Crown of Renewal(195)

It was not rain like any rain she’d been in before. Not individual drops at all, but water in a mass like tipping a barrel onto a fire: solid water, cold, heavy, drenching her in an instant. She couldn’t see; she couldn’t hear anything but a vast roar; she couldn’t breathe. She bent over, trying to make an air space in front of her face; water bounced back up from the paving stones and splashed her face, but she could breathe in short gasps. Water pounded her back, soaking through the surcoat, the mail, the arming shirt. She was wet through in seconds; water ran down her drenched legs, filling her boots; it ran under the back of her helmet and around her head inside it, dripping out of the front, slightly warmer than the rest.

Despite the roar of the water, she heard the clatter of wood and the splat of wet cloth as market stalls collapsed under the pounding rain and the cries of those pushed to their knees by the force of the rain. Water rose on the stones of the street, flowing back down toward the Hoor; bits of trash floated by, fruit from the market, a basket, someone’s head scarf, a stick long enough to have held up an awning. The city smells, the dirt, the trash, the jacks, combined with the fresh smell of the rain. She tried to look up; she could just see that the men beside her were down on their knees … and so was as much of the crowd as she could see before she ducked her head again to breathe.

A roof gave way somewhere nearby, with timbers cracking and a different tone of falling water added to the din. Her back was sore from being pounded; she felt she’d been beaten. The water ran clear over the stones now, all the dust and filth of a city street carried away. A frog swam by, then a small fish of the kind found in some wells. Still the water came down, as if the gods were filling the whole world with water. Now all she could smell was the water itself, the smell that rises from clean wells of pure water on a hot day.

As suddenly as it had started, the rain stopped. A ray of sunlight pierced the clouds. Arianya pushed herself to kneel upright, blinked, swiped the water from her eyes.

And there, in the sunlight, in a patch just large enough for it, stood a cow. A dun cow. A dun cow whose dry glossy coat gleamed in the sunlight. A cow with a garland of fresh flowers around its neck, roses and bluebells and snow-daisies. The cow looked around the square, then walked over to her as others also looked up and struggled to rise. Arianya could not move. A perfectly dry dun cow with a garland of flowers around its neck appearing suddenly in the street after such a rain? It could be only one cow.

The cow looked her in the eye with its mild gaze, then reached out and swiped her face with its rough tongue—part caress, part correction. Its breath smelled of mint and green grass and roses.

“Gird,” Arianya said.

The cow swiped her with its tongue again. Arianya reached up and grasped the shiny horns, and the cow lifted its head, helping her stand. Joy burst through her; all doubt and guilt fled. Around her others were rising now, their faces filled with astonishment and joy instead of hatred and anger. They were alive. She was alive.

She stood with her hand on the neck of Gird’s Cow, and the people stared.

“The cow’s not wet,” someone said.

“It’s got flowers—they aren’t wet!”

“It’s Gird’s Cow,” Arianya said.

“But—”

And someone else interrupted. “Gird’s Cow—I heared of that. But it was just a cow’s hide over sticks, they said.”

“Is anyone hurt?” Arianya asked. “We need to help them.”

One of the knights walked over to the sodden, blackened bodies of the mage-hunters. “Naught we can do for these.”

“We can bury them,” Arianya said. “And mourn the hatred that brought them to this.”

A fresh breeze sprang up, bringing more scents of wet grass, fresh flowers, hope. Now the clouds shifted apart, the sun gleaming on wet cobbles, the stones and bricks of houses, the wet clothes. Steam rose from the street as it dried.

The angry mob had dissolved into individuals—family members checking on one another, neighbors teasing neighbors about how they looked as if they’d gone swimming in the river, merchants too happy to have survived to complain about the collapsed stalls, the missing wares.

“Reckon we needed a good washin’ out and coolin’ off,” one man said to Arianya. “We was all that hot and bothered.”

“Reckon we all did,” she said, wringing out her surcoat.

One by one people came up to pat Gird’s Cow, who stood quietly, tail swinging gently back and forth. The wet caresses left no mark on the cow’s shining coat. Occasionally, the cow would swipe her tongue onto someone’s hand or someone’s face, but that was all.