I Rode a Horse of Milk White Jade

by Diane Wilson

  “Bator!” I exclaimed as the tiny tiger-striped kitten bounded into sight, instantly weaving a pattern around my legs. “What are you doing all the way out here?”

  In response Bator jumped onto my padded silk trousers, needle-sharp claws snagging a path upward. I had found the kitten two moons ago, dragging his half-starved body behind one of the oxcarts, and named him Bator, meaning “hero.” Now, I know the giving of a name to an animal is unheard of, but somehow, to me anyway, Bator seemed more than a mere animal. He strutted cockily, meowing loudly, always announcing his accomplishments to the world. That day, although he was climbing my clothing with all the courage and determination of his name, I scooped him up in my hand, cuddling his furry body beneath my chin. Then I held him out in front of my face.

  “What is it you want, little one?” Again the tiny creature wailed, his green eyes shutting tight with the effort.

  “Oh, is that it? Well, I can’t play right now, I have work to do. And besides, it’s going to rain, so we have to hurry.” With great effort Bator stretched a front leg, the little toes at the end spreading to reveal five tiny pink pads. He mewed loudly. I chuckled. “I’ll bet your feet are tired after that long walk. How about if you ride in the basket until I’m done?” Carefully I dropped him into the basket on my back, but before I could take another step, Bator had leaped onto my shoulder, mewing urgently in my ear.

  “Well, I don’t know what you want, you little nuisance, but if you don’t want a ride, you can walk.” I set the squirming animal on the ground. Without looking back, Bator charged through the tall grasses, still crying out.

  And then I did know. From the time that kitten had come under my care he had been able, somehow, to make me understand what he wanted. And now he was making me understand that something was wrong and that I needed to follow him. Eyeing the blackness flooding the horizon, I turned to follow.

  I could barely see Bator’s stubby tail wending its way through the grasses, but his loud mewing served as an effective guide. Ahead, I knew, lay a dried creek bed, strewn with rocks. Bator’s cries halted at its edge. Struggling up behind the kitten, I saw the reason for his worry. In the crusty, web-patterned dirt at the bottom lay one of our ail’s goats. Her sides were swollen with a late pregnancy, and one miniature black foot attached to a spindly black leg protruded from beneath her tail. When she saw me, the goat lifted her head and bleated pitifully. Her cry was drowned by the first rumbling of thunder. Helpless, the goat dropped her head back to the hard ground and lay panting, her pink tongue bright against her gaping mouth.

  “Oyuna! Come now!” The faint voice of my mother rushed across the steppe on the rising wind. But the storm chased hard behind it. Fat drops of rain began to pelt the three of us.

  Wheeling around, I stumbled, a sharp pain darting through my foot as a blast of cold rain struck me in the face. My heart began pounding as I realized that I could not outrun the storm. Daydreams had led me wandering farther than I should have on such a threatening day. Now, with my crippled leg, I was trapped.

  The goat bleated anxiously.

  I heard my mother’s voice again: “O-yu-na!”

  But I had made my decision. With just one glance over my shoulder, I dropped the basket and slid upon sharp, skittering pebbles down the embankment.

  ***

  “That was the last time I heard my mother’s voice.”

  Even across the years the memory carried a fresh sadness and the old woman’s words caught in her throat. She began to cough. The explosive, rattling noise made the round-sided mare snort in alarm, and for several minutes the dark stable echoed with an exchanging of gusts between human and horse. When at last her throat was clear, the old woman shook her head and, like the mare, snorted.

  “Life is a funny thing, granddaughter,” she said in a far-off voice. “You never know when you’re doing something for the last time. One day—drinking tea with a good friend, chatting about this and that, and then—many years later—you look back and realize that that was the last time.” She paused and lowered her gaze. Her voice quavered when she spoke again. “There was so much I wanted to say.” Her trembling fingers pulled a jade pendant from the folds of her robe. The misty green stone was carved into the likeness of a galloping horse, its long mane and tail streaming in the wind. “I never got to thank my mother for this,” she whispered.

  The woman fell silent, her watery gray eyes staring vacantly into the night. The girl, still nestled beneath her grandmother’s arm, waited respectfully, then prompted her to continue.

  “What happened?” she whispered. There was no answer. “What happened?” she whispered again, her tone so urgent this time that even the white mare turned her black eyes upon the two and waited.

  A change surged through the old woman. She stretched her hands before her, and the moonlight shone upon mottled flesh sagging from swollen joints. “These hands have done more good than my foot has bad, I tell you!” Anger rumbled in her words. Alarmed, the girl lifted her head from her grandmother’s lap. “What was I to do?” the old woman asked into the darkness.

  Wide-eyed now, the young girl could only swallow and timidly repeat, “What happened?”

  The old hands dropped, disappearing into the robes’ thick folds. “The goat and the kid lived. My mother died: lightning. Bad luck. Of course, my father and I were punished.”

  4

  Lightning!

  My people fear lightning more than any of nature’s powers. In spring and summer, without warning, bolts leap from the sky. They sting the earth’s hide and capture for their own the spirits of our herdsmen and our animals. The rains they bring are welcome, of course, but such cruelty accompanying the gift! Who can count how many lives taken from the steppes? Hundreds to be sure, maybe even a thousand lives snatched from their families each season by lightning.

  Once, when I was still very small, a summer storm arose midday, surprising the herdsmen of my ail. I was peeking out the door flap of our ger and still I can see the thorny bolt that scratched its way through the purple-black sky. Straight to earth it shot, crackling and snapping so loudly I jumped away from the door and pushed my fingers into my ears. Then a thunderous bang! that shook the ground beneath my feet. At once my mother grabbed my hand and out we rushed, she dragging me toward where the horses huddled. Others ran beside us, not caring about the wind throwing dirt and bits of leaves into our faces.

  A strange burnt smell reached my nose even before we reached the horses. I remember my mother sweeping me up, trying to press my face to her chest. But I had already seen them: the lifeless bodies of three horses and two cousins sprawled grotesquely on the hillside. And I couldn’t help it. Between my mother’s splayed fingers I stared and stared at the blackened clothing, the singed manes and split hooves. And I couldn’t stop shaking.

  The night I helped the goat deliver her kid at the bottom of that creek bed, lightning crackled all around us. Each hissing bolt lit in my mind the stark picture of those hollow bodies—their spirits stolen by lightning. I was so scared! Then the heavens split open, pelting us with hail. With little Bator huddling in my lap and balls of ice piling at my feet, I hunched my shoulders against the pounding and fought to pull the slippery kid into this world. When the hail melted into a driving rain, still I was pushing and pulling, my hands bloody, my breath hot. At last my fingernails tore away the birth sac from the tiny black nose. The kid took his first panting breath. And I couldn’t stop shaking.

  Only then did I notice the brown water rising over my felt boots. We had to climb to higher ground—now! Lunging forward, I gathered the curly-coated kid into my arms, the sudden movement spilling Bator off my lap into the muddy water. Complaining in yowls, the kitten scampered up the embankment and huddled in the dark, watching. With the frightened kid bleating pitifully, and kicking so hard he almost unbalanced me, I managed to worm atop a large boulder. Swaying dangerously, I lifted the strug
gling animal above my head and shoved it over the bank’s slippery edge. The mother goat, already on her feet, rushed after her newborn, using my lap as a stepping-stone to gain the brim in two leaps.

  By the time I pulled myself, tumbling, up and over the embankment, my hands were bloodied, the fingernails torn and blackened. But we had made it. And just in time, too, for in the next instant I heard the water coming. Peering cautiously over the edge, I saw the foaming floodwaters pour over the boulder upon which I had just stood.

  Later that night, when the storm had weakened to a steady rain and the goat and her kid had trotted off, bleating, into the darkness in search of the herd, I was still shaking. I had tucked Bator inside my del and the small heat from his little body against my chest became my focus as I stumbled in search of my own kin.

  Though my teeth chattered with cold and with fear, I was yet happy—happy that I had welcomed a new life into this world, happy that I had braved the lightning.

  You should know, since some Mongol blood flows in your own veins, that mong means brave. That night I was proud to be Mongol.

  “Oyuna!” I heard my father calling from the blackness ahead of me. “Oyuna! Where are you?”

  “I’m coming,” I called back. The frantic tone in his voice told my father’s worry; that was my fault for staying out in the storm. But how happy he would be when I told him—

  “Oyuna! You’re all right!” My father’s strong arms engulfed me, lifting me, feet dangling, right off the ground. He hugged my body so tightly that Bator wriggled out of my collar and leaped into the darkness to find his own way home. “Oh, Oyuna, Oyuna,” my father cried. His shoulders heaved with great sobs. His embrace tightened still more. “I thought I had lost you, too.”

  Never before had I seen my father cry. It seemed a weakness then and I wanted him to stop. I wanted him to be brave, too. Struggling to free my head from his arms, I said, “Father, I’m all right. I was too far from our ger when the storm came upon us—upon Bator and me—and I knew with”—making a face, I jerked my head toward my crippled foot—“that I would be too slow back to camp. But Father, I have a surprise. I helped a goat to—”

  “Oh, Oyuna, Oyuna,” my father moaned, crushing my face into his arms again. Slowly he sank to the ground until I was standing, he kneeling. With his head now buried in my shoulders, my nose was pressed directly behind his ear and I remember thinking that that small crevice smelled exactly like the stiff, musty hairs between a dog’s toes. To this day, whenever a dog places a paw in my lap…well, I remember that night and a great sadness sits upon my heart.

  “Your mother is dead.”

  “No,” I said, “she can’t be. She isn’t.”

  Looking blearily into my eyes, my father nodded. “The storm…the lightning.” He spoke between gasping sobs. “Your mother went…”

  “…looking for me,” I finished, the awful realization squeezing the life from my heart. It was my fault, then. She knew my twisted foot could not carry me swiftly to safety. And rather than try to limp back through the storm I had stayed with the goat. Now my mother was dead. My foot was bad luck.

  By morning the blame for bringing lightning into our ail had been placed on both me and my father. And our animals. And all our possessions. We must have done something very bad, the clan’s elders said, to so anger the gods that they would punish us with lightning. Now we were unclean.

  While an uncle galloped off in search of a shaman to perform the cleansing ceremony, the women of my ail prepared to bury my mother.

  Squatting, mute, on the cold, muddy ground, I watched them fasten a del of buttery yellow silk around my mother’s stiff limbs. Over her arms they slid a long matching vest decorated with fancy stitching. Across her scarf was fitted a heavy silver cap from which dangled shining braids of black hair along with gleaming silver pendants studded with yellow amber and blue sapphires. I had never seen her dressed so elegantly. This was how she looked the day she married my father, I was told.

  Then the women dug a hole in the ground and laid my mother in it. Beside her were laid her saddle, her food bowl, a cooking pot filled with water and mutton, and a block of tea leaves. I was glad at least that she would have food in the next world. Then a dun-colored mare and her nursing foal were led to the hole. With a strong blow to the forehead, each fell to its knees, dead. Both bodies were pulled into the hole and laid beside the body of my mother. Now she would always have milk to drink. After the dirt was piled on top of the bodies and the sod patted into place, my mother’s favorite horse, a gray mare, was killed. The meat was set aside for the evening dinner, while the hide was stuffed with dried grasses. The huge, wobbling apparition was then impaled upon a long pole angling toward the sky. My mother would not be left to walk in the next world.

  Half a day later, still mute, I found myself seated beside my father in our oxcart. Our ail was moving a short distance away from the freshly mounded earth—to a safer place. I kept looking over my shoulder, watching my mother’s grave grow smaller. The afternoon’s brisk wind sifted through the dead horse’s mane. And the hide, still soft, rippled, almost as if muscles bunched and released beneath it. I wondered if my mother’s spirit was already galloping toward the next world.

  The shaman, robed in white and carrying a drum and a staff that sprouted a hairy oxtail, met us in the next valley. Under his thunderous directions, two huge fires were lit. To the pounding of his drum, a lance was thrust into the ground beside each fire and a long rope tied between them. On this rope dangled stuffed felt dolls, one for each of the gods whose blessing we needed. Already my relatives had picked up the chant.

  My father and I waited on our oxcart, packed with the few possessions belonging to us. We had left our ger behind, sitting alone on the steppe, holding only my mother’s bed and a few of her old clothes. No one would dare to touch these unclean objects. They were left for the winds to wash through them and, over time, to carry them away. My father had even taken the jade pendant from my neck and thrown it into the mud before hurrying me onto the oxcart.

  The women of our clan stood in a double line between us and the fires. They also waited, chanting, heads turned in the direction of the shaman. I was cradling a shivering Bator in my arms, covering his eyes to keep him from bolting. The old white-robed man signaled for silence and, when only the crackling of the fires could be heard, shook his tasseled staff high in the air.

  My father spoke to our ox once, then again, sharply, for the animal was swinging its head nervously from side to side and bellowing loudly. Each time it tipped its long horns I could see the rolling white of its eye. Finally, with another of my father’s shouts, the animal pushed into its harness, still swinging its horns, and the women began chanting again and flinging water at us. Under the rope we passed. One of the felt dolls just brushed my head, raising prickles of fear on my arms. From the corner of my eye, I saw the god of long journeys, an eagle feather lashed to its black felt body, bobbing crazily above my head. Queasiness flooded my stomach. What did this mean?

  But there was no time for another worry, for now we were passing between the two fires. Our ox bellowed in fear. The heat sucked at my skin. The moment we cleared the orange flames Bator squeezed out from my arms and fled into the grasses. I climbed off the cart and, through several more trips, helped my father drive our horses, sheep, and goats under the rope and between the two fires. It is no easy task coaxing animals toward fire, let me assure you, and by the time the shaman pronounced us cleansed, the sun was already setting and I was covered with sweat.

  That night our clan feasted with the shaman and laughed and sang as if all were right with the world.

  But my father and I were left to lie upon our backs under the stars. An arm’s length from him, I saw that the fleece covers pulled high across his face shook erratically. And muffled moans, like those from a wounded animal, crept from the pile to die in the dark.

  Where
were my tears? Sleepless, I threw aside my covers and stumbled away. My feet found the crushed grass paths left by the wheels of the oxcarts. Numbly, while the moon arced overhead, I followed the wet tracks back to the lonely ger upon the steppe. As I neared it I began to tremble. But a need pushed me closer. Finally, keeping one wary eye on the gray horse apparition that leaped motionlessly toward the sky, I fell to my knees and searched through the grasses surrounding my mother’s grave. When my fingers closed on the small jade pendant, tears burst from my eyes. All the way back to camp I sobbed, clutching the little horse given to me by my mother. By the time I slipped back under my covers, the pendant again tied around my neck, though hidden within my del, the sky was growing pale. Exhausted but still sleepless, I could only stare, swollen-eyed, at the few floating stars and blame myself.

  The next day, when our ail moved on, our oxcart and all of our animals were forced to the back of the line. That day and those that followed, our horses and sheep and goats ate the grass trampled by others.

  And so it went for the next three moons. Always my father and I were the last to choose a site for the small ger we had pieced together from discards, the last to dip water from the stream. My relatives were friendly, even consoling me over my mother’s death, though no one dared touch me or hug me.

  How I missed my mother then! My heart hung like a stone weight banging in my chest.

  I worked hard just to walk in her shadow. Rising before dawn, I gathered dung, started the cooking fire, boiled tea, and milked our mares. After my father left the ger, I combed the goats, stirred the ayrag, churned the butter, and milked the mares again. But as hard as I tried, the tarag burned, the aaruul turned moldy, and the mutton was stringy and tasteless. Day after day I met with failure and I heaped blame on the bad luck of my foot. I began to feel the bad luck hovering over me like a cat over a mousehole, waiting to pounce.