I Rode a Horse of Milk White Jade

by Diane Wilson

  And always at dusk my father sat silent, his eyes cast down.

  5

  Flight

  The horses save me then.

  No longer at dusk, but well after dark I waited. Until dinner was eaten and the bowls wiped clean. Until my father had smoked his pipe and fallen asleep. Until, holding my breath, I could slip into the night.

  Searching, my hands found thick mane, and I lifted my weight from the ground. Kicked wildly to free myself. Knees found their familiar niche behind warm ropes of muscle. An urgent whisper into the hollow of an understanding ear, and striped hooves carried me away.

  I don’t know across how many hills, beneath how many stars we sped each night. Bent over the horse’s powerful neck, my shoulders heaved with sadness, rose and fell with each thundering stride. I shed salty tears, lifting first one cheek and then the other that the wind might lick them dry.

  Night after night across the darkened breast of Itugen, the earth goddess, we galloped. But I couldn’t escape it. My bad luck I carried with me, clamped to the horse’s side. And, slowly, I let my heart unwind behind me, leaving it in thin strips to dry and twist in the next sun.

  At last in the moonlight I sat, a shadow on the horizon, staring at the silent gers. And I vowed that if ever I had the chance, I would carry my bad luck far, far away.

  6

  The Night Brings Surprises

  After three months walking at the tail of our caravan, my father found another wife.

  All during that third moon I had known that some trouble was eating at him, although he still rarely spoke to me, only asking me twice during that time to cook for him the intestines of wolves he had hunted. My mother had taught me long ago that eating the insides of a wolf heals a painful stomach. After all, the wolf can devour anything—from blades of grass to a many-days-dead sheep—and never suffer. Therefore I willingly cut into pieces and cooked in boiling water the slippery intestines my father handed me so that his aching stomach would gain the wolf’s strength. And while I stirred the bubbling broth I wondered what my father was keeping from me. At summer’s end, with the sheep shorn and goats combed, the woolly bundles piled high inside our ger awaiting trade, my father broke his silence.

  “The mutton tastes especially good tonight, Oyuna,” he said. That was when I braced my shoulders for his news, for although I had dug up some wild onions that day to add to the stew, my tongue had already told me that the meat I had prepared was as flavorless as always. I watched my father swirl his hand in the cooking pot, pulling out a greasy chunk of meat and plopping it directly into his mouth. He chewed noisily and swallowed. Then, in the firelight, his lips spread in a toothy grin. A dog grins in the same manner, drawing back its lips and hanging its head—tail thumping hopefully—when it has run behind your back and nipped an unsuspecting lamb.

  “I have a surprise for you,” he said, beginning haltingly. “No, Oyuna, I count again. As surely as the camel carries twin humps upon his back, I have two surprises!” His voice was rising with excitement. “First, I am going to…No, that must follow. First, Oyuna, I tell you that next moon you travel with me to Karakorum for the festival.”

  My father sat back, tall and proud, watching the excitement bring light to my face as the morning sun bathes the land with its warm glow.

  Karakorum! My mind galloped dizzily. Year after year I had listened to the stories brought back by those who had visited the great walled city—the only place of its kind on the steppes. A palace once used by the Khan himself stood there, in the purple shadows of the Hangay Mountains and guarded by a giant stone tortoise the size of a horse. Tents of all colors spread in every direction, some big enough to cover a thousand heads! And in the center, a tree crafted of silver with four golden snakes wrapping its trunk. All you had to do, I had been told, was speak to this tree, telling it which drink would quench your thirst, and from the mouth of a serpent would pour ayrag or wine or the honeyed boal, directly into a silver cup. And now I, Oyuna of the Kerait tribe, would travel to see those wonders with my own eyes!

  “And next, daughter…” My father began speaking again, then closed his mouth, tapping his wooden bowl sharply on the rim of the cooking pot to gain my attention. I struggled to shake my head clear.

  “Yes! I am listening,” I said.

  “And next, daughter,” he continued, “I tell you my other surprise: not many more days will you cook alone.” He sat back once more, grinning, waiting for the understanding to show itself upon my face. But impatience saddled him that night and when my face remained blank my father leaned forward to add words. “I have found a new wife,” he said, “a new mother for you.” Quickly he began to scoop dripping chunks of meat into his mouth, one after the other, his brown eyes glancing both nervously and hopefully across the fire into my face.

  I felt its excited smile grow cold. Spirits that had been soaring toward Karakorum dropped to the hard earth. “A new mother,” he had said. I didn’t want a new mother. My mother was dead.

  I wanted, then, to race out of the ger. Instead, nodding stiffly at my father’s words, I calmly rose.

  As if from a distance I watched my hand wipe the meat from my bowl back into the cooking pot. Without licking it clean, I set the bowl aside. Turning, I fastened my gaze hard onto the smooth wooden handle of the ladle as it dipped water into another bronze pot. Feet moved beneath me as the pot was carried to the fire and set in the coals to boil. With my back toward my father once again, I spent many blurry-eyed minutes on my knees, searching for the bag of tea leaves. The silence within the ger was so complete I could hear the silk fabric across my chest rustling with my every rapid breath.

  My father went on eating, finishing his meal without speaking again. Finally he licked his bowl clean and set it aside. Then he lit his pipe. The ger thickened with smoke and unspoken thoughts.

  I sat across the fire, staring vacantly past my father at the blue-and-white pattern in a saddle rug. I longed to escape, to rinse myself in the cold night air upon the back of a horse, to think about this news. Looking up, I saw the moon traveling across the round scrap of sky framed by the ger’s smoke hole. Would my father never go to sleep?

  Puff after puff he sat beside the fire: face solemn, thinking, relighting his pipe, and thinking some more. Desperate for a task to harness my restless thoughts, I pulled a torn del onto my lap and began to sew.

  “There follows yet another surprise, Oyuna.” The words made me jump. My father’s voice was quiet now. His happiness seemed to have fled.

  When I looked across the fire at him, the hard planes of his face had softened. He appeared almost shy. This time he spoke with his chin lowered, which muffled his words, and I had to tip my ear toward him.

  “At the festival—” My father coughed, then spent several long seconds clearing his throat. My heart was pounding. “At the festival,” he continued at last, “I will speak with the Ongirrat tribe about a mate for you, too, Oyuna.” If it seemed that my spirits had plummeted to the cold earth before, they now shattered in icy splinters. “You are twelve, I think. It is past time. And there are no better people with horses than the Ongirrat. Why else would they carry the name of the swift, chestnut-colored horses they breed? You, too, daughter, have a way with the horses. You will add to their wealth.”

  My father was fumbling inside his del while he spoke. Short grunts punctuated his search. Then he motioned with his pipe hand for me to come closer. Hesitantly I rose and limped a path around the fire. I squatted, lopsided, next to him, my own chin now buried in my chest. I saw my father’s fist open. In his palm, shimmering in the firelight, lay my dowry: long silver earrings ablaze with coral and mother-of-pearl.

  “I will do my best for you, Oyuna,” my father said. “I will do my best to make you a good match. But you understand…” He searched for words, trying to keep his passive gaze fixed upon the stricken face of his only daughter—trying not to let his ga
ze fall past my waist. His voice trailed off as his eyes could not. Clumsily, his large hands pushed the clinking earrings into my small palms. One by one he closed my fingers around them. Then we sat, father and daughter, his hand upon mine, in the silence of our ger. Tears welled in my eyes as well as his, but no one blinked. We each understood. With my crippled leg, any match would be a difficult one.

  No! No! No! the words screamed in my head. I tried to bolt, but my legs wouldn’t move.

  For endless snaking moments my father and I sat beside the fire. He finally released my hand just long enough to wrap his arm around my shoulders, to pull me closer. The motion was stiff, unused as my father was to giving the hugs and kisses of a mother. That night I tried to accept his offering, but I was numb. And at last, after huddling beneath his shoulder for many long breaths, counting the hurried puffs from the pipe that measured the uneasiness of us both, I gently lifted my father’s arm from my shoulders and returned to the other side of the fire. Dropping the earrings into my lap, I picked up my sewing and began pushing the needle through the padded silk. Instantly I stabbed my finger. The sharpness let spill down my cheeks the tears that had been pushing into my eyes. My shoulders sank, trembling, as I sucked the salty wound.

  “I will give you a horse as well, Oyuna. One of your own choosing.” I could not at first comprehend the words that drifted through the haze. But as their meaning became clear to me, I felt my sadness begin to rise out of the ger with the fire’s smoke. “You may choose a horse at the festival,” my father was saying, “from the ones brought to be sold or traded. I am planning on buying some new mares anyway. So you may choose a horse, too. Any horse you want, Oyuna. It is my gift.”

  Through streaming tears I gaped at my father’s face. Beneath its leathery mask I now saw an awkward tenderness and knew in my heart that for all his seeming clumsiness, my father was doing his best to care for me. Just as awkwardly I lurched around the fire, surprising him by throwing my arms around his neck and almost choking him with my happiness. Hands waving in mock agony, my father groaned and yelped and bellowed. But when he was free to duck his head and relight his pipe, the fire’s glow upon his face showed that he knew, at last, he had done well.

  Finding no words, I could only squeal and hug my father again. Then I whirled and plunged through the door flap, pushing my way into the clear cold night and drinking in the fresh, raw air. Already I was picturing the horse I would choose—the swiftest horse on the steppes. My mind was racing. What was my horse doing now? I wondered. What was he thinking about? From somewhere out in the darkness a horse whinnied. My heart rose in answer, its joy spilling forth in an exuberant shout that rushed across the land into the night.

  ***

  A soft whinny came from the round-bellied mare. Stepping close to the two humans murmuring in her stall, she lowered her neck to breathe in their smell. Then she pulled back, swung her head up and down vigorously, and resumed her restless circling, small hooves sifting through the dried grasses in measured rustling.

  “She likes your story, I think,” the girl said, eyes resting proudly upon the beautiful horse. She laid her head in her grandmother’s lap. “How long was it until you chose your horse?”

  The old woman closed her eyes. A happy smile stretched the thin lips. “To tell you the truth, granddaughter, I cannot even remember the days between my father’s news and our arrival at Karakorum. I can’t even tell you how many of my relatives traveled with us, although I’m sure some must have remained behind to tend to the herds.” She cupped her hands before her in the darkness. “My mother used to say, ‘When happiness settles upon you like a butterfly, sit very quiet and remember the colors.’” She opened her eyes.

  “And that is what I remember about my journey to the festival: the many colors shimmering around me. The glint of ice slipping from a brilliant purple aster, the brown matting of withered feather grasses crackling beneath the cart wheels, one emerald green valley that sheltered a stream. Every afternoon, a pink sky dotted with bronze clouds. Always ahead, puffing larger each day yet still cheating us at dusk, squatted hazy blue mountains.

  “And it seemed that good luck rode beside us. As we passed a reedy lake one day, my fingers counted seven sawbills and I at first caught my breath, but then two more of the black-backed birds broke the water, making a lucky nine. Another time, I spied a silvery wolf far ahead of us in the dusk. He was laying good fortune across our path with each silent footfall. And every night, sitting beneath the stars, I watched the golden moon swell fuller beneath its bounty.

  “At last, beneath a lavender twilight sky, we paused upon a rise overlooking the festival. From all directions lumbered glowing white, ger-laden oxcarts, pinning themselves in great hems around the city that was Karakorum.”

  7

  Noises

  Sounds of laughing and fighting and singing filtered through the thick felt walls of our ger the whole night. On my bed I flipped and flopped like a fish on a cold riverbank. So excited!—for somewhere on the dark steppe grazed the horse I would choose as my own. And so scared!—for somewhere in the surrounding gers slept the boy who might agree to choose me. By early morning, with small strummings of music still reaching my ears, I gave up trying to sleep.

  My father still slept in his bed, so, as quietly as I could, I set about preparing the morning meal. The door flap brushed my back as I reached outside to loosen the felt collar protecting the ger’s smoke hole. Then I slipped back inside and poked at the fire’s embers, adding a few small pieces of dung from the basket. I poured out the last of the water we had carried with us, then set it to boil in a bronze pot and, when it bubbled furiously, threw in a handful of tea leaves. Right away I pulled the pot from the flames to let the tea rest while I stepped outside again, dragging a big leather bag.

  The few horses we had brought with us were hobbled a short way from our ger. The bag thudded softly on my hip as I picked my way through the dark, stepping lightly on the wet grasses already flattened by hundreds of feet. As I neared the area set aside for grazing, a thick fog rose waist-high and I had to search through many horses until I recognized ours. I was surprised to find that three of our horses were missing and that two new mares were hobbled beside our small herd, a puffy triangle—the brand of my clan—already burned into each mare’s right shoulder. My father must have made a late-night trade, I thought. And I would soon be adding another new horse to our herd, a swift one of my very own! An excited shiver tickled my back.

  Pushing my way through the furry bodies, I found our brown mare with the white foot and gently shouldered aside her large colt long enough to squeeze a good serving of milk into the leather bag. Then, patting him on the rump as he shoved past to suckle again noisily, I retraced my wet path through the darkness back to our ger.

  My father was still asleep when I returned, so I poured myself a small bowl of tea, added some of the warm mare’s milk and a chunk of butter to it, and sat by the fire thinking about the beautiful horse I would choose today. Would it be silver gray or shining black?

  Would he be fat or thin? my mind interrupted, reminding me of the day’s other choosing. My stomach went cold. Pushing that unpleasant thought from my mind, I concentrated on the goodness the day held. Would I choose a mare or a gelding?

  Would he be young or old? my mind interrupted again. My stomach twisted. To be married to an old, smelly man would be horrible. But, as if with a heat of its own, I felt the misshapen foot curled beneath me and knew that no young, good-looking boy would choose me.

  By the time my father opened his eyes, rolling over and groaning loudly, I was all churned up inside with both excitement and fear.

  “Father,” I said, my heart pounding, “can I go choose a horse now? One of my very own?” I handed him his bowl of tea with mare’s milk, no butter. And do you know what he did? As slowly as if this were any ordinary day, he just yawned and stretched and grinned.

 
“What do you think about our new mares?” he said. “I would guess you have found them by now.” His brown eyes were twinkling at me across the bowl he lifted to his mouth.

  Truthfully, I could not even remember the colors of the new mares, but I said to my father, “They’re beautiful. Both of them. Now can I go choose a horse? Please?” A worry inside me nagged that, even though the day was just turning light, my champion horse, the one meant just for me, was already being led away by someone else.

  My father smiled. Then he dressed. And then he went out. “An important messenger from the Naiman tribe may be visiting,” he told me, grinning sheepishly. “You must wait here until I return.”

  And so, penned apart from where my heart already lay, I felt as if that morning trickled by like the last drops from a dried-up goat. I left the ger only long enough to refill our water bags in the nearby Orhon River, lugging them back through the crowds of happy people buying and trading for all that would give them pleasure. Angry, I put extra force into beating the leather bag of ayrag. With reckless energy I sewed haphazard stitches into a stirrup leather that had torn during our journey to Karakorum. Not even looking to see who passed, I tossed yesterday’s stew out the door, filled the cauldron with water, and set it to boiling a large sheep’s leg. And then I paced, one lurching circle after another, around the fire. Now, I didn’t tell you that I had brought my cat, Bator, with me to the festival, but let me say that he just crouched nervously on my bed the whole morning, round eyes staring yellow-green at my unbridled fretting.

  Midday came and went and I finally poured a bowl of broth with little bits of mutton in it, downing just a few sips before giving up and letting Bator lick the bowl clean. The heat of the day was growing inside the ger. By the time my father stumbled in, his grin even wider, it was midafternoon. Quickly I poured him a bowl of the mutton stew, handed him a piece of khuruud, and begged again to leave. So lost was he in his own happiness that he waved me away without speaking.