Wood Nymph and the Cranky Saint- Wizard of Yurt - 2 by C. Dale Brittain, Brittain Read Free Book Online

hesitated, not liking to mention the wood nymph before the hermit, and certainly not wanting to terrify him with the horned rabbits or that inhuman footprint.
    But the hermit beckoned me to join them. “Your chaplain’s been trying to tel me that Saint Eusebius has appeared to some priests in a vision, asking to leave the grove, but I’m sure they’re mistaken.
    Perhaps they are not aware of the miracle that occurred only a year after the saint’s death.”
    I sat down at the hermit’s feet, wiling to listen while waiting for my mind to come up with better ideas than I had now.
    “You’ve doubtless heard that a reliquary was made immediately after the saint’s death,” continued the hermit, “to contain al of his mortal remains that had not been eaten by the dragon. You do know about the dragon?”
    “Yes, I know that story.”
    He smiled approvingly. “One sometimes hears that wizards are too dismissive toward concerns ot the church, or even laugh at them, but I’ve never felt that myself.” I tried not to meet either his eyes or Joachim’s.
    “And so for a year,” the hermit continued, “the holy toe was peacefuly kept here, at a shrine built onto the side of the little hermitage where the saint had spent his days—in fact, this very hermitage where I now live. One of Eusebius s pupils lived there as a hermit in obedience to his master’s precepts.
    “But one day three priests arrived in the grove. They said they had come from the church where Eusebius had originaly been made a priest and that they intended to take his holy relics back with them! The young hermit, as you can imagine, almost went mad with despair. He fel on his face in the mud before the shrine and begged Saint Eusebius, his old master, not to leave him.
    “And the saint heard his prayer. For when the three priests tried to lift the reliquary, they found it so heavy they could not budge it. They went for a block and tackle and tried again, but they themselves were hurled into the pool from the strain. And yet when the young hermit lifted the reliquary, it was as light as a feather in his hand. And thus the saint showed that he wanted to stay here, rather than going back to the city he had purposely left behind him. And after al these centuries, after generations of hermits of which I am the last and the least worthy, he has not changed his mind.” I nodded, impressed in spite of myself.
    “As I already told you,” Joachim said quietly, “he seems to have changed his mind now. The letter the bishop received said that the saint was ‘fed up’ with having his relics here.” The hermit turned his smile on the chaplain. “Excuse me, Father, if I tend to discount the testimony of priests who spend their days on secular concerns. I’m sure they mistook his meaning. I realize the saint expresses himself forcibly at times—and error must always be rebuked firmly, as our Lord showed when He drove the money-changers from the Temple—
    but when he has appeared to me, it has always been with a gentle face and a wilingness to be my guide.”
    ‘Then I’l tel this to the bishop,” said Joachim, rising to his feet. I was glad of the excuse to stand up as wel; the damp moss on which I was sitting had started soaking through my trousers.
    After the chaplain and the hermit exchanged final expressions of esteem and reverence, we picked our way back down the steep path by the waterfal to where we had left the horses. I surreptitiously looked for footprints in the mud and saw none but our own.
    “Wil this settle it?” I asked. “Wil the priests who wanted the saint’s relics take the hermit’s word that the saint doesn’t want to leave?”
    “It depends on whether the bishop takes the hermit’s word for it,” said Joachim distractedly. He puled the lunch out of his saddlebag and started eating, but not as though he tasted it. ‘ Did you find the wood nymph, then?”
    “I found her and even tried to speak to her, but she wouldn’t