The Dollmage

He had been ill since the snow covered the peaks to the timberline.

“Do not die,” I said to him.Was I not his Dollmage? Could I not command him?

He got worse.

“I forbid you to die,” I said to him, loudly, every day.

I gave him feverfew and bloodroot and saffron tea. I made my best healing doll for him. The healing doll did not work.

With his lifeless hand in mine, I stared out my window for many hours. Four great mountains make our valley, and this day they held up the sky, a great bowl of melted blue. I could not breathe this heavy, wet sky. Outside my window I could see a bough of the plum tree. The plums baked in the sun. The bees dropped sluggishly from fruit to fruit and flew home sadly to make hot honey. My past and many years weighed down my heart, and I realized I was near the end of my powers.

I had feared for some time that my powers were getting old along with my body, and now I took my husband’s death as proof. What was I to do, since I had no daughter to take my place? I was far past the age of bearing. Neither had I chosen a successor, one with the gift, to whom I could teach the art of dollmaking. Now I had expended every strength to make my man live, and I had failed. I was sure I had no power left at all. I grieved for myself and for my people.

In the evening, when my husbands body was stiff and cold, I went into my garden to comfort my heart, and found my husband’s ghost hiding behind the root shed.

He beckoned to me.

“Did you not promise to die with me?” he asked. I had promised indeed, on the bed of our young love, a long time ago, as we whispered together in the dark.

Now, I loved my husband, but I did not want to go with him, not yet. I was old, but not old enough to die.

I said, “If I had found and trained my successor before this I could go with you now, husband. How many times you nagged me to do so, but I did not want to share my power. Mostly, I did not want to see that I was old.” It comforted me to realize I was talking to my husband’s ghost. Only one with the power of a Dollmage could see a ghost. My powers were not entirely gone yet.

“I will come back for you,” he said, and he turned away.

I almost tripped over the bucket of pea pods as I ran from the root shed to the village common. Children played in the shallows where the river was widest, and farther upstream fishermen cast their lines. Youths were frog catching in the cattails, and a few girls watched them and laughed from the bucket-path. I could not die and miss these summer sights of red cows in a green field, and children splashing in the river, and the toft-gardens tumbling overgrown with vegetables. Nor could I miss the smells of sausage and cabbage and leek gravy that came out of houses as the women cooked their supper meal. I could not die and miss the merry-alder that shaded the houses, and the bright bridges that crossed the river all through the valley like stitching. How I loved the crowding forests of the uplands and the bouldered screes of the mountains. I wanted to live, and will any of you blame me?

My husband would come for me, though, as soon as my successor had been named and trained. Briefly I thought of not naming a new Dollmage, but even the thought made me tremble. What would happen to Seekvalley if I died anyway, leaving you without a Dollmage to make the story of our village? Who would make the promise dolls? It would mean the end of our people.

I stood upon Weeper’s Stump and waited. I did not have long to wait. Everyone assembled quickly.

Silently, as I stood there, I prayed to God who dwells upon the mountains. I prayed to know how I should know my successor, how I should know who would have the gift to make the promise dolls.

God answered me, as he always does, but not as I had thought.

As he always does.

I saw my husbands ghost walking through the crowd, walking toward me. As he walked by Mabe Willowknot, the baby in her womb, overdue to be born by some time, leaped and kicked so that her dress jumped. It took Mabe’s breath away. Ah, I thought. So that was it. My successor was not born yet.

All of you waited for my words, if not quietly, at least respectfully. I raised my hand and the crowd fell silent.

I said, “Today my successor will be born.” Everyone cheered. My people, my villagers, so happy that a new Dollmage would be born that day, forgetting that it meant their old Dollmage must be losing her powers, that she may be dying. Only one person did not cheer. Only one person looked up at me sadly: Vilsa Rainsayer. She already knows, I thought. She already knows I am losing my powers. It made me angry that she knew. Vilsa always made me angry.

Perhaps that is why I chose not to see her, pregnant also, step aside to let my husband’s ghost pass.