Alys, toothless and wrinkled though with piercing eyes and a sharp tongue, told the men roughly: “Leave us be!” when they carried the trembling creature in to her. She tended the girl through the night. Alys was childless herself but had been midwife to many and was no stranger to damaged young. She stripped the girl of the drenched, ripped clothing, setting it aside, then rubbed her dry with rough cloth, and wrapped her in soft wool. She did all this in flickering light from a smoky oil lamp. When the girl stopped shaking, Alys stirred the herb-flavored broth that had been simmering on the fire in an iron pot. She poured some into a bowl, and fed the girl from a spoon held carefully lest she thrust it away in her fear.
But the girl sipped, wary at first, then opened her mouth for more.
“Go slow or you’ll puke,” Alys told her.
“What brung you?” she asked when the soup bowl was emptied. The girl’s head turned and she half rose, listening to the murmur of the sea, but she did not answer and the old woman did not urge her. Instead, Alys found a comb carved of bone on the shelf nearby, and began to unsnarl and smooth the wet, salt-stiffened hair.
The wind howled through the thatch on the roof. It was deepest night now. The girl dozed, half sitting. Finally, Alys lowered her to the bed and pulled the length of wool cloth up around her bare shoulders. She watched for a few moments as the girl slept, her hair fanned about her head. Alys had always yearned for a daughter and felt that the sea had sent this one to her. After a bit she lowered the flame in the lamp so that the hut was dim, with dark shadows on its walls. She wrapped her own self in a woven blanket, sank into a nearby chair, and slept too.
In the morning the girl woke and wept softly. When she saw her clothing, all rags now encrusted with drying salt, she clutched the tatters, feeling the ruined cloth with her fingers, and then relinquished it all, turning her face to the wall. After a bit, with a resigned sigh, she took the coarse woven shift that Alys offered her, slipped it over her head, and stood. Her bare legs and arms were bruised and scraped; one ankle was badly swollen and she favored it, limping to the table where Alys had set a bowl of porridge.
Her hair was red-gold, burnished copper in the early light of winter that came through the small window and fell over her as she ate. The day was fair, as it was often after storms.
“What brung you to this place?” Alys asked her again. “What carried you and threw you to the storm?”
But again the girl did not answer, though she stared at Alys with her gold-flecked eyes. She had a puzzled look.
“Do you not understand our tongue?” Alys asked, knowing that the question was foolish, for if the answer were to be no, then the girl could not understand in order to give it.
“I am Alys.” The old woman pointed to herself. “Alys,” she said again, and patted her own chest in explanation. “I have no child, none ever, but I have birthed many among our women and few died in the birthing; they say I have the firm hands and the feel for it, and I also lay out the dead and sometimes can heal if the sickness is not beyond healing.
“That’s why they brung you to me, for they felt you needed healing, or if not healing, then I would clean and wrap you for the grave.”
The girl was watching her. Her bowl was empty, and she raised the cup of milk beside it and drank deeply.
From outside they could hear, suddenly, the giggles of children. Alys pushed a window open, peered out, and called to them. “She’s alive! She eats and is whole, with no parts broken. Go and tell. And stay off now till she’s rested good! She don’t need the likes of you laughing and shouting about!”
“What be her name?” a child’s voice called.
“Go now! We’ll know her name soon enough, or give her one!” the woman called, and then there was the sound of the little ones scampering away.
With her gnarled hand she smoothed the girl’s hair. “It’s just the curiosity comes on them. Them three little ones are always together—best friends, they are. Delwyth, Bethan, and Eira be their names—I midwifed each one, same year. Six, they are, and full of the mischief, but they have good hearts and mean no harm.”
Then the girl spoke. “My name is Claire,” she said.
Two
They called her Water Claire.
People came to Alys’s hut during the weeks that passed and brought gifts to Claire, knowing she had nothing of her own. They were a generous people, as a rule. Gareth, his bald head and round cheeks pink with shyness, made shoes for her, leather sandals with straps that she fastened around her ankles over thick knitted socks when the swelling lessened and she could walk without pain. Bryn, the mother of little Bethan, stitched a linen petticoat and took the time to embroider flowers on its edge, a fanciful touch beyond the ordinary clothing of the people, but no one scorned Bryn for it, for the girl seemed worthy of such a gift. Old Benedikt carved her a comb, which she carried in her pocket, and to the surprise of everyone, since he was fierce in his anger and solitude, Lame Einar came in from the sheep meadow, hobbling on his two sticks, and gave her a hat he had woven her from straw.
As spring came, children brought her early wildflowers in small wilting bouquets and they helped her weave the stems into the straw of the hat’s brim.
She wore the brimmed hat to keep the sun from her eyes but even so needed to hold her hand there when she looked to sea because the light reflecting off the gray-white waves was blinding. She stood often on the shore with the wind blowing her hair and molding her skirt against her legs. She watched the horizon as if she waited. But she had no knowledge of what she waited for. The sea had drunk her memories away, leaving only her name.
“How old do you be, Water Claire?” asked a half-grown freckle-faced boy named Sindri. He measured himself beside her and she was the taller. But she shook her head, not knowing how to answer him. Alys was there; they were gathering herbs.
“Sixteen year or so,” Alys said, telling Claire more than the boy. And they knew Alys to be true in her guess, for it was she who tended the bodies of them all, and knew the signs that each year brings.
“Sixteen,” Water Claire repeated in her soft voice, and though she said no more, they knew that she was mourning the knowledge of the years that the sea had gulped away. She watched the little girls at play, laughing as they ran through the meadow, quick and colorful as butterflies, but there was sadness in the watching, for Claire’s meadow days had been taken from her. They did not come back, even in dreams.