Broken, wept the earthlines. Broken, broken.
Some of the groaning, she thought, was the ground itself, splitting, tearing itself from itself.
She was staring into the far end, where it was deepest—probably the height of two tall men, she guessed, easily enough to imprison a cow and her calf—when the woman came with a flask of icy spring water, and shortly after her one of Faine’s brothers with a pair of horses.
Mirasol mixed her cup: water, the spring water this field would know, herbs for distress of mind and body and one for deep dangerous wounds that they will not fester; some of this year’s spring honey, because spring was the season of joy for the future, and some honey tasting strongly of handflowers. Handflowers were lavender-pink, and inside they were striped red in such a way that they resembled the fingers and thumbs of two hands held cupped together. It was considered lucky to drink rainwater from the cups of handflowers—and anyone who regularly did then saw all things so clearly that they could not be deceived. I will not deceive you, said Mirasol silently to the earthlines. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m here and I’m listening; and there is still joy in this world. She stirred the mixture with the oak twig. Last she dropped in the three small stones, which were for light in darkness, for compassion and for love.
“Someone will have to climb down there with them, you know, to put the ropes around them,” she said.
The man nodded. “I know. I’ll go.” His face was pinched with worry and fear; he met her eyes, briefly, as if forgetting himself, and immediately looked away.
“Drink this first,” Mirasol said, and offered him her cup. “Just a sip—you only need a sip.” The Chalice stones clinked faintly against the side of the cup as he drank.
She turned away without waiting to see if her mixture had had any effect; she didn’t have a second choice if it didn’t. She knelt, and then lay down flat, just above where the unhappy cow bawled and thrashed. It was not a graceful procedure—what might the Chalice who had cured her father’s trees have done about a trapped cow? Cows and sheep did get caught in natural cuts and hollows sometimes—but there was nothing natural about this one. She spilled several drops from her cup on the bits of cow that happened to be under them when they fell. At least once the sweet water landed on her nose—which was where she was aiming—and Mirasol saw the vast pink tongue reach up to lick it off. The calf, being smaller, and trying to hide under its mother, was harder, but she splashed it a few times.
And then she stood up, as if what she wanted and hoped would happen was going to happen.
The cow stopped bellowing.
“Go down now,” she said. “Get ready. I’ll start at the far end: that’ll give you a few minutes.” She didn’t add, I have no idea how long the effect will last. I have no idea why it worked. If it worked. Maybe the cow just likes the taste of honey.
I have no idea if anything else will work.
She turned away, and began again the long walk—it felt twice as long this second time—to the far end of the grotesque crack in the ground. The high dreadful keening of the earthlines had diminished to a woebegone rumble; a rumble that seemed to be turning toward her—looking for her—looking for help, as Faine had done. She knew the usual conjurations to quiet an earth tremor—often a mere murmur of silence and peace, quiet and calm was enough, like singing a lullaby to a fretful child—but these seemed hardly appropriate for an earthquake that had torn a hole in the landscape. But she found herself humming an old lullaby her mother had sung to her: Sleep, my little love, sleep, my little one. Sleep is sweet and love is sweeter, but honey is sweetest of all.
There were several ritual ways a Chalice could hold her cup; she chose the one—only practical on the slender, stemmed Chalice vessels—that allowed her to weave the fingers of her two hands together around it while her crossed thumbs held the other side: connection, joining, linkage. She tried several phrases from the incantation book she had left behind, but none of them suited her; none of them felt right, none of them settled to the work before her. She felt the earthlines listening—listening but waiting. Waiting to hear the thing that would reassure them, that would knit them together, that would call them home.
She reached the end of the crack and paused. It had, she noticed with some small relief, stopped growing. But when she turned and looked back along the length of it, it seemed leagues long; the two big work-horses as small as mice in the distance; the heavy ropes hanging off their harness and disappearing into the crack were barely visible threads.
“Please,” she said clearly, aloud, as if she spoke to a person. “Please be as you were. I will try to help you.” She hesitated, and pulled out the handflower honey and added a little more to the mixture in her cup. The water was faintly gold against the silver cup; the small stones in the bottom shone like gems. She did not want gold and silver and gems; she wanted ordinary things, commonplace things. Trees and birdsong and sunlight, and unfractured earth. “Let the earth knit together again, like—like darning a sock. Here are the threads to mend you with.” And she threw a few drops from her cup into the trench. She saw them twinkle in the air as if they were tiny filaments; the pit was quite shallow here, and she could see tiny spots of darkness where they landed. Her fingers were sticky with honey. Absentmindedly she put one in her mouth; the taste of the herbs was clear and sharp, but the honey’s complex sweetness seemed to carry mysteries.
There was a sudden sharp new tremor under her feet. Her heart leaped into her throat and she froze. The jolt loosened the dirt on the sides of the trench, and it pattered down. Quite a lot of it pattered down, till the trench was barely a trench at all, little more than a slight hollow.
“Here are the threads to mend you with,” she said again, having no better spell or command to offer, and she tossed more drops from her cup into the wound in the earth.
The trench began to fill up.
She walked slowly back toward the deep end, murmuring to the earth and the earthlines, tossing sweet mysterious drops into the shadows of the ravine. The earth under her feet still shook, but the shaking now seemed more like that of something shaking itself back together again after a shock or an unbalancing blow: like the turning sock in the hands of the darner.
The crevasse was disappearing.
There was a shout ahead of her, and she saw the horses take the strain; and then they sank into their harness and began to pull. The ropes went taut—tauter; the horses began to move.