The Great Alta Saga Omnibus

by Jane Yolen

  “I heard Domina say something about it. And something about my second mother, too. They were friends.” Was this treading too close to the treacherous ground? Jenna felt her fingers start to twitch, but Pynt seemed not to notice.

  Pynt put her elbows on her knees and rested her chin in her hands. “Not Kadreen, though. You would not have heard it from her.”

  They both shook their heads wisely. Kadreen never gossiped or gave information freely.

  “I like Kadreen,” said Jenna, “even though she is a Solitary. Even though she never smiles.” Solitaries, women without dark sisters, were rare at the Hames, and Jenna felt very much as she suspected a Solitary felt, alone and without the comfort of a companion who knew your every thought.

  “I saw her smile once. It was when Alna stopped breathing and then started again with those funny coughs and the bubbles coming out of her mouth. When we were in the garden hunting down the rabbit. Well, the pretend rabbit. Children’s games! And you ran to get Kadreen because you are the fastest, and she put her ear down on Alna’s chest and thumped it.”

  “And Alna had a black mark as big as a fist for seven days.”

  “Eight—and she loved to show it off.”

  “Kadreen did not smile then.”

  “Did.”

  “Did not.”

  “Did. And anyway, A-ma gave me these.” Pynt reached behind her back and brought up two new corn dolls in one hand and a pair of reed backpacks in the other. “She and Sammor made them for us to celebrate the Choosing.”

  “Ooh, they are nicer than Alna’s.”

  “Much nicer,” agreed Pynt.

  “And the packs have the Hame sign on them.” Jenna pointed to the sign in the circle.

  “Now,” Pynt said, “we can be truly truly sisters, just the way you like to play it, sharing everything. You take the light pack and the light doll and I will take the dark.”

  Jenna took the pack guiltily, remembering how little she had actually shared with Pynt, remembering how Mother Alta had looked, standing in front of the great framed mirror, and speaking the words which had so frightened her. She remembered and wondered if she and Pynt could ever be truly truly sisters again.

  Then the dolls proved much more interesting than her own black thoughts and she put the babe in the pack, the pack on her back, and played at light sister and dark with Pynt for an hour or more, until the ringing bell recalled them to their lessons.

  “This afternoon,” Catrona informed them, “I shall instruct you in the Game of the Eye-Mind.”

  The girls grinned and Pynt elbowed Jenna playfully. They had both heard of the Game. The older girls talked of it secretly at the table sometimes. But none of them had ever really explained it, for it was one of the Mysteries reserved for after the Choosing.

  Pynt looked around quickly as if to see if anyone was noticing them. There were three older girls in the warrior yard, but they were busy with their own things: red-headed Mina aiming at the arrow target and hitting it regularly with comfortable thumps, and Varsa and Little Domina having at each other with wicker swords to the accompaniment of Big Domina’s shouted corrections.

  “Pynt, watch me!” Catrona said, her voice not at all sharp, but laughing. “I know there is much to see here, but you must learn to focus.”

  “What of the eye’s corner? Amalda said …” Jenna hesitated.

  “You get ahead of me, child,” said Catrona. She pulled lightly on one of Jenna’s braids, not enough to hurt but enough to get Jenna’s full attention. “First you learn to focus and then diffuse.”

  “What is diffuse?” asked Pynt.

  Catrona laughed again. “It means to be able to see many things at once. But first you must listen, Marga.” She stopped laughing abruptly.

  They listened.

  Catrona turned to the table by her side, a small wooden table, much scarred around the legs. It was covered by an old cloth which disguised a number of strange lumps and bumps on the top.

  “First, what do you see here?” Catrona asked, gesturing them to the tabletop.

  “A table with an old cloth,” said Pynt, quickly adding, “And a ragged old cloth.”

  “A cloth covering many things,” said Jenna.

  “You are both correct. But remember this—caution in the woods and in battle is the greatest virtue. Often what seems is not what is.” She whisked away the cloth and they saw that the table was a solid carved representation of a mountaintop with peaks and valleys. “This we use to teach the way through the mountain range in which our Hame is nestled. And to plan our stratagems.”

  Pynt clapped her hands together, delightedly, while Jenna bent over closer to run her finger thoughtfully over the ridges and trails.

  “Now what do you see here?” Catrona asked, guiding them over to the alcove where a second table covered with a similar cloth stood. There were even more ridges and peaks under this cloth.

  “Another mountain,” said Pynt, eager as always to be first with the answer.

  “Caution, with caution,” reminded Catrona.

  Jenna shook her head. “It does not look like a mountain to me. The peaks are not as high. There are round places, as round as … as an …”

  “An apple!” Pynt interjected.

  “Let us see,” said Catrona. She took the cloth away by lifting it up from the middle. On the table was a strange assortment of objects.

  “Oh!” said Pynt. “You fooled me!” She looked up at Catrona, grinning.

  “Look back, child. Focus.”

  Pynt looked back just as Catrona dropped the cloth back onto the tabletop, covering it completely.

  “Now comes the Game,” said Catrona. “We will start with Marga. Since you so love being first, you shall name an object on the table. Then Jenna. Then Marga again. On and on until you can remember no more. The one who remembers the most gets a sweet.”

  Pynt clapped her hands, for she loved sweets. “A spoon. There was a spoon,” she said.

  Jenna nodded. “And it was an apple, the round thing.”

  “And a pair of foodsticks,” Pynt said.

  “One only,” said Jenna.

  “One,” agreed Catrona.

  “A card of some kind,” said Pynt.

  “A buckle, like A-ma—Amalda’s,” said Jenna.

  “I did not see that,” Pynt said, turning to look at Jenna, who shrugged.

  “It was there,” Catrona said. “Go on, Marga.”

  Pynt’s forehead made wavy lines as she concentrated. She put her fist into her cheek and thought. Then she smiled. “There were two apples!”

  “Good girl!” Catrona smiled.

  “On a plate,” said Jenna.

  “Two plates?” Pynt asked uncertainly.

  “You are lucky,” Catrona answered.

  “A knife,” said Jenna.

  Pynt thought for a good long while and at last shrugged. “There was nothing else,” she said.

  “Jenna?” Catrona turned and looked directly at Jenna, who was pulling on her braids. Jenna knew there had been more objects and could name them, but she also knew how much Pynt wanted to win the sweet. How much Pynt needed to win the sweet. Then she sighed. “A bowl of water. A pin. Some thread.”

  “Thread?” Catrona shook her head. “No thread, Jenna.”

  “Yes, thread,” Jenna said. “And two or maybe three pebbles or berries. And … and that is all I can remember.”

  Catrona smiled. “Five berries, two of them black and three red. And you both neglected to mention the piece of tapestry with the wand players or the ribband or the writing stick, tapestry needle and—the sweet! But for all that you forgot, you remembered quite a good bit. I am very proud of the two of you for your first time at the Game.” She pulled away the cloth. “Now look closely again.”

  It was Pynt who pointed first. “Look, Catrona, there is Jenna’s thread!”

  Lying next to the tapestry piece, but far enough away from it to be read as a single item, was a long dark thread.

&
nbsp; Catrona laughed out loud. “Sharp eyes indeed, Jo-an-enna! And I am getting foolish and careless in my old age. Fine teacher I am. Such a miss might mean my doom in the woods or in the midst of battle.”

  The girls nodded sagely back at her as she picked up the sweet and solemnly handed it to Jenna.

  “We will play again and again until you remember all that you see. Tomorrow we will play with different objects under the cloth. By the time this Game is done, you will be able to name everything the first time and there will be more than thirty things to name. But it is not just a Game, my children. The point of it is this—you must look at everything twice—once with your outer eye and once with the eye of your mind. That is why it is called the Eye-Mind Game. You must learn to resee everything, to recall it as clearly the second time as the first.”

  “Do we do the same thing in the woods?” asked Pynt.

  Jenna had not asked the question because she already knew the answer. Of course they must do the same thing in the woods. And in the Hame and in the towns. Everywhere. What a foolish thing to ask. She was surprised at Pynt.

  But Catrona did not seem surprised. “The same,” she said calmly. “What good girls!” She put a hand on the shoulders of each and pushed them closer to the table. “Now look again.”

  They crowded close and stared intently at the tabletop, Pynt’s mouth moving in a strange litany as she reminded herself the names of each object there. Jenna stared with such intensity she trembled.

  In the evening, the four new Choosers met in their room and sat on Jenna’s bed. They each had much to share.

  Pynt bubbled through a recitation of the Game and how Jenna had shared the sweet with her.

  “Though she really won it,” Pynt finished. “But tomorrow I will win. I think I have found the secret.” She rocked her new doll in her arms as she spoke.

  “You always have a secret way, Pynt,” said Selinda. “And it almost never works.”

  “Does.”

  “Does not.”

  “Does.”

  “Tell us about the kitchen, Alna,” said Jenna. Suddenly she could not stand the argument. What did it matter if Pynt sometimes tried to find secret ways or that they seldom worked?

  Alna said in her whispery voice, “I never knew there was so much to learn in a kitchen. I got to help cut up things. In the garden they never let me use a knife. And I did not hurt myself once. It smells good in there, too, but …” She sighed and did not finish.

  “You would not have liked the gardens today anyway,” Selinda said quickly. “All we did was weed. Weed! I have done that ever since I can remember. How was it different to have chosen? I should have gone to the kitchen. Or the woods. Or to the weavers. Or …”

  “I like weeding,” Alna whispered.

  “You do not,” said Pynt. “You used to complain about it all the time.”

  “Did not.”

  “Did.”

  “Did not.”

  Amalda came into the room. “It is time to get into bed, little ones,” she said. “You must be like the birds. As high as they fly, they always return to earth.” She gave them each a hug before leaving, and Jenna squeezed back extra hard.

  Minutes later Selinda’s womb mother came in and stayed only a moment, tucking in Selinda and giving each of the other girls a nod. And then, because it was past dark, and Jenna had gotten out of bed again and lit all the lanterns, Alna’s mother and dark sister both came in. They gave each girl a touch but they fussed nervously and—to Jenna’s mind—endlessly over Alna despite her reassurances to them that she felt fine.

  At last Marna and Zo came in and, to everyone’s delight, they carried their tembalas with them. Marna’s instrument had a sweet sound. Zo’s was lower and complementary, just like their voices.

  “Sing ‘Come, Ye Women,’” begged Pynt.

  “And the ‘Ballad of Ringer’s Forge,’” Alna whispered.

  “‘Deny Down.’ Sing ‘Derry Down,’” Selinda said, bouncing on her bed.

  Jenna alone was silent as she unbraided her white hair, which was crinkled from its long plaiting.

  “And do you not have a favorite also, Jo-an-enna?” asked Marna softly, watching Jenna’s swift hands.

  Jenna was slow in answering, but at last very seriously said, “Is there a new song we can hear? One just for this first day after the Choosing?” She wanted this day to be as special as it was supposed to be, not just a strange, hollow feeling under her breastbone where all the little squabbles with Pynt and the odd sense of distance from the other girls were growing. She wanted to be close to them, and ordinary again; she wanted to wash away the memory of Mother Alta before her great mirror. “Something we have never heard before.”

  “Of course, Jenna. I will sing something I learned last year when we had that mission visit from the singer from Calla’s Ford Hame. Theirs is such a large Hame, some seven hundred members, one can be just a singer there.”

  “Would you want to be just a singer, dear Marna?” asked Pynt.

  It was Zo who answered. “In a large Hame, our small talent would scarcely be recognized,” she said.

  “Besides, this is our Hame,” said Marna. “We would be no place else.”

  “But you were someplace else once,” said Jenna thoughtfully. She wondered if she would feel different, more ordinary, scarcely recognized someplace else.

  “Of course I was, Jenna. When I went on my year mission before the final Choosing, before calling my sister from the dark, just as you shall. But for all the Hames I visited and all the sisters there who would have had me stay, I came back here, to Selden Hame, though it is the smallest of them all.”

  “Why?” asked Pynt.

  “Yes—why?” the other three echoed.

  “Because it is our Hame,” Marna and Zo said together.

  “Now, enough questions,” Marna said, “or there will be no time for even one song.”

  They snuggled down in their beds.

  “First I will sing the new song. It is called ‘Alta’s Song.’ And then I will sing the others. Afterward, you must all go right to sleep. You are no longer my little ones, you know, and there will be much for you to do come morning.”

  She began the first song. By the end of the third, the girls were all asleep except for Jenna, but Marna and Zo did not notice and they tiptoed out of the room.

  The fire in the Great Hall’s hearth crackled merrily and two hounds dozing nearby scrabbled on the stones with their claws as they chased after rabbits in their dreams. The room smelled comfortably of rushes and woodsmoke and of the bowls of dried rose petals and verbena.

  When Marna and Zo entered, they saw that all the big chairs near the fire were taken already and the three older girls lay on their stomachs on the rug by the hearth.

  “Over here,” called Amalda.

  They turned and saw that two places at the large round table off to the side of the hearth had been reserved for them.

  “How are the Choosers?” asked Amalda intently.

  “Are they still excited?” Her dark sister Sammor seemed more relaxed.

  “They are quiet for now. We sang them four songs—well, three, actually. They fell asleep before the fourth. Poor little mites, the day had quite exhausted them and I promised them more work for the morrow.” Marna sat down heavily in the chair.

  “We miss those little imps already,” said Zo as soon as she, too, was seated.

  Catrona smiled. “This is not such a great Hame that you will not see them every day.”

  “But they have been our special charges for the last seven years,” Marna said. “And I feel them growing away from us already.”

  Domina sniffed. “You say that every spring at Choosing.”

  “Not every spring. We have not had a Choosing since Varsa, and that three years ago. And now four at once. It is very hard.”

  Alna’s mother looked across the table at her. “It is harder on Glon and me. They have taken our baby from the gardens. To be a kitchener. Under
Donya. Feh.”

  “What do you mean by they?” Catrona flared. “You were as worried as we were that she might someday stop breathing out in that weedy trap of yours.”

  “Weedy? What do you mean? Our garden is as clean of weeds as any you will find in a larger Hame. Weeds indeed!” Alinda started to stand and Glon, next to her, reached out to steady her. They sat down together, but Alinda still trembled with anger.

  “She just meant it was hard,” said Glon to Catrona. “Forgive her. We are both out of sorts today.”

  Catrona snorted and looked away.

  “The first day after a Choosing is always difficult,” said Kadreen, coming to sit at the table’s head. “And we say the same thing every time. Are we children to have such short memories? Come, sisters, look at one another and smile. This feeling will pass.” She looked around the table and though she herself did not smile, soon the rest were returned to their normal happy moods. “Now are we all here?”

  “Donya and Doey are late, as usual,” said Domina.

  “We must wait, then. This concerns the new Choosers and so everyone who is involved with them must be here.” Kadreen folded her hands on top of the table, lacing the blunt, squared-off fingers loosely. “Marna, Zo, why not give us a song while we wait? Something—something bright.”

  They needed no more prompting, but picked up the tembalas and with an almost imperceptible nod between them to establish the beat, started plucking a quick-step dance that involved a melody which seemed to leap from one instrument to the other. It lightened the mood around the table considerably. They were just reaching the finale, with four strums alternating on the drone strings, when Donya and her dark sister Doey bustled in, wiping their hands on their stained aprons, eager to offer full excuses for being late.

  Kadreen signaled them to sit with a wave of her hands, so that the dying strum of the tembalas was accompanied by the scraping of chair legs against the wooden floor.

  “As you all know, we must talk now of the future for our new Choosers. These girls are our future. First, though, we must know from Marna what to expect. What do they know and how fast do they learn?”

  Marna and Zo nodded. “What I say now is not new to you. Over the years I have consulted with the mothers and with you, Kadreen, when there was illness. But telling it again to all may bring out some other truths, hidden even from Zo and me.