Dead Willow by Joe Sharp Page B

will find yourself in front of this council.”
    Lacey cast her eyes around the auditorium warily. Paula could see that she was starting to get to her. Good. She hadn’t lost her touch.
    “What happens if one is brought before the council?” asked Lacey timidly.
    Paula gave her the look that sealed the deal. “No one has ever been brought before the council a second time.”
    Lacey folded her arms snugly around herself and digested that bit of information. She seemed to have something on her mind.
    “What is it, child?” Paula prompted, determined not to take all day with this newcomer.
    Lacey twisted the corners of her mouth as she formed her question. After all the effort, what she came up with was, “Why? Why am I Bellwether? Who made me such?”
    “I did.”
    Lacey sat back, her mouth a wide-open circle. She was jolted by the swift honesty. “But we have only just met. You know nothing about me.”
    “The blood does not lie,” said Paula, her eyes on the proceedings.
    “What do you mean?” Lacey’s eyes pleaded like a lost lamb.
    Paula rolled hers. “Good God, child, wake up! If you are to be Bellwether, you must observe, you must see the connections. Your blood is Bellwether. I am the town physician. I know these things. Now, stop questioning what I tell you!”
    “Apologies, Doctor,” she said, casting her gaze to the floor.
    Paula sighed. “Do not look down, child … look up! Look around. What do you see?”
    Lacey perused the assembly of men and women in familiar attire. Paula waited for the unfamiliar to dawn in her expression. She did not have to wait long.
    “The women in the green frocks, there are many of them, they wear their bonnets very snugly, almost obscuring their faces. They all wear sleeves down to their fingers and white gloves as well. Their men all wear hats and sport full beards, and … they all wear green as if it were a uniform. They seem … uncomfortable.”
    Paula nodded. “They are Hatchet, and you will always see them looking thus. What else do you see?”
    Lacey scanned the group with a keener eye this time, and the patterns were now emerging.
    “There are only blue, green and brown colors in existence. Those in the brown do wear long sleeves, but not all are in gloves. The women’s bonnets are pulled back so that the face can be seen, and the faces are pale. The men wear beards, but some wear hats while others do not.”
    “And they are …?” Paula questioned her pupil.
    Lacey puzzled on this for only a moment, then she looked down at her own attire.
    “I am Bellwether, and if the Bellwether are blue, then those in brown must be the Paladin.”
    The last syllable stuck in her throat a bit as Lacey’s eye caught the Doctor’s frilly tan blouse and dark brown skirt.
    “Yes, I am Paladin,” affirmed Paula.
    She could sense that the dynamic of their relationship had just shifted. It nearly always did. Clan loyalty and an almost jingoistic distrust of other clans was not something to be taught. A newborn took to it like eating or crapping. The look that Lacey was now giving her said, ‘I am Bellwether and you are not’. It was a look she had experienced many times before.
    The Bellwether men had not been gawking with lust, nor the women shaking their heads disapprovingly over her alluring ankle poking out from under the hem of her skirt. Theirs was disgust at the sight of the thick, bluish-green veins which coiled around her delicate ankles, and disappeared up into the trunks of her calves.
    It was the same reaction she often got from her Bellwether patients, who might catch her with her sleeves rolled up while she doled out some salve or ointment at the infirmary.
    The Paladin did not reveal their nature anymore than did the Hatchet, and Paula knew this. But, just sometimes, she couldn’t resist the temptation to give the Bellwether a little taste of There but for the grace of God go I .
    It didn’t make the council hold her in the highest esteem, but she would