"Weeping Iniga"
by S. Evans

When the early spring sky lightened and began raining cherry blossoms, the village knew that she was coming. White flowers drifted down past still bare branches, landing in the muddy streets. Those who could found excuses to linger near the widest of the throughfares, mobbing the butcher's shop and the blacksmith's yard without business to complete, crowding the porch of the town's only inn. Doors were set ajar and windows prised open by the less fortunate, curious faces only inches from the rapidly-warming drafts of air.

The sun strengthened, warming high-peaked roofs and narrow porches still further with a generousity uncharacteristic for the season, and the cherry blossoms continued to fall, tangling in hair and clothes. Children played in the street, chanting game-rhymes, scattering only when threatened with the back of a hand or a whack from a broom. The crowd outside grew, until it seemed that every person in the village had turned out to line the rutted main street.

Old Guis the chandler squinted into the sky, a pale petal sticking to one of his eyebrows as he grunted, and then spat. The glob of soot-stained spit narrowly missed a grubby toddler splashing in a mud puddle. "So she's come, has she?" His lined face rearranged into a scowl, dissatisfaction graven deep by wind and weather. "You'd think that with her reputation, there'd be something useful, like water into wine, or fishes and loaves. Not cherry blossoms."

His words were swept away on a tide of rising excitement, before his oldest daughter could dig an elbow into his ribs to reprimand him for his impiety. Cries of 'I see her!' and 'there she is', could be heard clearly over the general buzz of conversation. Then Weeping Iniga stumbled into his view, gait weary with a blister-worn hitch.

Despite her name, her eyes were dry. She was a woman of average height, dark-skinned and dark-eyed, with a figure that spoke more of hard labor and a diet of potatoes than lissome youth. Her hands were callused, her fingernails dirty, and the expression on her face was stony. Where she walked, grass and hyacinths sprang up. Twining ivy coiled itself around trees and walls each time she faltered and thrust a hand out for support. Old Guis leaned forward a little, shivering, as she turned her unseeing face his way. Her gaze was blind with grief and questions, fraying around the edges in a way he knew too well.

The village had a festive air, people shoving at each other to see the delicate green grass that limned each footstep, trampling the tender blades in their eagerness. Nauzi the innkeep's wife pushed her way forward, into Iniga's path, her hand clamped firmly around the arm of her son, a moon-faced child who had never learned to do much more than smile and babble. He'd been born blue and floppy, with the birthing cord wrapped four times around his neck and nearly knotted.

Only Guis was watching Nauzi's son and ignoring the hyacinths and cherry blossoms, at least at first. When the boy stumbled, falling to his knees in the muddy road, he snorted and shrugged. Even the stories couldn't be true all the time. But then Guis saw the boy lift his head, the vacant look gone from his face. Drool dried in a runnel down the side of his chin as he stretched out muddy hands, and said clearly, "Mother?" The sound of his voice killed excited conversation, for the space of ten heartbeats. Gossip died out, only to be reborn at greater volume. The street erupted around Iniga, villagers crowding around her.

People began pushing forward, plucking at her clothes. Pleading. Requesting. Demanding cures for joint-ail, for obesity, for poverty, for piles. She did not respond. It was as if the press of the crowd did not exist for her. The woman continued forward, fingers slipping from her skin, her hair, her clothes-- she seemed made of nothing more substantial than light and shadow, the expression on her face never changing. People began to fall away from her, panting with the effort to keep up, although it seemed her weary gait did not quicken.

Old Guis grunted again, elbowing someone out of his way as he tried to fight through the crowd, backward, away from the woman that everyone wanted to touch. Blessed Iniga. Weeping Iniga. Iniga, beloved of God. All he wanted was to stay away from that terrible uncaring look on her face and the loss worn thin in those dark eyes. But his old bones and older muscles could not compete against the tide of humanity. He found himself carried along as the crowd followed, calling after her.

The woman continued up the street, alone, hair falling knotted and snarled down her back, her most persistent supplicants left behind and out of breath. The villagers were reduced to muttering amongst each other, telling and retelling what had just happened. Each one of them claimed to have seen Nauzi's son healed with their own eyes. Each one of them had a bit of the story of Weeping Iniga to tell to their neighbors, wisely, as if it had never been heard before. Old Guis merely looked sour, as the gossip flowed around him.

It wasn't until Steforo the carpenter called her Saint Iniga that Guis spoke up, harshly. "And just what makes you think she's a saint, you dunderheaded fool?"

Blank stares met his query all around, those nearby falling silent mid-anecdote as Steforo answered, looking confused. "How could she not be a saint, Guis? Even you had to have seen the miracles. Don't you know the story?"

"Oh, yes, the story." Guis accented that last word with a glare. "If it's true, she's no saint. She rejected God the day her husband died, five winters ago. Cursed him, if the story's true. Cried out against his name. Very saintly, eh?"

Stubborn muttering met his words, even as Steforo protested. "But the miracles--"

Guis didn't let him finish. "Is your head made of the wood you're so fond of, man? The miracles aren't because she's a saint, Steforo. Saints love God. The miracles are because God loves her."

"Papa, you're raving again," said his oldest daughter, clearly, taking his arm in the same possessive grip that Nauzi had used with her moonfaced son. "Come, let's get you home."

"You wait and see," insisted Guis, somewhat querulously, sounding a good twenty years older than his age. "Where does she always go when she passes through towns? To the shrines, to spend the night in vigil. To ask WHY." It was a question he'd asked bitterly, himself, after his wife had died fifteen winters back. "You'd best believe that when her anger's thinned enough and she's ready to listen, God will tell her why- - and then- -" But he was already being pulled back through the crowd, and even his daughter was taking no notice of his words.

A few of the younger men tried to enter the shrine, to see Weeping Iniga more clearly, but walk as they might, they could not get closer to the shrine than forty paces away. That night, the inn was crowded with the disappointed, speculation abounding. Nauzi's son was pinched and prodded until he cried in coherent sentences for his mother, not understanding why he was being treated like a dancing bear, or a bird in a cage. Bets were placed as the sun went down; would Iniga come back through town or simply continue on her wandering way?

No one could miss the light from the unapproachable shrine, so bright it made the eyes water-- it poured in like noonday but whiter, casting shadows with edges that cut like swords. Every chink in the walls, every gap in the shutters let the brightness in for a space of fifty heartbeats. Women screamed and drew their shawls over their faces. The men drinking out on the porch dropped their tankards with curses, eyes streaming and red as they crowded inside, seeking refuge from the light. Nobody understood what it meant, except Old Guis, growling and muttering to himself in the corner of the inn.

The morning dawned grey and sullen, and few people were up to greet it. Arthritis twinged in Guis' bones, and he gave up the pretense of sleep gladly with the predawn. Pulling his trousers on, he left the house to empty his bladder into the pot on the porch that went to the tanner in trade. A few withered petals floated in the rank liquid.

The thin light did not hide the dark-haired, dark-eyed woman with the tearstains on her cheeks. She walked down the throughfare without stumbling, attention on her surroundings. Now and then she stopped to study a porch, to smile, to touch the bare branches of the stunted trees in the commons. Where she walked, she ground the remains of cherry blossoms into the dirt, muddying their white color further. Old Guis, readjusting his trousers, watched her wander back through the village, the lines that mapped his age rearranging themselves into something like a smile.

His smile faded into a squint, as Weeping Iniga, still sniffling, wiped her nose on her sleeve and walked toward his porch, looking uncertain if not fragile. Wiping his hands on the back of his pants, Guis allowed his brow to beetle up as he observed, "You need a comb." Hastily, before she could say anything in return, he added, "I don't have one." He rubbed a palm over his shiny scalp by way of illustration.

A strand of dark hair caught in a hangnail; the dark-haired woman absently using her fingers to sort out the worst of the tangles. Her mouth hung slightly open as she grimaced, and then asked, "You know who I am?"

"Do I look like I'm senile?" countered Guis, with a glare. Eyes shifted to the side after a moment, as he muttered, "No point in begging you for a miracle, woman. You were done with self-pity, so God gave you an answer."

Looking both startled and defensive in the predawn grey, Iniga spoke, color staining her cheeks. "I wouldn't call it self-"

Guis had made a lifetime habit of interrupting others to get the final word. "I would. Best be on your way, then, before anyone else sees you." He lowered his voice, age making it gritty. "I'd offer food to take with you, but there's naught here but some moldy bread heels. Off with you, now." He waved his hands at her, in much the same manner he used to chase stray dogs from his porch.

What worked with stray dogs did not work so well on the former focus of miracles. Iniga lingered, staring up at the porch rail. "Don't you want to know... what comes after?" The question was an offer of conversation, a tentative offer of friendship.

"I'll be bones and dirt soon enough," retorted Guis, folding his arms, voice harsh once again as he schooled his face so the temptation didn't show. Rejection was the wisest course, when offered a truth from God, even secondhand. "Best you keep that knowledge to yourself. You're going to stir up trouble, sharing things like that. I've got no fancy to end my days locked up for crazy or torn apart for a liar."

The lines on his face deepened again, even as Iniga closed her mouth and turned away, fresh tears clumping her eyelashes together. She did not look back to see him standing, staring after her long after she'd passed out of sight.

A season later, a priest from Vicenna who was staying at the inn overnight, brought news of a woman, ripped to pieces by a disappointed crowd. They had been expecting Weeping Iniga, waiting for miracles, only to be faced with an impostor. A madwoman, insisting her name was Iniga, babbling incoherencies about love, God, life, and what came after death. The priest, trying to retrace Blessed Iniga's travels, had followed her tracks to this very town... and then nowhere, as if she'd been taken up bodily by God. Old Guis, in his corner, merely closed his eyes tiredly at the flurry of theorizing which followed. His bones ached, and he was tired.

For the handful of years until he surrendered to death, Guis burned a cherry-scented candle at the shrine each spring. Only his daughter cared to ask who it was for, and his answer offended her badly enough that she did not speak to him for two days. "It's for Iniga, who died at peace with God, if not with men."

THE END

Story copyright S. Evans 2002, published by the Fortean Burea
http://www.forteanbureau.com