by Mary Mackey
The morning after he left, Ama appeared with a bowl of tea containing powdered barberry bark, ground flaxseed, and dried mint. "Drink this," she ordered sternly.
Sabalah drank, but the problem was not her stomach. By now she was convinced that as long as the stranger sat by her fire no purge, however strong, could restore her peace of mind. Soon, she thought, we'll take him to Hoza, and perhaps Mother Asha will let us give him to another village. But she knew this was unlikely.
Then, on the morning of the day before they were to leave, when the litter was already prepared and the bones of the dead lovingly collected, something happened that flung Sabalah out of her black mood. She was working barefoot in a field of wheat, digging out the weeds with a wooden hoe. The hoe was merely a long stick, notched at one end so that each stubborn shoot could be grubbed out of the rocky soil quickly, but it was so well balanced that the shaft seemed to move back and forth in her hands with almost no effort. Sabalah loved working the soil; it was peaceful to stand in the fields and see the ocean on one hand and the forest on the other, to hear the bleat of the goats, the drumming of the surf, the distant laughter of children. The smell of fresh earth was soothing, and often, if she was lucky, she would see something particularly beautiful: a small butterfly with delicate purple-blue wings or, if she was very lucky, the bright black eyes and flat gray head of a grass snake.
Yet on this particular morning, the work was giving her no joy. She labored thoughtlessly, bending and reaching, bending and reaching, her mind lost in a bank of fog. She was so absorbed in her own misery that several times she dug up wheat instead of weeds and had to stoop down and replant the shoots as best she could. At one of these moments, just as she was taking a step forward to survey the damage she had done, she felt something sharp and painful enter the sole of her left foot. With a yelp of pain, she dropped her hoe, sat down on the ground, turned her foot over, and discovered that she had stepped on a long sharp thorn. She gritted her teeth and tugged at it, but it wouldn't come out. Curses and double curses! she thought. She dug her nails into the surrounding flesh, pulled harder, and the spine came out.
She sat for a moment examining the thorn, wondering what kind of plant it came from. She had never seen one like it. It was about two inches long, dark brown, slender as a needle at one end and broad at the place it had broken off from a bush or tree. There was a sheen to it, as if the thorn had been smoothed by something, and it occurred to her that perhaps it had come from far away, floating on the currents. If that were true, it must have been tossed up on land a long time ago, because she had never heard of a storm wild enough to run waves all the way up to the fields, but she had seen shells everywhere, even in the forest, so it was possible that the thorn had come to Xori by way of the sea.
As she had this thought, a realization suddenly came over her: this thorn was the disaster she had been fearing! She scrambled to her feet and tried to walk and found, sure enough, that a small bit of the thorn was still in her foot. The splinter wasn't terribly painful, but it made her limp. She felt so relieved she had to sit down again. This was it, then, only this and nothing more: she had sickened at the sight of the stranger, feared a catastrophe of the worst sort, but in the end it had only come down to a thorn. Like the stranger, the thorn had come from the sea, but it was the thorn, not the stranger, that brought sudden unexpected pain. The warning had been clear and simple, but she had misinterpreted it. Her life wasn't going to fall apart after all. She was only in for a few days of inconvenience while the puncture healed — perhaps a week at most.
As she limped back to the village to clean the wound and spread the sore with a salve made of lavender and black currant leaves, she rejoiced every step of the way. That evening she went over to Mehe's mother's longhouse and asked him to come back and share her bed again, and as she sat by the fire with Mehe on one side of her and Arang and Marrah on the other, she found herself smiling at the stranger, who no longer seemed dangerous.
"I won't be able to walk to Hoza," she called out to Ama, who was busy packing the last of the supplies. "I've hurt my foot, and it takes a good four days to get there and four more to get back."
"Are you badly hurt?" Ama straightened up from the packs and looked at Sabalah with concern.
"No" — Sabalah smiled — "not badly at all. In fact you might say I'm hurt in a good way." This of course made no sense to anyone but Sabalah, who laughed as she said it from sheer relief, but seeing she was in a good mood again, Ama, Marrah, and Arang laughed with her, and for the first time in weeks the whole family was happy.
CHAPTER FOUR
Every three years the Feast of the Dead brought all the villages of the Shore People together in a great communal celebration. From all up and I down the coast, representatives of the village funeral societies traveled to Hoza, bringing the bones of those who had died since the last feast. The bones, which had been picked clean by the birds, were carried in embroidered leather bags, and when each new village arrived they lifted the bags over their heads and sang out the names of the dead and their exploits.
In this bag we carry Osaba,
son of Tasa,
a great trader
who braved many storms
one village would sing, and another would reply:
In this bag we carry Bilera,
daughter of Goiza.
She was a good hunter
who brought us many deer.
Men went crazy for her
and slept outside her door
but she was very picky.
The songs of the funeral societies were raucous, sometimes obscene, often funny, for the Owl Goddess who governed death also governed life and regeneration, and how could you be expected to put on a long face and mourn when those you had loved were being taken back to the Mother to be reborn? Bones were only the cast-off shells of the dead. Their souls were safe in the care of the Goddess Earth, so it was best to celebrate, laugh, get drunk on fermented honey and fruit wine, and tell stories of how good (and bad) these same white bones had been when they walked the earth covered in flesh.
The result was a party that went on for three days. A new Goddess Stone was always raised, and there was nonstop feasting and singing that ended with a dance around a tall wooden pole erected in the central plaza. If a woman was having trouble getting pregnant, she might anoint one of the Goddess Stones with honey and oil and rub her naked body against it for luck, or, more to the point, she might invite some young man from another village to go off into the woods with her. Love was easy to come by at Hoza, and there were always many babies born the following spring.
The last time a Goddess Stone was raised, Marrah had been too young to attend the ceremony. Now she was a woman, but so new a woman that she was awed by the spectacle. Sabalah had entrusted the stranger to her care, but as she stood beside his litter on the first morning of the feast, she all but forgot he was there. All she could think about was the new Goddess Stone. She was a huge thing almost three times as tall as a grown man, and one false move could send Her crashing down. Perhaps that would happen and perhaps it wouldn't, but only the Stone Herself knew if She wanted to live upright among the other Goddesses of Hoza, and She seemed indecisive, tilting first one way and then the other, as if She might decide at any minute to fall and crush the men who were trying to lift Her.
If She toppled, it would be a disaster. It had taken nearly three years to get Her ready for this day. First She had to be delivered from the earth like a baby from its mother's womb. Crews of young men had spent months quarrying Her and shaping Her, using only fire, water, and stone mauls. They had drawn the shape of Her great body on the granite in charcoal, laid twigs soaked in animal fat along the lines, set them on fire, and doused them with cold water so the stone would split. They had pounded Her loose, loaded Her on a sledge of square-cut timbers, lashed Her down with vegetable-fiber ropes, and dragged Her to Hoza on a series of oak rollers carved from tree trunks. It had taken a thousand men to move Her and t
wenty more to carry the rollers from back to front, but what did it matter how much time and sweat and pain it cost? She was their Goddess, their mother, their darling, and they had sung and prayed as they tugged Her up hills and lowered Her down toward the sea.
When they got Her to Hoza, the young men had chipped Her bottom to a blunt point, strewed her with flowers, and left Her to get acquainted with the other Goddesses. For almost two years She rested, waiting for the next Feast of the Dead. Then, about a month ago, more young men had arrived to dig a deep rectangular pit for Her to stand in. The pit had three straight sides and one that sloped. When they finished, the men slowly maneuvered Her down the slide into the hole, raised Her head with wooden levers, and put logs under Her. The logs were called "the Goddess's pillows," and what pillows they were, growing steadily, log by log, until She almost stood upright.
Once again they left Her to rest, and once again they waited. Today they had returned to lift Her to Her feet and pull Her toward the sky, to love Her and sing to Her and beg Her to stand alone and bless them, but no Goddess was easy to persuade and no lifting was a success until it was over. As Marrah stood watching the young men strain and sweat and sing, the suspense was so unbearable she sometimes forgot to breathe. Most of the time, though, she cheered and clapped her hands like a child at a party. Once she made a belated attempt to be dignified, but before she realized it, she was standing on tiptoe again, bobbing up and down to get a better view as she called out words of encouragement along with everyone else.
It was no wonder she yelled herself nearly hoarse. Who wouldn't be excited? This was not only her first feast, it was the first year her own village had been entrusted to lead the lifting. She had friends out there pulling on the ropes — cousins and uncles and neighbors — and no matter how loud she cheered, she could always hear Gorriska's voice booming out above the roar as he urged them and the other men on.
Lift the Great Owl
who blesses us all;
lift Her up,
Gorriska sang. Inspired by his voice, the young men pulled harder on the ropes, straining with all their might. All night they had chanted and danced themselves into a hypnotic state until their separate minds and wills had become one. Now as they tugged the stone skyward, lifting their beloved to Her resting place, their hearts rose with Her. On the far side of the stone other men strained on ropes attached to long levers, while still others piled more tree trunks under the Goddess until Her pillow became a tower. In a moment, the crucial point would be reached: She would rise and stand unsupported, perhaps forever, perhaps only for an instant.
Suddenly the stone wavered and turned slightly in the mouth of the foundation hole, bringing a gasp from the crowd. May She not fall, Marrah prayed, clutching for Ama's hand. This was too much; she couldn't bear it. She looked away, jammed her fingers in her ears so she wouldn't hear the stone crash to the ground, and tried to think of other things.
There behind her, dominating Hoza, was the Womb of Rest, which she had seen for the first time yesterday after years of hearing about it. Placed on the summit of a small hill covered with purple and gold heather, the Womb was a large circular mound of stone with eleven passages cut in the southeast side, aligned so they would catch the light of the rising moon. The doors of the passages were open and ready to receive the bones of the dead, and ceremonial fires were already smoking in front of them, sending the sweet smell of pine and herbs into the clear summer air.
There were no other buildings because Hoza wasn't a city in the ordinary sense; it was a ceremonial center built on a windswept bit of shoreline where nothing grew except heather and stunted bushes. The only houses were temporary shelters warmed by campfires that would be doused with seawater at the end of the festival. But long after the crowds had returned to their villages, everything in sight would vibrate with spiritual energy. The energy would come not only from the Womb of Rest but from the long rows of Goddess Stones that marched down toward the sea, some only a few feet high, some giants. Each column was a sacred owl who would look after the dead when Marrah and the others were gone, but none was as tall as the new Goddess they were raising today.
She took her fingers out of her ears and heard Ama catch her breath and mutter something in a low, anxious voice. Not a good sign. Still convinced that the new stone was about to fall and break into a hundred pieces, she began to distract herself by counting the old ones: ten, twenty . . . nearly seventy Goddesses in all.
Suddenly there was a deafening cheer from the crowd. Unable to resist any longer, Marrah looked back toward the plaza and saw the new Goddess tilt dangerously to the left and then slip quickly into place. Leaping out of the way, the young men quickly secured their ropes to dozens of wooden pegs that had been pounded deep into the stony soil, fanning the lines out so the column was held upright like the center post of a tent.
"Praise to you!" the crowd yelled. "Well done!"
The lifters fell back sweating and exhausted. Some turned and smiled at the crowd in a dazed way as if they had just noticed the thousands of anxious faces surrounding them. They reached for jugs of water, drank deeply, and poured the rest over their heads and shoulders, tossing it off like seals. Although the lifting had been a success, their job was not over yet. Rocks and earth still had to be piled at the base of the Goddess to brace Her, but the most dangerous moment had passed. She had not fallen, and unless Amonah herself sent a great wind to break the ropes, She would stand for many generations.
There was a saying among the Shore People that the two most dangerous things to leave unattended were fire and the strength of young men. Both were precious, but both had to be put to good use and well cared for or they might explode and cause great destruction.
"You have worshiped Her with your strength," the crowd called to the lifters. "We love you; we honor you; only you could have done this!"
The young men smiled, feeling proud and satisfied. A new Goddess had been raised to guard the dead, all the villages of the Shore People had been united again, and for another three years there would be peace.
Marrah found herself crying with joy and relief. The stranger who had sat beside her all morning noticed her tears and was puzzled. He had watched the whole ceremony without understanding a bit of it. What makes these savages work so hard? he wondered. What do they get out of it?
Mother Asha, the Mother-of-All-Families, had also watched the young men raise the new Goddess Stone. She had sat on a wooden platform on a comfortable pile of sheepskins, shaded from the summer sun by a tightly woven straw canopy. Around her stood half a dozen village mothers, ready to bring her a drink of cool water or fan her or do anything else she asked, even though most of them were grandmothers many times over. Even so, Mother Asha thought, none of them is as old as I am. I've already outlived my youngest child and the grayest head of my council by more than twenty years, and, who knows, I may live twenty more.
At the age of ninety-eight, she needed all the small comforts they could give her, for although her eyes were bright and her mind as sharp as ever, her skin was so old it looked like worn leather, and all of her teeth except three back molars were the subject of fond memories. How I used to tear into a piece of venison! she thought absently as the lifters bowed to the cheering crowd. She was cheering too, of course, because the young men would have been mortally disappointed if she had failed to show enthusiasm, but she had seen this same ceremony many times before, so it no longer moved her the way it once had. As she called out words of approval and pounded her walking stick against the platform, she found herself remembering exactly how her mother's venison stew had looked and tasted ninety years ago. She could see the dark brown clay pot, simple and round-bottomed, sitting on a stand over hot coals, see it right down to the double row of dots and bands incised on the sides, even see the hunks of venison floating in rich gravy, flavored with herbs only her mother seemed to know how to find.
Mother Asha nodded, pleased with herself. Lately she had begun to fear she was forg
etting things. Take the words to songs, for example. The entire history of the Shore People was memorized; to forget the words to even one song was to forget some essential piece of the past. Lately she had caught herself unable to remember a few of the ones that were rarely sung. Of course she still knew thousands of verses, but in the past year or so there had been several little unnerving gaps, so it was a relief to discover her memory was still sharp enough to bring back the smell of a stew that had been eaten generations ago.
Tired of cheering, she put down her walking stick, placed her hands on her knees, and looked out at the crowd. These were her children, her responsibility, and now that the Goddess Stone had been successfully raised she soon would have to begin doing what only she could do. It often struck her as strange that she should have so many thousands of children in her old age when the four children she had given birth to in her youth were dead, but a Mother-of-All-Families did not actually have to have living children. Nor was it enough for her simply to be the oldest woman alive, although that was frequently the case. The position was not hereditary; if she had been quarrelsome or dull-witted or unsuitable in any way, the village mothers would have met in council and given another woman the honor. In fact the only qualification for the job of Mother-of-All-Families was that you couldn't want it; it had to be thrust on you.
Well, thrust on her it had been, Mother Asha thought, as she motioned to two of the younger women to help her rise to her feet. The younger women, one of whom was fifty-three and the other nearly sixty, caught her briskly under the arms and lifted her gently to a standing position. When they saw their Mother rise, the crowd fell silent and turned toward her, their faces lifted like the faces of eager children.
