by Sandi Layne (c) 2003

It was the thirtieth year that I, Achan son of Liam, had been Healer of our Clan.

The winter morning fought its way through the fog, as if against a reluctant enemy. The mists clung, as they often do, seeming to take purchase on the wan light.

I noticed the cycle of the seasons as I meditated upon the mystery of my life and wondered if it was time for the Wheel to turn once again, taking me with it. Had I been of any real significance on the Earth? I was the Healer, but I felt, then, that all my efforts for my people, in my craft, had made no difference in the world.

We were having the longest winter that I could remember, and I had seen more winters than most. Was this a Sign? That the Earth was tired? Needing rejuvenation? Was my purpose to provide it?

But could I lay aside myself for the good of my people? Who would serve as Healer if I left them?

I was walking that morning in the winter of my life. Seeking. Seeking an answer to the dilemma of the winter, the purpose of my life, to the ache that held my heart like a stone fist. I was like an animal in the snow, seeking that which would bring life back to myself.

My footsteps were light on the frost-webbed ground. Bare, ancient trees made way for me as I passed. What animals that were up and about were old friends, and were not disturbed as I moved through their territories. On the surface, it was eminently peaceful.

The scream that pierced the mists and sent the winter creatures scampering to their dens did not belong to that chill tranquility.

It had come from the west, seaward from my Clan’s village. Using all the instincts that my craft had bestowed to me, I followed the trailing echo at a run. I was old, then, as the Clan counts years. Old, old. I had fifty winters to my tally. The mystery of my long life on the Earth had plagued me, but I felt, in the faint sounds that dwelt in the fog, that I was about to find my answer.

Another scream came, weaker than the first. And it did not originate above ground; no, it sounded from below the ground, and the dying echoes of a woman’s cry seemed to skirl along the misty tendrils at my feet. I found the origin of the cry as it faded completely; a neglected wolf den, with a dark opening leading to the former home of a mother wolf. My breath was puffing out in white gasps by now, but I dove headlong into the narrow passage.

How the woman came to be there, I never found out. I can only remember how she looked to me, then. It was dark, in the damp, earth-smelling place. Dark. I remember that. But…I also remember that it wasn’t dark to my old eyes. No, there was a radiance there. A radiance that was solely due to the woman in travail, there in the beaten earth.

Was she one of the sidhe, I first asked myself. One of the bhaen sidhe, with her screaming, sent to warn me of my own death? Was that my purpose in wandering? To have my sacrifice confirmed? I was shaken, my old bones frozen in my flesh at the thought.

A gasp, faint as the memory of a breath, came from her when she saw me. A garble of sounds issued from her pale lips. Pale lips; the woman was pale everywhere. Her hair was the color of a moonbeam through the fog. Her skin the white of early dawn. Her eyes were so pale that at first I thought they’d no color at all, and that, honestly, frightened me so that I reached for the talisman of knotted, wrought silver circles I wear over my heart.

But no, her eyes were merely a light shade of gray. More pale than old love.

Though they lacked color, the eyes had fire! I did not comprehend the sounds she used to speak to me; her eyes communicated eloquently enough. A command flashed in them that I’d not seen except in the eyes of the Healer-before-me, Elann.

You will help!

I found myself nodding before I thought, so powerful was that demand. She seemed to be a queen, there in the underground den. Her garments, though wrinkled, were finely woven. Embroidered, they spoke of wealth and rank among her people.

She shifted her body against the earth and I saw, then. I saw the head of the baby she was trying to bring into the world. Still unsure as to whether this strange lady was of this world or no, I moved forward to help in the birthing, as I had helped hundreds of babes enter this world. The moan that came from the woman was despairing in tone, now, not demanding. It seemed barely to reach my ears, but I was focused on the small bit of life seeming to have to push its own way out into my hands.

“Come, lass,” I said in my best encouraging tone - the one I used regularly with women exhausted after long hours of labor. “Almost done. Let me just go find a shoulder…”

The small head was covered in blood and tissue and I remember gritting my teeth as I went in search of the shoulder that would ease the rest of the delivery. Slick newborn skin met my fingertips. “Ah,” I whispered, “there it is.”

With practiced ease, I shifted the baby’s body and slid her the rest of the way out of her mother. I say her, for the infant was a girl-child, silent and still.

I looked, but found nothing to wrap the baby in, so I shed my outer tunic and laid it on the dirt for the baby’s blanket. I would have cleaned her up immediately, but her mother needed my skills in a most urgent measure.

* * *

The mother had not been of the bhaen sidhe. She had been mortal.

The baby was clearly a different child though, for she had not yet cried. Not even when I had to settle the body of her mother on the frozen ground. I left the wee child in the comparative warmth of her birthplace while I had taken the poor, pale mother to the surface.

My people of Clanhome have many beliefs. One is that the body is just a husk, a temporary residence for the spirit, the living breath, of a person. Another is that we each are here to serve a purpose, in life or in death, and all is subject to the whims of the Earth and her forces. When the breath of life has left the body, that body is just that…a body. What purpose does such have in the circle that is Destiny?

Meat. It is the natural way of things that meat provides nourishment to those seeking food. We of Eagle Clan do not, understand, consider men in this light. The meat of other creatures of Earth is here for our sustenance, as we are here for the sustenance of others. Thus is the balance maintained.

The little girl needed me more than her mother, so I brushed my hands free from the lingering presence of the mother, told the animals that all was well again, and returned below ground. The babe was still wrapped in my tunic, her eyes opened wide, as if she were looking around at the place in which she found herself. Roots clung to the ceiling of the only place she knew.

Strangely enough, it took me a while to realize that it wasn’t dark. The little lass with the abundant crop of pale hair and large, solemn eyes - like her mother’s even at her birth - also seemed to shine in the darkness. I did not understand how I could see all this, for the darkness in the cave was natural. But the babe’s personal light was undeniable. Unnatural? I could not and cannot say.

I am destined to preserve the lives I can. Here was a motherless girl-child and there was no question but that I had to take her back to Clanhome with me. She would need a wet-nurse, to be sure, and someone would have to see to her training.

Already, it appeared, I knew she would need training in the arts. Healing or leadership, the little lass would be a woman of some influence. Wisdom. Awareness. How complicated would her life be?

Overwhelmed by the direction my thoughts had taken, I bound the baby close to my skin to keep her warm aboveground. There she nestled, wrapped in the leaf-hued tunic underneath my flax-shaded shirt and cloak. She watched my face with a most unusual concentration.

“What am I to do with you, wee one?” I whispered as the cold air hit us.

Did I expect an answer? Well, odd as it seems, I half-thought she might say something. No, I am not now and was not then touched by the sidhe.

But was she? That is what I have never truly known. Not ever.

Strangely, the animals avoided us as I carried her back to Clanhome. I saw only the white tails of the deer as they darted from us, heard only the whispers of tiny feet as the smallest of the forest-dwellers sought refuge from the cold and mist. I still remember how otherworldly I felt then, mired in confusion and wonder about the babe in my arms.

I had children of my own, of course. My wife was a warrior, or she had been before her arm grew too slow to wield the blade. We had ten children together, five of whom grew to adulthood, three of whom still lived. These children and our many grandchildren were true blessings to us. One cannot have too many proofs that the Wheel still turns.

But who was in Clanhome who could care for the little one in my arms?

“Do you know, lass,” I inquired of the wide-eyed one, “what a commotion you’ll cause?”

Soon, the smoke from the hearth fires could be seen as I crested a low ridge. “Here we are,” I said to the girl, my breath gusting in a small patch in front of me.

“Achan!” My wife, Nuala, appeared, though she was so swathed in cloth that only one who knew her well would recognize her from a distance. “I wondered where you’d gone off to, man.” As she approached and we drew near to each other, I saw the familiar way her dark eyes raked my body. Suspicious, concerned, and curious. That was my wife. “Hold, there, Achan. What is it you’ve got there under your shirt?”

I smiled, I remember, at the tone of her voice. She was implying that I had gone daft. Well, it was her right. “Now, woman, don’t go after me. You’d not guess what I have here in a full moon of summers.”

“Achan! I’ll clout your ears for you, Healer that you are or no!”

“No you won’t, Warrior Woman,” I said gently, putting one hand up in a placating manner. She calmed down immediately and I beckoned her nearer. “Let me show you, then.”

Slowly, I peeled back the layers of cloth that were shielding the babe from the wintry air.

Nuala gasped at her first sight of the little girl I held.

“By all that breathes, Achan, where did you find her?”

I related the tale to Nuala and she listened with an open mouth.

“We will take her,” Nuala stated. She had been the warrior-chieftess of our people and her statement carried authority, even to me, her husband. “Elspeth, poor lass, lost her babe only yesternight.” A fact I had forgotten somehow. “She will be a good nurse.” Nuala’s lips firmed as she took the baby from my arms. “But you, Achan, will have the raising of her.”

I demurred. “Nuala-love. You are far more fit.”

Command sparked in her lined eyes. “No. You. I see her as a healer.”

The statement resonated in my mind. The reason I had outlived so many of my old friends, the reason I was still hale and whole and able to fulfill my duties as Healer.

I caressed the baby’s soft cheek and marveled at the turn the Wheel had taken.
The pale, silent babe had no name for two winters. Then, in the next spring, a man came to our village, heralded by Dev and Devlin, who had then been in warrior training. Our visitor was a learnéd man from over the sea and I welcomed him to our home, giving him food and hearing stories of the wider world as I saw to his small ailments.

The little lass toddled in the door from the garden to meet him, and I saw the very first smile to curve her too-serious bud of a mouth.

“She’s a child of light and grace,” our visitor told us. “Charis. It is Greek and means just - just what she is,” he went on, kneeling with apparent awe so he could stroke her white-blond hair.

The rightness of it struck Nuala immediately, and Charis received her name.

I am Achan, the Old Healer. I have seen more than five and sixty summers. It is time and past that I join my fathers. Charis has succeeded me as Healer of our Clan. My purpose in the Great Wheel has been fulfilled.