I Rode a Horse of Milk White Jade

by Diane Wilson

  Every year Kublai Khan and his family and servants left the heat of summer in Khanbaliq to pass the months of June, July, and August at his palace in Shangtu. I never saw this northern city, but I was told it was smaller than Khanbaliq and that the Khan spent his days there hunting and feasting.

  As the following day was the first of June, the palace shook with scurrying feet and shouted packing orders. Yet long after the sun rose, dripping heat from a hazy sky, the Khan’s assembly was still waiting, swishing at flies, outside the city gates.

  For this annual journey Kublai Khan traveled in a huge box lashed to the backs of four elephants. At this moment, however, he sat in the shade of a large tree and scowled. The great gray animals swayed with boredom, trunks scooping up dust only to toss it aside. The creaking of their harness was lost among the nervous bleating of goats, the cries of women hurrying their children, the restless whinnying of horses pawing the ground beneath empty saddles. At last Marco Polo, one of the Khan’s advisers from a land an entire year’s travel away, galloped up, full of news. He and Kublai Khan climbed into the box atop the elephants, and the procession of a thousand feet began shuffling out of the city.

  The Khan had asked me to stay behind and work the summer at his Imperial Stud. In our visit there the previous day he had noted that the horses readily responded to my touch, so, with the promise of a swift horse for a job well done, I began service as an assistant—gentling the yearlings and saddling the two-year-olds. Bayan needed a rest anyway, so I contentedly spent the warmest months in the company of my white mare and her new stablemates.

  I found my service continuing, however, when Kublai Khan and his family returned to Khanbaliq in early September. Within the first few days of their homecoming Chabi sent a servant to summon me to the palace. All that summer, it seemed, she had remembered that my hands were skilled at sewing and now she spread garments before me and asked my thoughts.

  Chabi, I knew, was only one of the Khan’s wives; yet like him, she carried an active mind that pounced upon new ideas. For this reason, and also because of the tenderness he showed in her presence, I came to believe that she was his favorite. On the day that Chabi called me into the palace sewing rooms, she was designing a new style of del that had no sleeves. “So much easier for the archer to reach for his arrow, don’t you agree?” she said. Oh, she was always trying new ways. Together we designed various styles of head coverings and we experimented with weaving rugs of everything from used bowstrings to dog hair.

  When I wasn’t with the horses, then, I was sitting beside the palace seamstresses, sharing stories and laughter. It was good in this strange land to speak with others in my own tongue. Now I sewed happiness into the garment upon my lap and wished that it might accompany its wearer like a sunbeam.

  The Khan hadn’t forgotten his promise to me. At times, in my travels between the stables and the sewing rooms, I would pass him. He always took a moment to greet me by name and, occasionally, to exchange a teasing word. Then the two limping souls in the palace, one young and one old, would lean against the walls and talk.

  Always it was a joke with him that I had refused to sell him Bayan. “How is my mare?” he would ask, chuckling. “The one I call Bayan. Have you decided, Oyuna, which swift horse you will take for her?” And always I would answer that I was just trying out this chestnut or that bay, but I was not yet sure which one I would choose and perhaps I would decide tomorrow. But tomorrow was a long time coming.

  More and more often the gold ornament that brought me luck was left inside Echenkorlo’s leather pouch. I no longer needed to carry it with me at all times, I thought, for good luck seemed to have settled around my shoulders. I knew I had escaped the clutches of bad luck on many an occasion, most especially the night I slept beside the dead body of my grandmother, and I knew I would never do anything to tempt it to chase me again. Besides, I was happy now. I was even ready to return to my family. But my journey would have to wait a little longer. I had been watching my white mare with a close eye and by October I was certain: Bayan swelled with foal.

  ***

  The young girl pressed a hand to each cheek, framing a mouth that hung open in a silent O. With unblinking eyes she watched first one small hoof and then another—wrapped in a glistening blue pouch—slide from the round-sided mare. In a rush came the fine muzzle, the sculpted head, two incredibly long legs, and, spilling on top of them, a small body and two more spidery legs.

  The gnarled hands of the old woman expertly tore away the pouch from the foal’s face. A thumb quickly wiped clean each sucking nostril.

  Slowly then the woman arose and gingerly stepped to the corner, sinking again into its shadows and pulling the young girl to her side.

  “A fine filly,” she whispered.

  Tipping her smiling face to her grandmother, the girl whispered back, “You said that earlier. How did you know?”

  The gold flecks twinkled in the dove gray eyes. “I have seen many births,” she said simply. A cloud rushed across, chasing away the sparkle. “And many deaths as well.” Her bony chest heaved a sigh. “I shall finish my story.”

  28

  Spring 1281

  Chabi died in the spring. The Khan sat for days just staring out the window.

  And the weather! It turned cold—so cold!—with rain, it seemed, that would not end. The crops began to rot in the fields.

  My eyes puffed red and it seemed that the water would not stop flowing from them either. In Chabi I had again found the love of a mother. Losing her flooded me with memories of losing my own mother. During these days I think I closed my eyes for only a few moments at a time. For while the daylight delivered tears, the darkness behind my lowered lids called forth terrifying apparitions.

  How awful the dreams that tormented me! As soon as I let my eyelids droop, grinning white horses galloped from the dark hollows of my mind. They charged straight at me, teeth bared, only to slide to a halt, as if suddenly frozen through. I watched in helpless horror as their hooves grew long, sinking into the black earth. Somehow I could see the hooves beneath the ground, pushing deeper, stretching longer, always turning brown as they twisted into tangled roots. As soon as the roots hardened, the horses stiffened and fell over and died.

  “Tengri!” I called out upon awakening, sobbing. “Why is everyone and everything dying?”

  My one bud of comfort in those days was Bayan, for life was still growing inside her belly. I did not know, at that time, the stallion. One of Genma’s, perhaps, or the wild yellow gobi stallion or maybe even one of Kublai Khan’s royally bred studs. So blessed would be Bayan’s foal if it was fathered by one of the Khan’s own stallions! Sitting alone in my room at night, Bator purring at my side, I once more pulled the gold ornament from the leather pouch to study the girl carrying flowers upon her galloping horse. Taking a cloth in my hand, I would polish it, again and again, wishing very, very hard as I rubbed for a healthy foal and an easy delivery for Bayan.

  But it seemed that Tengri had turned his back on Khanbaliq, for bad luck continued to rain down upon us. Now word arrived at the palace that the Khan’s white mares were sick, that some, indeed, had already died from a mysterious illness. Kublai Khan summoned his advisers but did not travel from the palace.

  I paled at the news, for Bayan grazed with these mares. And it had been two days since I had last checked on her when the news of the sickness arrived at the palace. Scolding myself as the laziest of mare keepers, I hurriedly saddled a horse borrowed from the stable and rode out to the valleys. Rain had ceased for the moment. Weak sunshine was fighting to poke through blue-black clouds lumbering across the sky.

  When I first saw the splotches of white against the emerald green shirdik covering hill and valley, I breathed a sigh of relief, for they drifted, as always, in casual rhythm. But as I rode closer I noticed that some of the splotches weren’t drifting; in fact, some appeared stuck into the grass as if
it were mud. At the near edge of one valley, the long-robed shamans gathered around a particularly sick mare, pinching her skin and waving their hands about her. One of the wise men held a red clay bowl of burning incense below the mare’s nostrils, while another one pried open her lip. He held a short knife in his left hand and I looked away, knowing he was about to practice Genma’s cleansing cure.

  I was riding past the backs of these men, searching the hills for Bayan, when my ears caught words that made me gasp.

  “Better to kill them all. Now!” one shaman was arguing in a booming voice.

  “No,” retorted another, “only a few have died. We must find a cure for their sickness, for the sake of the Khan.”

  “It is because of the Khan that these mares are dying!” The first shaman was shouting now. “Have your toes not turned moldy—like the crops—in all this rain? The gods are punishing the Khan because he has displeased them. He has not followed the daily purification rituals that we have prescribed. His Chabi has died because of it. The crops are dying, so soon we will all starve. And now the sacred white mares are dying. It is the gods’ will that they die, I tell you. And if we kill the rest of them—now—perhaps the gods will chase away the rain and smile upon us as they used to do.”

  I saw that most of the shamans frowned at these heated words, although the man who spoke them stood nearly a head taller than them. “You cannot kill the Khan’s mares without his permission,” one of them warned.

  “I will get his permission!” screamed the hot-tempered man and, robes swirling around his feet, he strode toward the city. A few paces from the group he threw his hands into the air and shouted to no one in particular, “They’re all going to die anyway!”

  I dug my heels into the horse I was riding, a pointy-crouped sorrel gelding, sending him plunging across the valley. My head turned from side to side like a banner in the wind as I searched for Bayan. Usually she grazed with one of the bands of older mares among the tall, juicy grasses at the river’s edge and so I reined the gelding toward the swirling brown water. The mud sucked noisily at his hooves as they stomped through the yellow-bottomed rushes.

  I had tied the jade pendant given to me by my mother around Bayan’s neck so that I could more easily spot her among the white mares and also so that if her foal’s birth began when I wasn’t nearby, it would slip more easily from her belly. Ahead of us now, alarmed at our rapid approach, dozens of swanlike white necks popped up from the grasses. Around one of them I saw dangling the small pale green figure of a galloping horse.

  Mid-stride, I slipped off the sorrel and pushed my way through the white bodies, all the while studying Bayan’s face. Throughout the winter her eyes had glowed with an inner contentment. Today as I met her gaze I was certain I found no sickness, yet the luster seemed absent, the hollows above her eyes seemed deeper. I ran my hands over Bayan’s brow, down her neck, and across her back. There was no fever, no stiffness. As usual, she reached around to nuzzle my shoulder with her playful lips. I breathed a sigh of relief, yet sat with her all that day while she grazed as we used to do upon the steppes of my homeland. And I promised to sit with her every day until she delivered her foal, which, by the swollen girth of her belly, could be at any time.

  The following morning I huddled, waiting, against the trunk of a large shade tree, but the rain still blew and spit into my face. Not only the chill breeze sent shivers along my spine, but the horrid sight of more mares stretched painfully still upon the hillsides, only their wind-whipped manes aflutter. Tears brimmed in my eyes as I watched frantic foals nudge the unfeeling sides of their dead dams, then wheel, squealing, to gallop in circles. And I watched the shamans, like the unstoppable rise of murky floodwaters, march across the valley, shoving incense into each mare’s nostrils, a knife into each mare’s pale gum.

  They didn’t reach Bayan and the band of older mares until the third day. I protested loudly, but what is the voice of a girl against the gathered wisdom of many lands? I could only turn my head against the cruel stabbing and try to hold back my vomit. When the shamans marched on, I tugged on Bayan’s forelock to lead her to the river. Scooping the muddy water into my hands, I managed at least to wash the dripped blood from her neck and chest.

  The next morning when I rode out to sit with Bayan, she seemed to walk more stiffly than usual. My heart jumped into my throat. I tried to tell myself that these mornings were cold, that Bayan was just growing stiff with age. But all that day she shrank back when I pulled upon her forelock, trying to coax her into moving around to warm her limbs. By afternoon she was sick, just like the others, standing stiff-legged and miserable. Wringing my hands, I limped circles around her, begging her to tell me what was wrong, begging her to speak to me and let me know what I could do. Perhaps, I thought at last, even she didn’t know.

  On the day that followed, I was standing in front of Bayan, cupping her muzzle in the warmth of my hands, when I felt it press into them. Only the weight of a feather, yes, but it was movement! I searched her black eyes. The veil of pain that clouded them squeezed my heart. And then, through the pain, came that piercing look that went straight through me. Breathless, I waited for her to speak, but only a ringing emptiness filled my head. Tears filled my eyes.

  Then, with an all-out effort, Bayan somehow managed to drag one sharp hoof across the muddy ground. The pale, bulbous ends of grasses, their fingery roots dangling like spider legs, lay upturned in the sunlight. Was she hungry? I wondered. Bayan had eaten the bulbs of plants when we crossed the gobi, but then only in order to survive. Here she had plenty to eat.

  Bending to finger the exposed bulb and its roots, I remembered with a shudder the dreams I had been having about the stiff legs of horses turning into brown roots—the dreams I had been having ever since I passed the night in the mountain cave of Echenkorlo.

  And then two more images crowded into my mind. The first was a memory that, among the bags of herbs and powders I had buried with my grandmother, were half a dozen large bags of brown roots. And second, that the drawing of the flower upon the cave’s mud floor was not only of flower and stem but also of root—a long one. Perhaps, I reasoned, the root in that drawing was more important than the flower.

  And, like beads upon a string, all the images fell into order. The root, the stiff horse, the paiza—the plain message was that the roots in the bags were to be carried to the Khan for his sick horses. Had Echenkorlo, I wondered, foreseen the sickness that had befallen the Khan’s horses? Had she been carrying their remedy here?

  Already I was turning from Bayan, climbing onto the stable horse, and galloping toward the Khan. And still I was thinking. About the dreams I had been having. The grinning white horses in my dreams, I now realized, grimaced in pain, just like the stiff white mares. I shivered. Had my dreams also foretold the mares’ sickness? Did that make me a shamaness? I shook that absurd idea from my head and went on thinking as the stable horse went on galloping.

  Galloping! I thought with sudden alarm. Galloping just like the girl in the gold ornament, carrying flowers in her hand. Flowers with roots, I was willing to wager. Another chill skipped up my spine. Had I, Oyuna, been chosen all along to deliver the healing roots to the Khan, to save his horses? The gold ornament had always brought me luck. Perhaps it was meant to bring luck to the white mares—and Bayan!—as well.

  Luck. I reined the horse to a walk while I thought about that troublesome matter. How was I to know I was right? How was I to know if this was what the gods wanted? At least one of Kublai Khan’s wisest men seemed certain that the gods wanted the horses to die. Who was I, a mere girl, to say otherwise? All my life, I thought, I had been ignoring the well-marked signs of bad luck and rushing headlong into danger. Images charged through my mind: a killing bolt of lightning, a sneering doll, a knife plucked from the fire, Echenkorlo’s bony hand stretching toward me. I shook my head. Somehow I had lived. But my mother was dead. Echenkorlo, too. How could I even
think of pitting my own desires against the wishes of the gods? Oh, how was I to know what to do?

  And then I found myself doing something that afternoon that widened not only my eyes, but the eyes of others. Riding directly to the shamans’ smoky pavilions within the city’s walls, knowing full well that they would all be with the Khan’s mares, I asked one of their servants for freshly cleaned sheep shoulder blades. I boldly lied, saying that the Khan wished me to have them, and so, of course, I was handed a set from a large basket brimming with bloodstained bones.

  Then I rode back outside the city gates and down to a secluded spot beside the river. I gathered wood and built a fire and placed the shoulder blades within the flames. And then, limping, I paced the riverbank, back and forth and back and forth, thinking all the time: Should I travel this journey or not? Should I travel this journey or not? I watched the flames lap at the bones. Through their translucent lips I saw the heat-hardened cracks drawing me an answer.

  At last the flames died down and, holding my breath, I dragged the bones from the fire with a stick. I pushed and poked the hot blades, turning them over several times until, in the fading light, I spotted the lines foretelling journeys. Squatting upon the ground, my heart pounding, I studied them. They started thick, traveled no more than a finger’s width, and stopped. The answer was plain: there would be no journey.

  Rocking back upon my heels, I blew a quick sigh of relief. Then I rose, kicked the warm bones with my foot, and sent them tumbling down the riverbank and into the river, where they sank from sight.

  As if a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders, I galloped back toward the Khan’s white mares. Perhaps Bayan was doing better. But the cold reality was that she was stuck to the same spot where I had left her. Dismounting and rushing to her side, I found her body cool to my touch. She couldn’t paw the ground; she couldn’t nuzzle me. I felt her drawing away from me, dying. I threw my arms around her hardened neck and sobbed.