Searching for Power (Part 2)

The second part of the 4th story in the Oracle

Menaia awoke, hurting everywhere. She had not slept on the ground for… years at the very least. And she hadn’t had a chance to wash or change clothes. And it was time for her to move.

She groaned and stood up. The only person awake, a small girl, was watching her with a small grin. But she had no time for little girls. Not that she ever had.

She turned toward the sun then put it to her right and started out. Her feet and calves and thighs complained immediately, reminding her of her walk yesterday. This was going to be agony. But… she shivered… she had no desire to disobey that oracle!

So she started walking and hadn’t gotten five steps before she caught her dress on a short, sharp branch sticking out of a fallen log and fell headlong, hearing an enormous rip. When she picked herself up she saw that she had left a good quarter of her skirt on the branch. And it wasn’t like she had sewing equipment, or time. So she trudged on, doing her best not to focus on the missing front of her skirt, hoping not to run into anyone in her indecent condition, and musing on what she had read last night.

Surely the oracle couldn’t expect her to become a wife, at her age! The idea had always disgusted her. The very thought of submitting both her will and her body to some man!

But, the more she thought about it, the more it made sense. She had asked to  become important and barring some light from the sky what better way for a woman to become important. She would marry some rich, important man and, after a disgusting few years… or, hopefully, months, he would die leave her in charge of his estate. She wouldn’t enjoy her importance long, certainly.

And it wasn’t like she wouldn’t be bringing anything to the marriage! She had a reasonable fortune herself which, once they were married… she wouldn’t tell him about it before hand… she would send for and they would use to augment their position and importance.

Or, perhaps, she wouldn’t. Perhaps it would be best to wait until he had died…

Then she remembered that obscene ‘definition’ she had read yesterday and realised that she was going about this the wrong way. The oracle had said that she had to follow the definition, so she needed to think through the definition and decide how that meant she should behave.

She was meditating on this an hour later, and not liking the directions her thoughts were going, when she became aware of a vague itching in an embarrassing location. She reached her hand down thoughtlessly and suddenly fiery pain lanced all up and down her legs.

She frantically pulled her dress off and then, even more frantically, her undergarment, beating frantically the whole time. They were simply covered with ants! Biting ants!

She cast then from her and spent a very annoying few minutes beating herself off. When she had finally killed the last ant she rubbed some mud on her legs (something she had learned when a girl) and reached for her undergarment… but she had tossed it right in the middle of the mound and it was literally black with ants.

Sighing she reached for her dress (what was left of it) and shook it vigorously off, examined it very closely, and put it back on. She was looking down at her legs, particularly her right leg, and frowning at how very much of it was showing, when she looked at it again. It was… different. It had fewer, far fewer, of the spots and veins and other marks she had gotten used to in her old age.

Then she looked at her hands. They were less wrinkled, smoother skinned, and had far fewer of the white patches that had started growing when she was middle aged.

Then she came to with a start and realised she wasn’t walking! Her heart racing she began moving forward, not quite at a run, desperate to catch up with the progress she should have been making. She wasn’t looking forward to getting married, but she was even less looking forward… if that was the right word… to finding out what the oracle had in mind for her if she didn’t follow instructions.

She was going so fast that she ran slap into the swamp without even noticing. Two rapid steps in and her right leg disappeared to the knee!

Panicked she pulled at it, desperate to get it out. Death in a swamp seemed like the kind of thing that that oracle might do to…

She couldn’t get her boot out! She reached down and desperately unlaced it and then, finally, her foot popped out. She stood up and… curses! Her left boot sank in.

She didn’t hesitate this time but unlaced it and pulled her foot out, and then started frantically crawling forward, her hands and knees supporting her enough that she didn’t sink into the muck too much and was able to move forward.

On and on she went, glad that so little of her dress was left as she would have had to rip it off herself to keep it from bogging her down. On and on through the muck and worse. She heard animals but she ignored them. If the oracle was going to let her live through this it would be because she obeyed instructions. Once a leech attached herself to her thigh, and she just ripped it off and went on, dripping blood. It wasn’t like she had any salt. Or could make a fire!

Finally, in the distance, she saw a small hill. No, a ridge.

She frantically moved forward, slipped, and landed face first in the much. Curses!

She lifted herself up and moved forward again, hardly able to see from the muck that was in her eyes, and hardly able to breath with the muck in her nose, but desperate to get out of the muck.

Finally she felt her hands land on firmer ground and she moved forward, foot after foot, through stinging nettles but she didn’t care, and hardly able to see but she didn’t care.

She was just about to to think about standing up when her left hand slipped… no, the ground underneath it gave way, and she was falling.

She fell only a few inches before she felt her dress catching on something and she had a moments hope… but then there was a tremendous rip and she felt herself falling… and then she landed with a tremendous splash in cold but, the stars be praised, clear water.

At least the mouthful she accidentally swallowed felt clear. She had been a rather active girl and, unlike many of her fellows, had learned to swim, and swim well so she swam a few strokes under water before coming up and, keeping herself with her legs along (something her fellows could not have done!) washed her face off.

Then she opened her eyes and there, standing in the shallow water, clearly in the middle of his bath, was a man. Staring at her.

She blushed, realising that what was left of her dress was caught in some bushes or something up on the bank and that he was staring very appreciatively at her and, casting her eyes down…

“Well met, Miss,” the man said. “Well met indeed.”

“I…” he had called her ‘Miss’! And her view of herself indicated that she was, indeed, young. Very young. And…

“Well met, my husband,” she said, for he could be nothing else, could he? The oracle had arranged for her not only to meet him, but to meet him in a situation so compromising that…

“Only if you wish it, Miss. I realise that in big cities our situation like this would mean we would have to marry; but out here in the bushes well, we live a simpler life. Many a girl out here owns no more clothes than you have on, so meeting like this is just a meeting.”

“Well!” she said, preparing to defend her honour but… what honour did she had to defend? If he was her husband, her honour was his honour. If she was but a passing waif… then she had no honour.

“Well, I do wish it. I was sent by the oracle to marry you and I mean to do as I was instructed.”

“Well,” he said, in a very different tone. “Come here and be instructed.”

—

“We need to be getting back now,” he said, an hour later. “Our children have been left alone long enough.”

“Our… children?” she asked, getting up and reaching for clothes to put on, then realising that she had none.

“We have seven children,” he said. “The oldest is twelve summers and old and a good help. Indeed they are all a good help, except for the smallest two. One of whom should still be on the breast. I hope your breasts will be able to produce soon, he isn’t doing so well on gruel and the like.”

“My… breasts?” she had heard of such a thing, a woman’s breast coming into milk, or coming back into milk, when needed. And there were some herbs that helped such a thing, she knew that, since she knew herbs.

“Well, you have them, as I know well,” he said, pinching her. “Now let us go.”

“I… I don’t have any clothes,” she said, and he pulled on some short pants.

“I see that. We will try to buy you some if the market goes well. Are you any good at haggling?”

“Yes,” she said, flatly. She was very good at haggling. Herbs and haggling had been her life.

“Well, good. Come then.”

Flaming red she followed him. She knew that poor people, very poor people, often went around without clothing but she certainly had never done so!

But there was nothing for it and, repeating the definition of ‘marriage’ she had practically memorised she followed her new husband down a very faint trail through the woods and, only a hundred yards or so later she heard a voice, a boys voice!

“Father?” 

“Ah, Caleb,” the man said (she hadn’t even asked his name!) reaching behind her and pushing her forward toward the young man who had come out of the bushes. “Greet your new mother.”

The boy looked shocked but came forward and gave his kiss.

“Found her wandering in the woods, claiming she was sent by the oracle. No doubt a bit touched in the head, but we need a woman, at any road. I’m hoping her breasts will give for youngest.”

“I will need Hennin root,” she said, decidedly, as the young man stared at her.

“What is that?” the boy asked. She would think of him as a boy.

“It’s the root of a tall dark green plant, that has yellow flowers in the spring. They look like trumpets…”

“Ah, trumpet flower. And you need to root?”

“Yes. Lots of it. I will need to eat it… no blessing that I assure you… until my milk comes in.”

They had been walking down the path while they talked and, as the boy ran off, no doubt to find some of the root, they came around a corner and she saw… a hut.