ForevaXena's FanFic . . .

Turning The Wheel

by Mary Morgan

Disclaimer: Xena and Gabrielle do not belong to me.  This is a post-FiN story.

“but I am bound
Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears
Do scald like molten lead.”
(King Lear, Act 1V, scene vii, lines 46 – 48)

She was coal being burnt, and the ash flame left after.  She was water warped into ice and locked in her coldness.  She was darkness with no hope of light, for she was the heart of the rock.  She knew all this, and knew why she knew it.  Because she had set fire to the coal and frozen the water and locked herself in the rock.  Her knowing this completed the pain, made it perfect.  She had caused it herself, made her choice.  What she had lost was always beyond her.  It could not be known; she had decided against it, removed herself from it.  Now there was only her self. 

And her pain.

I

Gabrielle took a deep breath.  Her head hummed, her heartbeat was loud in her ears.  With an effort of will she stood straight, did not waver.  She looked down at the man at her feet.  All around her, she felt expectation.  The warlord’s men, tense, over there.  The village behind her.  All waiting for what she did next.  She tightened her hand round the hilt of his sword.  To her right, she saw something flutter on the ground.  Her flag of the truce he had broken.  As she knew that he would.  She felt a smile tighten her lips; her size had worked to her advantage again.  He must be thinking the world had gone mad, she reflected.  That a slip of a woman in just two moves could have downed him and taken his sword.  The smile twisted, grew wry.  She’d been thinking the same, for more than 11 years now, ever since Japa.

“Kneel,” she said.  Her voice sounded deeper, less firm than she liked.  She could feel her rage build, hot and heady.  Focus!  Get a grip!  She swallowed, shook her head, flicking the roughly cropped hair out of her eyes.  “Kneel down,” she repeated.  Better; the words carried further, reached those who looked on.  Good.  Time to start the last act of this drama she’d scripted.  She smiled wryly again; so much for the bard.  This was as creative as she had time or heart to be nowadays.

The man struggled up and knelt, bulky hands fisted, knuckles down in the dirt, keeping him stable.  In this posture, he was still almost as tall as she stood.  But she’d belted him hard, once her kick had taken him down, let her wrench his sword from his grasp.  She’d wanted him shaken, unable to focus, his wits scattered.  It seemed she’d succeeded.  All the same, she watched him closely, especially those hands, for a sign that he was stupid enough to try to attack her again. 

“Look at me,” she commanded.  She knew he would, for she knew that her voice had that power.  Murky brown eyes, blinking wildly, met her own, slithered aside.  “You broke the truce.”  She made her voice louder, shifted her grip on the sword, raised it.  It was a little too long and too heavy than she would have liked, but well balanced, too fine a blade for this oaf, she reflected.  With negligent ease she angled it close to his neck, looking away from him now, glaring past him, addressing his troops.

“This is your leader?” Gabrielle asked them.  She made her voice scornful, wanting them shamed along with the man at her feet.  "This man without honour?”  She let the sword lean into his neck, felt the skin part under its edge.  Yes, a good blade, much too good for the warlord, who now gasped with pain, visibly shuddered as blood seeped through sliced fat and skin, welled around the blade and trickled down his neck.  Look at your leader, she invited the men in her head.  She tautened her stance, well aware of the tableau they made, the sun setting, its light turning her hair to the colour of fiery gold, flashing off iron, pooling in azure swathes between the indigo folds of her jerkin, casting her shadow over the man at her feet, the huge man who had dwarfed her when standing.

“This man who accepted the terms of the truce?  Who pretended to welcome a parley, yet came here to kill me?”  Her voice had risen to a raw shout of defiance.  Behind her, she heard feet, steadily marching.  Good boy, Axel, she thought.   Lit by the sunset, the bits of armour she’d stolen last night, eked out with odd bits of farm tool and harness, would still look impressive, although it was worn now by shepherds and ploughmen, the village’s baker, the blacksmith.  They came up and flanked her, facing the raiders, blades drawn, faces set, as she’d schooled them.  “Well, let’s see if he can at least die with some honour,” she yelled, lifting the sword over her head, shifting her balance and then sweeping it down in a leisurely arc, letting it cut through the air towards the man’s neck.  But she kept her face calm, kept her gaze on the raiders, who were watching their chief. 

Who collapsed forwards.  She smelt the sharp stink of urine, and flung wide her blade at the last moment.  “This is your leader?” the small woman asked once again, now openly mocking.

They broke, first one then another, then twos and threes.  Running blindly, stumbling on stones as they crossed the rough fields from which the villagers gleaned their sparse crops.  Soon only a handful remained.  Older men, better armed, grasping their swords with something like purpose.  She moved swiftly.  Leaving the huge man sprawling behind her, she strode to confront them.  A sword’s length away she demanded, “Who will be first?” letting out more of it now.  More of the rage that sustained her, knowing it darkened her eyes and turned her voice cold as the night.  One stuck his weapon forwards, perhaps more out of surprise than to answer the challenge.  With one graceful movement, she swept it aside with her blade, aware as it arced through the air, twisting hilt down with the weight of the hand which still gripped its hilt.  She grinned full in their faces, through the fountaining blood, and asked, “And who’s next?” then laughed as they staggered away, turning and running in panic.

Then she swooped forwards, grabbed the maimed arm, bound a scarf that she tore from the wounded man’s neck tightly round it.  Look at it, Gabrielle.  Look at the damage you’ve done.  Face this truth.   She made herself stare at the stump; the bone was sheered through, gleaming incongruously white, and already the pace of the blood loss was slowing.  She closed her eyes just a moment.  At least it’s not on their heads, she thought to herself, aware of the villagers clustered behind her.  And no one is dead.  And that band of raiders is broken.  Is that such a bad day of fighting? 

She opened her eyes, looked at the stump once again.  Beyond it, the man’s face was chalky, his breathing shallow with shock.  Poor bastard.  She swallowed down sickness, smelling blood, aware that some had spattered on her.   “Anyone, give me something to wrap this,” she said, and reached behind her, feeling cloth pressed into her grasp.  “I hope someone is guarding that raider,” she added, trying for lightness.  But her voice was still raspy; she dared not turn round.  What might they see in her face?  “Come on,” she told them, “let’s get them inside.  Four of you, stay here on guard.”  The threat was over, she felt it, but they needed to see they’d played a part in all this.  She wrestled her rage back into its kennel and stood, risked looking at them, ventured  a smile.  “Well done,” she told them, and almost cried with relief when they did not run from her, when some even summoned an answering smile.

Gabrielle stared out through the window of the Inn.  Flat lands stretched away till they met low rolling hills to the west.  Beyond that was forest, many weeks deep, so Alse had told her.  Then mountains.  Then, much further west, the sea.  Gabrielle wondered if that was the ultimate sea, the one supposed to rim the edge of the world.  If it’s flat, that is.  Something she doubted.  How can it be?  If it were, why would a ship disappear over the horizon bit by bit?  Hull first, mast-top last?

She sighed.  Which way should she go?  She considered.  North would take her into tundra, she reckoned.  Sparse land roamed by nomads, folk with little need of her services, even if she felt a kinship with its spare barrenness.  South?  South would take her home.  To Greece.  For a moment homesickness rose fiercely inside her.  She smelled thyme on a hot mountain side, saw the wine dark waters lap at rocky coves far beneath, saw a pale mare with a dark rider astride her picking their way down a steep, narrow track.  Tears prickled her eyes and she forced them back, swallowed the longing.  No, not south.  Too many memories. 

She would go on as she had been then, keep moving northwards and westwards.  Towards the mountains and eventually the sea.  Something pulled her that way.  Something dark and cold.  She would leave tomorrow; things were settled here now.  She could move on.  She had to keep moving.  Staying too long let memories rise to the surface, and they were always worse at this time of year.  Springtime.  When everything should be beginning.  On the trail, senses aware only of what was around her, she could find something like peace.

She studied the mug she held, sipped at the cider inside it.  Twenty four hours ago, she had taken a man’s hand.  She had changed his life forever.  Gabrielle had spent the previous night with the herb wife, Alse, helping to tend him.  When that was done, unable to sleep, she had watched over him.  Unexpectedly, it had been a tranquil time.  She had looked out at the stars and words had drifted into her head, which were still there in the morning.  She jotted them into the notebook she still carried.  It was almost full now, though she never read what she had written afterwards.  Just writing words down seemed to help her.

And Alse had helped as well.  “He made his choices,” she had said.  Gabrielle had merely looked back at her, over their patient, her victim.  “You weren’t responsible for him being there at that time, in that place.  You just stopped him being here now, looting the village, enslaving us all.”  Then Alse had smiled, brown eyes kindly.  “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Gabrielle.”

The small woman smiled wryly at that memory, and took a long draught of the cider.  She was thirsty.  She had worked hard all day, reinforcing what she had already told the villagers about better defences and training techniques for their militia, then, because it had been bothering her since she arrived, suggesting ways of improving the local irrigation system.  Some of what she said might stick.  At least she had tired herself out with honest work; perhaps she would sleep tonight. There was just one thing left to do,  check on the warlord.  She hadn’t liked the way they found excuses to stop her visiting his cell.  She’d see what was up in the morning.

Gabrielle drank from her mug again, then looked round.  The Inn had almost filled up, mostly with folk from the village, but with travellers too.  Her smile this time was gentler.   Breaking that band had freed up the trails again. Surprisingly quickly.  There was even a bard, a slight, grey haired man with tired eyes.  She wondered if he would be any good, and found herself hoping so.  She missed hearing stories, almost as much as she missed telling her own.

“Won’t you sit nearer the front?”  It was Alse again.  Something in Gabrielle wanted her to go away.  Something else welcomed her.  She had been breathing the scent of Alse’s herbs all day.  Of Alse as well.  The other woman had taken her blood-stained clothes to clean them, lent her some of her own, kept from when she was a child she’d explained, when Gabrielle had wondered at their almost fitting her.

“I’m more comfortable here.”  Gabrielle paused, confused, aware she must sound rude.  She only really wanted to be left alone, but this was her last night in the village, and they had not deserved her surliness.  She budged slightly up on the settle to make room for the other woman.  “Sit with me for a minute.”

Alse studied her steadily, then pointed at the mug.  “Let me get you another, first.”

She nodded, watched the tall woman walk to the bar.  How old was Alse, she wondered.  It was difficult to say.  The herb wife’s red hair was thickly peppered with grey and her face seamed with lines, but she carried herself lightly, moved like a young woman.  And now, as she turned back towards her, carrying two brimming mugs, her face broke into a grin which made her look like a girl.

Gabrielle could not help herself.  She grinned back.  Her face felt stiff, but somewhere inside her a pressure eased, and something buried down deep ached with relief.

“That’s better,” Alse said, relaxing onto the hard wooden bench.  “So, you’re off tomorrow then?”

Gabrielle felt surprised, then defensive.  “How did you know?”

“Saw you cleaning and mending the harness for that nag of yours.  What do you call it?”

“Plato.”  Gabrielle grinned again, into her mug this time.  She knew what everyone thought about Plato.  Poor old plug.  He was headstrong and stubborn and mean, but there it was.  He was hers.  She couldn’t abandon him now.

“He’s the best groomed fleabag I have ever seen, that’s for sure.”  Alse laughed, a quiet chuckle but one which warmed the smaller woman.  “Come over and let us thank you properly,” she said when she had finished.

Gabrielle stiffened.  “I didn’t do much.  You people did most of it.”  She broke off and frowned out of the window, wishing she were out there, under the moon and the stars.

“Gabrielle, give them this.  They want you to know how they feel.” 

Alse was looking at her.  She could feel her eyes on her back.  Gabrielle took in a deep breath and straightened herself, turned round and nodded, once, with decision.  Alse was right.  She owed them the opportunity to finish this appropriately.  No loose ends to be regretted after she had left. 

She rose and walked up to the bar.  Mattox, the head man, greeted her there.  A huge bull of a farmer, he towered above her, awkward and shy.  She smiled reassurance, shaking her hair out of her eyes.  Leaning forwards, Mattox put huge hands on her shoulders, kissing first one cheek then the other.  “We thank you,” he said simply, “and we bless you.”

Eyes prickling again, Gabrielle thanked him, looked at the villagers gathered around, beaming at her.  “You did it really,” she told them.  “I only showed you the way.”  Inside, she sighed.  They didn’t believe her, of course, but just thought her modest.  She could tell from the worshipful smiles.

Beside her, Mattox cleared his throat nervously.  She sighed again.  She’d hoped she had escaped this part at least.  “We’re a poor village,” he said,  “but ask for anything we have that you want, and it’s yours.”

“I have that already, Mattox,” Gabrielle said.  She included the whole room in her speech.  “I have your friendship.”

Back in her seat, shaking slightly, she felt Alse settle beside her.  “You don’t like being called a hero, do you?”  When the smaller woman said nothing, the herb wife let the silence go on. 

After a while, Gabrielle said, “They don’t need heroes.  They need to count on themselves.”  She felt Alse nod, but the silence extended itself further.  Her voice tense and breathy, she found she was speaking again.  “I’m not a hero.  No one’s a hero.  No one.”  She heard anger in the words as she spoke them, and hurt.  They made her voice quieter.  Now she couldn’t stop speaking.  “Bards call them heroes, and people believe what they hear, but none of it’s true.  It’s faith which makes heroes.  Then whoever gets called one can’t let down that faith.  Till it kills her.”  Her voice was trembling.

“Have something to drink.”  Alse handed her a cup, full of something clear and colourless.  Gabrielle smelt water and drank it, tasting coolness and darkness and earth, and it soothed her.  Alse turned towards her, cupped her cheek, caught her tears with her thumb.   “You’ve the most beautiful eyes,” Alse murmured.  “Deep and grey-green like the sea.  But so sad.”

Gabrielle leaned into the palm, craving the contact, the press of rough skin.  She let herself want it, and more.  It’s been so long.  She heard the tall woman draw in a breath, get ready to speak, but there was a stir from the direction of the Inn’s hearth.  The bard had stood up and with a surprisingly deep and rich voice was asking for their attention.

He wasn’t too bad, Gabrielle thought, several tales later. She had liked the story about the ice princess and the farmer’s youngest son, and the tale of the hunt for the Red Hind had at least kept her attention.  Too much action, though.  Not enough about who and why.  At the back of her mind, old reflexes were filing his stories away, choosing better beginnings and ends, better words and word orders, surer ways to involve the people who listened. 

“What do you think?” Alse asked her, while the bard paused to drink ale.  Caught unawares, the smaller woman told her, watched Alse’s eyes gleam shrewdly as she listened.  “Gabrielle,” she began, as the bard started again.  At the fourth word, Gabrielle stiffened, felt her heart thump.  Her world shrank to a pinprick, impossibly heavy and hot.  She stood up and made for the door, blindly plunged into the darkness.

When she came to herself, she was kneeling, head down.  Like the warlord.  This will always defeat me.  She could have howled with despair.  From the ache in her sides, she guessed she’d been retching.  Her face felt like ice, but warm arms were wrapped round her, hugging her tight.  “I’ve got you,” somebody said, plunging slivers into her heart.  She groaned.  Now the arms rocked her and the woman told her, “It’s okay, sweetheart.  Let it all out.”  But she couldn’t.  There was too much feeling inside her.  It might drown the world in its darkness.  Instead she gathered herself, pulled away slightly.

Alse loosened her grip, but did not entirely let go as Gabrielle struggled up.  Instead she rose with her, kept a light contact that told Gabrielle she wasn’t alone.  “Don’t ask me to go, love,” she whispered.  “You need me.”

Gabrielle felt the heat in the body behind her.  She closed her eyes, then turned in a heartbeat, pulling Alse’s head down, kissing her deeply.  Sensation filled her. She drank in the taste of the herb wife, the smell of her skin and the weight of her body.  She tightened her grip and probed deeper, trying to pull Alse inside herself, hands digging in deep to keep hold of flesh slick with fresh sweat.  Muscles strained and she welcomed their burning, wrestled still closer.  Perhaps now.  Perhaps Alse.  I could love Alse.

But no.  Just the thought was enough, just the knowledge of who it was not.  That stopped her cold.  With a sob she tore herself free.  “I’m sorry,” she gasped.  “I’m so sorry.” 

She stumbled away, but Alse was there.  The herb wife had stepped round to face her again.  “No, I’m sorry,”  she said, and stared into her face.  What did she see there, Gabrielle wondered, in the light of the moon.  Someone who’s really a corpse?  Using the tips of her fingers, not touching her skin, Alse swept back her hair and looked closer.  “Who was she?” she asked.  Gabrielle did not answer.  “That hero he’s singing back there?”

Gabrielle could not say the name.  Her body felt empty, no more than a husk.  “My soulmate,” she answered.  Her throat swelled, making just drawing breath an ordeal.

“What happened to her?”  Alse asked.  When Gabrielle said nothing, her face flushed, and she said in almost a whisper,  “Did she die?” 

Did she die? Would it have hurt less if it had been that simple?   How could she explain?  In the end, the small woman simply nodded.  Her face felt damp.  How long had she been crying? 

“Oh, Gabrielle.”  Alse’s eyes filled with tears of her own.  “You can’t go on like this, dearest.  With the best half of you locked away in her grave.”

Gabrielle looked away, at the stars high above.  For once she was glad of their steel-pointed glitter.  Unbidden, her own voice echoed in her memory: That’s what happens to the things you love…

They were silent for a time.  Alse said, “I’ve never been in love before.  Trust me to leave it too late.”

Gabrielle flinched.  I should tell her something, about what’s inside me.  Poor Alse!  I owe her that.  She swallowed her tears and said, carefully, through a throat which felt like broken glass,  “It isn’t just that she’s never there, when I want to talk to her, when I simply want to touch her.  Hold her.  Which I do, every day, though it happened years ago.  It’s the other loss, the loss of what we had when we were together.  What came into existence because we were together.  Our shared life and all it held.”  She wanted to say more.  To say that it was not Alse, that it had nothing to do with the herb wife, but lay entirely in her, in the dark emptiness which filled her.  But her voice gave out and she could only stand and fight not to weep again, aware that Alse seemed to be doing the same.

When they were calmer, Alse said, “Come back inside?” and as Gabrielle’s face told her, “No,” added, “Share my bed at least.  Just don’t be alone.”

But Gabrielle couldn’t.  She could not risk it.  Not that memory, of nights lying spooned by a long, loving body.  She shook her head, turned and walked off to her room at the back of the Inn.  There, just before dawn, she fell asleep.

There it is again.  That look.  Intrigued, a little suspicious, Gabrielle told Mattox once more, “I just want to talk to the guy.  You can come with me.”  After all, she’d put the warlord in this predicament.  She had a responsibility to know exactly what was happening to him.

Mattox stared at his feet.  He looked ashamed as well as shifty, she realised, and her suspicions grew sharper.  When he still didn’t answer, she turned, strode away purposefully, throwing, “I know the way,” over her shoulder.  Other villagers stood and gaped, showing similar dismay.  She caught sight of Alse, coming out of her cottage door, her face grave and thoughtful.  That calmed her a little.  She trusted Alse.

And, it seemed, with reason.  The room was large, not well lit, but clean.  The man, looked fine, though he was chained, and flinched when he saw her.  His bed had a mattress and blanket, his clothes had been cleaned.  Then why?  He surged to his feet, came as close as he could.  “Get them to move me,” he rasped.  “They can’t keep me here.  Not with that monster.” 

Gabrielle felt her brows rise.  “What monster?”  He looked beyond her and she turned, seeing a corner buried in shadows.  She saw straw, heard it rustle, then something muttered.  The shadows rose, the mutters grew louder.  Not mutters, rather a grunting.  Behind her she felt the warlord shrink back, muttering something she suspected was a charm to ward off evil. 

“Show her,” another voice said.  Flanked by Mattox and Alse, a man had come in.  She’d seen him just twice; the village’s priest. Tall, thin, he had spent the past days in his shrine, praying, telling those who came to him they should face the truth of their helplessness, that their efforts were useless, that they should pray too.   “Show her our shame,” he told Alse.  The herb wife  slipped by, intent on the dark corner, crooning softly.  Gabrielle heard bits of words only, echoes of cradle songs, endearments for children.  Then Alse was swallowed by shadows.

The room held its breath.  Gabrielle felt her skin prickle, hairs rise in the nape of her neck.  She clenched her fists, held herself steady.  Something was coming.  Every instinct told her so.  Something important to her.  Alse stepped into the light, hugging close something which looked like a bundle, long sticks wrapped in rags, but a bundle which was moaning.  “Who’s that?” Gabrielle asked, her mouth suddenly gone dry.

“What, not who.  It’s a thing,” the priest hissed, “not a person.  Something cursed by the gods.”  He paused, stared at her coldly, lips pursed to hold back more words.  She could guess what they would be, had he the courage to speak them.

Gabrielle focused on Alse.  The herb wife was smoothing hanks of thick, dirty hair, murmuring softly.  “Shh, now, shh,” she repeated over and over, but the small, animal noises continued.  Gabrielle moved closer, squatted down, tried to see the face under the tangle.  “Alse?” she asked, and leaned closer.

“No, don’t get too close.  She might bite.”  Alse looked up.  Her brown eyes were moist and she blinked them.

“Let her,” the warlord snarled from his bed.  The women ignored him.

“She?  Alse, what’s going on?  What happened to her?”  Gabrielle clasped her hands in her lap to keep from reaching out, rocked back on her heels, waited.

It was Mattox who answered.  “She was born this way.  Came into this world squalling and kicking, like we all do, but she stopped that way.  Eats, sleeps, screams, stares at nothing for days, kicks and bites anyone near her, except Alse, and that’s it.”  He sounded beaten, exhausted.

“She was born here?  Where are her parents?”  Gabrielle was bewildered by the strength of her feelings, by her need to know. 

“Dead,” the priest answered.  She thought she heard satisfaction in his voice, had to stamp down her anger.  “The boy mocked the gods, and the girl disobeyed her parents to lie with him.  Both paid the price.”

“The boy?  The girl?” 

Alse replied, “He was born wild, I suppose.  Wilful, violent, selfish.  Always in trouble.  He died months before the birth.  Just 14, he was,  The girl died during it.  Yes, they were both far too young.”  Then her voice changed, “There now, that’s better.”  Gabrielle realised the moaning had stopped, that Alse was sweeping back the lank strands of hair.  The girl’s eyes were shut tight, her face pinched and bony.  Red scratches stood out on the sallow skin of her cheeks.

“Who did that to her?” Gabrielle asked sharply, her anger turning cold.  She looked down.  The girl’s arms were bare too, and she drew in her breath at the wounds which oozed there, puffy and choked with puss.

“She does it to herself, Gabrielle.  Tears at her skin, then tears the scabs off before she can heal.”  Alse sighed, rocked the girl quietly, kissing her head. 

Gabrielle tried to imagine what it must be like, to be the girl, to be trapped in such mute isolation and pain.  She could not.  “All the time?  She’s like this all the time?” she asked weakly.

Alse shook her head.  “Mostly she just roams around, or sits and stares.  She eats when I feed her, sleeps now and then.  She never seems to come to harm.  But then she has these, these…I don’t know what to call them.  Fits of self loathing, almost, as if she cannot stand to be inside her own skin.”

“How long?  How old is she?”

Mattox answered.  “Ten now, very nearly eleven.”  He paused.  “She’s my sister’s daughter, even looks a little like her.”

Behind them, the warlord sniggered.  Mattox’s face darkened and he swung round abruptly.

“Mattox!” Gabrielle kept her voice firm, steady.  “Not in front of her.”  He backed down.

Gabrielle looked back at the child.  Eleven years of living like this.  She felt an immense sadness.  “What’s her name?”

“She’s an animal.  A soulless thing.  She doesn’t have a name,” the priest declaimed behind her.  Neither woman responded.

“She’s a lost soul, I think,” Alse said.  She lifted her head, met Gabrielle’s gaze.  She said slowly, deliberately, “When she finds herself, perhaps then she’ll know her name.”

Gabrielle took a breath, took another. She looked at the girl, who now raised her head, opened her eyes.  Just for a second, before the girl dropped her head again, their gazes met.  Gabrielle froze.  The room turned dark all around her.  She could feel her skin tighten, grow cold.  Words rose to her lips by themselves.  “Let me have her.”

In the silence, the war lord sniggered again.  “Oh, let her.  Do.”

“You have to be mad,” Mattox replied, sounding confused. 

The priest, mean-mouthed, held his peace.

 Gabrielle said, “Last night you offered me whatever I wanted.  Give me this.”

“Yes.”  Alse nodded.  She looked past Gabrielle, at the two men.  “It’s the right thing to do, Mattox.  I can feel it.  It’s her best hope.”  Then she fixed her gaze on Gabrielle and watched her steadily.  

Gabrielle, feeling light headed, shut her eyes.  Behind her closed lids, she could still see the girl’s, staring back.  This would happen, she knew it.  She could feel the mark of destiny on the moment.  When the priest said, “So be it,” she only sighed.

II

Gabrielle pulled Plato to a halt, tossed his reins over his head and jumped out of the saddle.  She moved a little away from him and sniffed deeply, sorting out scents.  Plato, of course, and the lush green of the undergrowth.  Nettles, cow parsley, wet earth, old, crumbly bark.  Her nose twitched and she tried just a bit harder.  There!  That’s it!  Smiling, she stepped off the path, into the woodland around it.  Four paces, five and she was into a clearing.  She crouched, moved away leaves heavy with rain drops which spattered her hands.  There, underneath, glowing like rubies, she saw them.  She plucked a large leaf and piled it with berries, slipping those which she crushed into her mouth.  It’s summer.  Really summer at last.   

Straightening, she glanced up at the sky.  Nearly dusk.  And the clouds are melting away.  She smiled once again.  Time to make camp.  The clearing was perfect, screened from the track but close to the stream which it shadowed.  She stashed the strawberries, then went back for Plato.  “You’ll like this campsite,” she told him, rubbing his muzzle.  “Lots of grass.”  She walked round the edge of the clearing, ears open and listening.  Only animal sounds; squirrel and rabbit, birds up above.  Worry snaked out a tendril.   Calm down.  Focus.  She extended her hearing.  Ah.  Just not ready to stop yet.

Stones blackened with fire lay at the heart of the clearing.  They weren’t the first to camp here.  She pulled off Plato’s saddle, replaced his bridle with a halter, tethered him near the stream.  Then she gathered dry brushwood and lit it, set up a pan to heat water, remembered her cache of ripe berries and went back to collect them.  Now for the main course.  Rabbit would do.  With slingshot and stone she caught two, then got them roasting before darkness fell.

While supper cooked, she groomed surly Plato, leaning into the strokes of the brush.  “Good boy, Plato,” she told him.  “You’re not concerned.  You know there’s no reason to worry.”  He snorted, ducked his head, shook it and tugged at the grass at his feet.  “Yeah.  I’m being stupid.  Of course it’s okay.”  She moved away from the horse, stood in the gloaming, worked through her forms till she ached, till she could smell the rabbit was ready.  Still out there.  Closer, at least.  And she must be hungry.   Gabrielle walked back to the fire, where she made herself eat.

The girl came to the campsite before her portion cooled down completely.  Gabrielle did not react, merely watched quietly.  She’s dry anyway.  Must have found shelter when it rained.  The girl squatted just within reach of the firelight, eyes downcast as always, long fingers tearing the meat into shreds, cramming it into her mouth.  When she had finished, she looked round for more.  Gabrielle, hiding a grin, keeping her distance, leaned over, pushed close her own plate.  When that was clear too, she picked up the leaf, displaying the berries.  After a moment, the girl stretched forwards and snatched them away.

Then she held her breath.  She was always a little afraid the girl would dash off at this point, that she would disappear into the night.  But she did not.  She curled up by the fire, her back to Gabrielle, who cleared their leavings away, then banked down the fire.  She talked as she did so, telling a story.  A small story, a quiet one.  One of the tales she remembered from her childhood.  “And that is how the tortoise beat the hare,” she finished.  She paused, biding her time, watching the girl breathe.  Asleep.  Gabrielle stood, shook out a blanket, draped it over the slumbering form.  It was usually only at such times that she could get so near.   “Sleep well, sweetheart,” she  whispered.

Settled back against Plato’s up-ended saddle, Gabrielle fed scraps of bark into the fire, watched sparks fly upwards.  Would Alse approve?  Letting her run wild like this?  But the girl had grown strong over the past weeks.  Her frame had filled out, her skin had lost its waxy pallor.  She had even grown taller.  And no more scratches. No more tearing at herself, thank the gods.   The last time was more than three weeks ago.  Gabrielle had held her for hours, gripping her hands, cupping the nails within her own palms,  absorbing the rage till both collapsed in exhaustion. At least that’s stopped now.  And she lets me get closer.  Only a few days ago, she had washed the girl’s hair.  “It’s lovely,” she’d crooned, combing it dry, admiring the colour.  Chestnut banded with copper and gold to make a rare brindle.  And she always stays near; within hearing distance. 

Gabrielle sighed, rubbed her face with her hands.  The spinney was still, the night peaceful.  Up above, though she could not bring herself to look at them, she knew the stars gleamed quietly.  She should sleep now, if she could.  This was a respite, something told her.  Something darker was waiting just ahead.  She shrugged off the foreboding, hitched her blanket over her shoulder, curling into herself.  And no dreams, please?  She might just be lucky.  She quite often was nowadays.  Did Alse know?  How this would help me? 

She’d got so much back.  Even a fingerhold on her stories.  She remembered the days when her loneliness had seared her, when she had, time and again, looked up from her camp fire wanting to see a particular face, a particular gaze, and nearly been overwhelmed by the grief which surged up when she saw nothing.  She remembered days when she had found herself travelling with others, and had had to move her bedroll to avoid seeing features which did not resemble those she would never see again.  But tonight, and every night since she had started this journey westwards with the girl, she had felt only comfort in her company.  Thank you, Alse.  Smiling a little, Gabrielle slept until dawn.

It was close to midday.  She and Plato had set a good pace, though the old gelding was fractious and edgy.  They were deep in the forest.  They should take a break; the girl must be hungry, and her patience with Plato had almost run out.  Gabrielle hauled him to a halt, prepared to dismount.  Then sounds shattered the peace.  Steel on steel, human screaming.  It must come from just round the bend in the trail, not far ahead.  She tethered Plato, pivoted on her heel till she was sure she was looking straight at the girl.  “Stay here,” she hissed into the trees.  “Look after Plato.”  Her first command to the girl, she reflected, working her way into the forest, weaving through shadows, closing in on the fight.  She hoped she’d obey.

A glance took the scene in.  Three carts, drawn by oxen.  Several old people, some women and children were huddled inside.  Hampered by panicky livestock, men were fighting around them; six farmers with sickles and staves, trying to hold off bandits.  She counted nine, mostly in leather, rusty swords dented.  Not fighting with style, but they were pressing in closer.  She grimaced as one thrust in wildly, punctured a thigh.  Time to do something, she thought, slipping back fast to where she’d left Plato.  Whispering, “Stay,” to the girl, she tied his reins to the saddle, slapped his rump hard, ducking out of the way of his hooves as he bucked.  Then he was off down the track while she followed, high in the trees now, as supple and silent as light gilding their bark.

From above, she watched the effect, smiling grimly.  Plato peeved was impressive, thundering up in a shower of clods and sprayed foam, teeth wicked and gleaming.  There!  That was the leader, the tallest.  He had grasped what had happened, was ready to rally his men.  She summoned her rage, then launched herself down, latched onto his shoulders, locked one strong arm round his neck.  Both on the ground now, Gabrielle knocked the sword from his hand.  She tightened her stranglehold, brought up one knee and rammed it firm in his back.  Reaching a hand, she snatched for the sword where it lay, caught his head with its hilt. 

Then she stood up, aware of something behind her, spinning round, catching a blade with a deft parry that flicked it away from its owner.  She side-stepped and swung, slicing through muscle, then kicked out knees which were already buckling.  Two down.  Another came at her.  She planted her foot and kicked up and out, catching the man at his temple.  He dropped like a stone.  She hefted the sword and spotted a fourth, who was climbing up one of the carts.  When one of the women swiped at his head with a pan, he leaned away backwards.  Gabrielle seized hold of his belt and heaved hard, launching him over her head.  He staggered, just kept his footing, turned round to face her, taking a two handed hold on his sword, his eyes opening wide as he saw who opposed him.

“Come along, little girl,” he blared out, but she read doubt in his gaze.  She let herself grin, but said nothing, just beckoned him on, quietly changing her stance as she did so.  When he swung down, she ducked under his blade and aimed a shrewd slap with the flat of her blade at his rump.  He staggered forwards, but wrenched himself round and rushed at her.  Gabrielle dodged him with ease, angling one leg so it tripped him, and followed it up with a pounce which placed her above him.  Then, with the hilt of the sword in her hand, she threw a punch at his jaw which knocked him cold.

And then it was over.  There were no more attackers.  Three of those she had dealt with were down and not moving. Two others were penned by the rest of the men from the carts.  The remnants, she saw from the tail of her eye, were far back down the track and still running, one trailing blood.  Fool, she thought coldly, shaking her hand.  The punch had felt good, but it hurt now.  Of course.  She widened her survey, saw people climb down from the carts.  The oxen, sweating and wild-eyed, strained at their yokes.  Some of the women edged up to them cautiously, catching hold of the traces.  Others started to gather in chickens and pigs.  A boy broke away from the group and ran towards Plato.  Alarmed, she almost leaped to prevent him, but the old gelding had tired himself out.  Head down and sides heaving, he succumbed to the child like a pet.  Just behind, in the bushes, pale fabric fluttered.  At least she stayed out of the fight. 

“Bors!” a voice moaned.  Gabrielle whipped round.  A woman knelt by the side of a tree, hunched over someone.  The guy I saw stabbed.  Damn, I almost forgot him.  Upset with herself, she became aware of a dark shape beside her.  It was a youngster, tall for his age and bashfully smiling.  Gabrielle thrust the sword into his hands.  “Tie that lot up and watch them,” she told him, nodding her head at the unconscious bandits.  “Help him,” she said to a pair of old men who had joined them.  “They’ll be waking up soon.”

Crouching down by the woman, Gabrielle said, “Let me see.”  She kept her face still as she did so.  The tip of the blade had snapped off and was still in the wound; she hated to think of the state of the metal.  Blood welled up around it.  She smiled, for the man and the woman.  “We’ll get that out,” she assured them, then said to the woman, “Light a fire and heat up some water.”  She leaned forward, feeling the flesh which surrounded the wound, disliking its heat.  She patted Bors’ shoulder.  “Don’t worry, I’ve seen a lot worse.”

She rose, intending to go to her pack and sort out some herbs for a poultice, but a flicker of movement caught her attention.  One of the farmers was prodding his captive, egged on by the others.  As she watched, he jabbed harder and the man yelped.

“Hey!”  Gabrielle called.  She sauntered into the knot of angry men, which loosened around her.  “Keep it down, guys.  You’ll spook the oxen.”  She pointed with her chin.  “Those women can hardly keep them under control.”  Two of the men, looking sheepish, peeled away from the group and went back to the carts.  She slipped between those that were left and the captives.  “Great work, by the way, catching these bandits.”

They blushed and shuffled their feet.  One remembered his manners.  “You did the real work.  We should have thanked you.”

Now Gabrielle blushed.  “Nah, just happened along.”  She’d sized up the men they’d been guarding.  Young and half starved; they wouldn’t last long on their own.  “You’d better secure them,” she said.  “There may be a price on their heads.  More if they’re brought in alive.” 

“Excuse me.”  A hand tugged at her sleeve.  The woman with Bors, her face pinched and beaded with sweat.

“I’m Gabrielle.  Is everything ready?”  She resumed her walk to Plato and her supplies, the woman tagging behind her.

“Jennah,” she said, her voice breathy with her fear.  Her eyes fixed themselves on the small woman’s hands, watched as they dug into the saddle bag and extracted a number of small, washed-leather bags.  Gabrielle studied her from the corner of her eye.  Jennah was pregnant, she was fairly certain of it.  Three months along, perhaps.  Under wispy, pale hair, her face looked sallow and thin.  Gabrielle added a further bag of herbs to her haul.

“He’ll be just fine, Jennah.  All we have to do is get the sword blade out and make sure everything is clean.  Okay?”  She unfurled her best, most confident smile, saw Jennah relax a little, brighten.  She snatched a moment to turn away from the woman, direct her smile and a nod at a screen of branches behind which she knew the girl was hiding.  Then she turned back, said briskly, “Come on, let’s get started,” and led the way back to her patient.

It was nearly dark before she was done.  The further north she went, she had noticed, intrigued, the longer the evening, the shorter the night.  She even had the impression the sun was moving north too.  It must very be very late, she deduced.  Bors had been treated, the animals penned, the prisoners secured, the farmers’ camp set up.  She could see their fires through the twilight. She rolled her shoulders to loosen tight muscles and hissed in pain.  Craning her head round, she noticed a tear in the seam of her jerkin.  She shrugged it off, checked again and spotted the end of a long, red scrape on her shoulder.  Must have caught it on something.  Damn.  She could do without the hassle. 

Sighing, she tipped some water from the pan over her campfire into a metal cup, nestled that in the heart of the blaze to get hotter.  For the first time since the fight, she had nothing to do except wait.  She could have snarled with impatience, but instead clenched her fists, caught her lower lip in her teeth, made herself sit down and settle back.  Calm down, Gabrielle.  Breathe.  Breathe.  It was the aftermath of her anger, making her feel burned out but edgy.  She wanted to work through her forms, or run through the forest, or simply hit something.  But she couldn’t afford to let go; not with the girl out there, hanging about, waiting to come in.

Her gaze drifted back to where the farmers were gathering for their supper.  They had invited her, but she had pleaded tiredness.  They’d been half insulted, of course.  But the girl would never join her over there, among so many people, and she was reluctant anyway.   The days when she had welcomed the chance to be part of a gathering, to tell her stories, to chatter and giggle and exchange gossip for hours were long gone.  Too much had changed, too much been lost.  I’m not the same person anymore.  She wanted to sigh with regret, suppressed it with resignation.  Everything changes. Shape up or give up, Gabrielle.  She shrugged, felt the scrape twinge.  They had given her food anyway, bread, almost fresh, and good cheese.  She set out both beside her, where the girl could see them.  That would have to do for supper tonight.

Gabrielle checked on the water.  It was still not boiling, not even rolling.  Using the tip of her hunting knife, she prodded it deeper into the fire.  Waiting, scraps of what the farmers had told her began to connect in her mind, began to make a picture.  Gabrielle frowned.  They were refugees, running from something.  She had known that from the start, as had the bandits, who had wanted to loot their wagons.  But when she had asked them what had happened, they could not give a clear answer.

“It’s bad back there,” Jennah had said.  “It’s cold and it’s cloudy but it never rains.  Summer hasn’t come where we used to live.”

Gabrielle had looked her surprise.  That was what farming was like: you had good years and bad ones.  Whatever happened, you stuck to your land.

“Nothing is growing, Gabrielle.”  Jennah had struggled to put what she felt into words.  “Nothing.  The trees haven’t leafed even.  And nothing has been born there, not since last year.  No calves, no piglets, not even chicks.  It doesn’t feel right, Gabrielle.”  She’d laid a hand on her belly.  “Not with my baby coming.”

Gabrielle rubbed her hand over her face.  She’d got snippets from others, all tending the same way.  That it was bad, and getting worse, but must be still worse further on.  No one had come out of the far west since the first snows of winter.  In her mind’s eye she could see it; a dark cloud ahead, keeping out sunlight, sucking up life.  She shuddered.   This was it, she was sure, what she had been working towards.  What had been drawing her.  And I’m taking her into that?  But what other choice was there?  She had to go on, now that she knew.  I’ll ask Jennah.  Tomorrow.  To take her.  It felt like a betrayal.

The water was boiling at last.  She used her gloves, folded over, to pluck it out of the fire, wadded a rag, dipped it into the pan.  Then she attempted to wash clean the scrape, but it was awkwardly placed.  Twisting and turning only made her grimace with pain as she tightened the skin round the wound.  Gabrielle wiped hair out of her eyes with her forearm, tamped down her impatience, tried once more.  This time she managed one swipe which was vaguely on target.

 But now someone was standing beside her.  She looked up, through hair which had flopped back over her brow.  The girl, her face hidden in shadow, but one hand extended.  After a moment, Gabrielle held out the pad she had made.  The girl took it and kneeled down beside her.  Gabrielle held her breath.  Deep inside, something awoke.  Something which warmed her.  A feeling she barely could name now.  She watched as, gently, absorbed in her task, the girl dabbed at the wound until it was clean.

III

Several days later, they reached the edge of the blight.  Gabrielle hauled on the reins, studied the trail up ahead.  Here it was sunny, but two paces further would plunge them in shadow.  It loomed like a wall which cut off the country beyond.  She’d seen it coming for miles, a crust of grey cloud getting closer and closer, a veil of dun air underneath.  From this point, it even looked thicker.  Bile rose in her throat as she pictured it clogging their lungs.

Their lungs.  The girl was still with her.  She frowned and felt half regret, half relief.   She’d told the girl, after they’d eaten, “I think things will be bad up ahead.  I want you to stay with Jennah for a while.  The lady I helped,” she’d explained.  “I’ll come for you later.  I won’t leave you alone.”  Perhaps her words had rung hollow, she couldn’t tell.  But when she woke the next morning the girl had already gone.  Her blanket was cold.  Gabrielle wasn’t surprised when, late in the evening, she turned up again.  Jennah and safety were miles away now.  She’d sat down cross-legged, head bowed and in shadow, wolfing the food Gabrielle passed her. 

“Oh, kid,” the small woman had said.  “Okay.  But you do what I say.”  She’d waited.  When nothing happened, she’d added, “You’ll stay out of danger.  Yes?  Deal?”  The girl had just turned her back, settled down on her blanket and fallen asleep.

All the same, she seemed to have listened.  She never strayed far, but kept out of sight when strangers approached.  This happened quite often.  Every day, refugees passed them, fleeing the lands to the west.  When they were clear of the forest and farmland spread out all around them, it was mostly deserted.  The holdings were empty, doors barred, windows shuttered.  Only stray dogs moved in the yards, or roamed village greens. Not all dwellings were vacant, however.  Gabrielle sensed eyes looking out as they passed, belonging to those far too old or too sick to move out, at a guess.  Folk left behind, left to cower in terror. 

Abandoned.  The thought made her shiver, made her rage rise.  No one should be left so utterly alone.  I have to do something about this.  She stood in her stirrups, scanning the sombre landscape ahead.  Long, slack folds of it stretched out under the shadow, mud-coloured and silent.  But what?  What could cause this?  Something welled up in her heart, far too familiar.  That’s whatever is out there at work.  I can fight this part at least.  She had lived with this feeling for over eleven years.  She knew its name and how to move through it; despair.

Now the girl emerged and stood by her, gripping a strand of Plato’s black mane.  Gabrielle watched her knuckles turn white.  She shifted forwards in the saddle and leaned down, placing her hand over the girl’s.  “Climb aboard,” she said softly, loosening one foot from a stirrup.  “He won’t mind.”  The girl did not reply, but Gabrielle felt her shiver.  “Come on now,” she repeated, “Just put your foot in the stirrup and hop.  I’ll do the rest.”  This time the girl moved.  She looked up at Plato’s broad rump.  Then she sighed and moved forwards, let Gabrielle grasp her under her arm and lever her up.  Gabrielle clicked her tongue.  “Walk on, Plato.”  Slowly, he did, and took them into the shadow.

The girl continued to shiver.  When she patted the hands clasping her waist, Gabrielle frowned at their chill.  “Hey,” she said, “I never told you how I got Plato, did I?”  She felt the girl’s head shake.  “Well, I found him.  Yes really,” she said, as if the girl had answered.  “It was a long way to the south of here.” 

In Thrace, just after I left Amphipolis for the last time.  Just after I left her ashes and chakram in Lyceus’ tomb.  Gabrielle clamped down on the pain, kept on talking to distract herself.  “I heard this terrible noise up ahead.  It sounded like an elephant sitting on a donkey, all trumpeting and braying.”  She paused.  “You won’t have seen an elephant.  They’re really huge creatures, big as a barn, with long noses and big ears and they live in hot countries way to the south.”  She paused again, considering what she wanted to say, the promise it implied.  She said it anyway.  “Perhaps one day I’ll take you to see one.

“Anyway, how I met Plato.  Where was I?  Oh yes, hearing that strange noise.  Well, I decided to take a look.”  Of course, she sneered at herself.  Such a hero.  “It was this poor, scraggy heap of a horse.  Oops, sorry Plato, but you were.” She leaned forward, scratched the old horse on his head, then rubbed his neck fondly. 

“I suppose his last owner must have got tired of him,” she went on.  “He’d been tied up to a tree and just left there.  Cast off.  It must have been days beforehand, but he was too darned mean to die.”   Gabrielle smiled at the thought.  Tough old nut.  Good for him.  Her affection coloured her voice as she continued.  “In fact he was so darned mean that when I tried to untie him he nearly kicked my head in.  He did manage to bite me.  I’ve still got the scar.”  She had, a small, raised white ring on her arm, which itched sometimes, even now.  “And I had a lump on my leg for months after.  Just there,” Gabrielle pointed at the place, sticking her left leg out so that she could do so. “You should have seen the colours.

“And even after all that, he wouldn’t let me look after him, not at first.”  It had taken at least three days, Gabrielle recalled, after she had realised she couldn’t just leave him alone.  Three days of thinking of nothing but getting on the right side of the stubborn beast, of feeding and watering him, of cautiously tending the sores and galls on his hide, of slowly, very slowly, getting him to trust her.  “It was discovering that he likes stale bread, of all things, that made the difference.”  He saved my life, the crusty old grouch.  Took my mind off everything else.

“So in the end he decided to give me a chance and came with me.  But, as you may have noticed, his temper hasn’t really improved,” she finished.

By now she could feel the girl had relaxed.  She kept talking though, telling stories, as much to hear her own voice break the silence as for any other reason.  At length they came to wood.  The trees looked lifeless, their bark galled and scurfy, though when Gabrielle looked closer she could see the tight, shiny buds of leaves which had never burst.  Under their branches, the air felt still danker and heavier, and the girl tightened her grip round her waist. The silence grew stronger; even Plato’s hoof beats were muffled by the layers of last year’s leaves, lying sodden and slimy on the ground.

Gabrielle was about to begin a new story when the wood suddenly opened up ahead.  She reined in Plato and looked round, blinking her eyes to get used to the change in the light.  At the same time, she felt that she was, on the contrary, about to plunge into darkness.  She beat back a shudder.  Narrowing her eyes, she could make out the scene at last.  There was water in their way.  A lake, murkily reflecting back the banks of lichen-encrusted trees all around.  She urged Plato forwards and looked more closely.  The surface was completely still, dark brown rather than black.  Silt, she thought, it’s nearly choked with the stuff. 

She looked across the lake, and realised that they were not alone.  There was a wagon over there, in a small, bare patch between the track and the edge of the surrounding trees.  A horse pulled at meagre blades of grass nearby.  Two people were sitting beside the lake, a man and a woman, staring into it.  She clicked her tongue and urged Plato on, already dreading what she might learn.  They were motionless, intent, unresponsive her approach.

“Hey,” she hailed them quietly as she drew up alongside.  “Is anything wrong?”  When they did not answer, Gabrielle gestured for the girl to get down, then dismounted herself, handing Plato’s reins to her companion.  “Stay here, okay?  I want to check this out.”  The girl stared at the reins, and Gabrielle sighed, pushing back gold-brindled, chestnut hair so she could briefly touch her cheek.  “I can’t ride on by, you know.  It’ll be all right.  Look after Plato; let him eat some grass.”  She noticed a corner of the girl’s mouth pucker, and her own twitched too.  As if either of us could stop him snacking when and where he wants to.

A little-heartened, she braced herself and walked up to the couple.  “My name’s Gabrielle,” she said, squatting down beside them.  “Do you need help?” 

It was the woman who spoke, not looking at her, not giving a reply so much as making a statement.  “You’re too late.  Nothing can help.”  Her voice was lifeless, leeched of expression.  Beside her, her husband seemed to hunch himself more deeply into the shell of his silence.

“Tell me,” Gabrielle insisted, though already she had guessed.  She stayed where she was and waited.

At last the woman said, “She’s in there, our daughter.  Our Taina, in that horrible water.”  She looked at Gabrielle.  Her eyes were bloodshot in a tallow-coloured face.

“When?”  Gabrielle leaned forwards, put her hands on the woman’s shoulders, held her gaze.  “Where?”

The woman shook her off.  “Yesterday evening.  Somewhere there.”  She pointed to her left, where a bed of reeds straggled along the bank.  She shot Gabrielle a glance which seemed to defy her to help them.

Gabrielle sank back on her heels again.  She rubbed her hands over her face.  She wished she knew what to do.  Once I would have told them a story, I suppose, she mocked herself.  Found words I believed in, then, to tell them that love never dies, put together a pretty fable with the moral that their daughter will live in their hearts forever.  She fought back the bitter laugh which rose inside her.  That was when I believed in the power of love, of course.

After a moment she got up and went to the girl.  “We’ll stay here with them for a while,” she explained.  “Can you gather some dry wood?  We need to make a fire.”

When that was burning, she boiled water, made tea for the parents, left the girl with instructions to feed the fire, stir the soup she had left to heat over it.  A small part of her noticed how the girl seemed to be listening, how she seemed to want to help.  She pushed back the observation for later, carried over the mugs of tea.  The woman took hers without thinking, but Gabrielle had to unclench the man’s hands and wrap his fingers round the one she handed him.  She watched him till he started to sip at it, then settled beside them and waited again.

“We thought this would be a good place to camp.”  Once again it was the mother who broke the silence.  “I let Taina play while I prepared our supper.  Erik was mending a broken harness.” The man had stopped sipping.  His fingers curved round the mug like claws.  “We could hear her.  She had her doll with her.  She was chattering to it, about why we were going, about seeing her sisters again, about the cousins she was going to see.  She sounded just close by.”  The woman fell silent.  Gabrielle wondered if the calm was going to break, if she was going to cry at last.  But she did not.  Instead she went on, “Then we heard the splash.  Not a loud one.  As if a fish had risen, broken the surface and sunk back into the mere.  Quiet.  So quiet.  We thought nothing of it.”  She stopped again.  A tremor seemed to run through her, and tea slopped over the edge of her mug.  Then she controlled herself again.

“We looked for Taina though, and saw she’d gone.  I remember, my head felt so light.   As though I didn’t have a body at all.  I think I knew straight away…”  Gabrielle leaned over to take her mug, her own hands shaking slightly.  “We were by the water so quickly, just beside where the doll was floating, but we couldn’t see Taina.  Not bubbles, not even a ripple.  She was just – gone.”

The woman’s shoulders shook now.  A strange sound came out of her.  A throaty groan.  Another.  Gabrielle put the mug down, wrapped her hands round those of the woman.  When she howled and sagged forwards, Gabrielle pulled her into her embrace, held her tightly, rocking her, saying nothing.  Beside them, she became aware that the man was sobbing too.  He had dropped his mug and his hands lay slack and open, empty of anything but air.

“I tried.  I tried,” he repeated, again and again.  Gabrielle guessed he had sat there all night, in clothes which had dried slowly on him.

“She’s still down there.  In that cold water.  Our little girl,” the woman moaned, breaking out of Gabrielle’s hold, turning towards her husband, demanding, “Why couldn’t you find her?”  She beat on him weakly, then suddenly grabbed hold of him and gathered him into her arms.  They wept together.

Gabrielle stood up and backed away, wondering what would be best to do.  She looked at the dark surface of the lake and knew.  Walking over to the fire, she checked the soup.  “Good girl,” she said, and smiled reassuringly at the girl.  “Just keep stirring it, ‘kay?  Oh, and watch my clothes.  I don’t want Plato nibbling at them.”  She pulled a face and broadened her smile to a grin as she pulled off her boots, then stripped down to her shirt and briefs, folding her jerkin and breeches neatly and laying them on the ground beside their pack.  “I’ll be back before you know it,” she said to the hank of hair hanging over the girl’s face.  She watched two long fingered hands knot themselves together.  “Don’t worry.  I won’t leave you alone.”

The water was cold, even though it was near midsummer.  Gabrielle shook her wet hand, watched droplets fall and make fat, sluggish ripples, studied the lake’s surface looking for currents.  Then she waded in, feeling an insidious pull deeper down.  Under her feet, the slimy mud slithered.  It was easy to see how the child had lost her footing and been dragged under.  She kept her balance only with effort, and was relieved when she was able to begin swimming. 

Gripping her knife firmly in one hand, she began her first dive.  It was too dark to see anything down there, she quickly discovered.  She bobbed up, shook the hair out of her eyes.  The parents were both looking out towards her, she saw, their faces slack and bewildered.  By the fire, the girl was sitting with her knees pulled up, her head hidden behind them.  I’m sorry, kid.  But this is the only thing I can think to do.  Helplessly, she sent the thought in her direction, then seized her knife between her teeth and dived again.

Using her hands, she felt her way through the murk, making dive after dive, working her way grimly along the line of the reed bank.  Twice she became entangled in weeds, which tightened round her legs and chest and had to be hacked away.  The second time she was under long enough for red spots to float behind her closed eyes and a dreamy sense seize her that this way it would be easier, that this way she could find the peace others had sought for so desperately.  That she craved for so cruelly.  Red filled her vision, the colour of sunset, was rimmed with black which rapidly closed in around it.  But the memory of the girl and the parents, even of Plato, drove her to slash exhaustedly at the bonds which tied her and, just in time, free herself.

Surfacing, she pulled air into her aching chest, coughed up foul-tasting water, thought of making her way back to the bank. She suddenly felt eyes were on her, looked up and saw the parents’ glassy stare, Plato grazing nose to tail with their solidly-built draught horse, the girl, sitting by the bank herself now, hair hiding her face as usual.  Just once more.  The thought floated across her mind.  Suppose she’s just there.  Suppose you just missed her.  Her head felt clearer, her limbs less heavy.  Once more then.  She took a deep breath, ducked down and almost at once felt something smooth and rounded, something cold and limp and clothed. 

She had been a pretty child, Gabrielle saw as she surfaced for the last time, the body in her arms.  Ash blond hair, blue eyes; a sturdy toddler with a rose bud mouth.  She looked towards the parents, hitched the body so it was cradled against her, walked towards them.  When she reached them, Gabrielle waited for the woman to reach out.  Then she eased Taina into her mother’s embrace and watched as she smoothed the pale hair, murmured her name, dropped tears onto the still face.  When the father enfolded his wife in his arms, Gabrielle moved away, noticing that they were well into the long twilight.  It was black under the trees, and the green of the grass was taking on a strange, pallid glow.  She went back to the fire, slowly, feeling exhausted.

The girl had kept it burning well.  Beside it, stretched over a log to keep it off the damp ground, a drying cloth hung.  Gabrielle took it gratefully, rubbed herself over briskly, hung her undergarments close to the fire to dry, then got dressed in her outer clothes again.  Sitting down on the log, she sighed with relief, and became aware of someone standing in front of her.  The girl.  She held out a mug, shyly.  It was filled with soup, and Gabrielle drank it down, surprised to find how much better the warmth made her feel.  “Thank you,” she said, and then, impulsively, touched the girl’s hand.  “You were very good.  I’m so proud of you,” she said.  She found she was smiling at the girl, naturally, with an ease she had almost forgotten.  That warmed her too.

After she had made sure the girl had her share of the food, Gabrielle told her, “There’s more to do here.   Will you put yourself to bed?”  She waited till the girl nodded, then carried mugs of soup over to the parents, who had carried the child to their wagon and laid her on its bed.  She hunkered down near them, patiently waited for them to notice her.  When they had drunk down their soup Gabrielle asked, hesitantly, “Do you want to take her home?”

They both stared at her blankly.  Then the mother said, “No.  We can’t go back there.  We can’t.”

“Where are you going, then?”

“To my sister.  She lives 10 days travel east of here.  My other children are already there.”  Her voice trailed off.  She looked back at the wagon.  “What shall we do?”  She asked the question of no one in particular.  “What shall we do?” she repeated, her voice rising.

“I don’t know,” the father said, his voice deep and thickened with grief. 

When neither he nor the mother said anything more, Gabrielle suggested, softly, “You could bury her here.  When the darkness goes, when summer comes back, it will be pretty here.”  I promise, she added silently.  I’ll find out what is causing this blight.  I’ll bring summer back.  Even if I can’t do more.

The father sucked in a deep breath.  “Yes,” he said, heavily, decisively.  He placed his hands on his knees, levered himself up.

“Let me help,” Gabrielle offered.  She didn’t wait for their answer, but walked over to where spades were tied to the sides of the wagon.  Taking one, she waited for the father to select a place for the grave, then, with him, dug into the soil.  When that was done, she went back to the mother and helped her wash the child, clothe her in her best dress, comb her hair free of snags.  After the father laid Taina to rest, Gabrielle stood back, waiting for the parents to make their farewells before she filled the grave in for them, patting it smooth when she finished.

Full night had arrived, she realised.  She looked towards the wagon and saw the parents had stretched out under it, lying in each other’s arms.  She hoped they had found sleep.  The girl, at least, seemed deep in it.  Gabrielle tweaked the blanket so it covered her shoulder and dropped a kiss on the peaceful face.  She straightened, wincing as her muscles protested, feeling deathly tired but not sleepy at all.  She sat by the lake instead, leaning against a log, listening to the water’s stillness.  The sky was overcast; there were no stars to reflect in its surface.  Her eyes seemed to grow huge with the darkness.  She felt as though her body were weighted down by its cold vastness.  It was too easy to imagine they were all, the girl, the parents, Plato, at the bottom of the lake, drowned and at peace, with no need to move on.  Not here, in the night, in this alien place, alone.  Gabrielle became aware that her own tears had risen and were flowing.  She did not bother to wipe them away, just hugged herself tight round the stone of her grief. 

She must have dozed off, in the end.  When she woke up, the sky to the east had turned a faint, pearly grey.  There was a blanket draped over her shoulders and warmth at her back.  She knew, without looking, that the girl was curled there, sleeping beside her.  Something fragile and delicate unfolded within her.  A tentative hope.

IV

It took three more days of travel to reach the centre of the blight, across land which was rising slowly but steadily.  When the trail turned now, it was often to avoid outcrops of rock, dull grey, patched with lichen.  Gabrielle camped by one on the second night, and walked round its base curiously while the girl clambered up it.   One side seemed to have been sheered, revealing its grain.  She ran her fingers over the cold, gritty surface.  It looked like – layers of dough being kneaded and stretched.  What could treat the bones of the earth like this, like honey being stirred and swirled?  Heat?  Could it get hot enough inside the earth to turn stone to taffy?  She smiled in wonder at the thought. 

Though it looked calm enough now, a grey crag basking in the sunlight, like a whale in a grass green sea.  Is that what happened?  Are there oceans of fire at the heart of the earth?  And did it escape and rise to the surface?  The girl, she noticed, had got to the top and was sitting there cross legged, her face quietly lifted to the sun.  Gabrielle stepped back and studied the rock face again, taking in the whole thing this time.  Somehow, it looked different.  Burnt out flames blown by a gale which won’t ever extinguish them.  Water turned to stone and trapped that way always.  She shivered, uneasy.

She dreamed of the rock that night.  She dreamed that she woke inside it, locked deep in the stone, which was locked deep in the earth.  She felt its weight press the air from her lungs, its darkness weigh down her eyelids.  She dreamed she pried them open anyway and stared into the solid darkness, and discovered that she was awake after all.  Sweat drenched her and ran cold and she shuddered in terror, reaching out with her hands.  When she touched stone, the terror nearly stopped her heart.  With immense effort, she gathered herself together, turned her head.  There were the last low embers of the fire, there was the outline of Plato, black against the grey reaches of the pre-dawn sky.   And there was the girl, she realised suddenly, lying much closer to her tonight than ever before.  She smiled, slightly, in wonder, and felt her heart slow and steady as she lay watching the sun rise over the east, weeping silently in relief.

On this third day of the journey, the land folded and crumpled.  Juniper grew here, and rowan, and a small leafed, ground hugging plant clustered with blue-black berries.  They could not see far ahead at any point, for the track led round craggy hills and boulder-strewn valleys. At least Gabrielle knew where she was going.  The parents had told her. They had roused that morning somehow much stronger. “Come with us,” the mother had urged.  “It’s dangerous back there.”

“Where?” Gabrielle had wanted to know.

“Torgaarten,  to the west,” she answered.  “I don’t know what it is.  It was just there one morning, in the temple.  Some new god or other.  No one can deny him.  The only thing to do is get away, if you can.”

“We didn’t want to leave our holding,” the father had said then.  “We sent our other children away, but we hung on, hoping things would get better.”

Gabrielle had nodded.  “So you have other children,” she had prompted, and watched as purpose flared in their eyes.

Torgaarten was a substantial town, built of stone and wood, nestled in the crook of a river just as it emerged from a deep valley which cut into a range of high hills.  She could not see their tops, nor what lay behind them.  Heavy clouds sagged around them, grey and tumultuous.  There must be mountains, though.  The water sliding under the bridge as they crossed it was ice-melt, blue green and swift. 

It must have just stopped raining, Gabrielle deduced as they entered the town.  Water ran down the gutters at each side of the street Plato carried them along, and the sills and eaves above her head were beaded with sullen drops.  She suspected, though, that this was not why the streets were deserted, that Torgaarten was mostly empty and that its remaining inhabitants rarely ventured outside.

The road they were on opened into a sizeable, stone-flagged square.  There were shops around it, at least two inns, a building she guessed to be the temple, though its structure was strange to her.  It looked a little like a fir cone, made from split logs of wood overlapped to form a tapering spire.  The door stood open but she could see only darkness inside.

Gabrielle steered Plato towards the nearest Inn.  The bundle of branches hanging outside it must have been there since last midsummer, she judged.  Birch boughs, a few brown leaves clinging to twigs in the heart of the bunch.  She got down, waited for the girl to join her, tied Plato’s reins to the hitching post. 

The bar keep had fleshy features arranged in drooping folds.  Those under his eyes pulled his lower lids down, revealing red rims.  She had to work not to look at them, nor think of dogs she had known with faces like that.  He was looking at her blankly.  She repeated her request to see the owner.  He opened his mouth, but nothing issued from it, and his stare grew unfocused.   Gabrielle sighed, then leaned forwards and grabbed the front of his tunic, trying not to think of what might have stained it. 

“Do you own this Inn?”

He swallowed after a moment, and nodded. 

“What happened?” she asked him, watching him closely.  He looked through her and said nothing.  She sighed, and turned round.  There had been three people in the tap room when they came in. Those three were staring at her now, with just the same looks on their faces.

“He went into the temple, weeks ago now.” 

The words came from the doorway.  Gabrielle saw a woman was standing there, a small, broad woman silhouetted against the light.

“My name’s Solveig,” she said, stepping into the Inn.  “I own the Two Tuns, over the square.”  She smiled wryly.  “If you and the girl want a clean bed and something decent to eat, you’d best come with me later.”

Gabrielle felt her eyebrow lift in response to the smile, and she nodded.  “But you haven’t been into the temple?” she asked, watching the woman closely.

“How did you guess?”  Solveig walked behind the bar, moving the man out of the way to do so.  She poured beer into two mugs, looked at the girl again, and poured water into a third.

“You’re right to question everything,” she continued, after she had carried the drinks over to a table and waited for Gabrielle and the girl to sit down opposite her.  “This has been going on for nearly a year now.  It’s blighted everything.  No crops grow, no animal gives birth, and no one who walks into that temple comes out in one piece.  Not in the head, I mean.  I’m no hero: I leave that for braver folk than me.”  Her face had darkened and her voice grew harsh.  She caught her breath.  Then she looked at Gabrielle steadily.  “I’d think again,” she said finally.

There was silence for a while.  The girl sipped at her water and Gabrielle considered what the woman had told them.  She had already known some of it, but the effects on the people were much stronger here, and she was fairly certain the clue to what had happened lay in their feelings, more than anything else.

“So all these men went into the temple?” Gabrielle avoided the woman’s gaze and studied her hands instead, the pattern of fine white scars from the nicks and cuts she’d taken over the years.

Solveig sighed.  “Not all of them.  Osip did.” She nodded at the barkeep.  “So did two of the others.  But  Trygve?  No,  he just lives here.  Being near the temple does that to some people.”  She occupied herself with her mug.

Gabrielle watched her closely.  Solveig was no fool.  The table she had selected was just the one Gabrielle would have chosen herself, against a wall, with a clear view of the doors and windows.  The Innkeeper sounded confident, alert.  But her hands were shaking, just a little, and her face was wan.  “What does it do to other people?” Gabrielle probed, gently.

Solveig shrugged.  “Leaves you feeling tired,” she started.  Then she stopped.  Her voice dropped lower.  “Eats your heart out.  Makes you feel disgusted with yourself.  Makes you face the fact that you’re a coward.”

Gabrielle leaned forward.  “What could you have done?”

“Gone in there.  After my Per did; gone in there and made whatever monster it is give him back his mind.”

“And if you had come out without yours?”  Gabrielle kept her voice reassuring, but let a little sternness creep in.  “Who would have looked after him then?”

Solveig sucked in a breath.  “You haven’t even got a sword,” she said, wildly.

“I don’t think you need one, do you?  Not to face what’s in there.”

Solveig shook her head.  “They took them in; swords, axes, whatever they could lay their hands on, but it never looked as though they’d used them.”

Gabrielle nodded.  “So, a sword wouldn’t do me any good, would it?”  She paused.  “When I was a little girl, there was a house in our town I hated to walk past.  You know how it is.”

Solveig looked a little baffled by the change of subject, but she nodded.

“It was such a dark old place, and it loomed so.  It looked as though, once you were in, it would never let you go.”  Gabrielle smiled suddenly.  “We kids would dare one another to run up and knock on the door of course.”  She winked at the girl when she said this, but the child’s autumn tinted head was down, and she was rubbing at the grain in the table by her mug.

“Well,” Gabrielle said, “One day, my mother came the kitchen all breathless with excitement. ‘Emphidocles’ house has collapsed.  Just fallen down in a great puff of dust,’ she told us.” 

Solveig nodded again.  “Yes, that happens sometimes here, too.”

“I wanted to know why it had happened, so I pestered my father till he told me,” Gabrielle continued.  “That’s how I found it that a fungus causes it.  A nasty black thing which spreads through timber.  It eats the strength out of a building made of wood, until in the end it can’t stand up any longer.”

“You have to check the beams all the time, make sure they’re sound.”  Solveig looked back at Gabrielle.  “But you can’t fight it.  You have to cut out the diseased wood and replace it, if you catch it early enough.  That’s all you can do.  And usually the stuff has already spread, and comes out somewhere else soon enough.”

Gabrielle shrugged.  She stood up.  “Perhaps.  Time to find out, anyway,” she said.  She turned to the girl who was staring at her blankly from under her shaggy fringe.  “It’ll be okay.  You trust me, don’t you?”  She set her hands on the girl’s shoulders, noting for the first time that they were nearly of a height, trying to read the girl’s answer in her downcast face.  “Well, I’ll be back.  You go with Solveig, she’ll give you something to eat.”

She felt it in her hands first.  Then the girl’s head shook.  No!  She didn’t need to speak.  Gabrielle sighed.  “I will be back.  I promise,” she repeated, but the girl lunged forwards and grabbed her round the waist, hugging her close.  “Look.”  Gabrielle reached behind her to unclasp the girl’s hands, which hung on like claws.  “Look, you promised.  When I said you could come with me.  You promised to do what I said.  If you don’t, you put yourself in danger.  And that makes it dangerous for me.”

Abruptly the girl let go and stepped back.  “Good,” Gabrielle said.  “Good girl.”  She looked at Solveig, who seemed a little bemused.  She didn’t have time to explain.  “You’ll look after her?” she asked instead, and when the woman nodded, turned and left at once, before anyone could change their mind.

The temple should have been full of brightness.  That was the first thing Gabrielle thought as she stepped inside its wide door.  There were many openings in the upper slopes of its walls, cunningly slanted to keep out the rain but let in the daylight, and sconces in which candles burned.  It occurred to her that her eyes could see perfectly well.  Her eyes took in the oak covered floor and the rows of pinewood pews and the colourful ikons hung everywhere, at the same time as her sense of smell responded to the musty, damp odour of the place, and, far beneath that, the faint traces of the beeswax polish which must have filled it once.

But she was not aware of any of this.  What she was aware of, what she actually saw, was darkness.  It filled her mind, a buzzing darkness, which reminded her of something.  A vague memory nagged at her.  Angry wasps, perhaps, or the strange, silent thrumming that comes with the first chill, dull impact of shock.  The darkness reminded her of this too, recalled the blood red blotches that float and crowd together and thicken into the stifling black of unconsciousness.

She made herself move forwards, into the buzzing.  It vibrated in her teeth and her skull and along the length of her bones and made her feel as though her heart had forgotten the rhythm of its beat and as though she had no air in her lungs.  The feeling which had overwhelmed her when she first entered the blight had returned, unimaginably stronger.  Taking a breath seemed unthinkable.  Who knew what else might enter into her, what might take root inside her, in the dark, warm, moist organs within.  She imagined, helpless to control it, eggs turn into maggots which burrowed their way out of her, leaving a dry husk behind.

Then she clamped down on herself.  Breathe.  Breathe.  You’ve felt this before.  You’ve come through it.  She had.  Panic; powerlessness; despair.  Coming down from a mountainside in Japa, wondering what she had done wrong, how she could have taught the person who was her life to choose death instead.  She remembered losing her footing again and again on the rocky track because tears blinded her and she did not care about anything, whether she could see or not, whether she got to the bottom safe or not.  She remembered, also, the anger which had seethed inside her, at herself mostly, the anger which had carried her along on its surge, which had saved her.

Use it, she reminded herself.  She shook her head to clear it, and the humming in her ears subsided a little.  She realised that she was cold, that she was damp with sweat.  And with tears.  She wiped at her face with her hands, then clenched them into fists.  It wants to make people afraid.  That’s it!  It’s about fear.

“How can I be?” a voice asked in a reasonable, gentle tone.

Though she knew that nothing had spoken, that the words had left no throat, but had blossomed silently in her brain, she turned towards to the centre of the temple, of the darkness, as if she were facing the speaker, as if he were standing directly under the spire.

“Not fear,” the voice went on, “because you aren’t afraid, are you?”

Gabrielle tried to speak her answer, but nothing came out except a soft gasp of air.  Something enormous was filling her chest, was swelling into her throat.  She could barely force air by it.

No, she agreed silently, forming the sound with her thoughts, keeping it just as soft, just as reasonable.  No, I’m not afraid.  Nor had she been, for a long time now.  The thought unsettled her.  Fear was a normal reaction, a right reaction.  She expected it in others, assumed it of herself.  But she had not felt it, not since Japa.  Not since…

“You have to have something to lose, to feel afraid, you see,” the voice told her.  The words pierced her, touched off reactions she had battled for so long, but which were still as powerful as the first time she had felt them.  Her throat ached rawly round the dark mass which filled it, but she gathered herself, and swallowed it down.

Yes, I see, she replied at length.  Because she did.  I lost everything I was afraid to lose a long time ago, she told the darkness steadily. 

Was there a moment’s surprise?  Was that why it did not answer her at once?  A suspicion took shape at the edge of her mind, and she tucked it safely into hiding.

“I am not hatred either,” the voice went on, still gently.  “Though you are filled with hatred.  You know that too, don’t you?”

Gabrielle closed her eyes.  Nothing changed.  She still saw darkness, was still aware of the temple around her.  She considered the words, and faced them as she always faced what was true.  Yes, I know that. 

“You think you hate yourself, though,” the voice went on, prodding at her words, prying them apart.  “For being alive.”

Yes.  Gabrielle felt her head nodding, stilled it with an effort.  Nothing in that place could see her.  For being alive.  There was more to come, she could feel it. 

“And if I said you were lying to yourself?  If I said that you hate her more?”  The voice was a softer than ever, a burring whisper which seemed to catch on the word “her”, pulling and teasing at it insidiously, possessively.  Gabrielle stiffened in outrage, but held her tongue.  “What if I say that you hate her not just for being dead when she could be alive and with you, but for not thinking you were a good enough reason to live.”

Her answer was immediate this time.  She’d spent years coming to terms with this.  I’d say you were wrong.  Gabrielle opened her eyes again.  She stared into the darkness.  I hate her as much as I hate myself, not more, she told it steadily.  I hate her for not being alive when she could be.  For not knowing that neither of us could be truly ourselves without the other half of our soul.  She paused for a moment, considering, remembering the dark nights spent enduring this truth, then went on.  I hate her for making me let her stay dead, because she knew I would not stop her doing what she wanted to do.  She had faced this long ago, on that godsbedamned ship as crawled back from Japa.  Faced it and lived with it ever since. 

She made herself continue, though the old bitterness was rising with withering force.  And I hate myself just as much for that too, because I would not let myself force her to do what I wanted.   Whatever she wanted.  Gabrielle remembered nights spent by the dying embers of camp fires which never seemed to give out enough heat while her thoughts chased themselves round her head like rats trapped in a maze made of iron.  What I knew was the right thing to do.

“No.  You’re merely justifying yourself.”  For the first time the voice hardened, raised.  It battered her, and she reeled, but felt relief as well.  The voice no longer trusted to the force of its reason to destroy her, she sensed.  It was resorting to cruder weapons; it had been shaken.   She readied herself.  Suddenly it was no longer an omniscient presence which filled the world.  It had shrunk.  It was a threat, an obstacle, something she would not go round but would fight her way through.  If she had the strength.

“You hate her for not loving you.  You hate her for leaving you alone.  For forsaking love, and you.”  The voice was thunder now.  It drove Gabrielle to the floor.  She found herself on her knees, her arms braced, her palms flat on the oaken planking.  She was not sure if the words had hammered her down, or the weight of the darkness within her, which was growing again, getting denser.  It drove the air out of her, and she heard herself moan as it forced itself through her throat. 

In front of her, the darkness intensified and so did the buzzing.  She had seen something like this once before, Gabrielle recalled, and then with horror remembered being lost, separated from her parents while they travelled to visit an old friend.  She had been very young; this was almost her first memory.  Heat, tiredness, fear, a long white path, something weird on it ahead, something which had a peculiar, shiny black shimmer and made a strange sound.  It had scared her, but she had been fascinated too.  She never had been able to resist something which appealed to her curiosity.  So she had toddled right up to it, until the myriad blow flies rose from rotted carrion and swarmed furiously around her head instead.

“That’s it,” the voice suggested, quietly again.  “That bloated, dead thing.  That’s your life without her in it.  Your half life, without your heart and soul.”  And Gabrielle vomited dryly, unable to escape from the image, at the mercy of feelings she had repressed for too long.

Then someone came into the temple behind her.  Gabrielle’s eyes saw the long shadow cast within the slanting rectangle of sunlight which shone through its open doorway.  The girl, of course.  She was standing beside her now, her hand on her shoulder.  Her mouth was open and with a jolt Gabrielle realised that the girl was screaming.  No, shouting intelligible words, the first she had ever heard from her.  “No!” she was shouting.  “Leave her alone!”  Gabrielle felt the darkness change its focus, bend itself towards the girl.  Leave her alone, she yelled at it in her turn, struggling up with infinite effort, moving the girl behind her.  We’re talking about me.  She straightened her back and lifted her chin.  And yes, I hate her for that too.  For never allowing herself redemption.  For thinking that  giving herself to her guilt and their vengeance would bring her peace.  For not knowing I  was her peace, if only she loved me enough. 

“Ah.”  She had its attention back again, she could feel it.   She had startled it somehow, unsettled it.  Most people did anything rather than face it, she guessed.  They would evade it, but not she.  She would smash it apart or die trying.  It was not used to such an assault; she had become a challenge it could not afford to ignore.  “But you are still lying to yourself.  Because it’s you who did not love enough, and that’s why you hate her, and why you hate yourself.  Because you didn’t love her enough to bring her back anyway, whatever she wanted.”

Gabrielle could almost have laughed, if she could have made any sound at all.  Now she was sure both that she knew what the voice was, and that it had made a mistake.  She gathered herself and her words.  Her weapons, weighted only with the truth, which it thought could destroy her.  Some part of her took the time to appreciate the irony.  She felt for the girl’s hand and hung on tightly.

No, that’s not it, she said quietly.  Love isn’t like that.  You don’t understand love at all.  She reached inside herself for the strength she needed to say what needed to be said.  The truth.  I knew she didn’t love me as I loved her.  She had always known that, almost from the start.  But that didn’t matter, because I loved her.  All of her.  And so I knew her, and I knew this as well.  And I knew I had to let her be who she was and do what she wanted.  Gabrielle had to pause.  She felt so tired, so heavy.  The darkness inside her had swelled so much it seemed to be pressing her breast bone right out through her skin.  She swayed again, and the girl tightened her grip on her hand.

Concentrating on that clasp, on the warm flesh she knew was about her fingers, Gabrielle steadied herself, fumbled for the words which had scattered in her head, reassembled them once more.  I knew she loved me as much as she could, she continued at last.  I know that still.  We both loved each other as much as we could.  And as much as I hate her, and myself, I love her more.  I always will.

Gabrielle was not really aware of the silence that followed, so absorbed was she in containing whatever was rising within her.  It wasn’t over yet, she knew that.  She had to stay sharp, to stay focused.  Yet she could barely stay upright.  And perhaps she had made a mistake as well.  Perhaps she had not conquered her grief but suppressed it; perhaps it had conquered her instead.

“You’re lying,” the voice said, and dazed though she was, she could hear it was reaching.  “You don’t love her.”  It paused, seemed to calm itself.  There was more confidence in its tone as it spoke its next words.  “You can’t forgive her, that’s the truth of it.  You can’t even say her name.

Gabrielle knew it was time.  The weight inside her could no longer be borne.  It had swelled so much that there was no more room within her.  She opened her mouth and felt it rise like a stone, scraping her throat with its roughness, felt it emerge in one huge, choking sob.  “Xena!” She flung the word into the listening darkness, imagined its impact on the black, brooding thing.  That night in Japa came back to her.  She had lain by the fountain and battered her fists on the black granite around it till her flesh tore and shredded.  The scars were still there.  Now she used her words like her fists on a huge slab of rock she must batter her way through.  This time, she swore, things would be different.  This time she knew where the flaws lay, where it might be fractured and shivered to dust. 

“Xena,” she said once more, her fist striking out at the rock again.  Against all reason, she sensed its recoil and its rage, knew it was gathering itself for one last assault upon her.  It was desperate to smash her, but its desperation gave her hope.  She turned her attention away from it, ignoring it deliberately as she marshalled more words, said them for herself and her own darkness.  “I love you Xena,” she breathed. “And I forgive us both.”

When her senses returned, she thought she must be lying in a high mountain meadow in Hellas, so full of light did she sense the air around her to be.  Perhaps I’m dead at last, she guessed dreamily, and was surprised not to feel happier at the thought.  Someone said, “Take it easy, Gabrielle.  You’re okay.”  Solveig, she thought, remembering the name though nothing more.  She tried to say it, but the sounds stuck to the inside of her mouth and she could only mumble.  “Yes, Solveig,” the other woman said, and Gabrielle guessed she was smiling.  “You did it, Gabrielle.  It’s gone.”

It’s gone, Gabrielle repeated silently.  She had the feeling that this was good, though she wasn’t sure why.  The voice, she prompted herself. The blight.  She’d been right about it.  It was like timber rot.  It worked its way into life like poison spreading through veins in a body, and it attacked everything.  The seasons, the crops, animals, nature itself.  As for people, it struck at them most insidiously of all.  It ate into their hearts and minds, sapped their souls, left them with nothing but the truth of their powerlessness and insignificance and futility.

How strange that she had spent so many years preparing to meet it, and never known till today what she was doing.  Facing the truth. Never blinking it, not one bit of it.  She had been so ruthless with herself that nothing the voice could say was able to match it.  She had lived with her grief and her loss and her knowledge that nothing she was could have been enough to prevent them, and the voice had shattered itself on her indifference to it, on her acceptance of despair.  Even that had a purpose, she mused.  And then, wonderingly, another thought suggested itself.  Perhaps there is hope after all. 

This realisation filled Gabrielle with even more wonder.  By challenging the voice, by defeating it, she had rediscovered another truth, a far more potent one.  I was so busy coming to terms with my failure, I let myself forget this.   Or perhaps she had made herself forget it, or her grief had, so that she could function in her life.  It had been locked away, along with her story telling and her memories of Xena, because these things were too painful to bear for a while.   But we aren’t worthless.  We do have power, she told herself.    Our power comes from the things we believe in, and from the things we love.  They change everything.

She moved her head, and became aware that it was supported by something warm and soft.  Solveig’s lap.  It was a comforting feeling, to be lying here quietly with Solveig’s hand gently moving her hair off her brow.  But there was something missing, something she needed to know.  She felt the skin tighten on her forehead as she frowned, trying to think what that was.  “What is it, Gabrielle?” Solveig asked, and when Gabrielle could not answer, she said, “She’s all right.  She’s right beside you.  Open your eyes, Gabrielle.”

With that, relief washed through Gabrielle and she took in a deep breath, surprised to find how easy it was, how free and clear she felt.  I should open my eyes, she thought to herself, and she did.  The air was indeed full of light.  It poured around her in great, filmy swathes.  For a moment she was distracted by the glittering patterns made by motes of dust as they passed through the shafts of brightness.  Like the stars in the heavens, she thought dreamily.  There’s Xena’s sword.  There’s her dipper.  Then she shifted her gaze, passing over the shadowy forms of townsfolk gathered around her till she found the girl at last.  She was kneeling just to Solveig’s right, head down as always, her face covered by hanks of hair. 

“Hey,” Gabrielle said, finding it easier to speak now, and cautiously raised a hand, stretching it out to tug gently at the girl’s sleeve.  “Hey, it’s okay.  I’m good.”  She was, she realised; better than she had felt for a very long time.  She tugged again.  “See?”  The brindled curtain moved a little and the girl looked up.  For the first time, she met Gabrielle’s gaze.  The small woman felt her breath catch and her eyes smart with unshed tears.  She blinked to clear them.  I was right, she thought, recalling her initial, fleeting impression.  She felt herself smile as she said, light-headed with unexpected joy, “Thank you, sweetheart.  Thank you for being there for me.”

It was midsummer’s night.  Solveig had said that if they were to keep going north, they would eventually come to a land where it was never dark in the summer and never light in the winter.  Gabrielle had been tempted.  The thought of a place so full of the sun had seemed very attractive after so many years haunted by darkness.  But in the end she had decided to turn south after all.  She wanted, more than she wanted to see the midnight sun, to see Hellas again.  It was time to go home.  Besides, a land without night would have no stars, and she found her old delight in them had returned as well.

Sighing with contentment, she stretched out on her bedroll and looked at the spangled swirls in the sky above her.  She was teaching the girl to play the pattern game.  Idly she scanned the heavens.  There! she thought.  Her hare.  And there’s her falcon.  And, now where is it?  Yes!  That’s her tortoise.  Gabrielle smiled, remembering the girl’s eagerness, her enthralled absorption as she played earlier that evening.  She was speaking more each day, too, drawing on a wide stock of words she must have gathered through years of listening to what was said around her, even though she was silent herself.  I’ll have her telling stories by the time we get home, Gabrielle promised herself.  That’ll make two bards in the family.

Now when Gabrielle smiled, it was wider than she could remember smiling since she was a girl.  I’m a bard again, she told herself, barely able to believe it.  Just yesterday she had been telling stories, in the common room of a tavern where they had spent the night.  She hadn’t needed to; their room and board had been covered when she sorted out the tough who had been running the local protection racket.  But suddenly she had wanted to, and on that impulse had asked the barkeep if she might. 

She had told several of the old tales, mostly about Xena the Warrior Princess, glad to see the rapt faces of the Inn’s guests as she found words to bring the glory of her partner back to life.  Then, at the end, another tale came into her mind and told itself to her at the same time as she told it to her audience.  A simple, guileless tale about a princess who had been pricked by a poisoned spindle, but who had slept for a hundred years instead of dying and been awoken by a loving kiss.  Gabrielle shook her head at the memory, baffled and charmed in equal measure.  Where did that come from? she wondered.  She had no idea, but she had spent most of the previous night perfecting the tale as she wrote it down.

She had missed this so much, she realised.  Listening to the tales in her head, sharing them with others.  There was nothing like it, that special relationship with an audience.  The support their attention gave her, the way their involvement could carry her along.  Stories create themselves for an audience, and words bask themselves in their sun she thought, and grinned at herself.  Save that till you apply to the Academy for a professorship she teased herself.  Now she had that relationship back, just as she had her relationship with Xena back.  Just as she had Xena back, in her mind and her heart and her spirit.  These things were connected.  Of course they were.  For by letting herself remember Xena, Gabrielle recovered the other half of her soul, and thus herself as well.

Which meant that she could go home as well.  Home to Hellas, to Chalkidike.  It was too far to rush it.  Gabrielle had no intention of exposing the girl to a winter crossing of the southern mountains.  But here, in the west, other routes offered themselves.  There were great rivers to the south, she had heard, and much traffic along them.  They could get to Massalia that way, and there take ship for Potadeia. She had been explaining this to the girl that very afternoon, loving the feel of the names in her mouth, the first time Greek had filled it for so long.  “I’ll have to teach you,” she told her, and started straight away, pointing to things as they went, the girl repeating what she said almost perfectly, and asking, “More, more,” every time Gabrielle stopped.

This had continued through the usual lesson Gabrielle gave her in self defence as she worked through her own forms, and then through their supper, which had included a dessert produced with shy pride by the girl as a surprise.  She had crammed a leaf packet to bursting with ripe, juicy blackberries. They had shared out the treat berry by berry.  By then daylight was finally seeping from the pale northern skies and the stars began to appear in the darkening turquoise reaches of the sky.  They had played the star game till the girl fell asleep.  But Gabrielle stayed awake, keeping their small fire company, too happy to want to lose a minute of this long-forgotten contentment.

To her right, Plato shifted his weight and sighed.  He had new shoes, courtesy of yesterday’s racketeer who had also, it turned out, doubled as the village blacksmith.  She’d figured he owed Plato something for calling him a jug-headed, sway-backed  old screw.  To her left, the girl muttered and turned over.  Gabrielle propped herself on one elbow and reached out, twitching the blanket back to cover her shoulder.  The girl muttered something again, then turned over once more and woke up.  “Hi,” she said, blinking sleepily.  “Is it morning yet?”

“No,” Gabrielle replied softly.  “Not nearly.  Go back to sleep.”

“I had a dream,” the girl said, sitting up instead. 

“A bad one?” Gabrielle asked in swift concern.

“No, I don’t think so.  I don’t remember it much.”  She rubbed her eyes and then looked at Gabrielle.  “I do remember one thing though,” she added.

“What?” Gabrielle, meeting her eyes, imagined she could still see their colour, even by firelight.  Blue as hare bells.  Serene as a calm sea.  The words skipped over the surface of her mind and again she could not help smiling.

“A word.  A name, really.  I think it’s mine.” 

The girl sounded a little afraid, Gabrielle thought, and she said firmly, “That’s good.  That’s very good.  Alse said you would know it when you were ready.”  When you find your soul, she added silently, remembering.  Then she waited.

The girl swallowed, plainly hesitating.  “Do you want to hear it?” she asked.  “It’s a bit weird.  It doesn’t sound like any name I’ve heard before.”

“Of course I do.”  Gabrielle smiled her encouragement.   The name wasn’t important.  She already knew who the girl was.

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