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Chapter One: Clunethar
Deposition Given by Osmer Cseva Clunethar
Subject: The Linshevese Workshop Explosion
We - that is, my mother and I -
Sorry. I, Cseva Clunethar, and my mother, Paru Clunethar, were walking to the tram station. I was carrying the shopping, and turned towards her as we walked because she was talking to me. I saw the light behind the glass panes suddenly, grabbed her arm, and spun us around so my back sheltered us. I felt the heat hit my back, and the glass shards. When I turned back the door was off its hinges, the windows were shattered in the street, and there was fire inside.
Someone came stumbling out, and then two people helping each other. Inside I could see a third person, crawling. I let go of my mother’s arm and wrapped my cloak across my nose and mouth before I went inside, but the sudden burst of heat was failing, and the fires hadn’t gotten too bad yet. I was able to grab the person - they were all black. Their skin was all black. And they screamed when I touched them. But the fire was spreading, so I picked them up, and carried them outside.
Their skin was sticking to my hands, sticking and peeling and they were screaming. I looked into their eyes, pale blue and glassy, but they saw me. I know they did, because…because as I got through the door they looked around, and sighed, and then they didn't breathe again. I fell into them - into her, I knew it was a her in that moment, because suddenly I was her. I was working. There was a spark. There was a burst of pressure and sound and then there was pain and fire, and then I was watching myself carrying me out.
And then I was out in the free air but I still couldn't breathe, and I died.
—
Dach’Othala Celehar looked up from the lectern as he stopped reading and scanned the room. He had the trick of making every student feel seen, even with a quick glance. This time his grave eyes made me feel uncomfortable, as though he knew I hadn’t been listening. I had always struggled with attention, had always been more comfortable moving and doing. This time had been different, though. This time I’d been drawn back to my own first Witnessing. Celehar said that was normal, when one had Witnessed for something truly horrible.
Deaths by burning are some of the worst, he’d said to me, with such grave conviction that I was reminded that he’d Witnessed for the death of a burnt Emperor. He had experienced what I had, and he continued to work, continued to teach.
My mind had wandered again. He drew me back with a slight cough and the continuation of his lecture. “That was one of the earliest recorded Witnessings,” he said, of the reading I had missed entirely, “but the prelates at the time were familiar with the effect. Images suggesting communication with the dead predate written language. Ulinese Witnesses are perhaps the most well documented, but there are also early accounts of people who could find water, and people whose Dreams could predict what crops would grow well. In ancient times these gifts were accepted, but rarely trained, and poorly understood. Still, they existed. What did you notice most about this account?”
There was a long, thoughtful pause before Min Belzhavin said, “We noticed how much like us she was. Her difference from others, her relief at being found and having her experiences explained. Many modern girls might face a similar situation and make a similar choice.”
Celehar smiled. I’d known him most of my life, distantly, as my adoptive grandfather Orchenis’s friend, somebody my mother trusted implicitly. That had been driven home when her immediate reaction to my first, unplanned Witnessing had been “Send for Thara Celehar!” She’d said it over her shoulder, without thought, as she’d bent over me in the mud, shielding me as I’d vomited.
I shook that thought aside. I was here, now, in this classroom learning about the history of my talent. My only talent. I should focus.
“They recorded a Witnessing where the young woman was positive about their involvement,” a young man said, "but it’s suggested that they ‘descended’ on her. There might have been other instances where it was less welcome that weren’t recorded?”
“Very good!” Celehar said. “It’s always important to consider bias in your sources. There are few surviving records from that period, and one of the reasons might be censorship by the prelacy. That’s all for today’s class. Osmer Clunethar, a word before you leave. Everyone else is dismissed!”
I froze, wondering if he’d noticed my attention wandering. I’d always been a poor student, but it had never mattered before. Now it did. Something had changed, when I’d felt that young woman’s life slip away under my hands and had seen myself through her eyes. I didn’t want to feel more pain and death, but for the first time in my life I’d been important for myself, for my own actions, instead of for my family. I packed away my supplies and approached the lectern. “Yes, Dach’othala?” I said.
Celehar smiled. His smiles were rare, given the gravity of his teachings, but they folded naturally into the lines of his face. He seemed to carry inside him a secret peace and contentment, which never left him entirely. “Osmer Clunethar,” he said. “There has been a death suitable to your Witnessing. The Mer died peacefully and there has been no petition, but he was a man dedicated to inquiry and learning, and he gave permission for his body to be used thus in his will.”
—
The body was being held for us at a small cemetery near the lake. It was a tiny corner of a place, and more prosperous than I had expected; the Ulimeire was small but new and very clean. The body would, we were told, be cremated.
He was perhaps ten years older than Celehar himself, but I thought that in life he may have shared that peaceful curiosity. Celehar squeezed my shoulder encouragingly and stepped back as I began the prayer of compassion for the dead.
Celehar had brought me to a few of these peaceful deathbeds. He never gave me information about the deceased beyond reassurance that I wouldn’t be thrown into the sort of torment that has so vividly marked my first experience. My task was to learn what I could, to push past my own remembered shock and fear with curiosity and compassion.
I placed my hand on the dead man’s forehead and felt myself fall into his last moments. He’d woken in the middle of the night to disorientation and shortness of breath. There had been fatigue, running deep along his bones, and he’d wondered if he would ever wake if he allowed himself to sleep again.
Read my papers, he thought, to the idea of me, to the nameless Witness who he had left his body to as a lesson, Look after the marsh. I think there’s a nest…
And then he had allowed himself to sleep. What is your name, I asked him, as I had been taught. His spirit was strong, but his thoughts were not of himself. He pushed marshy air at me, thick and mud scented. The flutter of brown wings. Dragonflies, small and glittering, and the distant rumble of the trams. Your name, I asked again.
Finally he gave it to me, and I let the connection drop. “His name was Csienu Haluthar. He died in the night, without pain or fear. His last thoughts were of a marsh which he cared for. He asked me to read his papers about it.”
Chapter Two: Belzhavin
Early Csaivese Witnessings and Their Reception
By Kiru Belzhavin
Stories of people with special connection to or insights about water predate written history, but by the founding of the Ethuveraz those accounts were beginning to become formalized and associated with the worship of Csaivo. The two case studies presented here were foundational to the inclusion of Csaivese Witnessings as evidence in judicial decisions.
Case One
In the city of Cetho, before it became the seat of the Imperial Government, a woman received a Dream of Csaivo. In her account she says, "I dreamed of the water flowing away from the earth like blood from a wound, and the people of the city dying of thirst. I dreamed the water [was] poisoned, and people dying of sickness when they drank. And I dreamed of shovels, of chisels, of the great scar of a quarry in the sacred ground that held the water. Stop this!"
She told her dreams to anyone who would listen. Eventually she slept in the town square, and begged passersby to heed her. She was scorned as a madwoman and was eventually killed; no charges were pressed against her murderer. The quarry project went ahead. Eventually the aquifer that fed the city's wells was contaminated and drained. She's now considered a martyr of Csaivo. A statue adorns a filtered cistern in a city hospital.
Case Two
In the city of Pushvarno, during the reign of Edrehasiver II an outbreak of highly contagious fever caused the deaths of more than half the population of the southern district. A cleric of Csaivo, pausing after leaving his shift at the city hospital, stopped at the well.
His account reads, "When I touched the coping a swell of sympathy hit me, and I lost my sense of my body. Instead I became the water in the well, cool and clear and deep. But I felt wrong; something alive, something unhealthy and miniscule, swam within me. It spread into the bodies of those who drank from me, and from them into the sewers…"
He took his case to the Csiav'Othala, and they sought an audience with the Prince. The well was closed and cleansed, and the illness eventually contained. This is the first documented case of a Csaivese Witnessing directly impacting public policy.
Analysis:
Without a strong legal precedent of accepting Witnessings and legal protection for Witnesses, it was easy to brush them aside in favor of financial or practical motives. In the early days of the Ethuveraz it took extremely specific conditions for a Witness of Csaivo to be publicly recognized and their wisdom acted upon.
As Witnessings became an accepted form of testimony, Witnesses Vel Ama were incorporated into many procedures. At first these witnesses were entirely clerical, but eventually their usefulness was proven and Judicial Witnesses began to represent public interests in cases where the Gods chose not to speak directly.
I glanced over what I’d written, not entirely happy with it. I had the rough shape down, but there was nuance that I wanted to capture before I turned it in. I couldn’t help wanting to impress Dach’othala Celehar, who had featured largely in my grandmother’s stories while I was growing up, along with the other champions of Edrehasivar VII. Her claims to a connection were slim; as a girl, her mother had been the cook at Edonomee, and she herself remembered the Emperor as “a charming boy.” I was named after Kiru Athmaza, the first ever Nohecharo. Well, I had another full day until the assignment was due, and I knew I wasn’t going to get further on it until my thoughts settled. I began to gather my things.
“Excuse us?” I didn’t recognize the speaker until I looked up. Osmer Clunethar didn’t often speak in class, and I hadn’t spoken to him outside of it. My sisters would say that I should put myself out there more, that Clunethar was connected and I should nurture the relationship. The mere idea made me angry. He shifted uncomfortably and looked down before trying again. “Min Belzhavin? May we have a moment of your time?”
I settled back in my chair, gesturing to the one across from me. “What is it, Osmer?” I asked. My voice was shorter than I would have liked. The Academy library was one of my favorite places in the city of Amalo, but it was still a city, full of people and not at all suited to me. Or me to it. I missed the Edonara with its empty miles, its complex scent and layered quiet, and the ever present stillness that settled over my nerves like a blanket. Everything here was loud, hard, and grating.
He sat down awkwardly. That irritated me, too. He had no business being awkward. He was a relative of the prince, a member of the nobility. Surely he’d been trained against such things. Surely it wasn’t on me to ease him through his interruption of my study time.
“You are a Witness of Casivo?” he asked me. I nodded. He should know as much, from class. “And particularly, for rivers and wetlands?”
“Yes,” I said, curiosity piqued. Usually people sought me out hoping for the more medical sorts of Witnessing. It had become extremely tedious to explain that while in theory I could ask the Goddess to show me the problem, in practice there was an entire network of Clerics actually trained in such things. Furthermore, they, unlike me, were under vows of celibacy, charity, and, in fact, were actually prone to caring if strangers lived or died. I did not care. To a marsh a human body is food, just like any other helpless thing.
My family had thought me somewhere on the border between hopelessly odd and outright mad before the pamphlet had made it to the village, listing the signs and saying the Emperor needed people like me.
"We Witnessed yesterday for an old man," Clunethar began. "His dying thoughts were of preserving a bit of marsh along the lake, where he thought a rare bird may have a nest. He had…many papers in his apartments relating. Would you accept our petition on his behalf?"
Oh. Those words sent a little thrill through me, in a way I hadn't known they would. Like the tugging invitation I often felt when I knew a foothold in the Edonara was safe, and would lead to more safe steps, and a place I had never been. My calling, I suddenly understood, as I hadn't before. Carefully, I said, "We accept your petition," for the first time.
—
Chapter Three: Clunethar
Belmelivar I was responsible for standardizing many of the legal practices of the Ethuveraz, including formalizing the deposition process; creating the first Judicial Witnesses; and creating the requirements for Witnesses Vel Ama in cases that involved natural resources, young children, or other legal parties who couldn't represent themselves or cause themselves to be represented.
He worked with the Prelacy to create the formal petitioning process for Clerical Witnesses, and required courts to accept the testimony that resulted from a valid petition. It is thanks to him that we are protected from retribution due to our work.
-An Overview of Witnessing Vel Ama, Thara Celehar
I knew I’d led a pampered life, but every experience since the explosion had made that clear in new and interesting ways. Mer Heluthar had lived in a boarding house that catered to the eccentric elderly, singles and couples with eclectic interests and no desire to be judged by their neighbors.
The room was smaller than I thought suited to the dignity of a retired scholar. It was made outright claustrophobic by the files, books, scrolls, and bits of paper that filled every space. The door opened between two worn armchairs. The side tables were made of the tops of shorter shelves, and file boxes filled the space under the coffee table. Bookcases lined the walls floor to ceiling, interrupted only by the door to the washroom. Even the spaces above the doors had been filled with shelves.
It took a minute through the bewildering visual noise to notice that the back wall wasn’t, in fact, a wall. Instead a full height shelf bisected the room, shielding the narrow bed from view. Behind that were more shelves, over the bed to ceiling height. I tried to imagine the ancient Heluthar standing on his bed to retrieve a book.
“You weren’t kidding,” Belzhavin said in wonder. “This is sure going to take some going through.”
“At least it looks organized,” I replied, thinking of a certain relative who had filled his rooms so thoroughly with books that he hadn’t been able to move safely. Mother had purged half his collection, with great care, and organized the rest. He still hadn’t forgiven her, and called her “that woman” whenever he spoke of her.
She huffed. It was the sort of feminine noise I’d never heard before, brisk and frustrated, too unladylike for my relatives and too rude for the staff to make where we might hear them. I liked it. “We don’t know where to begin,” she said. “We know how the Academy Library is organized, but a private collection like this… we’ve never seen such a thing.”
“There’s probably some sort of index,” I said, glancing around. One of the two chairs was more worn, and there was an empty mug, a pen, and a notebook beside it. “He seems to have sat here most often, and he would need it close to hand.” It felt odd to handle his things, invasive and rude. Only those brief moments before his death, when I had been him and felt so clearly his desire to have these things read made me able to pick the notebook up and leaf through it.
The pages were water stained and the notes in a quick scrawl. “This one seems to be his thoughts and field notes.” I held it out. “See what you can make of it. I don’t know anything about lakes, or marsh plants.”
She took it without hesitation as I crouched down to examine the shelf beside Haluthar’s chair. “His handwriting is atrocious,” she said, but she seemed to be able to read it as she was soon flipping back and forth between pages and muttering to herself.
The short shelf was, unsurprisingly, crammed with books, but one was laying horizontally across the others, and not fully pushed back, as though it were accessed often. It fell open easily in my hand, the spine soft from long use. “There we go!” I exclaimed. “This is the master index.”
“Good,” she said abruptly, sitting down in the guest chair. “He seems to have been in the habit of copying his notes more neatly into other volumes. And I need references. Make yourself useful and find…” she trailed off, her ears flattening as she looked up fully. “We are sorry, Osmer.”
I found, after my first flush of indignation, that I rather liked being treated as she clearly would anyone else. I waved it off. “In what way can I be useful?” I asked instead.
She flicked her ears back up and smiled in apparent satisfaction. “Find me…” she flipped through the field notes and the index and started listing books. Soon she was pulling out her own notebook and pen. Between muttering to herself she called out requests for more references.
By the time she looked up I was sweaty and covered in dust. “There,” she said.
“There what?” I asked, frustrated. “What did you find while I was using myself as a dust mop?”
“There are many good reasons to leave Mer Haluthar’s Marsh alone, but the one he thought had the strongest legal weight was the two nesting pairs of Marsh Wrens. Those are protected under the Natural Diversity Act. Unfortunately, he was never able to find the nest, because they are very shy.” She sounded quite satisfied. “But I think the Goddess will show me.”
Chapter Four - Belzhavin
The Csethiro Zhashan Environmental Diversity Act was approved by the Corazhas and signed into effect by Edrehasivar VII during the seventeenth year of his reign. It arose out of the controversy surrounding the extinction of the yellow shell turtle, whose primary remaining sandy spawning area was destroyed during the installation of the Wisdom Bridge. Edrehasivar VII expressed deepest regret that he didn't ever see the turtle alive, and only became aware of its existence through drawings after its presumed extinction.
Csethiro Zhashan and Archduchess Vedero Drazharin led a committee of Judicial Witnesses Vel Ama and hobbyist naturalists, many of whom were noblewomen encouraged by the Joint Chairs of the Committee. Together they spent several years assembling a "non-comprehensive list" of at risk species, with provisions in the law requiring regular review and updates.
—
“Come on,” I said, gesturing to the borrowed canoe. “Get in.”
“You first,” Clunethar said. “I’ll take the stern.”
“You will not,” I snapped, indignant. “How often have you even been in a canoe? You had to ask around to find someone who owned one.”
“A…few times?” He sounded more bewildered than offended. I knew what my mother would say about me speaking to the nobility this way, even if the nobility was currently a scatter-brained youth with the common sense of a chicken. The Edonara would have eaten him. But he didn’t seem to mind when I spoke bluntly, and I’d never been any good at all the formalities anyway.
I leaned over and steadied the boat. “In in the bow. Back a little ways; you’re heavier than me. But I know how to steer.”
“It can’t be that hard if Aesho can do it,” he said, but he did get in. I only managed to keep it from tipping him into the canal through a good grip. “Keep your weight low! And centered!”
“Yes, yes, okay,” he said, moving more carefully. “Here?” he called over his shoulder.
“Yes. Sit! And take this.” I handed him up a paddle. “Good. Now sit still.” I pushed away from the shore and stepped in, lowering myself to kneel in the stern with slow, controlled movements. The buoyancy, the momentum, the need to measure every movement came back instantly. It had been months since the airship had taken me to Amalo, and in all that time I’d never gone far enough from the Academy to use the canal. I felt as though I’d been stuck abed with a long illness and was only now able to walk again.
I would come back again, for the joy of it, I thought. For today, I had work to do. Celehar had seen to it that we all learned prayers to invoke our gifts. There were many available, some more traditional than others. The one that called to me was known as The Prayer of Joyful Thanks for Water. I said it aloud and immediately the current, which had been tugging at my attention, swept me under.
Physically I remained in the boat, but the boat was now a small thing upon the surface of myself. I stretched from clear bright springs, many and surging, to the briny vastness of the sea, constantly becoming, moving, and shedding myself. I had countless little marshes, little boats, cities and bridges, people and animals and fish, and all were me and I was all.
It was a vastness beyond mortal comprehension.
Amalo, I whispered into that great Presence. The lake, yes, and the marsh here. This canoe in the canal with the two young people. Wilt Thou in Thy bounty guide us to the nest of the Marsh Wren, that we may shelter it?
The vastness receded, replaced by the more familiar sensation of something drawing me on. I unshipped my paddle, letting the river flow through my body and steer me where it would. Each paddle stroke felt strong and sure, slipping through the water without a splash.
We crossed the lake swiftly. I barely had time to note the location of the marsh along the far shore before we parted the reeds silently and drifted to a stop with the stems brushing the gunwales. Something small and brown flickered above and in front of us, slightly to port. I felt the river’s love for the bird, no more and no less than its love for the cattails, for the fish, for the insects. It was baffled by my focus, but showed me willingly, helping my eyes to follow the little darting bird into her nest.
I noted the details; where in the marsh, how high above the water, how often she came and went as we sat there watching. The patterns of her feathers. The time of day and the date. Finally I thanked the Goddess once more and eased the canoe backwards until we were in the open lake once more.
“Depositions?” I asked Clunethar.
“Depositions,” he confirmed. “The Environmental Protection office, I should think.”
Chapter Five - Clunethar
During the early days of Judicial Witnesses they were considered by the public to be less trustworthy than Clerical Witnesses. There was a popular belief that those the Gods Gifted were inherently trustworthy.
Various political and social upheavals of the church undermined that belief. In the meantime, the consistency of the work that Judicial Witnesses did, the verifiability of their work, and the accessibility to the average person, caused them to gain trust. By the time of the Varedese Dynasty the Judicial Witnessing process was considered the main information gathering process for legal matters, and with the long decline of religion within the Court many came to disbelieve in Clerical Witnesses entirety.
-An Overview of Witnessing Vel Ama, Thara Celehar
There was something very surreal about entering the Prince Zhaivaca Building. It was grand, but shabby, functional and dull. Not quite real seeming, as though it were the backdrop for an opera. There were the doors Dach’othala Celehar had entered every day. These were the stairs he’d climbed. That office, which we walked past without entering, was where he had had sat, and the bored middle-aged woman reading behind the desk was a Witness for the Dead, like Celehar, like myself. This might be my own future.
How many stories had the woman at the desk found? How many people had she, oh so briefly, been? We all knew of Celehar’s deeds: uncovering the Tethimadese Conspiracy, quieting ghouls, cleansing the Hill of Werewolves, uncovering the sentient nature of dragons and the massive genocide behind the gold rush. We knew he’d founded the Academy.
Only now did it strike me that he had Witnessed for thousands of people in his long lifetime. I wondered which ones had touched him the most. How many lives had the Witness in that office touched? How many would I?
We walked on, past the cartographers, to the Office of Environmental Protection. There were two people there, an older half-goblin man and an elvish teen. The man was bent over a map, studying it through reading glasses while the boy watched nervously.
“This is good work, Myrra,” the man said. “Your lettering has improved, and you’ve added the terrain with a fine conciseness of detail.”
Myrra flushed, ears very tall. “Thank you, Mer!” he said. “We try!”
The man straightened, a smile creasing his grave face. “We know you do, michen. You are a most enthusiastic pupil. But we see we have visitors. Come in, come in! What brings you here?”
“Our name is Cseva Clunethar, and we are a Witness for the Dead,” I said. My voice cracked and stumbled, and I blushed, cursing my elvish complection. “Excuse me,” I mumbled. “In sooth I have never had occasion to say that before. It’s my first, you see.”
His orange eyes crinkled kindly at the corners. “It is no matter to me. I have stumbled enough times in the course of learning my work,” he said. “But please, tell us why you have come.” Bless him for both easing my discomfort and providing such a smooth bridge back to formality!
“We are Witnessing for Mer Haluthar, who died of natural causes. At the time of his death he was much concerned with a certain section of marsh, and we have undertaken to follow up on his work. We understand from his notes that he came here often? Are you the Mer Zhanivar he had spoken to before?”
“Yes,” he replied. “We are sorry indeed to hear of his passing. He was a kind man, and very passionate. While he was neither a trained judicial witness like ourself, nor a clerical witness, he had the nature for the work, and a fine sense of detail. He was a scholar before his retirement, we understand. But tell us more. Who petitioned you on his behalf, and how did you come to be following up? This is outside the usual scope of a Witness for the Dead, surely? Otherwise, anyone with unfinished business could petition a Witness to finish it for them.”
“We are students at the Academy for Clerical Witnessing,” I explained. “Min Belshavin is a Csaivese Witness Vel Ama. Mer Heluthar had specified in his will that students such as myself could…experience his death. And he died worrying about this marsh. So I petitioned Min Belshavin, and we find ourselves here.”
“It is a most distinct pleasure to meet you, Min Belzhavin!” Mer Zhanivar exclaimed. “We had spoken to Dach’othala Celehar about the need to revive the old traditions, but he was unsure when he would find someone with the inclination. For though the health of the watercourses is crucial to the health of the land and all the life supported thereby, most Csaivese focus on the human body.”
Belzhavin lit up. “They do!” she explained, with more passion than I had seen from her. “And then people expect the same of us, and truly we aren’t that interested in humans. Our mother says it’s a flaw, but we’ve always been like this.”
“Well, you are always welcome in this office,” he said firmly, “though you will find we have more work than hands to do it. We do care about the water.”
“Thank you,” Belzhavin said, ducking her head. “We are here to give a deposition. We went to Mer Haluthar’s Marsh this morning, and the Goddess showed us to the location of the Marsh Wren nest he had been searching for.”
“Did She now?” Zhanivar asked keenly. “That’s excellent! Come, the clerks at the cartographer’s office can witness, and Myrra here can scribe. He’s developing a most excellent hand, and this is good practice for him.”
—
Chapter Six: Belzhavin
Let the record show that the Marshland now known as Mer Haluthar’s Marsh is hereby protected by the Csethiro Zhasan Natural Diversity Act. Exhibit A, a map drawn by Myrra Veschar, details the extent of the protected area. Exhibit B, a deposition by Kiru Belzhavin, Csaivese Witness Vel Ama, declares the breeding presence of a protected species of bird. Exhibit C is supporting evidence from Cseva Clunethar.
-Judge’s Ruling
We, first person plural. What a strange word to find myself using suddenly, naturally, in my own thoughts. It had been less than a week, and already we had done enough together that it wasn’t until I was slipping back into the stern of the canoe and floating into the current that I realized how new it was.
Yet here we were, Osmer Clunethar and young Myrra and I, going back to the marsh. Here I was, inviting other humans along with me on an adventure of exploration, on something that had always been private. And there was something else - something that had always been there, but which I now recognized with new eyes.
The Goddess whispered to me of the currents. I could see them in the subtle shifts of the color and texture on the surface, the way any skilled boatman could, and feel them in the movements of my craft. But now - after the explicit Witnessing brought on by the prayer - I knew why I had always thought other boaters somewhat stupid. They had been operating half blind. The river stretched around me like part of my own self. I could feel its shape, feel where the bottom was muddy or sandy or stone, feel the great rush of the main current, slow but unstoppable, and the tickle and tug of the eddies like long hair brushing against skin.
The Academy had not tamed me. The city streets still chafed across my nerves like a wire brush. But it had given a name and a context to my wildness. When I was done studying and went again to the Edonara, it would be as someone Goddess-Blessed and approved, wise-gifted rather than witchy. Someone people like Mer Zhanivar respected and were happy to see.
Mother, I thought. Mother, you’d be so proud of me. I would write to her when we returned, I decided, to tell her that I was doing well. I would thank her for taking all the steps to bring me here. I had always thought she feared me, but I suddenly understood that she had feared for me instead, her strange lonely child who played in the swamp that killed other children.
I felt whole, renewed and joyful. For a moment I forgot myself and laughed with the pure release of it. The canoe tipped dangerously. My eyes snapped open to find Clunethar craning over his shoulder to stare at me.
“I missed the water,” I said, grinning and unrepentant.
“I can see that,” he murmured. “Thou art radiant in thy Goddess’s arms.” He turned back towards the bow, where Myrra handled the second paddle. It wasn’t far to the marsh, out into the lake and away from the bustle of people. Today we approached it slowly. I held the boat steady and pointed out features while Myrra and Clunethar took sketches and notes.
It wasn’t large; smaller than a city neighborhood, just a half circle of low lying land sheltered from the current by a stone outcropping. The river drifted and sighed into it rather than rushing, and deposited her gift of silt. We eased in gently as the cattails grew over our heads and the channels narrowed. There between the stems the city sounds were muted and far off. I knew from Haluthar’s notes that he had found it as disorienting as he did intriguing.
I shipped my paddle and let us float, listening to the silence. I wasn’t disoriented, because there was no place I wanted to go from here, no direction that mattered. This was the center of everything, a small cradle of creation just outside the hard city. It was soft and buzzing with insects, warbling with birdsong, and everything I had needed but lacked was right here around me.
“Listen,” I murmured. “Dos’t hear the birds? There’s at least five kinds here other than the Wren. And I’ve seen four different dragonflies. Fish spawn down between the roots. This place is the nursery that allows the river to thrive.”
I felt the boat rock again. Clunethar had turned around to face me in his place. “I’ve lived in Amalo my whole life and I’ve never known this was here. Never wondered. I’ve seen it, just another patch of shore. And then I Witnessed for Haluthar, and felt his love for it. I see it reflected in thy face.” He looked at me the way I looked at our surroundings. “There is so much I never knew existed, and I wonder…will every Witnessing lead me to new and secret worlds, little universes hidden within my city that can only be unlocked with the right eyes? Is that my gift?”
I tried to imagine. My mother had scolded me over and over to try to see things from my sisters’ perspectives when we fought, or to have more empathy for the bumbling idiots i was routinely called upon to rescue from the Edonara. I had never imagined it, never been able to be less than completely myself. And yet my time in the city, and using my gift deliberately, had made me realize that what I felt from the water was a feeling outside myself, that I had always been both myself and more than myself.
“It seems to me a strange gift, and very overwhelming,” I said. “To walk around knowing all that exists and you don’t know it. I think perhaps I would rather not know of the universes that aren’t watery.”
He smiled at me, eyes bright. “It seems a great adventure to me,” he admitted. “Though I would prefer another path in, besides death. It seems all the stories I find must perforce unravel in reverse, having begun with completion.”