“Tamer’s Tale” by JunoMagic
4. Dreams
As her mother had done before she had married her father, Tamer stayed in her chamber behind the kitchen in the wizard’s cottage. She was the wizard’s housekeeper. This was her place until she married.
Her days were busy. The cottage had to be kept immaculate. So she dusted the many books in the good room, wiped and waxed the wooden floors until they shone and polished the copper pots and pans hanging from the hooks at the kitchen wall until they were bright as mirrors. Under her ministrations the roses formed a bright red gate at the entrance to garden and cottage, and the cabbages and potatoes flourished in the sheltered garden.
But the summer went by, and the wizard did not return. Cabbages, potatoes, and the apples from the lonely apple tree kept her father and her siblings fed. The rooms of the cottage remained silent, and she as she kept them well-aired, the last remnants of pipe-smoke had drifted away on a summer breeze months ago.
Autumn, winter, spring, and summer again.
Year after year went by, but the wizard did not return.
One fine summer’s Master Merrsem suffered from an unfortunate accident, reeling drunkenly into the harbour basin and drowning to his death ere he could be retrieved. Jehan inherited his business, having learned the craft of boat building and boat repairing as best as Master Merrsem had been able to teach him—which was not much, to be sure; but his innate talent for working with wood and water soon earned Jehan the reputation to be the best boat-builder Himling had ever had—or at least as long as anyone presently alive on Himling could remember.
Tamer was twenty-one years old that summer, and although it was not said aloud, Tamer was aware that the people of the village expected Jehan to woo and wed her ere the year was out. They had been childhood sweethearts, after all, or what counted as such on isolated Himling. She was of an age where a woman should be married. He would soon need a son to help him in his craft. It was time for nature to run its course.
But Tamer felt strangely reluctant to accept Jehan’s suit.
She enjoyed her life in the wizard’s cottage. The presence of scrolls and books in the good room reminded her of the wide, wide world beyond the sea, beyond the shores of Lindon, and the blue shadows of the Ered Luin. Working the garden in silence, only sometimes humming one of the songs the wizard had taught her during that long winter when her mother had died, she was happy in her lonesomeness. As is the normal course of such things, she had lost her sight with the onset of her womanhood. But although the veil obscuring that other world and all its paths never lifted for her again, she felt comforted by the knowledge of its existence. On lonely evenings sitting in front of the cottage, gazing over rows of beanstalks and orderly beds of cabbages and potatoes towards the West, she was almost painfully aware of this other world, of things to know and power to do… and her dreams took the wings of the white bird of legend and flew over the Sundering Seas, imagining white shores and fair faces…
She knew it was selfish, but she was not quite ready to give up on these elusive dreams and imaginings yet. In some dreams she still heard a scratchy voice that was warm and soft like velvet, yet strong and dangerous as a sword, and when she woke from such dreams on a moonlit night, she felt the desire to hear that voice again, and that desire was fierier than any longing to feel dear Jehan’s lips on her mouth.
So it came about that year by year went by, and ten years to the day of the wizard’s last sojourn in Himling had passed, and Tamer, the wizard’s housekeeper, was not married, not a mother, and still living alone in that chamber behind the kitchen in the wizard’s cottage.
It was an autumn day, cool and crisp; the winds had been blowing hard, the waves unruly for the last week. But suddenly seas calmed down, and a fresh wind began blowing from the East. A few hours later, the look-out from the small lighthouse reported that a small vessel was approaching, a small grey sailing boat.
Tamer’s heart was racing as she bid Jehan good-bye, who had made her a new wooden bucket, filling it with flowers to make her smile. She hastened back to the cottage. She did not need to be told who was in that boat. She knew it in her heart. He would appear to be a very old man, with a blue hat and a silver scarf. With fiery dark eyes and a long white beard that could be braided by a small girl and vanish when it was convenient.
The wizard had returned.
Jehan’s eyes followed her swiftly disappearing form, his face sweetly sad. He loved her dearly, but he knew that he would never hold the first place in her heart. No matter what he might dream of, she was the wizard’s housekeeper first, and always would be.
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