The Ways

"Sweet save, Aunt."

I heard the sound of a dry chuckle from the old woman. A lot of people believe she is this mean old woman that will turn their livers inside out and feed it to the sleen. They would be right most of the time. Forget the wager, she would do it just for the amusement. The ominous cloak of mystery she wears is there to keep people out. Its just her way.

That little chip of wisdom came when I was very young and she was swirling her cane around trying to wallop Imke, my jit monkey. He had run up her leg when I first got him. It looked and felt for all the plains like the skies turned themselves upside down. She was batting at him and he was screeching and jumping everywhere trying to get out of her way. I screamed at her to stop ... just stop. Then I told her she was a mean old woman, that he was just a little monkey and she was scaring him.

Everything fell silent as if it the world grew still. That was when I could see her ... the real her without any barriers or mists. She was just frightened and unsure of what was around her, especially of Imke. I put her hand on his fur and felt the tension ease from her old weathered hand. Imke's hair stood out but not because he was scared but the way it does in a lightening storm. He bolted out of the flap and wont dare come near her since but I sat talking with her for a while. It was like her voice came from somewhere beside the channel of her mouth when she said I had the ways. Oh yeah well thank you Aunt, thank you very much but umm no thank you. I didn't tell her the rest of what I was thinking ... I do not want to be like you. She seemed to have heard my thoughts and set my mind at ease when she told me I didn't have to.

Always clarify when you are talking to a Spex. Always.

In her wagon now, I felt a lot like that little girl. "It is time Mezoo." So much was happening so fast that I wasn't sure I was keeping up very well. She did what she has done for many envars, she placed her hand over my eyes so that everything and everyone went away. It was there that I found the comfort of the dark. The margins of silence. With my eyes closed she introduced me to her world, laying different things in my hands for me to see without seeing, to know by the touch of my hands or the smell or the sound that it made without light. I knew the variances of herbs she used for healing to the touch of sand as it flowed through my fingers. I know the warm pulse of a kajira's heart still fresh, still beating. She spared no expense that I could see the way she did. This time she lay her hands in mine and I explored her palms and fingers, the ends of her fingertips. She was holding something in them that couldn't be seen with the naked eye.

I grew up with the verr helping Grandmother and Mother made sure that I knew how to card the wool and make functional and beautiful things with it. Now I had to make a choice between them all. I had to find which way was my way. Grandmother's way and Mother's way, I could do with my eyes closed, but Aunt's way was something altogether different. There was a great deal unknown. It was a trail less traveled.

The world wasn't going to stop, just stop until I could make up my mind. I kept thinking it had been made up for me and was waiting for me to understand. I was just frightened and unsure of all these new changes around me and no one was reaching to place my hand on it so that all the tension would ease. Maybe it was because it would tuck tail and scram like Imke did. I closed my eyes and chuckled to myself kind of picturing it.