Andre Norton - Zarsthor's Bane

Between them and the girl the flower held its constant light, not bright, but not dimming either. The creatures edged backwards. Brixia made no move to follow them beyond the line their dance had set—the limit of the tree’s overhanging branching. She knew, though not how, that the canopy of that growth represented a barrier of a sort, and for her a refuge.

There was an attempt to begin the dance once again. But, though those a little beyond her croaked and gestured, none would pass where she stood flower in hand. At last they broke in earnest, pattering off into the dark. Though they did not altogether desert the battlefield, for, as she returned to settle under the tree she could hear croaking calls, gibbering, arising through the darkness, and guessed that she now lay besieged.

She was hungry and she was thirsty. Another brief thought of the pack she had left in the dale at the beginning of this adventure made her sigh at her folly. But both hunger and thirst were muted—they might have tormented another part of her, detached from the person who sat under the tree, nursing the bloom, its petals as fine and firm as if carved of some treasured gem stone.

On impulse Brixia breathed more deeply of that fragrance. Nor was she fully conscious of what she did then as she turned to the tree behind her shoulder. Placing the flower carefully on the ground, she knelt and embraced the trunk with her arms, setting her mouth to its smooth bark. Her tongue touched that bark, swept back and forth across its surface. Though her flesh did not have the rasping abilities of Uta’s, it would seem that she did so fret the wood. For there was moisture now rising to her licking. Drops oozed out which she could suck.

Neither sweet nor sour, having a taste she could not honestly give any name to, that moisture dribbled, flowing faster as her tongue continued to lick the bark, answering the sucking of her lips. She swallowed, sucked, swallowed.

Thirst was gone, and hunger. Brixia was filled, revived. A murmuring enveloped her, blotting out the calls of the toad folk. Brixia lifted her head, laughed joyfully.

“Green mother you truly are! For your strength do I give thanks, Lady of the flowers! Ahhh—but what thanks can such as I render unto you?”

There was a sadness born in her. This was the emotion someone might know if she looked through a doorway into a place of great joy and yet dared not enter therein. If this was magic (and how could it be else than that?) let no man hereafter decry such magic in her hearing. The girl leaned once more against the tree and set her lips to the bark, not now for filling and comforting, but in wonder and joy.

Then she turned and curled up, the flower beside her face, her spear lying forgotten. With perfect faith in her safety she slept.

Brixia awoke softly and happily. The sun had arisen far enough to send gold fingers into the Waste. She lay looking up drowsily, wrapped in a strange content, into the meeting of branches over her.

Those flowers which had been candles in the night were now tight closed in sheathing of red-brown outer casing. None had faded, fallen from the branches. As she turned her head a little the girl saw the one she had plucked resting on the ground beside her, no longer wide open, but changed into a cylinder of brown as were its sisters on the tree.

She was not hungry, nor did her feet ache now. Instead she felt alert, strong. And—

Brixia shook her head. Did dreams hold over into waking hours? She could blink, close her eyes, and see, somehow with her mind, a pathway. There was growing in her a sense of compulsion, a restless feeling that she was needed somewhere—for a task she did not yet understand.

She picked up the tightly encased flower, putting it into the front of her shirt where it might ride safe against her skin. Once more on her feet the girl looked to the tree and spoke softly:

“Green mother, what magic you have worked for me I am not wise enough to understand. But I do not doubt that it will smooth my path. In your name from this time forth shall I go not unmindful of all which grows from roots, lifts stems or branches to the sky. We share life truly—this lesson have I learned.”

That was so. Never again would she look upon forms of life different from her own without heeding their wonder. Did one who was blind and suddenly gain sight view the world with such sharp clarity as was hers in this early morning?

Each twist of coarse grass, rise of stunted and twisted bush in the land beyond, was transformed for her into a thing rare and strange. All stood differently from its fellow, offered an infinite variety of shape.

Brixia picked up the spear. As the world of green growth had come to a new life for her, so had there also been set in her mind the way she must go. In that going she must no longer tarry. There was a need for her.

On she sped at a steady trot. Those toad things that had striven to use their sorcery to her defeat were gone. Without being told the girl knew that sunlight raised a barrier against them.

Now and then, on some patch of earth, she saw tracks; boots had pressed here. Woven in and out among those markings were the pad prints left by Uta. The three she followed had come this way.

In one place Uta’s tracks were to one side, a number together. Brixia nodded, though there was no other there to see her acknowledgment of what the cat had done. Uta, she was very sure, had deliberately set those signs for her, Brixia—in a way as clear as any road sign of the Dales.

The girl no longer questioned the purpose of her own actions. Dimly she understood that she could not turn aside now from this trail.

There was life in the Waste—but none which this morning appeared threatening. Leapers jumped once or twice before her, streaking away with speed in those great bounds which had given them their country name. Brixia sighted an armor clothed lizard, its reddish scales matching the sand about the rock on which it sat. Jeweled eyes surveyed her as she passed. It did not share the leapers’ fear.

A flock of birds called and fluttered up from the earth, to fly only a short distance and then light again, searching for insects. They were dun in color, as was much of this land, for there were no sharp and brilliant greens, no flowers to star the grass. The vegetation was as dusty as the soil. One or two plants with fleshy, grey-red leaves stood isolated. Around the roots of those lay shellcases of beetles, homy legs, debris of feasts dropped from the stems ending in thorned leaf pairs ready to close on new prey.

This part of the Waste did not lie level, rather possessed a number of rounded hills—like dunes of shore sand—save that these were of earth, not so easily wind-shifted. Thus the trail Brixia now followed did not run straight, but wove a way back and forth among those. As they rose higher the less far she could see.

The feeling of rightness with the world which had been hers upon awakening under the shelter of the tree had ebbed little by little as Brixia penetrated further into the maze of the mound country. Coarse grass grew on the sides of those—but the clumps did not resemble true vegetation, rather they appeared more like rank fur covering the bodies of crouching beasts who allowed her to venture in so far amidst their herd so she would prove easy prey when they ceased to toy cruelly with her and sprang—

Fancies—yes, but such as were not normally like her to dwell upon. Brixia even paused twice to thud her spear point into a mound side just because she must so reassure herself that this was indeed only dank earth and grass and no such menace as creeping thought suggested.

A portion of her mind arose to question. These fear-forms—surely they were not hers. Fear she had long known, but that was all of tangible things, wolves of her own breed, cold, hunger, sickness—all which was ready to assault the helpless or the careless. Never had she drawn upon fancy to supply new enemies.