Walda the Wise

 

He was the last.

He was last of the queen's special group of healers, the gaggle of five misfits she had collected in her first year. He stood on the scoured mountain top while the ceaseless wind whipped his Mabon fire.

Sandar had died of old age years ago. Then Kal and Venin died in the war in the same year, one in winter and one in summer. The last was just this year. Galean the Fair, they had called her. She was the best of them all, now she was gone.

Now, the apprentices called him Walda the Wise. As if being the last somehow meant he was wiser than the others. Ridiculous notion.

Walda watched the fire crackle and found little in this year's equinox to give him balance. It should have been a time of harmony and setting new intentions. He should be thankful for the harvest and the new peace after so much war.

He was the last. It kept weighing on his thoughts.

Walda could still see them all around the first Mabon fire. Young (except Sandar) and full of vigor, a little naive, and ready to cure the world. Then the wheel of the years had ground them down, running from plague to war to famine.

Still, they had given thanks each year. Thanks for abundance even when they had little. Thanks for the second harvest before the season dwindled to cold and darkness. Thanks for finding a mission worthy of a lifetime's effort. A home. A family.

Last Mabon, Galean was already sick, and Walda had offered to have some apprentices carry her on a litter up the rocky path. She had motioned him closer and gripped his beard, pulling him near her face.

"You want to keep this scruff?"

"Yes," he had winced.

"Then we do as we have always done."

He remembered how her breath had smelled like mint. She was always so clean, even when they were camping with the army and knee deep in mud and guts.

This year, Walda made the solo journey up the trail winding among boulders and tenacious outcrops of yellow flowers. The apprentices had already placed dry wood and pitch at the top.

All he needed to carry was Galean's ashes and a skin of wine.

He was the last. He had never considered how it would feel. With his much maligned penchant for leaping first and asking questions later, he had always assumed one of the leaps would eventually land badly. But no. Maybe he was wise after all.

He snorted. Walda the Impossibly Lucky was more appropriate. Walda the Charmed. Walda the Last.

He watched the fire bend in the relentless wind. Nothing but clumps of brown grass and oddly vibrant yellow flowers to slow the coming winter.

He pulled out a gourd and removed the cork.

He heard old dead Sandar give their first invocation, and he repeated it as he tipped Galean's ashes into the evening breeze.

"While we give thanks for all we have, we also give thanks for what we lack. We give thanks for what we have let go. We gladly release thoughts that do not serve our great purpose. And so too do we give thanks and release those people who have crossed our path in this short life."

The last of the dust twirled away on the wind. Walda crushed a sprig of mint between his hands and tossed it up as if he was releasing a bird.

He waited an hour as the coals pulsed under a purple sunset. He drank from the wine skin and remembered.

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