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She carried a small basket in one hand-the hand that bled. The other hand hung at her side, but when she stepped into the sunlight something glinted there. A knife. Again Jy
"It's all right," the woman said. She halted and held up the blade, a smile on her wizened face. "This is for me, not for you."
There was still a good distance between them, and Jy
"I'm Mettai," the woman told her. "Do you know what that means?" Of course. She'd heard her father and mother speak of the Mettai. They were Eandi sorcerers who used their blood to do magic. But her parents spoke of them the way they did of the horsemen of Naqbae or the warriors of the T'Saan clan, as if they lived leagues and leagues from Tivston. What was this woman doing here?
"Yes," Jy
The woman glanced at her hand and after a moment licked away a streak of blood. "Yes, it is. Blood magic." She held up the knife again.
"That's why I need this. A Mettai can't conjure without her blade." "What kind of magic are you doing?"
The woman beckoned to her. "Come here and I'll show you." She smiled again. "I won't hurt you."
Jy
"Good girl," the woman said. "Now watch this."
She dropped to her knees with an ease that seemed to belie her aged appearance and carefully placed the basket on the grass just in front of her. Then she laid the blade on the cut she'd already made on the back of her hand and pulled it slowly across the wound, wincing slightly as she did. Blood began to flow from the cut again, but before it could run away over her skin, the woman caught it on the flat edge of her knife. She carefully switched the blade to her wounded hand, then stooped, ripped away a clod of grass, and pulled out a handful of earth from the hole it left. Mixing the blood from her knife with the earth in her hand, she said, "Blood to earth, life to power, power to thought, flowers to basket."
After a moment, the bloody mixture in her hand began to swirl, as if stirred by some invisible hand. Once, twice, three times it turned in her hand. As it began to go around a fourth time, the old woman, with a light flick of her wrist, cast the mixture at the basket. But rather than merely splattering the lovely weaving, the dark mud appeared to turn to tiny flower petals, or shards of colored glass, or droplets of water shining with the colors of the rainbow.
And suddenly the basket, which had been empty an instant before, was overflowing with blooms. Aster and columbine, larkspur and lupine, snapdragon and pe
"Can I touch them?" she asked.
"Of course, my dear. They're quite harmless."
She touched the lupine and the snapdragon. They felt real. Leaning forward, she inhaled, the scents of the blooms filling her lungs. She gently rubbed the leaves of the pe
"They're beautiful," she whispered.
"They're yours, if you'd like them," the woman said. "The basket, too."
"Did you make the basket?"
"Yes, I did."
"With magic?"
The woman smiled and shook her head. "No, I wove all my baskets by hand."
"But you were doing magic on them before."
The woman's smile changed, the way adults' smiles did when they were a
"Before, in the trees, before you saw me. You had your baskets out and your hand was bleeding, and you were speaking to yourself, like you did just now when you made the flowers."
"You saw that, did you?"
Jy
The woman looked at her bleeding hand and took a breath. After a moment she licked the blood away again, as she had in among the trees. She lifted her gaze, her eyes meeting Jy
"The truth is," she said, "I weave my baskets entirely by hand, and usually I dye them by hand as well. But I've been wandering a long time, making new baskets as I go, and I don't have all my dyes with me. So occasionally, I have to color my baskets using magic. That way I can get gold enough to continue my travels. Do you understand?"
Jy
"I usually like to keep this a secret," the woman went on. "We Met- tai aren't well liked by the other Eandi. They don't like our magic. But you being Qirsi and all, I didn't think you'd mind too much."
"Actually, we're Y'Qatt."
"Y'Qatt! Really!" the woman said, as if she'd never met one of Jy
"Not at all."
The woman frowned. "Oh, my," she said, looking back toward the trees. "Do you think that means that no one in your village-what village is this, my dear?"
"Tivston."
"Tivston," she repeated. "Do you think this means that no one in Tivston will want to buy my baskets?"
Jy
The woman turned slightly toward the trees and smiled, as if they were sharing a secret. "Would you like to see my baskets?"
"All right," Jy
She followed the stranger back into the shade. The air felt cooler here, and damp.
"What's your name?" the woman asked.
"Jy
"That's very pretty. I'm Licaldi."
"I know. You said that before."
"Did I? Oh, yes, I suppose I did."
"Licaldi is a pretty name, too," Jy
"Thank you, my dear."
They pushed through the low branches of the trees until they reached the small open area where her baskets were still spread in a small arc.
Jy
"People will buy these," Jy
"You think so?"
She turned to the woman and nodded.
"And you won't tell them that some are colored with magic?"
Jy
"No," she said. "I won't tell."
"You're a sweet girl. Just for that, you can choose another one, to take home to your mother."
"Really?"
Licaldi nodded.
Jy
"You have a good eye," Licaldi told her. "I think that's one of my best." The girl smiled.
"It was nice meeting you, Jy