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The Goat Weasel
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swiftrose.doc
Keywords male 1294007, female 1178001, dragon 161705, squirrel 33028, story progression 2228, story series 2196, prequel 656, flashback 644, shaman 469, cub clean 275, storytelling 255, healer 220, iskret 10
Swiftrose

A Silvania Story — SY 4531, Late Winter


~ Before the Story ~
It was the kind of winter evening that made the inside of a house feel like a specific achievement. The fire in Veverka's hearth was doing its work. Outside, the cold pressed against the windows and the two moons were lost somewhere above the clouds.
Tassa was in furfolk form, which she chose for warmth and comfort. She was holding a small carved wooden figure that Khari had made for her at the winter festival. It was a dragon in feral form, wings spread, no larger than her palm. She had been carrying it for two weeks.
Tarvek was on the floor near Veverka's feet. He was Iskret and small and had the large alert ears of his species. Jukrit saw his family resemblance in Raskon. He was not yet two. He did not have much language. He had presence, which was sufficient.
"Tell us a story, Grandma," Tassa said to Veverka.
"What kind of story?" Veverka said.
"A real one," Tassa said. "About someone real."
Veverka looked at her granddaughter for a moment. Then she looked at Tarvek, who was looking back at her with his amber Iskret eyes.
"All right," Veverka said. "I will tell you about Swiftrose."
"Who was Swiftrose?" Tassa said.
"She was your nine-greats-grandmother," Veverka said. "My seven-greats grandmother. She lived three hundred years ago. She was a shaman-healer, like your father. And she was faster than anyone in the family has ever been, before or since."
Tassa shifted to dragon form briefly, then back to furfolk. She did this sometimes when something interested her. "How fast?" she said.
"Fast enough," Veverka said. "Now listen."

~ The Story of Swiftrose ~

Pansilva Interior, SY 4283


The runner arrived in the valley settlement at midday, barely standing, and said two words before he fell: Hollowridge. Sick.
That was all anyone needed. Hollowridge was three days into the deep forest in good conditions. It was mid-winter and the conditions were not good. Snow had been falling for four days. The passes that gave Hollowridge its name were closed or closing. The runner had taken five days to reach the valley settlement and he had been running since before the snow started and he was done.
Swiftrose heard this from across the square, where she had been buying medicinal bark from a trader who came through twice a year. She paid for the bark. She asked the runner two questions while someone else was helping him sit down: how many sick, and what were the symptoms.
The runner held up ten fingers. Then five more. Then he said: cold inside. Fever but cold inside.
Swiftrose knew what that was. She had treated it once, in a coastal community, six years before. It moved fast. It did not care about age or health. Three days without treatment was already too long, and Hollowridge was three days away in conditions that had just made it five.
She went home. She packed for four days. She left within the hour.

The valley settlement's healer caught up with her at the forest edge, breathing hard.
"You can't go alone," he said.
"I'm not going with you," she said. "You'd slow me down."
He looked at her. He had heard about her speed. Most people had heard about it and most people found it difficult to believe until they saw it. "How?" he said.
"Shaman gift," she said. "Runs in the family. When I need to move I move." She adjusted her pack. "I'll send word from Hollowridge. Keep the runner warm and don't let him travel for a week."
She went into the forest.

What the gift felt like from the inside was not speed exactly. It was more like the world slowing to accommodate her. She had never been able to explain it to anyone's satisfaction, including her own. She simply ran, and the ground passed under her at a rate that should not have been possible for a body of her size and weight, and she did not tire in the way she should have tired. The cold helped. Cold air was clear air, and she breathed it and used it and went deeper into the forest while the afternoon light failed.
She ran until dark and then stopped and made a fire and slept for four hours and rose before dawn and ran again.
By the second afternoon she had covered what should have been three days of travel. The snow was heavier now, the tree cover thinner in the high terrain, and she slowed. The path to Hollowridge was buried. She read the landscape instead. The shape of the valley, the direction of the frozen stream, the way the old-growth trees grew that told you where the paths ran underneath centuries of forest.
She found the Grey Hollows on the second evening.

She had not known they were there. They were not on any map she had consulted, which was not unusual. The deep Pansilva interior had large sections that had never been mapped with any precision, and the Grey Hollows were simply a cave system in a limestone formation on the northeast face of a ridge — nothing that would appear on a supply route map or a community survey.
But they were warm.
She felt it from thirty feet away. The cave mouth exhaled a warmth that was not the warmth of a fire or of animal habitation but something older and more constant. She went to the entrance and put her hand on the stone.
The stone was alive in the way she associated with very old places. She had felt this in certain sacred sites, certain old trees, certain stretches of river that the local shamans treated with care. She had never felt it this strongly and this specifically. The stone knew her. That was not precisely accurate but it was the only way she could put it. It received her hand and was warm and directed.
She stayed in the Grey Hollows that night. She slept better than she had slept in years.
In the morning she wrote in her journal: found a hollow place in the northeast ridge above the Hollowridge path. Stone is warm and aware. Do not know what this means. Will return when there is time.
She did not return. Life did not give her the time. But she wrote it down, and the journal was kept, and three centuries later her descendant would train at a convent built into those same walls.

Hollowridge was a day further.
She arrived on the third morning to find fifteen people sick and four already past the point of easy recovery. She had the right medicines for twelve of the fifteen. For the other three she had to improvise from what the forest provided, which she could do having the knowledge carried down from her ancestors.
She worked for two days without sleeping. This was not heroic. It was simply what the situation required.
On the third day, the four who had been past easy recovery were not past it anymore. They were not well. They were no longer dying, which was the right direction.
The settlement's elder, a large-framed squirrel furfolk named Aven who had been one of the sick and was recovering, came to sit with her on the morning of the fourth day.
"You came alone," Aven said.
"Yes," Swiftrose said.
"In four days."
"Three and a half."
Aven looked at her with assessment. "The gift runs in your family," he said.
"Yes."
"Your grandmother came here once. When I was young. She was fast too."
Swiftrose looked at him. She had not known her grandmother had been to Hollowridge. Her grandmother had never mentioned it. "What did she come for?" she asked.
"Same thing you came for," Aven said. "Someone sent for her. She came."
He said nothing else about it. He went back inside to rest. Swiftrose sat outside in the cold morning and thought about the grandmother she had known as an old shaman, careful and precise, and tried to picture her running through the winter forest three days in from the valley settlement, and found that she could picture it without difficulty.
The gift had always been there. It ran in the family. It would keep running.

She left Hollowridge when the fifteen were stable. She went back the way she had come; past the Grey Hollows.
The winter was easing. Not ended. Easing.
She came back into the valley settlement on the sixth day, which was two days faster than she had any right to be, and the valley healer met her at the forest edge.
"All fifteen?" he said.
"Fifteen," she said. "Four of them were close. They're not close anymore."
He looked at her. "Three days in, two days of work, and back in six."
"The way back is faster," she said. "You know the route."
She ate a meal at his table and slept for eleven hours and woke the following morning entirely restored. She packed her remaining supplies, bought more bark from the same trader who was still in the settlement, and went home.
She wrote in her journal that evening: fifteen treated and recovered. The hollow place in the northeast ridge is worth finding again. The stone there is something I have no name for. It felt like being known.
She never went back. But she wrote it down.

~ After the Story ~

Veverka stopped talking.
The fire had burned lower. The cold outside pressed on.
Tassa had shifted to dragon form at some point during the story and had not shifted back. She was sitting with the carved wooden dragon held against her chest and looking at Veverka.
"She never went back to the hollow place," Tassa said.
"No," Veverka said. "Life didn't give her the time."
"But Papa trained there," Tassa said.
"Your father trained at the Convent of the Grey Hollows," Veverka said. "Yes."
"The same place," Tassa said.
"The same place," Veverka confirmed. "The convent was built there about a century after Swiftrose wrote about it. Someone else found it and understood what it was and built around it." She paused. "Your father put his hand on the stone there too, the first time he visited. He told me it felt like being known."
Tassa looked at the carved dragon in her hands.
"The same words," she said.
"The same words," Veverka said.
Tarvek, who had been quiet for the entire story, made a sound. It was a small sound. It was directed at Tassa.
Tassa looked at him. Then she shifted to furfolk and sat down on the floor beside him, which put them at the same level, which was apparently what both of them needed.
Veverka watched her granddaughter and neighbor’s cub, and said nothing further.
Some things did not need adding to.

— End of Episode —
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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From Above
Last in pool
On a cold winter evening, Tassa asks Veverka for a real story about a real person. Veverka tells them about Swiftrose, born three hundred years ago, a shaman-healer and the fastest runner the family has ever produced. The story follows Swiftrose into the deep Pansilva winter forest, running alone to reach a settlement called Hollowridge where fifteen people are sick with something that moves fast and does not wait. She covers three days of travel in less than two, finds a warm cave system in a northeast ridge she has never seen on any map, puts her hand on the stone, and writes in her journal that it felt like being known. She treats all fifteen. She comes home. She never returns to the cave. Three hundred years later, Veverka tells Tassa that the convent where Jukrit trained was built into those same walls. Tassa, who has been in dragon form for the whole story, looks at her grandmother and says: the same words. Because Jukrit told Veverka once that the stone there felt like being known. Tarvek makes a small sound. Tassa shifts to furfolk and sits down beside him on the floor. But if the family has been touching that stone for three centuries without knowing it, what else in the lineage has been quietly accumulating without anyone noticing?
Keywords
male 1,294,007, female 1,178,001, dragon 161,705, squirrel 33,028, story progression 2,228, story series 2,196, prequel 656, flashback 644, shaman 469, cub clean 275, storytelling 255, healer 220, iskret 10
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Type: Writing - Document
Published: 3 days, 1 hr ago
Rating: General
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