Wow. Yune sent me 5 PAGES of good writing. This is a fantastic story, even if it did take her about 2 hours.
The music played on, even as Seth searched for its source. He had been startled to hear the first breathy notes of pipes when he had first ventured into the shadowed woods where the villagers dared not go. It meant someone else had been foolish and desperate enough to come here. And yet the song was a light, joyous one. No one had been joyous since the drought had begun.
He followed the melody almost mindlessly, and it led him into a clearing where lay a pool. But another sight distracted him even more than the water. A woman was sitting on a fallen log with her back to him, swaying dreamily to the music. Her hands were clearly empty. But she was facing the water, and along its edge grew reeds.
The reeds. The wind was blowing on the reeds in just the right way so as to produce melody.
"Witchcraft," he whispered, and crossed himself.
The woman leapt to her feet and whirled to face him. The music tangled into discord, then faded entirely. The air seemed hollow without it. She started to run, but Seth sprang forward and seized her wrist, jerking her to a halt. She tried to pull away, but he was far stronger than she, and he stilled her enough to get his first good look at her.
The village whispered that there was a wood-witch. They never said that she was only a girl, slender enough to be lifted by a wind and far too young to have cheeks so hollow or eyes so haunted.
"You're the witch?" he asked, his thoughts sluggish.
She stopped her struggles and lifted her chin proudly. "The winds are mine," she said. "I use them for no ill. If that still makes me a witch, then so I am. Did you come to hunt me down and tie me to a stake and burn me?"
"No, I--" Seth almost released her to gesture at the waterskins he had dropped in order to catch her. "I was looking for water. Our wells have gone dry."
Her eyes narrowed. "That's none of my concern." A gale buffeted him so suddenly that he nearly fell over. Instinctively he hunched over and leaned hard against it, dragging her down with him. The wind threatened to tear him away from the earth that he clung to. He tightened his grip on her arm, until he heard her gasp with pain.
"I'm sorry," he said, and released her. She was only a girl, and half-starved; he almost could have wrapped his fingers twice around her wrist. "I didn't mean to hurt you." His tongue felt large and clumsy in his mouth. "Just...you were going to leave, and take the music with you."
She immediately stood and stepped away, but she did not flee. The haughtiness had faded from her face now, and there was a furrow between her brows. Slowly, with the wary movements of an untamed creature, she bent to pick up one of his waterskins and offered it to him. "When you leave, then, take some water. The pool is fed by an underground spring, and there is plenty even when there are no rains."
He reached forward and took it from her. When his fingers touched the waterskin, she flinched a little, as though even that mediated touch was startling. She had been here in the woods, away from people, a long time.
He stood there, feeling a strange reluctance to turn away. "The priest says you have cursed us," he said.
She looked at him disdainfully. "As though I would care enough to meddle in your village's affairs. Men chased me out of them four years ago, and I now thank them for it. Besides, if your god is so strong, should he not be able to overcome my paltry powers and bless you with rain?"
That was the priest's other accusation: lack of faith. Seth was not the most devout of men, though. He didn't believe the priest. And he didn't believe this girl, either. "Doesn't it get lonely?" he asked her.
She stiffened. "I'm happy here," she said. "I don't care for walls and iron and the pettiness of townsfolk." And she slipped away before he could protest.
He filled his waterskins and returned home, thoughtful. His wife Sharra greeted him with relief. "Never go there again," she pleaded with him.
"We needed the water." He touched her face, so gaunt and troubled.
"It's a cursed place. I don't dare let anyone else know where you got this, or that we have it at all."
But she used it willingly enough, and in time Seth judged that he needed to fetch more. This time he wandered the woods calling, "Wood-witch!"
"My name is Lynn," she said irritably from behind him, and he turned to see her glaring at him. "What do you want?"
"I wanted to ask for more water from your pool."
She made a dismissive gesture. "It's yours, as long as you don't bring the entire village down upon me."
"And..." He hesitated. "Could you play the reeds again?"
Her face softened. "There's no music in your village?"
"There's been no time for merrymaking since the rains stopped coming," he said.
She nodded at last, and he followed the girl over to the pool, where he filled his waterskins to the sound of the winds flickering over the reeds with a delicacy no fingers or lips could have managed.
He came regularly after that, until Sharra's protests finally faded for lack of effect. He learned how Lynn's mother had been a witch before her, and burned at the stake. She had managed to escape, and had learned to live in the woods. She had a quick temper, but he had been right: there was something in her that still craved human company, and if he stayed long enough, she would always come.
She gave him a whistle, fashioned out of wood. "I will always hear it," she told him. He wore it on a cord around his neck, and the next time he entered the woods, he blew it and was delighted to hear an impossibly complex trill of melody. And sure enough, Lynn came soon afterward.
One day he said to her, "You should come back to the village with me. Sharra wouldn't mind. We've always wanted a child, but we never could have one."
"I don't think I could be any man's daughter," she said, but the words lacked the edge they could have held. "I've lived alone and answerable to no one but myself for too long."
"At least see my home," he urged her. "Sleep a night on a bed instead of on dry leaves."
She wavered.
"Sharra can cook you a meal. You must be weary of living off of whatever you can forage."
And she sighed and said, "All right."
So the two of them left the woods. Seth took his usual discreet path to his house. Sharra always watched for him from the window. But this time she met him at the door.
"How dare you?" she spat.
Lynn immediately drew back. Seth looked at his wife questioningly. His expression only seemed to enrage her more.
"You think I didn't know? But did you have to come rub it in my face?"
For the first time he realized how Sharra must see Lynn: not as a poor, barefoot child with tattered clothes and browned skin, but as a young woman with a fierce wild beauty evident even through the grime.
"Sneaking off so often...I knew it was a woman. Off in the woods for a lover's tryst."
"That's not so," he said calmly, but she was already going on.
"And now you bring her back here! You think you can set up this chit in our home? We built this place together! We had everything we needed. You don't need this trinket or token or whatever it is you've been hiding around your neck--"
"Sharra," he said, but she had already snatched it up, breaking the cord and leaving a sting at the back of his neck.
"What is it? A whistle?" She laughed without humor and blew into it, contemptuously.
A fragment of song emerged.
Sharra stared at it, then dropped it and backed away. "What is it?" she said again, this time in a whisper.
The villagers had already begun to gather at the spectacle of a public fight. Now the circle widened, as though no one wished to stand too close to him. He scanned the faces, all of them familiar to him, none of them friendly. He was only glad that there was no sign of Lynn. She must have managed to escape.
"Witch," the ugly mutter began to rise, and Seth felt a sudden chill.
There was a ripple in the circle, and then the priest thrust himself forward. "Witch," he repeated with an ugly smile.
Sharra shrieked, "No! He's not!" She lunged forward for the whistle, but the priest got to it first. He turned it over in his fingers thoughtfully, then fastidiously cleaned the mouthpiece on his sleeve before venturing the slightest of breaths into it.
The notes were pure and clear and ironically bright and cheerful.
"This," the priest said softly, "is surely witchcraft. Seth, is this yours? Did you make it?"
There was a truth and a lie before him. He thought of men combing the woods, of seizing Lynn's frail frame and holding it against a stake while they tied her to it.
"Yes," he said.
Sharra screamed again, but two men held her back while others moved in on Seth. Still more left under the priest's strident orders to fetch wood...and a torch.
Seth did not offer any resistance as they build the wood pile, then placed him at its center and secured him there. What was the point? Even if he could win free, he was not like Lynn, to be able to live content in the woods away from other men.
Someone brought out the torch. The priest accepted it, then turned to him.
Seth turned his head aside. He could see Sharra's stricken face as the priest thundered, "Ask the god for forgiveness!"
"Help me," Seth whispered. But he was not praying to the god.
The priest lowered the torch. Flames began to lick their way up the tinder. The wood was dry, of course, and it flared into heat against the soles of his feet in only a short while. The winds were strong, and fanned them even higher. But the minutes seemed to slow for Seth, stretching almost languorously.
He leaned his head back against the stake and looked up. The skies above were dark. He watched the clouds gather with unnatural swiftness, so that even the sliver of the moon grew so thin it vanished, and a veil drew across the stars.
Then he felt them on his face. Raindrops. She had brought the stormclouds here.
Then they began to fall upon everyone else, and a shout went up. "Rain!" People threw their heads back and let the water soak their clothes, their skin. And there was the hiss of steam added to the tumult, as the rain became a torrent and doused the fire beneath Seth.
"It's a miracle!" someone said, pulling on the priest's sleeve. "The god has declared him innocent!"
The priest scowled, but someone else picked up the cry and there were suddenly hands busy at the ropes that tied him. Some people cheered him, but there was too much chaos now, everyone rushing home, busy trying to find container to catch water. They were running in the streets, the mud, and for the first time since the drought had begun, Seth heard laughter in the village.
One person was standing still and smiling, all her joy for him. He went to Sharra and embraced her.
She held him tightly. "Seth, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry--"
"It's all right. I understand. I did wrong, too. I should have let you know."
She clung to him, sobbing. He waited until she had quieted, and then he gently put her from him.
"I have to go to the woods," he said.
She stared at him. "But now the storm's blowing!"
"That's why," he said as gently as he could. "It will be the last time, and then I will come back. I promise." He kissed her forehead, then left her while she was still standing there, bewildered.
He knew where he would find her. She was not at the pool when he reached it, but he sat down upon the log and waited. He didn't need a whistle this time.
She came after a few minutes. She sat next to him and leaned her head against his shoulder. She did not say, I'd best stay here. He did not say, I'd best see you no longer. She did not say, If I had brought the rain earlier, you would have stopped coming here. He did not say, Thank you for my life. If she cried, any tears that wet his shirt were lost among the raindrops.
After the silence had drawn on long enough for all their words to remain unsaid, she stood up and walked away. She did not look back.
The rain felt like needles when it struck his skin, and the winds whipping between the trees bitter cold, but his shoulder felt strangely warm as he sat in the rain.
Currently grooving to: Ben Folds - One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn