Silver Eve by Sandra Waugh Read Free Book Online

clinging to the velvet tips of cattails. It was sweetly pastoral: a bee drunkenly weaving through the clover, the kid bleating after his mother, the stream bubbling quick and clear and cold; none showed concern. Harker’s ominous foreboding had echoed mine—that something dark was coming to our little world—but it was not present here. Perhaps I’d lost myself at last.
    Except that Harker had said those words:
You will find no peace here.
Prophetic or mocking, they were more than a little thorn. And his cryptic verse, his challenge and warnings made everything unsettled and wanting. It burned me that he said I
earned
those things. He knew questions would bubble up in me, eat away at any peace. I should defy his words to prove him wrong; stay here in this spot until whoever owned this hut and these goats returned in a week, a fortnight, a lifetime.
    I lasted two days.
    Two days: milking the nanny goat, collecting berries and salad greens, gathering dead branches and fishing cinder stones for fires out of the stream. The hut had a cup and a plate and a broom for sweeping; I wove a basket from the willow to add as way of thanks. I cleaned my marsh-filthy clothes. I played with the kid, or rather, he ran from me as I chased him. And I slept under the stars, for it was so pretty, and too warm for the hut. Lark would have loved this solace.
    But while my hands were useful, my mind was fixed on the old seer. What had Harker meant by not letting Lark help me? What had he meant by
find the shell
? Why did he say to open my eyes? No chore, no sleep helped me escape his words or the want to understand his prophecies….I finally had to surrender in agreement with the seer, the sweetness of this place paling as I fretted: There was no peace here.
    Another battle raged inside as well: I already knew how to find answers to the seer’s offerings. I had the yew and minion still; they could be combined in a spell to create a powerful mind opener called the Insight. Except it was a dangerous crafting, and something for a magician, not a simple Healer.
    They were different, magic-makers and Healers. Healers were born with their gift, while a magician was someone who learned the craft. A Healer’s work was limited to the ways of Nature; the magician’s not. A magician was a conjurer, but, then, he did not have the Healer’s hands, the natural instinct for rescue, for assuaging pain. Either way, efforts done in ignorance made for danger.
    But, if a Healer chose to study the ways of magic beyond her innate understanding of herb and mineral, then she blended simple instinct with learned technique—a most powerful combination, far more powerful than any magician. And the title of White Healer was bestowed.
    I knew the makings of the Insight spell. Certainly not from Grandmama, who had no use for curiosity-soothing enchantments. Grandmama was not curious; “necessary knowledge” was all she wanted. I was not so calm—though I knew Lark thought me so. For Grandmama it was enough to be a Healer, but I wanted to be a White Healer. I wanted to learn magic.
    ’Twas not difficult to search out such knowledge. Market days brought any variety of mysticism mixed into gossip. Someone could be pointed to if you asked, or eagerness might draw someone to find you. Dame Gringer was a White Healer from the village of Crene who traded geese at market. She’d enjoyed my interest and had lent me metal-bound books of spells and potions, which I’d pored over in between barters. At the end of the day I’d return the books and ask a handful of questions. “You have potential,” the dame would always encourage.
    Herbs and minerals used for simple healing had much greater powers when combined with the proper spells. I learned that yew could be used to raise the dead, or, combined with minion and with proper crafting, yew could make the Insight spell. I learned as well that using such a spell could be life changing. Not even a year back Dame Gringer made