That Chalice would have known what to do. But that Chalice had never had to grapple with her demesne in the conditions Mirasol faced.
“A moment,” she said, and flew back indoors. A tremor so ferocious it had ripped the mundane ground apart? She had no idea what she should do, but she had to try to do something. She snatched up the cup of balance, three of the Chalice stones that worked well with it, a handful of herbs, and thrust two pots of honey in the pockets of her cloak. She hesitated over her book of basic incantations; but basic incantations did not include crevasses opening in fields, and watching her fumble uselessly through a book would be good for neither Faine and his brothers nor herself. Her best hope was that the earthlines might tell her something she could use.
The journey to Faine’s farm was so uncomfortable, holding on to the hip strap till her fingers were sore to keep herself from being jolted off by the big horse’s bone-breaking trot, that she managed to avoid thinking about what she could do when they arrived. She didn’t know what she could do. She might as well think about her sore fingers and bruised seatbones.
It was worse than she imagined and, she thought, glancing at Faine’s face, worse than it had been when he had left to fetch help. A great ragged cleft had torn its way through the flat grassy pastureland; the red-brown gash looked eerily like a wound in flesh. Part of the awfulness of it was that the rest of the scene seemed so normal: the sun shone, the birds sang in the trees. The end near them was perhaps only two hands’-breadth across, but Mirasol could see it widened swiftly farther down the field. As she slid stiffly off the horse and her feet touched the ground, the ground shivered, like a horse’s skin shedding flies; the tuft of grass at the end of the trench rocked wildly and then parted with a sound like tearing cloth, and the trench was suddenly a hand’s-breadth longer. The birdsong faltered, and then took up again. Mirasol barely noticed; she was listening to the earthlines. Two passed through Faine’s field, and they were weeping like children.
She looked around, and broke a small twig off an oak tree, thanking the tree for its help. She always preferred to find something she could use at the location itself, and she liked oak for Chalice work. She brushed her fingers over its leaves and murmured a few words of dedication. The now-familiar ritual was a little soothing—but what next?
Two men and a woman had seen them coming, and met them at the edge of the injured field, but the keening of the earthlines in Mirasol’s ears was so loud it was almost impossible to hear human speech.
“…the rest of them out,” one man was saying.
“…Daisy’s calf ran in the wrong direction, and Daisy followed,” said the other man. “They’re…”
And then, as if the moaning of the earthlines was a curtain and they had parted it for her, Mirasol could hear the frightened bellowing of the trapped cow.
“Get a rope,” Mirasol heard her own voice saying. “Two ropes. You may have to drag them out. Your horse has a yokemate, I assume? Fetch him. How has this—rift—opened? Does it stretch from one end, or out from the middle?”
“The far end,” quavered the woman. “It began there. Where Daisy is.”
“Good,” said Mirasol’s voice again. “That makes it easier.” It does? thought Mirasol. The earthlines whimpered. “Where is your spring?” Every farm in Willowlands had a spring; she hoped this one would be a strong one, and near at hand. “Bring me a flask of the water—freshly drawn—as quick as you can.”
The woman turned and ran.
Mirasol walked to the edge of the field, took a deep breath, and climbed the fence. She was immediately deafened by the lament of the earthlines. It was not only the two in the field who spoke; the earthlines in the entire quadrant echoed their distress. She walked slowly along the length of the cleft; would she notice in time, she thought, if it decided to widen suddenly? She fished the cup of balance out of her pocket and rubbed her fingers over it; it was very difficult keeping her own balance between the strange space where the earthlines moved and spoke and the fact that if the crack opened under her feet in the mundane world, she’d fall into it. She tried to listen through the earthlines’ misery for any sign or guide: What was the cut doing here? Why was it here in this field rather than in some other field? Why was it here at all?
Broken, wept the earthlines. Broken, broken.
Some of the groaning, she thought, was the ground itself, splitting, tearing itself from itself.
She was staring into the far end, where it was deepest—probably the height of two tall men, she guessed, easily enough to imprison a cow and her calf—when the woman came with a flask of icy spring water, and shortly after her one of Faine’s brothers with a pair of horses.
Mirasol mixed her cup: water, the spring water this field would know, herbs for distress of mind and body and one for deep dangerous wounds that they will not fester; some of this year’s spring honey, because spring was the season of joy for the future, and some honey tasting strongly of handflowers. Handflowers were lavender-pink, and inside they were striped red in such a way that they resembled the fingers and thumbs of two hands held cupped together. It was considered lucky to drink rainwater from the cups of handflowers—and anyone who regularly did then saw all things so clearly that they could not be deceived. I will not deceive you, said Mirasol silently to the earthlines. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m here and I’m listening; and there is still joy in this world. She stirred the mixture with the oak twig. Last she dropped in the three small stones, which were for light in darkness, for compassion and for love.
“Someone will have to climb down there with them, you know, to put the ropes around them,” she said.
The man nodded. “I know. I’ll go.” His face was pinched with worry and fear; he met her eyes, briefly, as if forgetting himself, and immediately looked away.
“Drink this first,” Mirasol said, and offered him her cup. “Just a sip—you only need a sip.” The Chalice stones clinked faintly against the side of the cup as he drank.
She turned away without waiting to see if her mixture had had any effect; she didn’t have a second choice if it didn’t. She knelt, and then lay down flat, just above where the unhappy cow bawled and thrashed. It was not a graceful procedure—what might the Chalice who had cured her father’s trees have done about a trapped cow? Cows and sheep did get caught in natural cuts and hollows sometimes—but there was nothing natural about this one. She spilled several drops from her cup on the bits of cow that happened to be under them when they fell. At least once the sweet water landed on her nose—which was where she was aiming—and Mirasol saw the vast pink tongue reach up to lick it off. The calf, being smaller, and trying to hide under its mother, was harder, but she splashed it a few times.
And then she stood up, as if what she wanted and hoped would happen was going to happen.
The cow stopped bellowing.
“Go down now,” she said. “Get ready. I’ll start at the far end: that’ll give you a few minutes.” She didn’t add, I have no idea how long the effect will last. I have no idea why it worked. If it worked. Maybe the cow just likes the taste of honey.
I have no idea if anything else will work.
She turned away, and began again the long walk—it felt twice as long this second time—to the far end of the grotesque crack in the ground. The high dreadful keening of the earthlines had diminished to a woebegone rumble; a rumble that seemed to be turning toward her—looking for her—looking for help, as Faine had done. She knew the usual conjurations to quiet an earth tremor—often a mere murmur of silence and peace, quiet and calm was enough, like singing a lullaby to a fretful child—but these seemed hardly appropriate for an earthquake that had torn a hole in the landscape. But she found herself humming an old lullaby her mother had sung to her: Sleep, my little love, sleep, my little one. Sleep is sweet and love is sweeter, but honey is sweetest of all.