Mistress of Animals

by Myers, Karen

Others were providing the food, so she added water to the pot on the stove and set it to boil. She visualized the meat—it would make a mess wherever she put it. That doesn’t make any sense. They would always be celebrating this indoors in the winter. How do they deal with that?

  A knock on the door was her only warning, and then she was invaded by bulky men and cold air. Some of them busied themselves hanging their coats and capes on the lattice by the doorframe, but Jirkat and Ilzay came in bundled and singing. Each carried a crude wooden platter made from a rough-hewn fallen trunk. One held the antelope joint, already hacked into smaller chunks, and the other held the marmots, each one lying on its back, the belly sliced open to form a bowl of its own meat. The hot stones had been removed, but cooked root vegetables and chopped cabbage had been added to soak up some of the liquid.

  The platters were deep and heavy, but they did the job of containing the juices, and the worktable was large enough to hold them, once Najud cleared off his binwit.

  Winnajhubr came forward with a bag of wooden plates which he presented to Penrys, and behind him Khizuwi walked, carefully, using folded cloths as well as his gloves to carry a covered pot of something savory. He placed it on the stove to stay warm before he returned to the door to unwrap himself.

  They lined up tightly in a crowd by the door once their outer clothing was removed, and Najud separated from them to stand next to Penrys, by the stove.

  Khizuwi came forward first and bowed to the pair of them. “Greetings for durmiqa bul, to the zarawinnaj and his lijti. Today our day is dark, but we welcome the return of the sun.”

  He carried a binwit with him, and when he took his seat, on the rug near the stove, he laid it carefully down before him.

  Jiqlaraz was next, with a nod to Najud, and a moderate wish for the well-being of everyone present. It looked to Penrys like he, too, was carrying a binwit. When she glanced at the rest of the men, she saw that every one of them had a bundle like that.

  What do they drink when they’re not drinking mead? Is it just that they didn’t bring anything with them? It suddenly struck her how odd it was that she hadn’t noticed before, but then it had all been emergencies, grief, and travel since they’d crossed the High Pass. She was so used to alcohol not lasting very long with her that she didn’t miss it herself.

  The rest came forward in order of age, with Winnajhubr last. Najud recited what was clearly a traditional welcome “to all our family and friends, and to strangers met along the way.”

  When he paused and looked at her expectantly, she panicked. “Health to the herds,” she said, “and to absent kin.” Then she smiled and added, “And a thank you to the cooks!”

  Penrys leaned against the leg of her bedframe and watched the party. Her constant sips of Najud’s mead helped her stay inebriated, but her body disposed of the alcohol quickly and it was impossible to match the others. She was surprised that Khizuwi’s dish of sliced antelope heart and onions had been the first to be emptied—something about what heart was good for, along with a good deal of humor at trying to make Najud eat more of it.

  There seemed to still be a meal’s worth left for the next day on the platters, despite the efforts of all to demolish the feast down to the bones. Before his mind turned to other things, Najud had told her she should wrap the remains in goatskins and bury them in the snow near the door where they could be found the next day.

  A meat-eating people, these Zannib, when they got the chance, and that reminded her of Ellech, too.

  The point of this celebration seemed to be food, drink, and stories which, come to think of it, was true for most holidays. Winnajhubr was currently describing how he and a friend had blackened their faces and donned bearskins to ambush a young friend, when it unexpectedly turned out they’d targeted the girl’s mother instead, and she with a broom in her hand. Jirkat and Ilzay, who’d been witnesses of the resulting commotion, provided expert commentary on the dancing bears that had fled, complete with apologies, while the camp around them roared with laughter.

  “For youngsters, we thought you two showed promise,” Jirkat told him.

  “But we weren’t sure you would survive until morning,” Ilzay added.

  Jiqlaraz’s stories were unexpected—reminiscences of his wife, now dead. As if to counter any maudlin tendency, Khizuwi then launched into a long, picaresque tale about the adventures of a goat and the havoc he created as he wandered from kazr to kazr, seeking adventure and uncovering illicit affairs, mysterious thefts, poor housekeeping, and plenty of food.

  Penrys knew this had to be a traditional story not a personal experience—for one thing, it came with a chorus everyone repeated after the punchline of each episode, “the goat, the goat, the curious goat, who can evade the curious goat.” Since each chorus included a swallow of mead, it was clear that part of the challenge was for the drinking tale-teller to make it to the end. In the final chapter, the goat ended up providing the feast, and tranquility was restored, with the homily that the less you know about your wife and the neighbors, the happier you will be.

  Ilzay told the tale of his binwit—the father who had given it to him, and his father, taking the tale of fathers and brothers back five generations. Munraz continued the theme, his shyness lost under the influence of the mead. Instead of a single person giving him his binwit, he said, it had been the whole family, each one contributing a part to welcome him to his adult life with them.

  Penrys felt the nostalgia they all experienced in the silent moment that followed that story. They all remember a similar thing, a similar emotion, as they were welcomed into their family, their clan, on a new level.

  The unbecoming spike of envy that it generated in her was strong enough to make Najud turn his tipsy head in concern. She patted his shoulder and smiled at him. “Never mind,” she murmured.

  When they called upon her to tell a story, she took her cue from Khizuwi, and avoided her personal life. She told them instead how the herd-girls in rural Ellech stayed with their flocks in the mountain meadows all summer long. “These are girls not quite fully grown. Each summer they go up with their family, herding the sheep or the goats or the cows, and then they leave the girl behind all by herself to look after them. She milks them, and makes cheese, and works on the clothing she will bring to her wedding someday, when she marries. Then her family comes and brings her back with the flocks. And the cheeses.”

  She waved her hands in the air and took another sip of mead. “But these are girls, you understand. They have to talk with each other.” That brought a chuckle from her audience.

  “So, if the mountain valleys are narrow enough, and the next cabin is close enough, they can sometimes call to each other. You can’t hear words that far, but they have some particular phrases, with melodies. If you can hear the song, you know the words. They have other tunes they use when they call the animals, looking for strays.”

  The men asked for an example. The kazr was a muffling environment for sound, but she stood up and pitched her voice into that front position of her face that let it carry a long distance, and sang them one of the teasing fragments.

  “What’s that mean?” Najud asked.

  “Well, they get up at dawn to do the first milking. So when a girl goes outside and can’t see her distant neighbor outside the cabin yet, she calls, ‘Are you alive? Are you alive? I thought you must be long, long dead.’ To poke fun at her, you understand.”

  They looked interested, so she continued. “When they see a wolf or a bear, or even fire, they have traditional alarm calls for spreading the word. For that, they use a very long wooden horn they make out of hollowed halves of a softwood, wrapped around with birchbark to hold them together. It takes practice, but you can get several different notes out of them. One call means ‘bear’, another ‘wolf’, and so on.”

  She made a low rumbling noise in her chest and gave an example of the four-note call that meant ‘bear’. “You have to hear it. The notes are very low, and they don’t seem to be that lo
ud, but they carry a tremendous distance. Miles. From far away, it sounds as if it’s the mountain speaking, or the forest.”

  Winnajhubr said, sleepily, “You’ll have to tell my sister about that. She’d like it.”

  Penrys looked more closely and saw that more were in danger of just dropping off, and she had no plans for sharing her kazr for the night with six more snoring bodies.

  Stepping carefully, she hauled Winnajhubr and his friends to their feet. “All right, men—time to go home.” She bundled them into their outer garments and made sure they had gloves.

  The gust that hit their faces when she opened the door woke them up a little, and she made sure that each of them had a grip on the rope guide to their own kazr before she shoved them out to stagger into the snow flurries.

  She stood in the doorway with the door almost closed to watch their progress until they disappeared into the dark, and she remained there until her mind-scan showed them safely back inside their own kazr. When she turned, she found Khizuwi had risen and was watching her. He raised an eyebrow and she nodded, so he shook Jiqlaraz into alertness and together they got Munraz up.

  Khizuwi managed another bow as he left with his companions, all three gripping their rope and each other. Penrys waited until they reached their kazr before closing her door, glad to let a little fresh air into the space.

  Najud was dozing sitting up, and she tried not to wake him as she wrapped up the remains of the feast in goatskins and stashed it in the snow two feet to the left of the doorframe. It was visibly deeper than before, almost three feet now, and the wind blew it into higher drifts in places, but it was too dark for the light inside the kazr to show very much. She stood in the doorframe and lowered the flap, then closed the door.

  She surveyed the damage from there. The cooking pots had long been removed from the stove to the standing table used for food preparation. Those who had thought about it had taken their mead-kits with them, but some remained—the whole binwit, or just a cup or bottle. She gathered all the bits and put them on the low worktable next to the empty platters with their congealed juices for sorting out in the morning. The wooden plates Winnajhubr had brought joined them, along with any stray utensils that threatened bare feet in the dark.

  She glanced around in the light of the flickering lanterns and the stove. Her long morning nap had disoriented her and she couldn’t tell if it was early in the evening or late. The colorful, warm interior still smelled of cooked food and laughter to her, a timeless place, a bubble sheltered from the storm, with the sharing of stories that bonded them together.

  Three years in Ellech, two months in Kigali, a month here. Winnajhubr with his pranks had more tales to tell than she did—the ordinary stories of growing up, making friends, irritating his elders. Soon he would add falling-in-love stories.

  What were her stories? She was maybe ten years older—where were her ordinary stories, the tales to make others laugh?

  The anger that rose in her pleased her more than the self-pity of her previous mood. She would find the man who had ripped her life from her before dumping her on a mountain in Ellech, naked in the snow, and she would ask him “why?” before she took her revenge.

  She shook with the emotion, and it disturbed Najud who blinked himself awake. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  She unclenched her fists, and calmed herself before walking over to help him up. “Nothing important,” she said. “Let’s get you to bed.”

  He glanced around the empty kazr as another gust bounced off the lattice wall. “They went home through that?”

  “I watched all the way and made sure they got back safe,” she reassured him. “It’s just us, now. Flap’s down.”

  His face lit up at that and then took a on woeful expression. “Too much to drink, Pen-sha.”

  She smiled. “Never mind, it’ll wear off. I’m not worried.”

  Later in the dark, with no light but the gleams from the stove, Penrys wrapped herself around Najud’s back, hugging him close. She checked the locations of all the people, asleep in their kazrab, and moved outward to the horses to do a count. They were huddled together, dozing.

  They seem to be used to this sort of weather. Look how they think about it—the warmth of their neighbors, the security of the herd, confidence in food and water.

  She expected that would change if they ran out of grain or if it became too hard to find grass or water under the snow, but horses don’t plan for the future and for now they were fine.

  She knew Najud was still awake. “Want to see what the horses think of the snow?” she asked him. “Take a look…”

  He peeked into her mind and she showed him what the horses felt.

  “I’ve been experimenting with keeping them from straying,” she said. “Should I tell the others? I don’t want them to get used to someone else watching for them.”

  Najud snuggled up closer to her, as if he could pull her arm over him like a blanket.

  “They already know you do this, and they’re grateful.”

  She grunted. “Hmph. Go to sleep, nothing to do until morning.”

  Halfway to dawn he woke her up to prove her wrong.

  CHAPTER 31

  Once the door flap was lifted, there was a constant stream of visitors from mid-morning onward, despite the continued battering of the storm.

  Most had mead-kits, in whole or in part, to sheepishly retrieve. Winnajhubr rescued the wooden plates his group had supplied, and went off to clean them in the snow. A few blows of Najud’s hand-axe outside split the greasy platters into kindling small enough for their stove, where the aroma of last night’s feast as it burned made Penrys stomach growl.

  The leftovers had already been divided into a marmot and part of the antelope for each kazr, so all Penrys had to do was to hand the lightly frozen packet to someone from each of the other groups and bring her own in to thaw again. She went to the trouble of stripping the meat from the bones so she could reheat it without the clumsy marmot hide and bones, and those she discarded entirely, walking them a distance into the trees before flinging them away.

  “How much longer will this blizzard continue?” she asked Najud, when she came back in. Two days was a long time, even in Ellech, but she wasn’t sure what to expect, this far to the south.

  “Could go on for days,” he said. He’d been doing his own cleanup and now sat crosslegged on his narrow unused bed, his back supported by a cushion against the lattice wall. He patted the spot next to him, and she picked up the other cushion and walked over to join him there.

  He draped his left arm over her shoulder companionably, and she made herself comfortable with her legs tucked in sideways instead of crossed. “You see,” he said, “the weather comes from the west and it brings the water from the Wandat Sea with it. There’s always more snow in the west of sarq-Zannib than in the east, as the water drops out of the sky on the way.”

  He waved his free right hand. “The wind has a long reach over the Wandat, and it’s open ocean west of that, so there’s not much to stop it. The ridges a hundred miles west of here which divide the central steppe from the western farms, they’re the first real barrier it finds. So it blows and snows on both sides, more on the west than the east, but enough for both, and keeps blowing and snowing all the way from there.”

  She leaned on him. “So this is a winter storm on the ocean, come to land, is it?”

  “That’s right.”

  Her head could feel the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest, and his arm was a warm weight. He felt like shelter to her, as if he and this kazr had always been there, safe from the storm. She shivered a bit at the unexpected feeling of security.

  “Hmm?” He looked down at her.

  “Nothing. I just…” She swallowed. “I don’t want this to end. To lose you.”

  His right arm wrapped around her, too, and he hugged her to him.

  “We won’t let that happen, Pen-sha,” he promised.

  “I’m not what you want,” she said,
“Not what you deserve. If I were the only chained wizard, well, perhaps this could be my life…” She waved a hand at the interior of the kazr. “But I’m not. I have to find out about the others, have to help stop them, if they’re monsters. Otherwise I’m one, too.”

  She lifted her head to look into his face. “D’ya understand?”

  He nodded reassuringly. “I know. You have to do this like I had to pursue my masterwork.”

  Penrys broke into a smile. “Yes! That’s it, exactly.” Then her smile vanished. “But you deserve children and a home.”

  “So do you,” he murmured.

  She shrugged without looking at him. “I don’t think I have a choice. But you do.”

  “No, I don’t, Pen-sha. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Children or not, you’re what I want, what I need, and that’s a price I’m willing to pay.”

  His grip around her tightened and he gave her a little shake. “And I know you feel the same way, so quit fighting it.”

  What am I being so stubborn about? This man is dear to me—my heart would ache if he were gone. He’s made his own decision, in spite of warnings. Can’t I accept that? She could feel his tense emotions, underneath the deceptively smooth surface of his voice.

  She couldn’t speak for a moment.

  He leaned over her and pulled the hair back from one of her animal ears. “You know you want to,” he whispered into it, and then warmed it with his breath.

  She giggled. “What, you’ve been auditioning for the job, all this time?”

  “If the door flap were down, I’d do it again,” he said, with a leer.

  “Must be all that heart meat they forced down you yesterday.” Her smile faded, and she turned to search his face again. “Are you sure, Naj-sha?”

  “I’m sure. My life for yours. Your enemies are my enemies.”

  She stopped breathing for a moment at that.

  He lay his right hand along her face, and she leaned into it.

  She was silent, her mind still, and then she finally yielded. “All right, then.”