Mud Root Girl
From Tales the Wind Told
By Brooks Mencher
Leave the old city -- with its gray slate roofs and rain-muttled roads -- and travel east by the river. In five days: a village. And then a second village. In twelve days, there are mountains.
These mountains were home to Medriel, a water spirit, and Methuselah, a leopard so black that he was like a shadow even at night.
It is easy to imagine a fearsome leopard, as black as night, prowling through his forest. But what does a water spirit look like? According to the inhabitants of the cobbled, cathedraled city, you cannot see spirits. Spirits are invisible, they would say. In contrast, the people who live in First Village would say that spirits are clearly visible and may look like lights or stars, or like small people with odd features.
And if one were to mention a water spirit in Second Village, nearest the mountains? The inhabitants there dislike everything that lies beyond their mud streets and mud shacks. They believe in nothing, neither angel nor demon, and they spend their lives chewing hard, dried grain and kernels of corn, and hunting small animals. They are fond of war, wherever it may be, and the implements of war. For the people in Second Village, there are no spirits of any kind.
First Village would not be surprised to learn that Medriel, the water spirit, looked as if she were made from the roots of a tree and had the soft brown eyes of a deer, only smaller; that her arms and legs were twisted and rootlike, and that she stood no taller than a person's knee. And they also know this about a water spirit: It cannot leave the water and join the world of people without leaving something behind. That was the way the world worked. Something like a charm, or a song or a kiss . . . maybe nothing more than the breath it takes to blow out a candle.
But how does a water spirit see herself? Would Medriel know she was made of wood? Covered with bark? Or would a water spirit think she looked like a star as it falls through the immense night sky? Like a candle flame?
"I am a water spirit," thought Medriel. "And what is my life? Ancient! Forgotten . . . Before the tree grew from its seed, was I! This spring is my home. The groaning pressure deep in the Earth is my music! For innumerable years there was no day or night for me, for my life was underground amid stone and root, though I could sense in my heart the pull of the moon and feel the sun's warmth within the ground. And because of the pull of one and the warmth of the other, I could reflect on the passage of time. So . . . I am very old, I think, in the lives of trees.
"Tangled deep in the roots I lived. Crystal-cold water washed through me! I heard the song of the trees, and in that tale was the rumor of a sky that I had never seen, stars that sparkled above me yet remained hidden, wind that never touched my cheek! The tree sang to me, and never would I have known of branch or leaf, bark or bird, had the tree not whispered these secrets to me!
"So, in time, I gathered all my will and all my strength . . . and poked my head up out of the water and looked up . . . Stars! ... And I pulled myself out of the crystal-clear pond . . . A breath of wind! . . . And I sat upon the rock. There across from me was Methuselah, a fearsome beast with shining green eyes, his hair sparkling beneath the stars, his whiskers catching the light of the moon and his fangs glistening white. I leaped back into the pool!"
But time passed and Medriel befriended the great beast, and she and Methuselah sat beside the spring every night, listening to the wind as it blew down from the peaks, and Medriel, the water spirit, wondered what became of the wind after it continued down to the lower hills and the flat lands below. And what of her water? It, too, sought the downhill path and even within her range of vision grew bigger and wider as it flowed away . . . to where?
Looking back, it seems obvious: After Medriel had awakened from her silent life beneath the Earth, she knew she must see the world of the sun and moon for herself, and not just listen to the tales the wind told or the stories of trees. She chose to leave her spring on a night bright with moonlight, the better to see her path. She pulled herself out onto the stone and sat for a moment, turning back to look at the pool. The surface of the water was so still and black that she could see the unmoving moon and stars reflected in its surface. Was this her pool, or was it another sky? She blew on the water and watched the ripples, and it seemed that the glassy surface rose and grasped her breath within the ripples, and pulled it down and into the watery roots below. But Medriel knew it was her pond with the moon's reflection after all, and was not another sky at all. Then she rose and began her journey. But it was not easy for her to walk due to the stiffness of her wooden joints, the uneven lengths of her root legs, and, simply, the newness of walking.
She traveled and traveled, sleeping by day (for the sunlight was too bright for her at first), hidden in thickets and scrabble, and hobbling along by night. Several weeks passed and she still had gone no farther than the very forest that surrounded her spring. She met no living soul except for sparrows and squirrels -- and whatever other creatures lived in the brush and fled the presence of Methuselah. The world, she learned, was very big.
What direction did she go? Following the wind and the water, she traveled downhill, bound for the curious settlement of people who lived in the village below. Methuselah, of course, was at ease with the journey while he was in the hills and meadows, for he was used to traversing the broadest and tallest of mountains and the steepest of valleys. His pace was utterly silent, his eyes and ears were perfectly aware. So he roamed in front or loped behind or to the side as his vigilance demanded. He did not, however, feel comfortable as they approached the settlements of humans, and it was bad luck for the pair to come upon Second Village first, for this was where the inhabitants were least intelligent and most harmful. In Second Village, they stole people.
Mud Root Girl!" screamed the Wife, "Boil . . . That . . . Water! Boil it! Put the water in the pan, put that pan in the fire, stir the fire with your good arm! It's a blessing to me that you can't talk! Don't touch that! Get the pan, put water in the pan, put the pan on the fire and stir the fire with your good arm! Husband will be home soon!"
Medriel carefully placed a chair on the plank floorboards near the table and climbed up to reach the big pot that was used to boil water for soup. The heavy iron pot was about as tall as Medriel, but she managed to drag it off the table and they both fell to the floor with a crash. The pot smashed into the floor, cracking the rough, dry wood, and rolled until it slammed into the door. Medriel didn't roll, but hit the floor with thud, and lay there unmoving.
"Mud Root Girl!" screeched the Wife. Then she said, "I'd send you to the army, oh, yes, but they need flesh and blood! They need conscripts! Always have! And there's a good coin or two for the likes of me in providing conscripts. You?! They would grind you down for rifle stock, for a soldier's wood leg, yes, they would, but you're so worm-ridden they couldn't! Can't sell you for something when you're nothing! You're a curse to me, that's what you are!"
After the water had been fetched and boiled, a hundred other tasks lay before Medriel, the water spirit. Alas that she had wandered into the village on a chill autumn day, and had been captured and forced into servitude. Medriel had faced many cruelties and beatings in this home, and many were the threats, not the least of which was to be pitched into the fire and burned to heat Husband's dinner.
"Don't touch that, Mud Root Girl!" The Wife picked up a few barley kernels from a bowl at the table and waved them in front of Medriel's face. "This here is Husband's food! A blessing! Don't you touch it, Mud Root Girl, or it'll be the poker for you, and the flame! Them corns is from Providence . . . You hear me!" she said, spitting as she spoke. "That there is Husband's dinner bowl and you get away from it! He may have brought you here, him in one of his moods, as they say, out all night a wandering the hills and the village roads, but I say this: You're a curse to me! You get out of this house! Get out that door and crawl onto your woodpile where you belong! Bring in some wood, first, though! Now, Mud Root Girl, bring in that wood! It's a blessing!"
So Medriel carried in the wood and then left the house as she always did. She didn't sleep indoors -- she had no room, no bed, no clothes. It was night, and she could see the glow of the lantern inside the house as she peered through the windows from her woodpile. She slept on the split wood as she was told, and she looked much like the stacked wood upon which she slept. She closed her eyes. It had been snowing all day, and was still snowing -- large, thick flakes that broke to pieces when they landed, only to be buried by the next flake and then the next. Medriel stared up at the falling snow as she lay atop the woodpile. And she thought. She had seen herself once in one of Wife's copper mirrors. That had been some months ago, she supposed, but perhaps it was only days. She had to admit that she did appear to be a Mud Root Girl, but she did not feel the same way that she looked. How could she have changed so much from her life in the mountain spring to her slavelike existence in the village? Why had she left the spring at all? In the water, or sitting on the flat rock with Methuselah, she had been happy and had never felt ugly. And now, after more than a dreadful year later, she was still caked in mud, sand and gravel . . . and tonight, a thin layer of snow. And she moved stiffly as always, for she was indeed made of wood, and her arms and legs were not supple -- in fact, they could barely bend. One leg was stiffer than the other; she walked with a limp and a drag. One arm was short and singed from the fire. Yes, she thought, she did look much like a root, just bark and wood.
Winter crept up to the house and the woodpile and spread its snow along the roof and on the trail and trees. But Medriel never felt the cold, even on this winter's night, for she was made of rootwood. She watched the stars until the clouds moved in and more snow dropped silently.
She was resting on the woodpile when Husband came home. She rolled down and watched through the window. With Husband, she could see, were a company of his fellows, three or four, four or five, yelling and singing, falling to the ground and crawling back up, and among them was a small person . . . a child! And the child, in his hand, carried a wooden flute with silver fixtures at each end. There was a wool cap on his head. The straps from his pants looped over his shoulders and then back to his trousers. Had Husband stolen the boy just as he had stolen her, walking, as she was, on the road at the edge of the village? Surely, this must be the case, she thought.
He wore a felt vest . . . he had cold hands, cold feet . . . and they made him play his flute, high and low, quickly, so they could stomp and dance around, and when the music became too slow they shouted until he picked up the tempo, and they danced and tromped around the room again, Husband and Wife and the other men, pounding their shoes on the floor. The men threw stones of coal at the boy as he played beside the fireplace, and they sat in several chairs and on the table, clapping time. They made him play and play, and when they grew tired of him they took his flute and made him leave. Medriel watched as they threw snowballs and coal bats at him as he trudged through the snow and into the darkness.
They told the child they were through with the likes of him and his music and they told him to go, back to his clan and their wagons, back to his own village if he had one, wherever that might be, into the dark, and to be gone from them for they had no need of another mouth to feed. After the child had been covered by the night and his form hidden by the falling snow, there was a brief moment of shock when the Wife, aghast, realized that she could have sold the boy. "Oh, no!" is what escaped her lips, but Medriel, outside, was aware of her thoughts. If he could not be sold, it was better he perished in the snow, was Wife's thought.
"But a child is not made of wood," thought Medriel. "I am made of wood. I do not require feeding. I watched through the window, and there was steam and frost and some bit of snow that obscured my vision. But I am wood, and cannot freeze and die. The child was skin and blood! I saw him trudge north into the snow and away from the light of the house into the forest of white-laced trees."
Then, inside, Husband turned to the window and saw Medriel, who was staring in, and laughed. "Mud Rood Girl," he shouted, "Come in, get thee in here!"
She obeyed. "You've been with us now these many months, these long months, as they say, and have grown used to our hospitality!" said Husband loudly. "What have you given us in return? Gold? No!" And louder: "Silver? No!" Still louder: "Copper? No, no, no! You cannot even speak!" Husband sat up from his chair, and the other men also stood, and the Wife. Husband fell over, and was helped back up onto his feet.
"That carnival child tonight," Husband shouted, "filthy creature that he is, has done two things that you will never do, Mud Root Girl! Oh, I saw how you loved the music, like you'd never heard a flute before! You probably haven't! I watched that! I saw how you listened to our discussions! But I will tell you this: You will never speak, never will you sing, and you will never play such music on any flute! Never!"
The words hit Medriel like the iron poker; harder. She fell backward and could not get back up.
Husband spoke again, hovering over her: "You have no breath, Mud Root Girl. You cannot breathe!! You are wood! You lifeless, wooden root!"
Then Husband laughed until he could barely stand. Medriel finally was able to roll to her feet on the wood planks, not far from the table. Not far from the stick chairs in which the people sat, in which the Husband sat, still snickering.
She thought: She had no breath. How could that be?
Medriel stood up and walked bravely out to her woodpile, away from Husband and Wife and the others, away from the house and the table, chair, floors, and in her sadness she had three thoughts:
"I am alive. I must escape. But the child will surely freeze."
Knowledge of the evening's events did not belong to the household alone. No human ears ever heard the goings on at this house in Second Village -- or at any house in this sad Second Village -- it is true; but the forest, which spread down from the mountains to the edges of the shacks, has many ears. Two of those ears on that night -- and on all nights -- belonged to Methuselah, secreted as he was in the shadows of stone and tree, his long black tail twitching. Methuselah had watched and studied these humans as the seasons turned.
The leopard, as black and silent as the night around him, had watched the house each day, peering in from the trees as Medriel went about her menial labors. Should he swoop in like black lightning and dispatch Husband and Wife with two quick strokes of his deadly paw? And eat them? Yes! he thought. No!, he thought. They were too disgusting to eat! And, he had been told never to attend to the affairs of humans, as no good could ever come of it. Truthful words, no doubt, but hard to live by. These two humans tried the patience of Methuselah.
But he watched. People, if you can call them that, came and went. Husband would arrive from the village tavern with a young man, barely able to stay on the road as they walked to the hovel. Then, the next morning, army men would arrive and take the young man away. Husband always clinked the new coins in his hand.
Methuselah could not worry about Husband's trade in humans. He did not understand it, didn't understand what an army was or how soldiers were conscripted, or maimed, or killed. He understood Medriel's safety. At odd moments as the weeks and months slipped by, Methuselah might create a commotion outside the house, sometimes near the henhouse, if it appeared to him that Medriel was in severe peril. The Wife would stop whatever cruelty she was working, and run to the henhouse!
All those months the leopard watched the home. He had crouched among the trees on the night that Medriel escaped. Finally! It was only a matter of time, after all, he thought. So he followed! Not too close, no! He pounced through the snow far enough behind not to bring Husband's attention to the escaping Medriel, who looked back every few paces to see if she was being followed by Husband. She was pushing on in the direction the boy had taken, although his tracks were no longer visible, having been buried by fresh snow.
The house, and, to be sure, all that it represented, dissolved into the darkness behind them. Ahead lay only snow and silent trees. The sky seemed low, pressing down from above, almost touchable. It grew colder. Medriel gazed into the land before her, and, luckily, walked right into the child. He had seated himself cross-legged in the snow, and hunched over himself to stay warm as long as he could. He had been buried entirely. What could she do? She was made of wood, not of blood and bone. She had no warmth of her own to share. Perhaps she could pull him onward to some other hovel on the outskirts of the village. Could everyone here be as bad and Wife and Husband? Maybe she could hoist him onto her shoulders and carry him to First Village . . . how far was that? But she was too small to do that. It was pull him along or do nothing, it seemed.
So she pulled, a bit at a time. And with each pull, it became more apparent that her desperate actions were useless: The snow fell heavier, the night grew colder, and even the trees seemed to somehow encroach more tightly around them. Medriel despaired. How short her life had been since she'd left the spring, and how futile! And now, to lose this child to the midwinter night! She sat down with the boy to rest, and he looked at her and smiled but said nothing.
Methuselah, who had been tracking them, crept through the snow, his huge head barely visible above the white, and he sniffed and sniffed until he found the boy and the rootlike girl together, covered by the snow. He curled his body around them, wrapping them in his warmth, and so they spent the night. The boy slept against the warm black fur.
Medriel stared up into the falling sky and her barklike skin shifted slightly into a wooden smile.
Snow fell through the night, burying the trio in silence. They heard and saw nothing, but slept in the warmth created by Methuselah. A gray morning dawned, and the crunching of a person walking in the snow could be heard in the forest. Methuselah opened one eye.
"I found them in the snow, there . . . how far from the nearest tree? Oh, the distance of a coin toss," said Tawney Ma. "All that could be seen was a mound of snow in a field of snow, but I knew it must be the boy -- for who else could it have been? It was morning, and the worry of Afon had been with me since the night before when he was stolen away. What they say is true about that village and their thieving ways, after all. They stole my Afon; they steal people in Second Village! I plowed myself through snow up past my knees and I dug into the mound."
But just as she shoved her mittened hands into the snowy hill, she screamed in surprise and fell backward, for rising in front of her was the huge, black feline shape of Methuselah. The leopard growled once with a flash of white fangs and sprang into the trees, vanishing. Tawney Ma gained her feet once again and peered into the broken mound of snow and there she saw Afon, the boy, just waking up as if from a wonderful dream, and she saw also the oddest thing she had ever seen -- a girl in the shape of a root: Medriel.
Tawney Ma hoisted both up in her arms and began the trek back to her caravan of traveling wagons, and these were encamped for the winter at the confluence of two rivers, one being the East River that flowed from the mountains and the other being a smaller river that flowed into it near First Village. Tawney Ma was known as the queen of the caravan, and she led her small group and their five wagons around the countryside, navigating them safely from village to village, and rarely did the people run into any trouble except in this case regarding Second Village and the theft of Afon and his flute. But even that had ended happily with his return.
Afon was the youngest in Tawney Ma's family. There were also two girls, Zigana and Rivka, both with shining black hair. They lived in the first wagon, the lead cart of the caravan, and it was the most intricately and colorfully decorated, though it was not the largest. It was painted pale green and trimmed in bright magenta. A crooked stove pipe that came from a small wood-burning steel stove protruded from the top. Inside, always warm in the winter, was a den of woolen rugs and drapes, thickly felted beds and mats and felted bedding.
Tawney Ma struck bargains for the caravan people as they traveled the countryside. She dickered for wool for spinning, rare hardwoods for carving, vegetable seeds for growing and various small goods or books for trading. She herself knitted socks to trade or sell, and Zigana and Rivka did the same. Afon, whose eyes and hair were much lighter than his sisters', was one of a half-dozen youngsters who performed music at the villages visited by the caravan, and occasionally they would present a play or an opera that was popular at the time.
"Afon," said Tawney Ma, having returned to her wagon after discovering the boy in the snow, "I have decided in my mind for you to rearrange the wagon to make room for the root child so that she will have a bed to sleep in and a small stick chair from the bodger in which to sit. It is winter and too cold for any other consideration. And find for her a book to read and a cup to drink her tea or broth, and I wish you to do this promptly for I have a great feeling in my heart for her."
Afon and his sisters had great fun rearranging the interior of the wagon, moving this pillow and that, and hanging items from the walls when they needed to make more space. This is how Medriel began her life with the traveling people of the caravan.
"We are lacking a chair for the friend of mine," said Afon, "but I will give her mine, or Rivka hers, or Zigana hers."
"I see," said Tawney Ma. "Well, let us not worry. The bodger will be about some time or other . . . he knows where we are camped and he always stops by. He is from First Village, barely more than an hour's walk away, and word will surely reach him before we do. I hope to see him soon, for it is winter and we will be here in the snowy meadow at least until spring. A new chair is only one of the things we will be needing."
"What else do we need?" asked Rivka. She was sitting near the spinning wheel preparing a lapful of roving to spin. "I hope it will be small."
"Yes," said Tawney Ma. "A few chairs toward the end of winter, which we can strap to the top of the wagon to trade as we work our way north and west as we do every year. And some bark strippings, the castoffs, for baskets. We will have need of small herb baskets in the early weeks of summer, I am sure."
I am the bodger of First Village," said Berwin the Gregor. "Spring is my favorite season while it is spring, and during the summer, summer is the best part of the year. Autumn, when the leaves fall and birds can be easily seen in the branches, is also my favorite, for that is when I gather my greenwood. But winter holds a special place in my heart, for then I have time to reflect, and it was in winter that the root child came into my life."
That winter, Berwin the Gregor decided it was time to visit Tawney Ma and her people. It had been more than a year since he'd seen them last, and he enjoyed their company and the warm welcome that he always received. The heavy snow of a few weeks before had melted off somewhat, so he tied on his oiled canvas boots and prepared to walk upriver from First Village to the meadow. He banked the coals in his workshop stove, put on cap, coat and mittens and closed the shop door behind him.
Shortly he arrived at the encampment and he saw Tawney Ma outside the wagons. "Yes, yes," she said, "we will need one chair right away. Very right away! Small enough for a child, and we would like a woven willow seat for it. Zigana is already making a thick felt pad for it, Rivka has carded the roving . . . but no arms for the chair, dear bodger, no, lest it restrict her movement."
"Is there a new face in the family, then?" asked the bodger.
"Yes, thank you. A root child has joined us and there is a little stiffness about her in the legs and arms, as you might guess," said Tawney Ma. "And her chair should have no arms, as she finds it difficult to climb into a chair of any sort."
The bodger, because he lived in First Village, accepted the apparent existence of a root girl without question, and added, "Being a bodger, as I am, I am familiar with all sorts of wood and joinery for chairs and furnishings, and I turn greenwood on my bodger's lathe, creating the intricate spindles that I use in my chairs and spinning wheels."
"This I know, and I know also that all the Gregors before you were bodgers similarly, and that your craft is as old as the wheels that turn beneath the wagons of the caravan," said Tawney Ma.
"Very true," said Berwin the Gregor. "There is wood in my veins as they say, but I fear that a root child would have more, and this brings me to my point ..."
"Go on."
"As we have known each other these many, many years," he said, "and as my family has known yours for many generations, may I offer you any service you desire regarding your root child, as it may be possible that I could reduce this stiffness in her joints that you have so kindly mentioned."
"If it were up to me," said Tawney Ma, "I would say yes immediately! But we must ask the root child and learn her mind. She will do her best to answer, I am sure, although I know she cannot speak."
They went to the first wagon where Medriel was cleaning and Rivka was spinning gray wool for yarn. The teapot was on the stove and the water was hot. "My dear," said Tawney Ma to Medriel, "a certain friend of mine has come to visit, and he is a bodger and therefore works with all manner of greenwood and jointings and fittings of the sort that suit him. He turns greenwood on his pole lathe and is an accomplished artisan, and so on. It has occurred to me that this friend, whom we call Berwin the Gregor because of his long white beard and because he is of a long family of Gregors, all of whom were bodgers during their lives . . . as I say, it occurred to us that he may be able to ease the stiffness of your joints, your being mostly of rootwood as we can see, and we thought we should know your mind on this matter." She finished her statement and moved to the stove and teapot and prepared to make some tea as Medriel pondered her suggestion.
"To know my mind on this? My mind seems to dwell in my body, and hasn't the ability to voice itself," thought Medriel when Tawney Ma had finished. "And my body is made of rootwood. But I would consider accepting assistance from Berwin the Gregor, as Tawney Ma has said, for he is familiar with wood of many kinds, and with the working and carving, the spinning and bending, the fitting and finishing, of wood. There are many generations of bodgers behind that beard, and I can feel them, and . . . " she paused a moment, thinking, "Indeed, I remember them! For while I lived in my mountain spring, I was aware of the foragers and wood gatherers on the Earth above me, and I know well the footfalls of all the Gregors! I could hear them in the dark and I knew who they were and what they were about!"
Berwin the Gregor studied the root girl as she thought, and after a few minutes his eyes widened and a broad smile could be seen behind his beard. "Ah, yes," he said softly. "You are Medriel! I know your spring, your grove of trees . . . I know them well! Many are the times I have visited the spring, and my parents before me and theirs before them! And you remember me!"
"Most of all, I remember you!" thought Medriel. "But how could you have known my name? Even I did not know it until you said it, though I am certain it is my name, Medriel."
"How?" asked Berwin the Gregor, much to Tawney Ma's surprise. He looked over at the caravan woman and said, "My dear, I am a bodger. I have spent my life listening to wood. And my fathers before me, as well. The wood tells us what it will become, so to speak. We listen, we listen. Then we set to work. I listen to the root child and I hear her voice like a breeze through the large wide leaves of . . . a maple, for instance . . . and the dear child would like to know how I knew her name!"
"Well, go on!" said Tawney Ma.
"It is Medriel, and always has been," he said, then turning his attention to Medriel. "We have a name when we come into the world. That's the way the world works . . . don't ask me why, for I do not know why. When you left your spring and covered yourself with rootwood, let us say, the name Medriel was born. And this I know further: When you left your spring you left something behind. I know this, for otherwise you would not have left the world of spirits to join us! That, too, is a law of nature. And what could it be? A snip of wood? An eyelash? A wish? I do not know. We must ponder that later! But, regarding your name, I should say it means, well, from a very ancient language, Medre means Earth. And the last few letters alter its meaning to say, perhaps, Ôchild of the Earth.' "
Medriel smiled, and a few grains of gravel fell from the bark of her face to the floor of the wagon. "I would like very much to move with greater ease," she thought.
"Done!" said the bodger. To Tawney Ma, he said, "She is of a mind to allow me to bodge. I cannot do the work anywhere but my bodging shop in First Village, for there I have all my tools, a little room to move about, my finishing products and sanding papers, oh, the chisels and such. And good light for working. I will put aside all other work, except the small chair with the woven seat for the child so that she will have it in the caravan wagon when she needs it."
"Then it is agreed," said Tawney Ma. "The girl, Medriel (how nice to know her name!), will visit you in the village each morning. We will walk, for it isn't far. She and I. Then I will come back here to do my own work. Then, after your day's labors, you may walk back with her to the caravan where we will all have supper, and this we will do until the work is completed, however long it may take, and Medriel the Earth child will find greater freedom of movement and etc."
So Berwin the Gregor began by cleaning his workshop from floor to ceiling. He and Medriel dusted, swept, scraped, and washed the lantern flues. Then he began gathering his tools, which included the many sizes and shapes of chisels, saws, razor knives, files and brushes and so on, most of them miniature in size.
He placed a felt pad atop the worktable and he perched himself on a long-legged stool, spectacles and magnifying lenses in place, and his skilled hands worked for hours on end. Morning was followed by noon and then by afternoon and by evening, and only when the last rays of sunlight vanished did Berwin the Gregor lay down his tools and walk with the girl back to the caravan beside the river in the meadow.
Days passed. Medriel's legs were now fully jointed. More days. Her arms now bent at the elbows, the joints neatly cut and pinned. She had elbows and knees! Ankles and wrists! Soon, she could twist her waist and turn her head! As the months melted with the snow, Medriel found that she had toes -- and could curl them! And she could hold a teacup in her newly jointed fingers.
In this manner, working by day and traveling back and forth from meadow to village, the winter passed and spring approached. The snow that had held the land in its soft grasp eventually disappeared, and the resulting muddy roads finally dried up as well.
But the bodger continued to work, peeling away the porous root bark to reveal the beautiful grain of the inner wood -- it was neither rotten nor worm-ridden, as Medriel feared -- and this inner wood he polished and waxed, and he worked and worked until finally there was only one task left for him to complete.
Now, if a person knew Medriel after a long acquaintance, they would know what feeling or emotion, or thought, she was trying to express by watching her eyes, but it was difficult to communicate this way. Medriel, of course, had some degree of movement in her face, and her eyes were clear and brown. But Berwin the Gregor's final task was to increase the movement of her face and the broadness of her smile by carefully removing the layers of bark, and then, grain by grain, to help shape her face.
Finally the day came that Berwin the Gregor put down his tools. It was mid-spring. He stood up, leaving Medriel sitting on her wool pad on the table, and he slumped into an old chair a few feet away. His eyes were tired; they were red and shallow. But he had finished his finest work -- he had done what no other person could have, not the greatest of bodgers, for sitting on the tabletop before him was a beautiful girl of wood. She was not his creation! He had only removed the problematic layers; he had simply polished. He had merely added a hundred joints, as small as her fingers and toes.
The bodger handed Medriel a small wood box. She opened it and inside was a small ball of beeswax. "That, my small friend, is for your joints," he said. "It will keep your movements smooth and so on.
"Yes, you are fully articulated, my dear," he said to her. "Few can say as much. And, I dare say, my own grandfather would have been proud of us! You can dance if you like, whenever you like; you may leap, if you will, and you may spin! Your joints are strong and sound!" He smiled and his eyes twinkled, but in his heart, Berwin the Gregor kept hidden a small sadness, for he lacked the skill, or the magic, or whatever power it might be, to make her wooden body warm, and for all their work, she remained a girl of wood.
Since it was by now mid-spring, the people of the caravan were ready to begin their annual sojourn across the countryside, performing in the various villages, towns and cities that were in their path. Medriel was finally able to participate in the dancing, and she and Zigana and Rivka and the rest wore the brightest of dresses and other clothing, and Afon and the other musicians seemed always to bring the audience to their feet. The troupe traveled and performed month after month, and the summer was long and beautiful, the skies filled with white clouds and the fields with yellow flowers. Tawney Ma was as happy as she had ever been in her long life, yet she observed a slight melancholy in the little root girl, Medriel. The child still could not talk, but because she could now form the words with her lips and mouth, Tawney Ma could concentrate and understand what she was silently saying.
During her otherwise happy travels, Medriel hid her greatest sorrow, and did not express it to Tawney Ma. It was this: She had no breath. Though she could move freely, even dance, and though she was unquestionably beautiful and was no longer simply a mud root, the words of the Husband came back to haunt her night after night -- she could not speak and she had no breath.
"Who am I to hope for breath?" she thought. "I have now what I had not before, and my life has changed. I am neither hurt nor tortured by Husband and Wife, and am a mud root girl no longer. Alas, I have no breath, and though my skin is smooth and glowing, it is not warm, for I do not breathe. And where is my dear Methuselah? I miss Methuselah's warmth, his smile, his growl when he sleeps. I miss the bodger, too. Oh, I fear that I am not alive. I fear that the most."
These things she did not say to Tawney Ma, despite the love between them. But Tawney Ma was not blind to the girl's sorrow. Though she could not read Medriel's thoughts like Berwin the Gregor, she knew well what the girl was thinking. How could Medriel hide it? Not from Tawney Ma!
The older woman waited. They traveled. They performed play and concert and opera. They danced. And when the people began to feel the homing instinct as autumn drew to a close, they turned their wagons south and west to complete the year's circle and they headed for the meadow outside First Village.
'A
utumn is my favorite time of year," said the bodger one late fall day. He knew the caravan of five wagons would be returning soon to camp along the river in the meadow and last out the winter. By the end of autumn, he knew they could arrive any day, and he would learn how all had fared during the year. Such news he would hear! He had chairs to trade, and wonderful spinning wheels, large and small, their spokes turned delicately on his pole lathe. And he needed a wool sweater, badly, and a felt hat, just a few things. He needed to know how Medriel was, if her wood needed oil or wax, or possibly a bit of sanding if the joints had tightened in the summer heat. He was waiting for them in the meadow on the afternoon when they finally arrived.
Medriel found her spirits lifting as the small caravan approached First Village. The meadow! The river! She could only think of the warmth of the old woodshop, the sound of the rippling river as they told stories by the stove or listened to music from Afon and his friends.
No sooner had she thought of Berwin the Gregor than she saw him as the wagon pulled into the meadow. There he was!
Three full seasons had passed since Medriel, the mud root girl, had escaped from Husband and Wife in Second Village. She had changed in many ways, not just in the wood of her, but in the mind of her. Yet things had not changed there in Second Village, and the inhabitants, whose eyes were dim and whose eyelids seemed always half-closed, continued doing little more than grinding kernels of barley or corn in their teeth, or hunting down small animals for stew. Husband still wandered the countryside at night, weaving drunkenly from one side of a road or trail to the other, falling down only to get back up and stumble on. It was barely winter, and he would begin to keep a lookout for wandering travelers whom he could steal away for entertainment or hard labor. His prison was their fate! His home was their prison! He'd had good luck in the past, for, he remembered, the mud root girl had been a good worker, and even the filthy caravan boy had provided and evening's worth of lively entertainment for his closest associates. Such a shame they had escaped! Alas that in his drunkenness he had driven the boy away when he could have sold him! True, the child was a little young, but . . . . If he ever caught up with either of them, they would not be so lucky a second time, he mumbled as he walked in the night.
"Perhaps I will kill them if I ever find them again!" he shouted. "Grind them up! Boil them, bake them! Trade them like cattle and cats to my fine neighbors here in Second Village! Sell them for soldiers! Ha, ha!"
Yes, he had his eye out, now, for it was the season. Wife had her eye out, too -- she had much to gain from the hard labor of another root girl, if she could find another one, or the work of a young boy. She would enjoy administering a beating to either one of them, or both, as luck might have it.
"Maybe we will eat the next one," she said to Husband.
Medriel did not know that the pair lay in wait when she began to make plans with the other children in Tawney Ma's trailer. How could they have known? How could they suspect? Medriel wanted to visit her spring. She didn't really know why . . . she seemed to miss it. What had she left there? Was it true, as the bodger had said, that when she left the spring, she left something behind? She wanted to see the trees in the grove and hear their leaves rattling in the wind. She wanted to sit on the flat stone in the pond that formed around the spring, and stare up at the winter sky. Perhaps Methuselah would return. She could walk through First Village, pass quietly by Second, and work her way up into the mountains.
One morning at the beginning of winter, just past the end of fall, Medriel set out from the encampment in the meadow with her sisters Rivka and Zigana. First, they decided, they would visit Berwin the Gregor, sleep in front of his wood stove, have toast for breakfast and depart with a sack of muffins on their way to the mountainous country. This they did, and they left the bodger's warm home early one morning. He didn't cry when they left; he waited until he was alone. The sky was clear, the air was crisp and leaves of gold were blowing from the trees. The distance between First and Second villages was three days' walk, and the three sisters skipped and joked, made up riddles and poems, and they sang until the distance dissolved and the mountains grew clearly visible.
But not far up the road was Husband. He squinted and peered down the road as far as he could see until it seemed to him that three children were slowly making their way toward him. Perfect! he thought. He could capture them all at once because he had plenty of time to set his trap. He stumbled back home to Wife so they could prepare the trap successfully, and she accompanied him back to the road where they could see the girls in the distance.
"We will capture them all," she said with a smile, "and rent them by the day for their labor. I have spent the last year, since the hideous Mud Root Girl escaped, paying for the forging of three sets of ankle chains, and I have secured through trade three large steel and iron padlocks. They can never escape until they die, for I will never free them as long as I live!" she said.
"As for myself," said Husband, "through treachery and credit and usury I have forced our dear neighbors to build for me a large cage of wood and bone that I can use to capture and imprison youthful travelers on the road, that I might sell them to the army as conscripts or to neighbors as common laborers. And now, I have a wonderful cage in which to trap these three unhappy travelers. Perhaps I will kill them if they are too shy to work, if too crippled for soldiery! Or perhaps I am hungry!"
They smiled at each other and set their trap, hoisting the heavy bone and wood cage up between two trees above them, one tree on each side of the road. When Husband pulled his rope, the cage would fall and trap the travelers, who would then be clasped into leg irons and taken into the village where they would meet their fate.
They waited. Soon Rivka, Zigana and Medriel approached. Husband and Wife, who were hidden beside the roadway in the shrubs and rocks, were silent. The children walked closer. They were laughing. Medriel, with her smooth new joints, skipped and cartwheeled and, though she could not laugh, she clapped her wooden hands.
Suddenly, the cage fell from the sky with a horrible crack and a resounding boom, and all three, shocked and speechless, were imprisoned! Husband and Wife, more quickly than a gnat or bee can fly, threw a dark, stinking canvas tarp over the cage, shutting out all light. The girls felt for one another, their muffled screams barely penetrating the thick, wet cloth. There was no ray of light, there was no air, no breath of hope, and they were afraid.
Methuselah, where have you been?
The big old cat was out in the forest when Medriel began her daily visits to the bodger. He watched the caravan, and circled it. He liked the bodger. The old man, Methuselah thought, was a good listener, and this was very uncommon for humans. He could be trusted, even with Medriel.
Berwin the Gregor had even invited him in when Methuselah first visited the workshop. The leopard was surprised he had been detected! There was something to this old man, certainly. But go inside a human's house? Hardly! Never! Dangerous! But Methuselah though for a moment, and he realized it would be good to observe all aspects of the surroundings in which Medriel would find herself during the time the bodger refinished her wooden body. So Methuselah slinked from corner to corner, smelled every chair and table, squinted at every window, door and crack in the wall planks. He noticed the small bird who lived above the main entry door, and he noted the crumbs left by a dormouse. He was aware of the badger hole not more than two leaps out the back door, and he could count the bounds -- and the minutes and seconds -- between Tawney Ma's wagon and Berwin the Gregor's doorstep. And he determined two things: first, that it was safe; and second, that it was safe if he were near.
As the days passed, Tawney Ma walked hand-in-hand with Medriel to the bodger's shop each morning before daybreak. Methuselah, silent and invisible, walked alongside, hidden by tree and brush, by rock and shadow. The evenings of winter and then early spring slid by, with Berwin the Gregor walking the root girl along the same old road back to the wagons, and with Methuselah the leopard gliding like a shadow, unseen and unknown.
The cat watched the caravan on the day that Medriel, Zigana and Rivka planned their journey to the mountains. He was among the rocks above the meadow. He could hear their voices, but more importantly he could sense their intent, and he knew they would be traveling back to the spring. He thought about the path they would take. They would walk from the meadow to First Village, then pass through empty land for three days. How could they avoid Second Village? Either they would walk through the village or would have to wander in the forest trying to go around it. The thought of Second Village made Methuselah's fur bristle. The people there would eat a child as surely as they would eat a leopard . . . they were hardly people at all, really, but hard to classify. They smelled bad.
When the three left the caravan, Methuselah also left. Did he walk with them? No. But he traveled quickly. The leopard reached the ruined outskirts of Second Village in a few hours, not a few days. It was a land of broken, shivered trees and barren earth. Why describe it? It was a wasteland peppered with broken houses and brackish pools. With sneers and fear and unhappiness. Methuselah snarled at the sight of it.
Husband and Wife were up to no good. Did Methuselah understand the words? Hardly, for they were coughed up and spat out. But he could understand the intent. Did leg irons need interpretation? No. And the cage! Did that need words to tell what it was for? Hardly. A cage of bone and wood, iron hinges and iron locks, a sour, thread-gnawed tarp to throw over it. What else did he need to see?
He waited. His patience was supreme. He watched. Husband hauled on the rope and the cage rose into the trees. There was harsh laughter. Husband tied the rope and held it. Moment by moment, it seemed to Methuselah that the man could still abandon his plan. Any second, the cage could be lowered and the pair could shamble back to their hovel. They would eat grain or kernels of barley. Or boil an old rat for stew, or make tea from hair. And they would leave the girls alone -- Medriel and the children of Tawney Ma.
When Methuselah heard the tremendous crash of the cage as it hurtled from the treetops and smashed into the road, trapping the travelers, he was very sad, for he knew there was now no hope that Husband and Wife would find their humanity. But his sadness at that moment is all that has ever been learned, for cats are secretive, and Methuselah was more secretive than any. Husband and Wife were never seen again, inside or outside Second Village, and it was never widely known what Methuselah did to help the children of Tawney Ma.
"It was very dark," said Rivka. "I have never liked the dark if I could not breathe . . . "
"Not even a mouthful of air was to be had!" said Zigana.
"Even our screams were silent," continued Rivka. "We could feel cold bones and splintered wood and knew we were imprisoned. The smell of the black sackcloth was sour and old, and, I cannot say . . . "
"Bad," said Zigana. "That is all. Medriel began tearing at it, and it tore easily. Rip, rip, and then we could see and breathe!"
"We were alive!" said Rivka. "And the cage was battered enough from the fall that we could squeeze out of it. No one was around, and we could not have escaped had we not had time to pull and push and tear our way out between the bars."
They were alone. The road was silent, and evening had settled in. The sun was gone and there were no nightbirds singing . . . there were no birds in Second Village. A strange quiet had settled, as if it, too, had been suspended in the trees and had been released, falling over the land.
Medriel crawled through the bars of the cage, avoiding the bones for she did not know what animal they came from. She peered up and down the road, scanned the wasted land to one side and then the other. Finally, she could make out the dark form of Methuselah, who was crouching in the road. Methuselah had secrets, she thought. But they were free! They must leave the road and stay away from Second Village. One, two, three -- they left the road and circled north around the habitations, and then continued east. The mountains were five days away.
The five days passed, and by afternoon, Medriel and her sisters, Zigana and Rivka, finally found their way to the spring. It had been a long, perilous journey, and they were tired. Here they could see the flat stone at the edge of the pool where Medriel had sat with Methuselah years before, pondering the stars and wind. It seemed very long ago, yet the stone seemed the same. The surface of the pool was as clear as glass, just as she remembered. Golden leaves still clung to the big tree that hovered over the pool, and leaves blanketed the floor of the grove, interrupted by an occasional rock or tuft of high grass.
Medriel stepped out onto the rock and sat beside the pool. The stone was warmer than the air! Soon, her sisters joined her and they lay on their backs, hand in hand, gazing up into the blue sky and watching gray clouds move slowly west.
Soon, Zigana and Rivka fell asleep, but Medriel remained awake. She listened to the breeze, and the world grew silent except for the wind. The leaves shook. The breeze, the leaves, the breeze . . . . She stared up into the branches and into the gray winter light that dripped through them until her eyes grew tired. With her eyes closed, she could feel the Earth move, just slightly. It rose and fell as if breathing; and the rhythm was different than the wind's. How strange, she thought. Did she dare to move even a finger? No! She was very still. She felt she was rising with the breathing of the Earth, basking in the pulsing of the wind, and as she held the hands of Rivka and Zigana, she could feel their pulses as easily as she could feel the wind and the land.
Why did she have no breath, when everything around her did? The wind, the Earth, the daughters of Tawney Ma. Was she not alive, after all? How could she not be alive if she had eyes? She had thoughts! But her thoughts wandered, and she fell asleep.
Methuselah watched the daughters fall asleep on the wide, flat stone. The dark-haired ones nodded off first, and then the wood child. Patient Methuselah could wait no longer. Was he the only one who remembered the water spirit blowing on the surface of the pond, trying to determine if it was another sky with another moon? Was he the only one who knew that it was her breath that Medriel had left when she ventured into the wide world? Spirits and humans have breath, he knew, and root girls do not. If Medriel would not touch the water, then the water would touch her!
Methuselah was crouched in the trees of the grove, silently watching at the distance of one great leap. The ground was damp and cold against his belly. He tensed his hind legs beneath him, pawed forward slightly with this front legs, and pulled back his huge head, ready to spring. All his muscles burst at once, and Methuselah soared into the air, and, with all his weight, he plummeted from his broad arc directly into the icy water of the winter-cold pond.
There had been no splash like this in the life of the grove, the forest, in all the mountainous country. Water flew everywhere in a huge spout and the pool was emptied. He watched the clear water leap as high into the air as he had, and then it returned to Earth, burying everything in its frigid grasp.
Zigana gasped when the ice water covered her, and she shot up, not in simple surprise but in complete shock. After her first gasp, she was breathless, still holding the hand of Medriel.
Rivka was ripped from her sleep by the wall of water and the sting of the cold, and sat up in one shocking movement, the winter air entering her lungs along with the spray of the pond. She was covered, her clothing drenched. The gray sky seemed to close in, but she realized the gray sky was really the falling water.
Medriel, in the middle, burst dizzily up from her stone, gasping for air, shocked and frozen, confused and frightened. She quickly looked around and saw her sisters, soaking wet, and Methuselah, dripping and standing in the now-refilling spring pond. He leaped to the bank, watching the girls.
It took only a few moments, perhaps as long as it takes a leaf to fall from its branch to the ground, for them all to realize what happened. But they did not think of Methuselah, or of the winter flood that had left them sopping wet and shivering. Medriel had gasped! She had taken a breath. She looked at her hands, red from the cold, her arms, her feet, more red than her hands, as she sat on the flat stone. She watched her chest as it moved in and out. She rubbed her arms, and discovered that she was rubbing warmth into them! She breathed and felt the cold air within her. She had no idea what to think or what to feel. She looked at Rivka, at Zigana, and they in turn stared at her, for sitting between them now was a Medriel of flesh and blood, a breathing, living Medriel.
Methuselah shook his fur from head to tail, water spraying off him like a rainstorm. He slowly walked back into the grove and found a large outcropping of rock just barely warm from the gray sun, and he settled there, wiping off the last of the spring water with his tongue.
By now, afternoon was dissolving rapidly into evening, and the cool air had begun to grow cold. They were soaked and chilled. Methuselah began to pace, then began to walk the downhill trail, and so they began to follow him. But Medriel hesitated. She seemed pulled back to the trees, to the spring. Could she leave, now that she had regained her breath? The words of the old bodger came back to her as if carried on the wind: " . . . you left something behind. I know this, for otherwise you would not have left the world of spirits to join us!" She turned and ran back to the water. The pool had already begun to fill again. Medriel brought out the wood box that contained her ball of beeswax. "This is a box that I love, and I will forever miss it. But I will know where it resides, and it will hold all the memories of my life in the world just as my breath does." And with that, she set it afloat on the pond and walked back to her sisters.
It was warmer if they moved, and warmer still if they jogged along the trail behind Methuselah. Hours went by, but they were more happy than uncomfortable. Soon, the daylight dimmed and dusk settled over the forest. They were hours from the spring, but also hours from safety. Medriel could barely see Methuselah in front of them, and, actually, only when he glanced back at the travelers and they could see the glistening of his fangs and the green glint of his eyes.
Suddenly he was gone! And inching up the road were two odd figures, one tall and thin, the other short and strong. The tall one seemed old to Rivka, but she easily recognized the short figure -- Tawney Ma! Medriel recognized the other -- the bodger! They carried felted wool blankets with them, and were themselves warmly cloaked.
When the company of five descended the final curve and hill of mountainous country, there was Tawney Ma's small wagon awaiting them. Of course she had come searching after them, and of course she had gathered up Berwin the Gregor as she passed through First Village, for it was the bodger who knew where the spring was located! Not a soul in Second Village stopped them or slowed their progress as they made their way to the mountains, for all the inhabitants of Second Village were afraid. They believed in nothing, it is true, but there were rumors of a demon loose in Second Village. Catlike, the story went.
Cedar smoke poured from the wagon's chimney pipe, and hot tea and biscuits had been spread on the small table. Afon, who had waited at the wagon and tended the fire, played a long, slow ballad on a lute, and sang for a while as the rest warmed up and ate. For all of them, it was a wonderful night at the foot of the mountains, beneath the stars and wind, the rush of the river beside them. It grew late, and then later. One by one, they fell asleep; Berwin the Gregor, smiling, Afon, Rivka and Zigana, and then Tawney Ma who looked over all of them to make sure they were covered, and finally, Medriel blew out the last candle.