The Great Alta Saga Omnibus

by Jane Yolen

  “All four are bright, quick learners and have their first letters already. Jenna can read sentences and will soon begin on the first of the Little Books, though it is Alna who loves the tales the best.”

  Alinda nodded complacently. “We always told her stories to calm her when her breath would not come easily.”

  Marna smiled and continued. “Selinda is a dreamy sort and she needs much recalling to her tasks.”

  Selinda’s womb mother laughed. “Takes after her father Three boys I had after but a week with their fathers. But Selinda’s needed so much recalling to his work, I was with him three months.”

  They all laughed with her.

  Marna waited out their laughter. “Pynt—Marga, as I suppose she should be called now, though I shall always think of her as Pynt—is the very quickest at most things—”

  Zo interrupted. “But she forgets caution much of the time. We fear that very quickness will lead her into trouble.”

  Nodding, Marna added, “We do.”

  “It has already.” Catrona shifted in her chair and leaned forward, over the table. “She did not get the sweet she wanted at her first try at the Game.”

  Marna laughed at that and Zo explained. “She got the sweet anyway. And the larger half at that. Jenna shared it with her.”

  Kadreen unlaced her fingers, speaking slowly. “They are like shadow sisters, Jenna and Pynt. It will go harder on them when they have their own dark twins, will it not?” She asked it carefully, aware that as a Solitary she had little right to speak of such things. She had come to the Hame as a full adult, choosing to live apart from the busy towns where she had learned her craft, arriving much too late in life to be introduced to the Hame Mysteries or to learn to call up a sister from Alta’s eternal dark. “I mean, they shall have to wrench themselves when …”

  “That is almost seven years from now, Kadreen. And you know what childhood friendships are,” said Marna.

  “No,” Kadreen muttered under her breath.

  “We could consider it if they still hold fast together when it is time for the mission,” suggested Domina.

  “The Book speaks of loyalties,” reminded Kadreen. “This much I know. And Mother Alta has asked me to warn all of you about encouraging their special friendship overmuch. Jenna’s needs cannot be met by one friend alone. She must be loyal equally to all in the Hame. Not just one teacher, not just one mother, not just one friend. Mother Alta has made that quite clear.” She said the words as if they left a sour taste in her mouth.

  “She is a child, Kadreen,” Amalda said. “I would have taken her long ago as my own, had the Mother allowed it.”

  The others nodded.

  “Perhaps she is more than that,” Kadreen muttered, but she did not say more.

  THE HISTORY:

  Another game that has a tangled ancient history is the popular “I-Mine” of the Lower Dales, which Lowentrout, in one of his brilliant but eccentric leaps of scholarship, has dubbed “a classic Alta warrior training pattern game.” (See his Letter to the Editor, Games Magazine, Vol. 544.) His evidence, which is extremely shaky, rests on Vargo’s highly suspect linguistic shift thesis and interpretations of the priestess codes, rather than the more laborious but detailed archaeological work such as Cowan’s and Temple’s.

  The game as it is played today is a board-and-counter game, the board consisting of 64 contiguous squares of 32 light and 32 dark. There are an equal number of counters with inscribed faces, 32 with light backs and 32 dark.

  The inscriptions are paired, so that there are 32 of each color. They include: a knife, crossed sticks, ribbons tied in a bow, a flower, a circle (presumably representing a stone, since it is called so), an apple, a bowl, a spoon, a threaded pin, grapes (or berries; both names are given), a triangle, a square, a crescent moon, a sun, a crown, a bow, an arrow, a dog, a cow, a bird, a hand, a foot, a rainbow, a wavy line which is called “river” by the players, a tree, a cat, a cart, a house, a fish, a mask, a chair, and a sign which is designated “Alta” and is, in fact, the sign for female that is as ancient as any in the Dales.

  The point of the game is to capture the opponent’s counters. The play begins with all the counters turned inscription-side down and shuffled, then set onto the squares in a haphazard manner called “scuffling,” though light-backed counters go on the light squares, dark on dark. Play begins with each player turning over two counters. (They may be two of his own or one of each player’s.) Then those counters are returned to their face-down positions.

  Now the memory part of the game begins, for each player, in turn, turns over two counters, one of each color. If the inscriptions match, he keeps or “captures” them both. As the player turns over the counters, he says—on turning over his own—“I,” and if he suspects a pair, as he turns over his opponent’s, “Mine.” If he suspects (or remembers) they are not paired, he says “Thine.” If he should say “I-Mine” to an unmatched pair, he loses a turn. If he says “I-Thine” to a matched pair, he does not win or keep the pair (which are called “suites”) and his opponent then has a free opportunity to turn up the two. That’s the game at its simplest. But in tournament and adult play, certain inscriptions are also paired. If those paired signs—hand/foot, fish/river, bow/arrow, flower/grapes—are uncovered by the player right after one another, they count as two “suites,” rather than one. If the moon suite is uncovered on the very first play, the player gets an extra turn. If the Alta pair is uncovered last, it counts as three. So the game is both a game of memory and of strategy.

  If Lowentrout is correct, then another piece of the puzzle of the Dales has been found. But if—as is likelier—this is a later game phenomenon with no early antecedents among the Altites but rather (as A. Baum writes) “a Continental import” (see his naive but striking piece “Point, Counter, Point in the Dales,” Games, Vol. 543), then we must search even further for evidence of Altism in the Isles.

  THE STORY:

  Jenna marked the years after her Choosing by certain accomplishments. By the rind of the first year, she had read all the children’s books, the Books of Little Lights, at least once through and had learned the Game completely. She played at the Game out-of-doors with Pynt and at night before they went to sleep, until the two of them could remember everything set before them and the colors and counts and placements besides.

  The second year Jenna mastered the bow and the throwing knife and was allowed to camp out overnight with just Pynt and Little Domina, who was that year to call out her dark sister, having come home from her mission. Little Domina taught them a new game, one she had learned in another Hame, that of telling frightening stories of girls who had called out demons and ogres from the dark instead of their sisters. The first time she had terrified both Jenna and Pynt, especially as they thought they heard a cat scratching nearby. The second time only Pynt was frightened, and then but a little. The third time Jenna figured out a trick they could play on Little Domina, which had to do with a rope and a blanket and an old tembala with only its top three strings. It so frightened the older girl that she refused to camp with them again, saying that she had much studying to do before her Night of Sisterhood. But Jenna and Pynt knew better. They had to settle for Varsa, who was not as much fun, being stolid, unimaginative, and—so Pynt said—“slightly dim.”

  Jenna called the third year the year of the Sword and the Ford. She had learned to handle both the short broadsword and the double-edged blade, using the smaller versions made for a child’s hand. When she complained that she was almost as tall as Varsa, Catrona, laughing, had put a large sword in her hand. Jenna was able to lift it, but that was all. Catrona had thought she would be content with just the knowledge that an adult sword was as yet beyond her. But Jenna had sworn to herself that she would handle one easily by the year’s last turning. She practiced with pieces of wood, heavier and heavier, not even realizing herself that she was growing at a pace far faster than Pynt or Alna or Selinda could maintain. When Catrona had solemnly placed a
big sword in her hand on the very last day of the year, Jenna was surprised how light it felt, lighter than any of the pieces of wood she had used and smaller to grip. It sang through the air as she paced it through the seven positions of thrust and the eight of parry.

  That was the same day the Selden River overflowed its banks, something that happened only once every hundred years, and a runner from the town came to beg the Hame’s assistance in digging a channel to contain the angry waters. All the warriors and the girls went with him, plus Kadreen, for the town of Selden had but an herbwife and she near eighty-five. Mother Alta sent as many of the others as might be spared, though she had been firm about sending too many. They had done what they could, but seven farmers died anyway, out in the fields trying to save their flocks. The town itself was water up to the rooftrees of the houses. When the Altites tried to return up the mountain, the one bridge had been washed away and they had to ford the still-furious river, going across by holding on to a line which Catrona had begun with a well-placed arrow fired across the flood. Jenna and Pynt admired the strength of her arm and aim. Neither of them was fond of the icy water, but they were among the first across. The Sword and the Ford.

  The fourth year they began their instruction in the Book.

  Jenna could feel an itch between her toes. She ignored it. She could see Selinda settling herself more comfortably and hear Alna’s rough breathing and feel Pynt’s knee touching her own. But she drew herself in and away from them, focusing only on Mother Alta.

  The priestess sat whey-faced and stony-eyed in her high-backed chair. She looked small, even shrunken with age. Yet when she opened the Book on her lap, she seemed to swell visibly, as if the very act of turning the Book’s pages filled her with an awesome power.

  Jenna and the others sat cross-legged on the floor before her. They no longer wore their work clothes. Gone were the rough warrior skins, the smudged smocks of the kitchen, the gardener’s dirty-kneed pants. Now they dressed alike in their worship clothes: the white and green of young Choosers, with the full sleeves, the belled pants tied at the ankle, their heads covered with scarves as was the custom of girls in the presence of the open Book. They were all shining with recent scrubbings and even Selinda’s fingernails were clean for once. Jenna noticed them out of the corner of her eye.

  Mother Alta cleared her throat, which brought complete attention to her. Then she began with a series of hand signs, mysterious in their meanings but clearly potent. She spoke in a high, nasal voice.

  “In the beginning of your lives is the Book of Light,” she said. “And in the end.” Her fingers continued to weave a descant to her words.

  The girls nodded, Selinda a half beat behind.

  Tap-tap-tap went Mother Alta’s great pointing nail on the page. “It is here that all knowledge can be found.” Tap-tap. The fingers began to dance in the air again. “And here all wisdom set out.” Tap-tap-tap. “And so we begin, my children. And so we begin.”

  The girls nodded in rhythm to her words.

  “Now you must close your eyes. Yes, that is it. Selinda, you, too. Good. Good. Bring in the dark that I may teach you to breathe. For it is breath that is behind words. And words that are the shapers of knowledge. And knowledge that is the base of understanding. And understanding, the link between sister and sister.”

  And love? thought Jenna, closing her eyes tightly. What about love? But she did not say it aloud.

  “This is how you must breathe when you hear the Book and …” Mother Alta paused as if to gather them in more thoroughly. “And when you call your sister from the dark.”

  It was as if, instead of breathing, at her words they all stopped, for the room was completely silent now except for the faint echo of her voice.

  So. We are here, Jenna thought. At last.

  Into the silence Mother Alta’s nasal voice began again, a voice of instruction that had little warmth or inflection in it. “The body’s breath comes and goes without conscious thought, yet there is an art to breathing that will make your every thought larger, your every gift greater, your every moment longer. Without this breath—which I will teach you—your dark sister cannot breathe. She will be condemned to a life of eternal darkness, eternal ignorance, eternal loneliness. Yet no one but the followers of Great Alta knows these things. And if you should ever speak of them to others, you shall die the Death of a Thousand Arrows.” Her voice sharpened at the last.

  Jenna had heard of that death and could easily imagine the pain, though whether it was a real death or a story death, she could not guess.

  Mother Alta stopped speaking and, as if on a signal, all four girls caught their breath and opened their eyes. Alna gave three quick little involuntary coughs.

  THE PARABLE:

  Once five beasts quarreled over what was most important to life: the eyes, the ears, the teeth, the mind, or the breath.

  “Let us test this ourselves,” said Cat. And as he was the strongest, they all agreed.

  So Tortoise took out his eyes and without them he was blind. He could not see sunrise or sunset. He could not see the seven layers of color in his pond. But still he could hear and he could eat and he could think. So the beasts decided that eyes were of little importance.

  Next Hare gave away his ears. And without them he could not hear the breaking of twigs near his home or the wind through the briars. He looked very strange. But still he could see and think and was not without the ability to eat well. So there was that for ears.

  Then Wolf pulled out all his teeth. It certainly made eating difficult, but he managed. He was a great deal thinner, but he could see and hear and with his sharp mind he devised other ways of eating. So much for teeth.

  So Spider gave away his mind. It was such a little mind, anyway, said Cat, and besides, he was no stupider than he had been before. Flies, being even more stupid, still came to his webs, though the webs themselves were very strange, and no longer very beautiful.

  And so Cat laughed. “We have proved, dear friends, that the eye, the ear, the teeth, and the mind are of but little importance, as I always suspected. The important one is breath.”

  “That is yet to be proved,” the other beasts said together.

  So Cat himself had to give away his breath.

  After a while, when it was clear to the others that he was quite dead, they buried him. And that is how five beasts proved completely that it is breath that is the most important thing in life, for, indeed, without it there is no life.

  THE STORY:

  “It is said in the Book that we breathe over twenty thousand times in a single day. Half the time we breathe in and half the time out. Imagine, my children, doing something that many times a day and not ever giving it thought.” Mother Alta smiled at them, her serpent smile, all lips and no teeth.

  The girls smiled back, except for Jenna, who wondered if she would ever be able to breathe again so comfortably unaware. Twenty thousand. The number was beyond her calculations.

  “So—say with me:

  The breath of life,

  The power of life,

  The wind of life

  It flows from me to thee,

  Always the breath.”

  Dutifully they repeated her words, one phrase at a time, until they could say the entire thing without stumbling. Then she had them repeat it over and over until it was a chant filling the entire room. Ten times, twenty times, a hundred times they repeated it, until at last she silenced them with a wave of her right hand.

  “Each morning when you come to me, we will recite that together one hundred times. And then we will breathe—yes, my children, breathe—together. We will make my breath yours, and your breath mine. We will do this for a whole year’s turning, for the Book says, ‘And the light sister and the dark sister they shall have one breath.’ We will do this over and over until it is as natural to you as life itself.”

  Jenna thought about the sisters she had seen quarreling and the sisters whom she had seen laughing and crying at different ti
mes. But before she could wonder further, Mother Alta’s voice recalled her to her task.

  “Repeat with me again,” said Mother Alta.

  And the breathing began.

  That night in their room, before the mothers came in, Selinda began talking excitedly. Jenna had never seen her so enthusiastic about anything before.

  “I have seen it!” she said, her hands moving in a dreamy, rhythmic accompaniment to her words. “I watched at dinner. Amalda and Sammor, breath for breath they were, though neither of them was watching the other. Breath for breath.”

  “I saw, too,” Pynt said, running her fingers through her dark curls. “But I was watching Marna and Zo.”

  “I sat between Alinda and Glon by the fire,” said Alna. “And I could feel them. Like one bellows, in and out together.

  Funny not to have noticed it before. I made myself breathe with them and I felt such power. Well, I did!” she added in case anyone dared question her.

  Jenna said nothing. She, too, had found herself watching the sisters at dinner, though she had observed each pair in turn. But she had also kept an eye on Kadreen as well. It had seemed to her that the Solitary’s breathing shifted from one pair of sisters to another whenever she sat close, as if, without thinking, she were drawn into their twinned breath. When Jenna had tried to observe her own patterns, she found that the very act of observation changed the way she breathed. It was simply not possible to be both observer and observed.

  Tired by the excitement of the day, the other girls fell asleep quickly. Alna drifted off first, then Pynt, then Selinda, shifting and turning in her bed. Long after, Jenna lay awake, testing her own breathing and matching it to the sleepers’ until she could slip easily from one to the next with scarcely any effort at all.

  The rest of the year, far into the winter’s rind, they learned about breath from Mother Alta. Every morning began with their hundred chantings and the breathing exercises. They learned the difference between nose breathing (altai) and mouth breathing (alani), between chest breathing (lanai) and the breath that comes from lower down (latani). They learned how to overcome the faintness that came with rapid breath. They learned how to breathe standing, sitting, lying down, walking, and even running. They learned how the proper breathing could send them into a strange dream state even while awake. Jenna practiced the different breaths whenever she could—Cat breath, which gave great running power for short distances; Wolf breath, which gave the runner the ability to go over many miles; Spider breath for climbing; Tortoise breath for deep sleep; and Hare breath to help in leaping. She found that she could outlast Pynt in every contest of strength and running.