Fiddlis turned over in her sleep and smiled. She was dreaming that a little boy, with curly brown hair, was holding out his hand to her. Strange, she could see him. In fact, Fiddlis could see everything in her dream: a gurgling stream laughed nearby, the water looked cool and white. The sunshine fell in merry orange dapples onto the springy forest turf and tall pine trees snickered to each other in their own tongue. Several small fairies, their wings transparent and frosted with twinkling light, flitted in and out through the hillocks of moss and a warm breeze stroked wide sunbaked rocks, perfect for climbing on. The sky was so blue…such a pristine, clear-cut blue such as Fiddlis has never known. Indeed, the young girl did not even know what to call the beautiful color that looked down upon her as she rubbed her eyes and stared, open-mouthed, about her. Fiddlis had never been taught the names of colors, as she had never yearned to name them. Yet somehow, as she caught sight of the little boy, who was pink-cheeked and grinning, she knew his hair was brown and the skies were blue. The skies were blue! And the boy’s eyes were blue as the sky.
Fiddlis gave a shiver as she realized this and stood up. She had been laying in a field of daisies that smelled like Auntie’s special homey smell; the grass underneath her body had been crushed, sent up a fresh juicy odor. One lone white daisy had been pressed into a perfect assembly of petals and seemed almost, not quite but nearly, to nod in the breeze as thought telling Fiddlis to follow the laughing boy, who was running in and out of the pines. Fiddlis shyly brushed off her patched dress, but was amazed to look down and find that all the patches had disappeared. Her dress was as soft and bright as when Auntie had first given it to her, many long years ago. The dress had come from an old peddler who lived deep down in the lowland heaths, hidden from view until his sheep had been sheared and the wool spun and sewn into cloth. Then he would come to the highlands, carrying a heavy load of blue, green and red plaid cloth to sell in Fiddlis’s village. Auntie would sit holding Fiddlis and explaining everything to her, but she never mentioned the colors; Fiddlis knew now the colors of the cloth and loved every shade. The children would all run around the man, fingering the cloth with chubby hands and wide mouths shaped into an O. Every year, he would come and every year, the children tugged at their mothers’ hands and begged their fathers to buy them the special cloth, for clothing. Their parents laughed and complained but it was all in fun. The old man’s cloth was the best in the low and high lands, and it would be another whole year before they could buy any more.
So coin flashed in the sunlight and the old cloth-peddler grew very rich. No one ever thought to ask him what he did with the money, but the highlanders were understanding people and if a naughty child blurted out the nagging question of where his parents’ money went, he was hastily hushed.
Fiddlis recalled many things as she ran after the boy in her lovely dress. She could remember Auntie calling the cloth-peddler over, putting her niece’s small hands on his wrinkled roughened ones, and the peddler’s thick rich voice asking “Which cloth will it be, child?” Fiddlis would have loathed the pity in anyone’s voice had they spoken thus because she was blind…but somehow the smoky tone did nothing to offend her and she would run her skin along every piece of cloth while Auntie fed the patient old man with cold goat’s milk and freshly baked bread. Fiddlis would munch the hot bread, strewn with raisins, as she inspected every inch of every yard of cloth and offered suggestions. “This one should be softer,” she would say and hear the happy cackle of the peddler. “It should!” she would insist, spilling several plump black raisins onto the cloth basket. “It would sell better!” Of course, the man needed no help selling his quality wares, but Fiddlis felt it was her duty to tell him if something was wrong with a piece of cloth.
“She sees more with those little hands than most people do with their big ol’ eyes!” the peddler would say when a curious villager walked by and asked him about the odd little blind girl pestering his cloth. Shrugging, the villager would walk past, pleased with the color of his new cloth. But Fiddlis could not choose by seeing the colors, so she would feel and touch and bother the fabrics until finally she would turn to Auntie and say “This one. This piece of cloth is good.” Auntie would tell the peddler to cut some cloth for her, a smile in her voice, while Fiddlis stood eating the last of her raisin bread with contentment.
The young girl had no idea why this certain memory stood out so clearly in her mind. Perhaps it was because she could actually see the color of her dress now. It was bright, vibrant brown, like that sweet stuff called chocolate they drank melted in the wintertime, and it had red point-cuff sleeves and a blue apron with small white circles threaded into the blue. The apron was not as blue as the skies, nor the boy’s eyes as he beckoned Fiddlis to follow him through the tall rustly grass, but rather blue as midnight. Fiddlis liked it. She could see her dress and she loved the world. The colors and feelings, sharper than before, thrilled her.
Fiddlis ran after the boy, screaming with laughter as the wind played in her sandy hair, which was silky and long instead of dirty and tangled. Her feet needed no shoes and she relished the rich black earth between her toes. What about the little boy made her want to run after him and play with him the sunshine? Fiddlis somehow needed to follow him. There was s strange light that shone from his face, from his brilliant blue eyes, like some sort of odd cold-fire. Fiddlis threw back her head and gave a loud, hearty laugh. She and the little boy, who could not be much older than her, ran through the ticklish grass, over smooth stones, across the soft dirt and splashed through the giggling brook.
The little boy suddenly turned and caught Fiddlis’s hands up in his own. Gasping for breath and perfectly happy, she and the boy spun around and around reveling the sun on their cheeks and the warm of the air as it swirled past them. They crashed to the ground, unhurt, and looked cheerfully into each other’s faces. Fiddlis found herself still holding his hand and suddenly looked down at them. Right in the center of the little boy’s palms were two holes. Blood was dried around the piercings and Fiddlis could see the green grass through them.
She hardly knew why when a tear slipped from her eye down her cheek. To be able to see what not all good, she decided. She gently put the boy’s hand down and blinked in the sunlight as the world fell away and all there was left was the strange blue-eyed boy looking kindly at her. Leaning forward, the boy spoke for the first time, into her ear.
“My name is Shaddai,” the little boy breathed.
Fiddlis woke up with a sharp grunt and found herself back in the Fairy bed, just as before. She expected to feel the same feelings and look around with black, blank eyes. With a sudden cry, Fiddlis saw before her carvings on cherry wood and lacy curtains hanging before a balcony, gently blown by a deliciously warm breeze.
“I can see!” she cried out. “I am no longer blind!” Then something inside of her, reverberating from the deepest parts of her soul, remembered Shaddai, the little boy with wounds in his hands. Fiddlis stared around her.
“Shaddai,” she whispered.
“I envy you, I really do,” Gorn assured his fellow soldier. “This kind of assignment would agree right steadily with me!” Lorn, his sandy brown hair hanging self-consciously in his slate gray eyes, shrugged and leaned against a nearby tree. Gorn put a hand on his friend’s broad shoulder and grinned. There was a small piece of mutton in his teeth and Lorn smothered a laugh.
“Why are you being so gloomy?” the barrel-chested redhead guffawed. He threw a wickedly-pointed dagger into Lorn’s leather knapsack and then followed it with a week’s supply of dried meat. “Any young soldier would be honored -not to mention thrilled to his boots- to have such an agreeable assignment. You get to know the girl, find out some secrets, and then break her heart! Perfect drama and tragedy.”
“If there is value in drama and tragedy then I wish to add my approaches it!” Lorn growled, snatching his leather pack away and stuffing spare clothes into it. “I have never known any girl save for my withered old granny; my mother and baby sister both died when I was too young to know the difference between friend and foe. My father and granny raised me until I was old enough to be drafted…I have been a soldier for King Wenceslas ever since. Therein my life has been both tragic and dramatic, yet I know not how to even talk to this girl.” Lorn flipped his hair out of his eyes and began lacing up his boots. “Some people say she is mad, some say she is a witch who poisoned the Crescentfolk and that was how the plague caught them. I know she lived with her brother in a tree off the highway, harmless as a cricket, and yet this undaunting herbalist frightens me to death. Gorn…I have no idea what to do.”
Gorn was looking at him with mild, slightly amused eyes and ran a big hand through his short red hair. “Has anyone ever told you that you could get by in life just with your looks?” Lorn rolled his eyes and drew his dark green cloak around himself. “You will not have a single problem charming this healer-girl. Trust me, my young friend.” Lorn somehow hated the thick meaty fingers gripping his arm. He brushed past Gorn, feeling no better about the task before him, and walked through the camp.
“Ho, Lorn!” shouted several of his companions. Lorn forced his jaw to keep still against the curses that invaded his mind. He just wanted to be left alone! Keeping his gray eyes glued to the officer’s tent, Lorn pushed through the canvas flaps and stood straight and rigid before his commander.
“I am ready to depart, sir,” Lorn said in a well-trained voice. The hot anger that had pulsed through him was gone now.
“Very good,” said his officer. “I trust you understand your assignment?”
Aye, my assignment, thought Lorn with a squirm, but not how I will go about it. His tan face was closed against these thoughts and he nodded curtly.
“Right then, soldier; I am entrusting you with this important duty. The King expects a job well done.” The officer leaned forward, dark eyes suddenly glittering. “Do not disappoint him.”
Melchior stood quietly watching the happenings outside the balcony window. His icy eyes bored into the individual villagers as they milled about in the dust and the cold, awaiting the arrival of the outcast. Foolish boy, did he expect to gain favor with the Crescentfolk by turning himself in to the jury and the council of the village-kingdom? Soon he would know what a futile, wasteful and utterly stupid act this was. Soon…
The King’s advisor turned with a sigh from the window, his long silver cloak sweeping around his ankles, and departed from the room to fetch the King. A matter of life and death would be decided that day
