I Rode a Horse of Milk White Jade

by Diane Wilson

  With my heart thumping, I lifted my saddle onto Bayan, the horse I had never ridden. But there was that look in her eye again, the same twinkle promising adventure which I had trusted at Karakorum, and I knew now I was meant to ride her. With the bridle fitted upon her head and the girth tightened around her stomach, I quickly unknotted the hobbles and ropes. Then I stepped into the stirrup, swung my crippled leg over, and sat lightly upon her back. When the soldiers moved to release the hobbles from the horses they were stealing, I was already hidden among the other soldiers riding east. The morning wind blew straight into our faces, chilling our skin with its cold breath. Yet, tucking my face between collar and hat, I smiled. For seated upon Bayan’s back I felt as if I had wings.

  ***

  With a long groan, the white mare plunged to her knees. Like a moonlit wave crashing upon the shore, her belly and hips followed, the thin spray of her tail falling silently at the finish. Her whiteness pooled in the darkness.

  “Grandmother!” exclaimed the girl, bolting upright.

  The old woman reached out to stroke the girl’s hair. Her words were filled with soothing. “All is well,” she crooned. “All is well. The time grows near. Here,” she said, reaching her hands behind her head, “tie this around her neck.” In the girl’s palms she placed the pale green pendant carved in the shape of a galloping horse. “It is jade. So that her flanks may loosen and the filly gallop from her as easy as the spring breeze.”

  Making her way to the mare’s side, the girl carefully fastened the pendant’s leather thong so that the galloping horse dangled, twirling, just below the white throat. Then she looked at her grandmother. “Why did you say ‘filly’?”

  The old woman shook her head slightly, nudging the question aside. “Come,” she said, motioning with her hands, “there is more to tell.”

  Reluctant to leave the mare’s side, the girl stroked the white mane. “Does it hurt her?” she asked.

  Silence answered her words for many moments. “I think,” said the old woman, sighing, “she holds within her too much joy to feel pain. Now, come.”

  When the girl was huddled once again within the thick robes, still warm with the heat of their bodies, the mare lifted her head in their direction. She seemed to be calmly waiting for the story to continue. Relieved, the girl nestled deeper within the warmth and thought about what her grandmother had been telling her.

  “Weren’t you scared to ride off with all those soldiers?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Where did they take you? Where did you sleep and what did you eat?”

  A chuckle rattled the old woman, but her granddaughter wasn’t finished.

  “Did you never see Bator again? And what about Bayan? Was her leg healed? Did you have to fight anyone?”

  Quiet laughter overtook the old woman. “As Tengri sees all, granddaughter, you chatter like the starlings. Now, which do I answer first?”

  “Did the soldiers find out you were a girl?”

  12

  Riding, Riding, Riding

  A journey should begin with the sprinkling of milk upon the horse’s head. Sun and stars should light the path; tears and good food welcome the weary traveler. My journey had no such beginning and I knew not its end. I could see neither the land before me nor the land behind me, for black uniforms rode thick on my every side, like the darkest of forests stumping, rootless, across the steppe.

  Time that long day was counted out in hoofbeats; when the march rested, by the rhythmic wheezing of the horses. I heard snorts, commands, names of unknown places. The choppy pace would begin again. I rode blindly, bobbing like a twig among trunks in a flooding stream.

  I looked up: just a patch of pale sky; still early, the sun warmed my cheeks. Knees banged, swelled purple. Up and down, up and down.

  Sometime later the sun warmed my whole head, its heat seeping through the felt hat. Stomach whined. I pushed a dried mutton strip inside my cheek. Let the salt draw water from my mouth, soften it. Chewed, up and down, up and down. When the last bits melted down my throat, still the hooves pounded out a beat.

  The sun slid around, warmed my back. The dark forest marched on.

  For all my days horseback, I wasn’t hardened to such a ride. My thighs burned from bouncing against the wooden saddle. My ankles ached from standing in the stirrups. The bones in my back felt as if they jostled loose from their string and fell, cracking one upon the other, like pebbles tumbling down a dry streambed.

  Only when the sun sank, giving way to darkness, was the command shouted: Stop.

  Slowly I unstuck myself from the saddle. Eased an unwilling leg over. But when my feet touched the hard ground, my now-brittle legs nearly shattered with the pain. I fell amid hooves and legs and boots. Fear grabbed me. I found the stirrup with my hand, pulled myself up, only so much clinging baggage. With the colors rushing before my eyes, my fingers unfastened the saddle, managed to slip off the bridle. I fell backward, beneath a heap of wood and leather and wool.

  I remember the horses moving away, heads down, pulling at the grass, hearing it rip in their teeth…and the soldiers moving away, clustering around fires, murmuring…And I was still slumping, aching, hugging the saddle…and letting the tiredness…fall over me…like a blanket.

  13

  Welcome Once, Welcome Again

  A wetness skimmed my nose. A heavy furriness dropped over my face. In an instant I was awake, blindly pushing at the suffocating weight. When my hands closed around a soft bundle, vibrating with a familiar rumble, my eyes opened wide.

  “Bator!” I exclaimed, hugging the little tiger cat to my chest. He shoved his whiskered cheek against mine, kneading my chest in rhythmic affection. Between the purring, Bator’s pink tongue fluttered in his gasping mouth. My hands felt his sides heaving in and out. He must have padded behind us all day and night, I thought. And we had come so far! Truly the creature lived up to his name: “Hero.”

  “You dear little cat-cat,” I crooned. Stroking his back with one hand, I pulled at a forepaw with the other. When my thumb pushed aside the short, muddied hairs, I caught just a glimpse of bloody pink leather before Bator, hissing, leaped off my chest. Tail whipping angrily, he stayed just out of arm’s reach. Green-yellow eyes glared.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “Come over.” I wiggled my fingers toward the cat’s chin. It was Bator’s weakness, and with casual feline forgiveness he took a painful step closer and pushed his head into my hand for a scratch. “Your poor, poor feet,” I murmured.

  It was in stretching my arm toward the panting cat that I realized my own body was hurting. Because I had fallen asleep, exhausted, upon the spot where I had unsaddled Bayan, I had not had a fire’s breath to keep me warm. Only the saddle, turned up against the wind, and the saddle rug, stiff with dried sweat, had protected me from the night’s cold. The icy chill of the hard ground had been seeping through my body all night, silently stiffening my muscles, freezing my joints. Now I discovered that I had to think very hard about wiggling my toes, for at first I could not feel them within my felt boots. I bent first one knee and then the other as ice crystals shattered, breaking away from my hardened trousers. The warmth that began flowing back to my fingers and toes carried with it sharp pain and I sat up suddenly, hugging my knees to my chest and rocking back and forth, biting my lip to keep from crying out.

  Where was I?

  I crouched low and took a cautious look around. From out of the drifting fog stepped a bustard. The huge gray and brown bird stopped still, tipping a suspicious orange eye toward me. Then, with an urgent call, she, too, crouched to the ground, tail feathers fanned wide. Five tiny chicks scurried from the grass, across her tail, and up her back. Beating her wings, the mother bustard flew her children to safety.

  Loneliness pressed doubly hard upon me. My eyes scanned the sparse grassland stretching in all directions. It looked exactly like the val
ley in which I had awakened yesterday, except that this stone-colored sky sheltered no familiar cluster of white gers. Instead, a half-dozen bounds from my side, in pile after dark pile, slept the Khan’s soldiers. They had lined their upturned saddles against the steppe’s cold blasts and now lay in heaps between these windbreaks and the dead embers of last night’s fires. Lifting my gaze past them, I saw that the distant horizon was just beginning to glow copper, tingeing a line of heavily padded clouds. A biting wind came rushing along the ground, slapping into my side and ruffling Bator’s fur. The muffled crunching of frozen grasses told that the horses grazed somewhere far behind me, but my neck was too stiff for me to turn and look.

  Bator climbed into my lap and began pushing his way, nose first, inside my del. At first I thought he was trying to get warmer, but then I realized that he was probably smelling the mutton strips I had carried yesterday.

  “I’m sorry, Bator,” I said, pulling the eager cat away. “They’re all gone.” Persistent, he kept butting his head against my del. “There’s nothing in there for you,” I said sadly, tugging at him again. Bator jumped from my lap, stalked a few steps, and sat down, glaring at me once more. Then he abruptly rose and, tail rigid in the air, trotted into the grass. “Bator!” I called softly, not wanting to alert the soldiers. “Come back! We can find something.” But the grasses remained still. I sank my head upon my knees, biting my lip.

  What had I done?

  My hand traveled along my del, feeling for the gold ornament hidden in its inside pocket. Fingers closed around its comforting weight. “Wings of gold,” my grandmother had said. She had been right: I had flown with them. But to where?

  I closed my eyes, thinking back to that dreamlike night in my ger. What else had she said? Something about a place with ten thousand white mares. That’s where I would find my swift horse. No matter how scared I was, or how dangerous the journey—no matter who tried to stop me—I had to find my swift horse before I could return home. And I had to stay with Bayan. “Never lose her!” I heard the warm breath of Echenkorlo’s words in my ear as if she knelt beside me.

  I knew I had to get to Bayan. I had to be the first to saddle her. Never would anyone else ride her. Stiffly unfolding my arms and legs and rising, limping, to my feet, I gathered the saddle and bridle and crackling blanket and set off for the herd.

  The cold copper sun was just clearing the horizon when I reached the horses, my sides panting like Bator’s. I could hear some of the soldiers now tromping behind. Even among the hundreds of other horses, Bayan’s milky hide was easy to spot. I picked my way through the herd, most of whom had been hobbled by their more responsible riders. I was lucky that Bayan had chosen to stay with the herd the past night, rather than gallop where she pleased.

  When I pushed my way beneath the neck of the last horse, my heart nearly stopped. Bayan stood, grazing, on only three legs. Her other leg, the far hind one, was hitched up, with just the toe resting upon the ground. I dropped the tack in a heap and bent to place my hands upon her leg, fearful of swelling. Bayan snorted in alarm. Before I could look, a powerful hand gripped my shoulder and spun me around.

  “You one-legged half-wit! What are you doing?”

  I looked up into the fleshy face of the commander who had shoved his way into our ger yesterday morning. So hard was I trembling in his iron grip that I couldn’t speak.

  “Are you deaf as well?” he roared. “What are you doing?”

  I swallowed. “Saddling my horse,” I croaked.

  “Who gave you an order to saddle?” He shook me as if I were a felt doll.

  “No one,” I whispered.

  With a hard shove, the commander pushed me onto the ground. Bayan snorted again and sidestepped, lifting her hooves clear of me. “You are to wait for my order to saddle,” the man continued to shout. “Do these words reach your ears, you skinny son of a sheepherder?” Reaching down, he pinched my ear between his thick, calloused fingers; I yelped. “You are to wait for my order to saddle, for my order to eat, for my order to sleep!” The commander’s voice rose with his temper. I felt the blood drain from my face. He let go of my ear. Bending far over, he pressed his smelly face next to mine and shouted, “Do you understand me?”

  Holding my breath, eyes nearly closed in terror, I nodded. Through my squinting view I saw a mass of splotched and pockmarked skin dotted with black pimples. Scraggly dark hairs sprouted from a dirty chin. The night black eyes rolled, storming, in yellow seas. Pushed so close to the man’s face, I could even see the target of his eye, the darkest part, swelling like an angry black moon. I watched the crusted eyelid drop and rise. Watched the moon shrink and puff up again. The commander blinked, muttered something under his rancid breath, and blinked again.

  In a flash, his heavy arm knocked the fur-lined cap from my head. “Koke Mongke Tengri!” he exclaimed, hailing the great blue sky spirit. “You’re a girl!”

  Speechless with fear, I just trembled.

  For a moment the surprise held the commander speechless as well. But too soon his resurging anger swept away the silence. “What are you doing out here?” he bellowed. “The Khan’s army is no place for a girl. Why aren’t you stirring ayrag beside your husband’s fire?”

  Timidly, chin tucked, I responded, “I have no husband.”

  “Then why are you not helping your mother?”

  “I have no mother.”

  “Koke Mongke Tengri!” he exclaimed again, shaking his head. The commander rose to his feet and ordered me to get up as well. “I repeat my question. What are you doing out here? Why have you disguised yourself as a soldier? And look at me when you answer or I’ll have you skinned upon this spot!”

  Raising my quivering chin, I managed to look into the commander’s stormy face and answer. “You stole my mare,” I said. “I am staying with her.”

  “Stole your mare?” Spittle splashed my face. “You have no mares—no sheeps, no goats, no clothes upon your back.” The furious man grabbed the short collar of my del as if he would rip it from my body. “Each of these things—everything—belongs to the great ruler, Kublai Khan. He takes what is his when he needs it. And now his army, this army, needs horses. So we take what belongs to the Khan.”

  “Then you have to take me, too.” I heard these calm words come from my mouth at the same time I felt my knees would collapse from trembling.

  The commander only grew more angry. “You prove yourself the half-witted son—er, daughter,” he sneered, “of a sheepherder, for already I have told you that no girl is going to ride with this army.”

  “I go with my mare.”

  “You will go where I say!”

  We both saw the other soldiers approaching cautiously now, carrying their saddles and waiting for orders. The commander seemed flustered. He lowered his voice, though not his anger. His words were threatening. “You will go where I say, and when I say. And I am saying that you will walk straight inside the first ger we come upon and not show your face until this army rides over the horizon. I choose not to separate your head from your neck at this instant only because I have three daughters of my own and know their foolishness. But if you so much as say another word—just one word—you will be dropped—with no horse and no head—wherever your words fall. Do you understand me? A nod will do.”

  I nodded.

  “Now, place your saddle upon another horse. Only a fool rides the same animal two days together. And wait for my command to step up.” He spun around and stomped off.

  I nearly fell to the ground again, so badly was I shaking. I heard Bayan nicker behind me and then she was at my side, rubbing her head vigorously against my shoulder. I happily saw that she wasn’t lame after all, but stood squarely on all four legs. Just to be sure, I ran my hands up and down her furry legs, but each was cool and hard—no swelling! Patting her on the rump, I picked up my father’s hat and pulled it down upon my head.

 
Then I looked around for another horse to saddle. The young sorrel mare that my father had bought at Karakorum, the one with the days-old filly at her side, was grazing just a few horses away. Since she was familiar to me, I pushed my way through the herd and fit the bridle over her head. She did not resist my placing the saddle upon her back and continued grazing contentedly. As I bent to tighten the girth around the mare’s still-fat belly, I heard a muffled yet urgent mewing coming from behind and glanced over my shoulder to see Bator marching straight toward me. Head held high, ears pinned back in determination, he dragged the limp body of a fat suslik between his legs. For the second time that morning I pulled the cat to me and hugged him.

  Bator’s squelched cry made two soldiers nearby look over their saddles with curiosity. Turning my back to them, I quickly scooped up the dead suslik and stuffed it inside my del. I stuffed Bator in after it. Then I quickly mounted the sorrel mare, remembered the commander’s threats, and stepped down, all the while hoping no one noticed the two lumps, one squirming, that bulged beneath my del.

  Holding the reins, I stood close to the mare’s neck, watched the filly suckle, and waited. The commander rode by. I felt his hot glare upon my back, but I didn’t turn around. At last the order to mount was given. With a great creaking of leather, the hundred-plus soldiers stepped into their saddles, I among them. Then we sat, waiting, as the commander rode up and down, pushing the men into groups of ten. Each group had its own leader, although the hot-tempered man who knew my secret commanded everyone. When he rode past me again, I hunched over, trying to look as timid as possible.

  “You ride in the ninth arban, just in front of the horses,” he shouted, pointing to me. Looking straight ahead, he rode on as I reined the sorrel toward the herd, the filly trotting at our side.

  The ninth arban—a good sign, I thought. I kept my face shielded as I rode past the arbans holding the other members of my ail. I hoped they believed me to be my stepbrother. All knew him to be shy, always sidling away from attempts at conversation. Surely no one would choose this moment to call out.