Sky Woman: Book One of The Empress Saga

CHAPTER ONE

The wind was cold as it blew out from the desert. Enfri turned to look towards the source, a frown pulling at her lips. Desert winds shouldn't have been cold at midday. Her mother would have called that an ill omen, but there was little that the woman wouldn't have called a sign of bad luck.

"Is something wrong?" Enfri's visitor asked. The question was timid, as if she feared giving offense.

Goodwife Cobbler kept to the edge of Enfri's garden. She wrung her delicate, unlined hands. The girl was nervous being this far from the village. This wasn't her first time visiting Enfri's home on the desert's edge, but one would hardly know it by looking at her.

"Just the wind," Enfri said. "Winter must be coming sooner than usual."

The shoemaker's new, young wife gave a startled gasp. Her eyes were wide with a mixture of wonder and fear, and she clutched her shawl tighter about her head. The look on her face made Enfri want to rub at her temples. An off-hand comment given to a village girl, and now the local gossip was likely to turn towards incoming snows three months too soon, six-foot-thick sheets of ice covering the landscape, and the nefarious sky woman who called it down on all of them.

Enfri picked a few extra tomatoes to go with the girl's package. Something sweet and juicy might prod her towards thinking kindly of the bringer of doom.

There was a crack in Enfri's back as she straightened. Too long stooping over the dirt and picking through herbs. Even the strongest of joints could only be pushed so far before giving protest, and Enfri's back had never been strong.

Winds, she cursed inwardly. Mother wasn't far wrong. I'm already an old woman.

There weren't many years separating Enfri from Goodwife Cobbler, and in the opposite direction most would think. The shoemaker's wife, who had obliquely refused to hand over her given name, couldn't have been older than seventeen. Enfri, though hunched like an ancient crone, was three years the goodwife's junior.

It was an easy mistake to make. The crooked silhouette shuffling through the fields of a distant house would naturally be assumed to be that of an old woman, not a young girl fresh to the world. It came of Enfri's back, hunched and bent from a mistake of birth.

Few came to the sky women anymore, not since Enfri's mother and grandmother passed. It was a lofty name for a simple life; Enfri wasn't even sure who came up with it. A sky woman was a healer, a woman of the village who spent her days gathering herbs and mixing poultices. A caregiver and midwife.

"Here you go," Enfri said as she handed a basket of herbs and vegetables to Goodwife Cobbler. "Set the sunwillow to dry on your windowsill. Mix a few pinches into his tea, and the pains will lessen. Don't let your husband have more than a few pinches a day, or he'll get weird. Talking to the chairs and thinking that a scale lion is sitting on his head, that sort of thing."

"Magic..." the girl breathed in awe.

"Hallucinogenic. Big word that means it can make you see things that aren't there. But, it does wonders for the biting coughs. I packed some tomatoes in there, too. For the walk home." Enfri gave her as big a smile as she could manage.

Goodwife Cobbler returned the smile a bit uncertainly. She handed over a silver penny, bobbed a curtsy, and gave her thanks before she retreated from the garden at something only just short of a jog.

Enfri sighed as she watched the older girl trot away. When she was well down the road, Goodwife Cobbler plucked a tomato out of the basket and gave it a tentative sniff before biting into it. Baby steps. Before long, Goodwife Cobbler would return again for more remedies when she needed them, maybe even give Enfri her name next time.