Free Taminy by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

Meredydd had seen him, face down in the shallows like a
sodden doll. He felt the tearing of her spirit between the advancing Light and
the boy’s advancing darkness. He watched her make a choice of which he could
only say that it was just like her—just like her to use every ounce of herself
in one inyx. To sing all of her soul into one duan.
    Huddled
over Skeet’s limp form, she drew Light from the ether and poured it into his
failing heart. Then she breathed life into his lungs.
    Wyth
was amazed to the core. If he had always known Meredydd-a-Lagan was
exceptional, he had never suspected she was invested with that powerful a Gift.
“But ...” he whispered, “only an Osraed can restore life, and even then ...Has
she been accepted without ever having seen the Meri?” He shook his head and
spread his fingers toward the aislinn pool in a gesture of bemusement. “What am
I seeing?”
    “A
birth,” said Bevol. “Watch. What do you see?”
    He
saw a darkened empty strand and felt his spirit fall heavily. “The Light is
gone. The Meri has abandoned her.”
    “Ah,”
breathed Bevol. “Ah, but see—she returns to her post. Steadfast, disciplined,
she waits once more until ...”
    Until
she began to shift uneasily in the sand and rub at her arms as if chilled or in
some other discomfort. Until the chafing became fevered and turned to anguished
clawing. Until scrapes and scraps and ribbons of cloth began to come away in
her hands and fall to the sand. Until there was no cloth left to rend.
    Horrified,
heart plummeting from throat to stomach, Wyth watched the aislinn Meredydd
shred first her clothes, then her flesh until ... until ...
    He
was astonished and ashamed, rocked by waves of wonder and fear. Her naked,
golden radiance was beyond beauty, as if, with clouds torn back, he glimpsed a
corner of heaven. He felt as if he had stolen a look at God’s face. No, not God’s
face, but ...
    Wyth’s
breath caught in his lungs as the golden, gleaming Being that had been
Meredydd-a-Lagan stepped into a Sea that throbbed with emerald glory to meet a
second Eibhilin creature face to face. Together, arm in radiant arm, they slid
beneath the waves.
    Wyth
dared breathe, the air leaving his body reluctantly as if it might never
return. “Then it’s true. Meredydd is a Being of Light—one with-”
    Bevol
raised a hand. “But it’s not over. Watch.”
    The
waters within Bevol’s aislinn pool of tame darkness pulsed and flickered with
ghostly lightnings of gold and green. Then, from the roiled brilliance stepped
a Being of verdant luminosity. She came to shore, losing her radiance drop by
drop until she stood in naked humanity, peering out of the vision pool with
laughing green eyes.
    “Oh,
Master Bevol,” she said, “I haven’t breathed in a hundred years!”
    The
image floated, static, the words echoing softly from the girl’s parted lips
while over one white shoulder, Wyth glimpsed a Face in the gleaming waves—a Face
of holy flame with garnets for eyes. His senses blew past the already fading
image of the strange cailin and collected themselves before that Face, clinging
until nothing remained but translucent darkness, prowling in silent circles
like a black cat seeking a resting place. And Wyth sat watching it, waiting for
his soul to return from a journey it hadn’t, perhaps, been ready to take.
    Bevol
leaned toward him across the circle. “What did you see?” the elder Osraed
asked, eyes tight and watchful.
    “A
birth,” said Wyth. “I believe I have seen a birth.”
    Bevol
nodded. “Of more than you know.”
    Wyth
at last made his eyes focus on the other’s face.
    “Then
...” Dare he put it into words? “Then Meredydd has become ... the Meri?”
    Bevol
smiled. “Essentially correct. She hosts the Meri’s Spirit and gives substance
to Her Essence.”
    “But
this is what Osraed Ealad-hach has dreamed, is it not?”
    “Yes.”
    “He
believes it is death.”
    Again
Bevol nodded. “It is that, too,” he