Polgara the Sorceress

‘How curious,’ Beldaran commented.

‘What are you two babbling about now?’ uncle Beldin demanded, looking up from the scroll he’d been studying.

‘Birds,’ I told him.

He muttered something I won’t repeat here and went back to his study of that scroll.

‘Why don’t you take a bath and change clothes, Pol,’ Beldaran suggested a bit acidly. ‘You’ve got bird-droppings all over you.’

I shrugged. ‘They’ll brush off as soon as they dry.’

She rolled her eyes upward.

I left the tower early the next morning and went to the small storehouse where the twins kept their supplies. The twins are Alorns, and they do love their beer. One of the major ingredients in beer is wheat, and I was fairly sure they wouldn’t miss a small bag or two. I opened the bin where they kept the wheat and scooped a fair amount into a couple of canvas bags I’d found hanging on a hook on the back wall of the shed. Then, carrying the fruits of my pilferage, I started back for the Tree.

‘Whither goest thou, sister?’ It was my poetic lark again. It occurs to me that my affinity for the studied formality of Wacite Arendish speech may very well have been born in my conversations with that lark.

‘I’m going back to the Tree,’ I told him.

‘What are those?’ he demanded, stabbing his beak at the two bags I carried.

‘A gift for my new-found friends,’ I said.

‘What is a gift?’

‘You’ll see.’

Birds are sometimes as curious as cats, and my lark badgered me about what was in my bags all the way back to the Tree.

My birds were ecstatic when I opened the bags and spread the wheat around under the Tree, and they came in from miles around to feast. I watched them fondly for a time, and then I climbed up into the Tree and sprawled out on one huge limb to watch my new friends. I got the distinct impression that the Tree approved of what I had done.

I thought about that for quite a long time that morning, but I was still baffled about just exactly how I’d come by this unusual talent.

‘It’s the Tree’s gift to you, Polgara.’ It was mother’s voice, and suddenly everything became clear to me. Of course! Why hadn’t I thought of that?

‘Probably because you weren’t paying attention,’ mother observed.

In the years that followed, the Tree became like a second home to me. I spent my days on my favorite perch with my skinny legs stretched out on the huge limb and my back against the massive trunk. I fed my birds and we talked. We came to know each other better and better, and they brought me information about the weather, forest fires, and occasional travelers passing through the Vale. My family was always carping about my shabby appearance, but my birds didn’t seem to mind.

As those of you who know me can attest, I have an occasionally sharp tongue. My family was spared all sorts of affronts because of my fondness for the Tree and its feathered inhabitants.

The seasons rolled by, and Beldaran and I grew into an awkward coltishness – all legs and elbows. And then one morning we discovered that we had become women during the night. There was some fairly visible evidence of the fact on our bed-clothing.

‘Are we dying?’ Beldaran asked me in a trembling voice.

‘Tell her to stop that, Polgara!’ mother’s voice came to me sharply. That was something I could never understand. Mother talked to me directly, but she never intruded into Beldaran’s mind. I’m sure there was a reason for it, but mother never got around to explaining.

‘What’s happening, mother?’ I demanded. To be honest about it, I was quite nearly as frightened as my sister was.

‘It’s a natural process, Polgara. It happens to all women.’

‘Make it stop!’

‘No. It has to happen. Tell Beldaran that it’s nothing to get excited about.’

‘Mother says that it’s all right,’ I told my sister.

‘How can it be all right?’

‘Shush. I’m trying to listen to mother.’

‘Don’t you shush me, Polgara!’

‘Then be still.’ I turned my attention inward. ‘You’d better explain this, mother,’ I said. ‘Beldaran’s about ready to fly apart.’ I didn’t really think it was necessary to admit that my seams were starting to come undone as well.

Then mother gave us a somewhat clinical explanation for the bloodstains on our bedding, and I passed the information on to my distraught sister.

‘Is it going to go on forever now?’ Beldaran asked me in a trembling voice.

‘No, only for a few days. Mother says to get used to it, because it’ll happen every month.’

‘Every month?’ Beldaran sounded outraged.

‘So she says.’ I raised up in bed and looked across the room toward Uncle Beldin’s bed – the place where all the snoring was coming from. ‘Let’s get this cleaned up while he’s still asleep,’ I suggested.

‘Oh, dear Gods, yes!’ she agreed fervently. ‘I’d die if he found out about this.’

I’m fairly sure that our misshapen uncle was aware of what was happening, but we never got around to discussing it, for some reason.

Uncle Beldin has theorized about when the members of my extended family develop what father calls ‘talent’, and he’s concluded that it emerges with the onset of puberty. I may have had something to do with that conclusion. I think I was about twelve or so. It was ‘that time of the month’ for Beldaran and me, and my sister was feeling mopey. I, on the other hand, was irritable. It was all so inconvenient! Mother had mentioned the fact that ‘something might happen’ now that Beldaran and I had reached a certain level of maturity, but she was a little vague about it. Evidently, it’s sort of necessary that our first venture into the exercise of our ‘talent’ be spontaneous. Don’t ask me why, because I haven’t got the faintest notion of a reasonable explanation for the custom.

As I remember the circumstances of that first incident, I was dragging a large bag of wheat down to the Tree to feed my birds. I was muttering to myself about that. Over the years my birds had come to depend on me, and they were not above taking advantage of my generosity. Given half a chance, birds, like all other creatures, can be lazy. I didn’t mind feeding them, but it seemed that I was spending more and more time hauling sacks of wheat from the twins’ tower to the Tree.

When I reached the Tree, they were all clamoring to be fed, and that irritated me all the more. As far as I know, not one single bird has ever learned how to say ‘thank you’.

There were whole flocks of them by now, and they cleaned up my daily offering in short order. Then they started screeching for more.

I was seated on my favorite perch, and the shrill importunings of the birds made me even more irritable. If there were only some way I could have an inexhaustible supply of seed on hand to keep them quiet.

The jays were being particularly offensive. There’s something about a jay’s squawking that cuts directly into me. Finally, driven beyond my endurance, I burst out. ‘More seeds!’ I half-shouted.

And suddenly, there they were – heaps and heaps of them! I was stunned. Even the birds seemed startled. I, on the other hand, felt absolutely exhausted.

Father has always used the phrase ‘the Will and the Word’ to describe what we do, but I think that’s a little limited. My experience seems to indicate that ‘the Wish and the Word’ works just as well.

Someday he and I’ll have to talk about that.

As is usually the case, my first experiment in this field made a lot of noise. I hadn’t even finished my self-congratulation when a blue-banded hawk and two doves came swooping in. Now, hawks and doves don’t normally flock together – except when the hawk is hungry – so I immediately had some suspicions. The three of them settled on my limb, and then they blurred, changing form before my very eyes.