Maze of Moonlight, Gael Baudino [ebook reader screen TXT] 📗

it. Whatever they've got from you is hidden. An' that's good. But Vanessa: she's . . . taken after me . . . an' . . .”

He whirled suddenly on Varden. “Dan it bother you? Dan it touch you? No . . . it can't, I guess. You're down there i' Saint Brigid wi' people wha look at you wi' belief an' dan hate you. An' you're fading anyway: soon you'll na ha' to worry about anything.” Varden looked away quickly, but Lake continued. “But Vanessa and the rest, and their children, and their children's children . . . now and again it's going to show up in them, and they'll ha' to fight wi' it, and they'll either deny it, or go mad, or get burned or . . . or . . .” His hands were shaking furiously, and he clenched them and thrust them into the pockets of his overtunic. “Or they'll ha' it wake up i' them, and then one day, if they've enough o' it, they wan't be human anymore. An' then it'll be all the same for 'em. They'll die anyway.”

Varden did not look up. “And do you wish that I had not loved your mother?”

“I . . .” How much did Varden's kind feel? Did they bleed? Of course they did. The Inquisition had demonstrated that over and over again. But could they bleed inside? Could they feel that day-to-day gnawing that could turn every hour into a new trial, every careless word into a pang of fear? Lake did not know.

But Varden was weeping silently now: a grief too deep for utterance, a sorrow that struck its roots down into the infinite ages of the past. Did he feel? Of course he did.

“Forgive me,” said Lake.

Varden shook his head. “It is I who should ask forgiveness. I have troubled you. That was not my intent. It is not the intent of our—” Instinctive courtesy made him catch himself. “Of my people.”

“We've needed t' talk,” said Lake heavily, “if only t' shout at one another. I guess we've both known that for a long time.”

Varden nodded.

“You want to know about Vanessa.”

“Tell me. Please.”

“Why? Wha' can you do for her?”

“I would protect her.”

The transparency made a mockery of Varden's words. Lake glared at him. “You can't protect her. You can't do anything for her.”

Shadowed and glimmering in the dusk left by the low fire, Varden took a deep breath. “Tell me.”

“She's . . . different.” Lake spoke softly, unwillingly, as though his utterance might make more real an already too real fact. “The other children, they grew up, married, started families. Charlotte wa' the last. She's up in Furze now wi' a hat maker, an' doing well. Anthony lives a few fields awa'. He's the eldest, ha' children of his own, and Baron Paul waived the inheritance fees: when I die, he'll take my fields wi'out cost or question.” He stared moodily into the fire. “All o' them, all quite normal. And then . . . Vanessa.”

Varden leaned forward, listening.

“She wa' strange from the beginning,” Lake went on, just as softly, just as unwillingly. “Even when she wa' barely talking, she spoke o' things that set the priest to crossing hi'self. She'd go an' play with the river as though it were another child, and she'd talk to birds like she thought they'd answer.” Above, in the loft, he heard his daughter stir, cry out softly in her sleep, fall silent again. “We tried to ignore it, but it kept getting worse, and now . . .” He shook his head. “It's as if she in't really one o' us.”

Varden's starlit eyes were intent, fixed. “What do you do about it, Lake?”

“Wha' am I supposed to do?” Lake shrugged helplessly. “Foster it? It's as though she's old and young at once. She says strange things, asks odd questions. She's always talking about the patterns—”

“The Dance.”

“She calls it the patterns. She tells people what's going to happen. She's ne'er wrong. But she dan talk much to me. I can't say but that I dan let her.”

Varden looked alarmed. With a guilty glance at the loft, Lake sat down, leaned towards him, spoke earnestly. “I grew up i' Saint Brigid,” he said. “They tolerated such things there. It's different now, I'm sure, but of all the Free Towns, Saint Brigid probably still tolerates them.”

Varden nodded. “They do.”

“They even tolerated Ma, so long as she wa' . . . discreet.”

“They did. And they love Charity.”

Lake shook his head. “I couldn't stand it i' Saint Brigid. E'eryone knew, an' so I ran awa'. I wanted to be . . . human. I wanted to fit in. I din't want people pointing at me, whispering to one another. There he goes, they'd say. There he is, the Elf-child. One o' us, and yet not. I ran awa' from that, came to Furze Hamlet here, settled down. I learned the ways, married, had children . . . and now . . . now it's all cam back on me, and it's put us all in danger.”

“Does the priest trouble you?” Varden was keeping his voice carefully neutral.

Lake grimaced. “Bonnerel is a good man. At first he spoke o' it as some kind of holy vision . . . like Clare or Hildegard. But he's always been uneasy about what he's heard about me, and he's frightened by what he sees in Vanessa, because she really in't anything like Clare or Hildegard. He's getting more frightened, too, an' he might just do something sa'day.” He passed a hand across his moist brow. Someday? Any day. “I can't blame him. She's like sa'thing out o' the forest.”

“Vanessa is as human as you.”

“Aye, Varden. Tha's it exactly. As human as me.” Lake felt the anger rising again. Varden could talk of comfort, could mumble all the reassuring words that he wanted, but that did not change in the slightest the fact that Lake could not look into his daughter's eyes without having his