The Great Alta Saga Omnibus

by Jane Yolen

Jenna looked. By the roots of the tree grew white trillium and clumps of violets, all nodding in the breeze.

  “Your friends are hardy little plants,” said Amalda. Then she laughed. “And you are not yet a mighty tree. Another few years, perhaps.” But she hugged Jenna fiercely and they walked in silence the rest of the way around the Hame.

  Jenna remembered that silence as she packed, putting her best leggings at the bottom and her nightdress in the middle. She reserved the top space for the food she would get from Donya, and for her corn doll. She picked up the doll and was preparing to put it in the pack when Pynt stopped her.

  “No,” said Pynt. “Give me your doll, the light sister, and I will give you mine. Then we will not really be parted.”

  Her earnestness convinced Jenna, who traded dolls solemnly. Pynt stroked the cornsilk hair before setting Jenna’s doll in her own pack.

  Selinda gave Jenna a moon snail shell which had been a present from her mother on the day of her Choosing, and Alna gave her a posy of dried flowers.

  “From the garden. I’ve always kept it by my pillow,” she said shyly, as if it were a secret, though they had all known of it.

  Jenna cut a lock of her hair for each of them and, as she set the white curl in her friends’ palms, said quietly, “It is only a year. One year. And then we will be back here, together again.”

  She had meant it to sound brave and jaunty, but Alna turned away, and Selinda gave her a quick hug and ran from the room. Only Pynt stayed, staring down at the bone-white curl resting in her hand.

  Down in the warrior yard, Catrona waited for them by the tabletop map. She stared at each of them in turn, noting Alna’s reddened eyes, Selinda’s pale complexion, the determined look on Pynt’s face. Only Jenna seemed calm.

  Folding her arms, Catrona said briskly, “Let us go over the way again. And then you must be off. Remember—The sun moves slowly, but it crosses the land. You must not waste the best part of the day. The trip is long enough as it is.”

  The girls moved closer to the table.

  “Now show me the way,” said Catrona.

  Pynt started forward.

  “Not you, Marga. You know the woods so well, I would have Selinda or Alna show me. Just in case.”

  Alna’s hand flew rapidly along the route, first west away from the sun, down the path toward the town of Slipskin, and along the river. At the mountain’s foot she hesitated for a moment and Selinda’s hand pushed hers off toward the south.

  “And that,” Catrona interrupted, “Jenna, is where you leave them. You must take the more northerly journey to Nill’s Hame. Your markers are what?”

  Jenna moved closer to the map, tracing the path with a steady hand. “The river has two paths. I go around toward the Old Hanging Man, the mountain with the high cliff shaped like a man’s face, till I come to the Sea of Bells, the lily field.”

  “Good. And you others?”

  “We go with our back to the Old Man, our faces toward the twin peaks of Alta’s Breast,” Pynt said.

  They recited the rest of the route in like fashion, several times through, so that Catrona was finally assured. Then she gave them each a hug, reserving the final embrace for Jenna.

  All the women of Selden Hame waited at the great gates. Even the outer guards had been alerted and had come in from their posts. They stood in silence while the girls knelt before the priestess for their final blessing.

  “Hand to guide them,” Mother Alta intoned. “Heart to shield them. Hold them in thy hair forevermore.”

  “Evermore,” the watching women echoed.

  Jenna lifted her face and stared at the priestess, but Mother Alta was already looking down the road.

  The girls hoisted their packs and started off to the accompanying ululation of the watchers. The eerie quavering sounds followed them around the first three turns of the trail, but long after the sounds had died away, the girls were silent, thinking only of the path.

  BOOK THREE

  SISTER LIGHT, SISTER DARK

  THE MYTH:

  Then Great Alta shall touch her only daughter with a wand of light and the child will fall away from her down to Earth. Wherever the child steps, there will spring up flowers like bells that shall ring hosannas to her name. “O child of light,” the bells will peal, “O little sister, O white daughter, O queen who is to come.”

  THE LEGEND:

  Once a shepherdess from Neverston went up the flank of the Old Man to tend her flock. But it was her first time up the mountain and darkness still stained his granite cheeks. The girl was young and afraid. Fearing to lose her way, she put a handful of white pebbles in her apron pocket and at every step she placed a pebble on a green leaf to mark her path.

  All day she watched her ewes and lambs eating the sweet spring grass that was the Old Man’s beard, and prayed for guidance for a safe return.

  While the shepherdess and her flock remained on the high mountain, the pebbles slowly took root and became tiny white bells.

  When it was evening and the sun had set behind the Old Man’s head, the shepherdess led her flock safely home, following the sound of the tinkling bells. Or at least that is what they say in Neverston, where “lamb-bells,” or Lilies of the Old Man’s Valley, grow in great profusion.

  THE STORY:

  It had been cooler along the water than at the Hame and the girls had stopped at the confluence of the two rivers to eat their noon meal and wash off some of the trail dirt. It was there they said their farewells to Jenna. Selinda and Alna had wept without restraint, but Pynt had laughed oddly and winked at Jenna. Shrugging slightly, Jenna winked back, but as she trudged up the twisting northern path alone, she was still puzzling over Pynt’s odd behavior.

  As she walked, Jenna swung her head from side to side as Amalda and Catrona had taught her. Just because she was thinking did not mean that her ears and eyes should be unaware. As Amalda was fond of saying, You must set the trap before the rat passes, not after.

  She noted a pair of squirrels chasing each other through the treetops, the scat of a large mountain cat, and deer tracks. An owl pellet below a tree contained the skull of a wood mouse. There would be much to eat if she needed it, though she still had plenty in her pack. But she checked everything as a cook might check the larder.

  Stopping for a moment to listen to the trillings of a wood thrush, Jenna smiled. She had been worried about being alone, but though she missed Selinda and Alna and especially Pynt, she realized with a kind of surprised elation that she did not feel alone. This puzzled her. She wanted to hold on to her anger, as if anger alone could make her strong enough, so she repeated as if it were a prayer, “I will never forgive her. I will hate Mother Alta forever.” But the words seemed hollow. Spoken aloud in the joyous cacophony of the forest, the litany of hate had no power. She shook her head.

  “I am the woods,” she whispered. Then she said, more loudly, “The woods are in me!” She laughed, not because the thought was humorous but because it was true, and because Mother Alta, all unknowing, had sent her out to her true destiny.

  “Or …” she said, hesitantly, “did she know?”

  There was no answer from the woods, at least none that she could understand, so she put her fingers to her mouth and whistled like a thrush. It returned her call instantly.

  Sunset came earlier than Jenna expected because she was still in the deep woods and in the massive shadow of the Old Man’s western flank. She had hoped to come upon the white lily field by dark, having gotten the impression from Catrona that she should spend the first night there. But they had wasted so much time with their good-byes, and then she had not pushed herself along the trail, dawdling and enjoying her freedom. Now she would have to camp in the woods rather than the field.

  In the gathering dark, she picked a tree with a high crotch, for the cat scat had been fresh. Not wanting to take chances with a cat in her face at night, she decided to sleep high up in the tree. It would not be comfortable, but she had been trained how to do it. A
nd, as Catrona often said, Better the cat under your heel than at your throat!

  She made a small fire below the tree and ringed it with stones. It would be only a small protection, none at all if the cat were really interested. But it might scare off one that was only mildly curious.

  Then she climbed the tree and stashed her pack several feet above her head. She balanced her unsheathed sword in a branch just above the fork she had chosen to sleep in. That way she would be able to get to it quickly. Her knife she kept by her side.

  The tree was smooth, not nubbly like the first tree she and Pynt had ever tried to sleep in. She chuckled to herself, remembering the uncomfortable bark. Both she and Pynt had had the print of that bark impressed on their backs. They had joked about it in the morning. Suddenly she missed Pynt unbearably, so she stretched up, took down the pack, and removed the doll from it. She held the doll tightly in her arms and imagined she could smell Pynt’s hands on its skirt. Her eyes grew misty at the thought, so she looked up at the stars through the interlacing of limbs, and tried to name the patterns, as if naming them would keep away her tears.

  “The Huntress,” she whispered into the dark. “The Great Hound.” She sighed. “Alta’s Braid.”

  The sound of river water washing over stone lulled her quickly and she was asleep before the count was done, one hand slipping off her lap to dangle in the air.

  In the morning, Jenna woke up before the sun had found the valley, cramped and with a tingling sensation in the dangling hand. But that disappeared as soon as she used it. The cramp in her right leg took longer to go away. She descended the tree with the sword, climbed back up for her pack, then stretched lazily before looking around.

  The early birds were already heralding the dawn. She recognized the dry, rattling chatter of a mistle thrush and the peremptory tew-tew-tew of a pair of ouzels. She saw a flash of rusty brown she thought might be a nightingale, but as it was silent, she could not be sure. Smiling, she set about making her breakfast, using some of the grain she had carried with her in a leathern sack, the flask of goat’s milk, and the pack of dried berries Donya had gifted each girl. It was a feast and she felt herself making a quiet chuckling sound way in the back of her throat like the ouzel, and the realization caused her to laugh aloud.

  Before leaving her campsite, she checked carefully that there was no sign of her stay there.

  Except for my smell, she reminded herself, for Catrona had always said a cat might be able to track one of Alta’s hunters, but no one else should.

  Belting on her sword, she hoisted her pack, patted the knife at her hip, and started off down the trail.

  Around a great bend in the track that followed the meandering of the river, she came upon a meadow so broad she could not see the other side. Unexpected and beautiful, the meadow made her lose her breath. The expansive green was sprinkled with tiny white flowers.

  Jenna sang out in delight, a high crowing that she turned into a song of triumph. So, I had been that close all night long and had never known it. But to come upon it in the day, with the flowers open and the sun shining down, was much the best way to do it, she thought.

  Her song masked any other sound she might have heard, and that was why the hand on her shoulder startled her. She put her own hand to her knife, drew it, and turned in the same instant, bringing the knife up in the swift, clean motion she had practiced so often.

  Pynt stepped back just as quickly, though Jenna’s longer arms meant the knife slashed Pynt’s tunic, up and over the heart.

  “Some welcome!” Pynt said, putting her hand over the ripped tunic breast and breathing a sigh of relief when she realized the shirt beneath was still whole.

  “You—you startled me!” was all Jenna could manage before dropping her knife and enfolding Pynt in a tremendous embrace. “Oh, Pynt, I could have killed you.”

  “No one can kill her shadow,” Pynt said, her voice trembling and a bit muffled against Jenna’s hair. She moved out of Jenna’s embrace. “My fault, really. I should have known better than to come upon you that way. But I thought you knew I was behind you. Alta knows I made enough noise.” She grinned broadly. “When I am in a hurry, I am a regular twig breaker.”

  “What are you doing here?” Jenna asked, a tinge of anger in her voice. “Is this another of your secret ways?”

  “You did not expect me?” Pynt looked bewildered. “But I thought you agreed. When I winked, you winked back. You knew there was no way I was going to stay with those two and let you go off alone. Selinda stares off into space and plunges into rabbit holes every third step, and Alna chatters as endlessly as Donya.” She paused. “Without you, I could not stand them. And …” She sighed. “I could not let you go off alone.”

  “Oh, Pynt, think. Think!” Jenna pleaded. “Use your head. Those two will never find the way on their own.” She shook her head. “Selinda still thinks the sun rises in the west.”

  “Of course they will,” Pynt answered. “It is all one trail, no turns, until Calla’s Ford. All they have to do is follow the river. They can both use their knives, so there is no danger. And they have each other, you know. Often girls are sent out on their own because there are no others the right age ready to go.”

  “I could follow the way on my own, Pynt.”

  Pynt looked stricken. “You do not want me here?”

  “Of course I want you here, Pynt. You are my dearest companion.”

  “I am your shadow,” Pynt reminded her quickly, a bit of her old spark returned.

  “You are a twig breaker,” said Jenna. She punched Pynt lightly on the shoulder. “But you did not think this all the way through.”

  “I have been thinking about this since old Serpent Mouth said you had to go a separate way.”

  “Old Serpent Mouth?” Jenna put her head back and began to laugh.

  Pynt joined her and soon the two of them were so helpless in their laughter, they had to unbuckle their swords and throw down their packs. They rolled in the meadow grass, crushing hundreds of white lily bells beneath them. Each time one of them stopped laughing, the other would think up a new name for the priestess, both scurrilous and silly, and the laughter would begin anew. They went on this way until at last Jenna was able to sit up, wipe a hand across her eyes, and breathe in deeply.

  “Pynt …” she began seriously and, when Pynt still giggled, said more sternly, “Marga!”

  Pynt sat up, sober-faced. “You have never called me that.”

  “‘Pynt’ is a child’s name. We are on our mission year. Now we must both be adults.”

  “I am listening, Jo-an-enna.”

  “Marga, I meant it—about thinking things all the way through. What do you suppose they will do to you—to us—when they find out we disobeyed Mother Alta? Have you thought about that?”

  “They will not know until we return in a year, and by then we will have done so many glorious deeds and become so grown up, Jo-an-enna, that we will be forgiven.” She grinned at Jenna with a crooked smile and head cocked to one side that made her irresistible.

  Jenna shook her head again. “You are impossible, Pynt.”

  They stood up, brushed each other off, and Pynt picked three white flowers out of Jenna’s hair. Then, shouldering their packs, they buckled on their swords and started off through the meadow, singing jauntily.

  THE SONG:

  Come, Ye Women

  Oh, come, ye women of the Isles,

  And listen to my song,

  For if ye be but thirteen years,

  Ye’ve not been women long.

  And if ye be threescore and ten,

  No longer women be,

  Or so say all the merry men

  Who count so cruel-ly.

  But women we be from our birth,

  And will be till we die.

  Our counte is made so differently

  To give the men that lie.

  Oh, come, ye women of the Isles,

  And listen to my song,

  For we be women
all through life,

  Where life and love are long.

  THE HISTORY:

  “Very little music from the early Alta worshippers survives today. Because of the destruction by fire of most of the Hames in the tragic period of the Gender Wars, there are no large manuscript sources before the Covillein Booke of the sixteenth century. Fragmentary sources from earlier periods contain a handful of lullabies, several mangled ballads, and one instrumental dance scored for the ‘tembala,’ an instrument no longer extant. From the scoring, the tembala appears to be a stringed instrument of the guitar family with five melody strings and two drones.” —Arne von Tassle, Dictionary of Early Music, Vol. A.

  It is clear from the passage above that Dr. von Tassle, the world’s greatest authority on Early Music of the Isles, believes categorically that little music from the Alta Hames has survived till today. In flagrant disagreement, Magon—who readily admits that he is no music expert—cities modern Dales balladry and songs as proof positive that a vital and prolific musical heritage is preserved in the Highlands and Valleys. In yet another reference-poor monograph (“Music of the Spheres,” Nature and History, Vol. 47), Magon insists that there were four major categories of Alta music: religious tunes, lullabies and everyday songs, historical balladry, and dialectics.

  His thesis concerning the religious tunes is, perhaps, the only tenable one. Certainly songs (which he cites) such as the fragmentary plainsong “Alta,” with its plaintive refrain “Great Alta, salve my soule,” could possibly be traced to religious ceremonies. But the song itself is such a close relative to the seventeenth-century “Lyke Wake Dirge” of the North Country that it is more than likely a modern reconstruction of that old song.

  When Magon tries to link the charming and famous “Catte Lullaby,” which had been found scribbled on the battered flyleaf of a sixteenth-century ballad book, to the early Garunian period of the Hames, he is sailing in choppier water. It is almost certainly a composed song, though, like many others of the time, patterned closely on the old oral-tradition tunes. Magon does not, for example, seem to realize that the word “catkin” has no written source prior to the mid-sixteenth century and was certainly not used to mean “kitten” or “little cat” at that time, further invalidating his early dating.