger and once again the Tiny Ones followed her anger. While Amanda was sleeping, they ate right through the posts on her four-poster bed. The top of it fell down and suffocated her'

'Oh, how awful!'

'Awful indeed.' Leonia sighed. 'Tess fled. She came to the Village initially but she didn't stay long. The Burned One tried to help her but she was too consumed with guilt and self-loathing to focus on training. Since then, she's moved from place to place, trying to keep as distant from people as possible, terrified of something like that happening again.

'She liked it in Chesterley though. She rented that place opposite the Black Bull and her sculptures sold well at market. She says it's easier to be anonymous in a big city. But here we are,' Leonia shrugged. 'On the road again.'

'Poor Theresa,' Nesta brooded for a while. The one-eyed wood sculptor's story resonated deep within her heart. Such anguish. Such pain.

Nesta stayed silent. Listening to the birds sing and watching a red squirrel jump from branch to branch, she absorbed all she'd just heard. And then a thought occurred to her. 'So Theresa can read?'

'Of course she can.'

'Then why did she come to the post office to dictate her letters to me? And when I did the post round, why did she have me read her post out to her? You can read too, can't you? I saw books in your cottage. Why did you let me read your letter yesterday when you could have read it yourself?'

Leonia took a deep breath. 'The Empress is afraid of the Wise Women. That much is clear from yesterday's proclamation telling people to denounce us. Most of us find it's easier to let people think we're illiterate. That way we don't draw attention to ourselves. Ada's the exception, being a librarian. Did you know she's read all the books in that library? Even the ones in ancient Erithean? Anyway, you're a kind person. Tess probably let you read her letters because she liked being around you. It can get quite lonely, you know.'

'I know,' Nesta said.

They trundled along in silence again. Thoughts jostled in Nesta's brain until another question came to the fore.

'What happened to Mr Heywood?'

'Who?'

'Rosamund's husband.'

'Oh!' Leonia laughed. 'There never was a Mr Heywood. Some of us pretend to be widows or we tell people we have husbands who are away in the army or something. It makes it easier for people to accept us. A single woman living alone is always suspicious. The truth is when we pledge ourselves to the service of the Goddess we forsake relationships.'

'So you don't get married? Any of you?'

'No, Wise Women never marry. We devote our lives to the service of the Mission. It's easier to concentrate on developing your healing gifts when you've only got yourself to worry about. Besides, relationships breed jealousy, insecurity and resentment and that's such a waste of energy. Energy you could be using to hone your skills and making yourself a useful instrument of the Goddess. Romantic love, I've always thought, always risks tipping over into hatred.'

'Huh!' Nesta scoffed. 'That's a pretty jaded way of looking at things.'

'Maybe,' Leonia shrugged again. 'But I've found that by not binding yourself in love to one individual, you free yourself to love everyone -- every person, every animal, every plant.'

'But some couples are very happy together.'

'That's certainly true, but some of us aren't born to be one half of a happy couple. If you feel called to the Mission and refuse the calling so you can get married because that's what everybody else does . . .' She cocked her head to one side, 'Well, let's just say, you may end up feeling a nagging sense of regret that you can't shake off and you may find that happiness is harder to come by.'

Nesta ruminated quietly. Although she didn't like it, she could see there was some truth in what Leonia said. And she couldn't deny the feeling deep inside that she'd found her tribe. That she was finally coming home.

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