the Year the Horses came

by Mary Mackey

  "See how he cries."

  "See how he mourns."

  "Perhaps he's afraid we won't bless the bones of his friend."

  "But of course Mother Asha will bless them."

  "How can he know that? The poor man doesn't understand a word we're saying."

  As if sensing their concern, the stranger lifted his hands, made a gesture toward the dead man, and said something. He repeated the phrase as if frustrated with their inability to understand, but his plea, whatever it was, made no sense to anyone. He clenched his fist and pounded on his chest. "Xuxu hztu!" he cried. "Xuxu hztu!"

  Great Goddess! Marrah thought. She stared at him in amazement. Either she was dreaming or she'd just understood what he'd said! Hurrying over to him, she fell to her knees and put her face close to his. He smelled of sweat and woodsmoke and something else she couldn't quite identify. "Xuxu?" she said.

  "Marrah," Ama cried, "what are you doing? Come away from there. The man's dangerous."

  For once Marrah heard but didn't obey. "Xuxu?" she repeated.

  "Xuxu, chau!" The stranger reached out and caught her by the shoulders."Xuxu, vh hztu xuxu ch tzxha achan!"

  "Marrah of Xori, stand up this instant!" Mother Asha commanded.

  Disengaging herself from the stranger's embrace with some difficulty, Marrah rose to her feet and turned to face the Mother-of-All-Families. "I understand him!" she cried. "I know what he's saying. The dead man" — she pointed to the body on the litter — "is his brother, Achan." Behind her the stranger was speaking in quick, excited sentences. "He's saying they were wrecked in a great storm and separated by the sea. He's saying that his brother's death is...a something for him; I can't quite catch the word, but I think he means it's a terrible thing, like the loss of an arm or leg. That's it. Achan was like his right arm, and he says that without him he's crippled."

  Everyone stared at her dumbfounded. "How do you know all that?" Mother Asha whispered. "How can a girl of your age know what no one else knows? Is the Goddess Herself giving you second sight?"

  "No, dear Mother." Marrah finally found the presence of mind to bow respectfully. "The stranger is speaking a language that's a lot like one my mother taught me."

  "Amazing." Mother Asha looked as if she still didn't quite believe her. "Are you telling me he speaks Sharan?"

  "Not exactly, but close enough. I think maybe he's speaking Shambah. The villagers who live on the Sweetwater Sea north of Shara speak it, but he must not really be from there because he has a strange accent. I think his mother tongue must be the one he was speaking earlier, but I believe I can make him understand me if the Mother wants me to translate for her."

  "This is a miracle." Mother Asha lifted her hands in the direction of the new Goddess Stone. "All praise to Her who can make even the rocks speak." Having waxed poetic, she turned to practical matters. "Ask him his name, child. Ask him where he comes from."

  Marrah spoke to the stranger in Sharan, and once again he embraced her. Pushing him away gently, she decided that from now on she was going to stand well out of reach. He had a grasp that could crush the lungs of a bear. "He says his name is Stavan and he comes from the Sea of Grass."

  "A sea of grass? Are you sure you got that right? It makes no sense."

  "Yes, dear Mother, I'm sure. He said it twice just as clearly as I'm saying it to you now. And he said something else, something that makes me wonder if perhaps he is not quite in his right mind. He says" — Marrah paused, embarrassed to spout such nonsense before the Mother-of-AU-Families — "he says he left this Sea of Grass with his brother Achan about four years ago, and all that time they've been wandering together looking for gold."

  "For gold?" Mother Asha lifted her eyebrows. "Do they have so many dead that they need to make funeral necklaces by the dozens?" She turned toward the dead man, who glittered even as he lay motionless on the litter. "From the looks of this brother of his, I should think the two of them had found enough gold for all the temples in their land. Why didn't they turn back long ago? What kind of foolishness is this to waste years of their lives on?"

  Marrah shifted her weight nervously from one foot to the other, wishing she had never gotten herself in the position of translator. Not only had she just remembered that Sabalah had forbidden her to speak the language of Shara in the stranger's presence, what she had to say next was so incredible that Mother Asha would probably dismiss her out of sheer disgust. "They were not just searching for gold alone, dear Mother. The stranger — Stavan, that is — says they were searching for a village made of gold that their people believe lies in the valley of the setting sun." She paused, obliged to speak the truth, yet not wanting to. "Actually he didn't say "village"; he said they were searching for 'a great camp of golden tents.' I asked him if they wanted the gold from the tents to hang around their necks, and he said yes, they did, because their people value gold above all things, but there was more to it than that. He said the search was a sacred obligation, and he and his brother were sent off with great honor to find the place where the sun slept."

  "Poor idiot." Mother Asha snorted. "Everyone knows the sun is the Goddess Earth's daughter whom She puts to bed each night at the bottom of the sea."

  "The stranger says the sun is no daughter but a great god named Han who rules the sky."

  "A sky god." Mother Asha sighed and shook her head. She gestured at the crowd of people who were hanging on every word. "Go back to your camps, all of you. We have a man among us whose whole world is upside down, and it's going to take time to set it straight." She turned to the village mothers, who stood beside the platform. "Go tell your young people to bring us food and drink. This Stavan holds on to his dead brother like a barnacle, and since I can see no prospect of persuading him to move out of the sun, I'll have to sit here and talk to him. This isn't a pleasant task for an old woman to perform, and I have no intention of doing it on an empty stomach."

  Mother Asha was right as usual. The conversation with the stranger took a long time, just as she predicted, and although Marrah did her best it didn't go well at all. She translated everything faithfully, and each time she opened her mouth he got more upset. In no time at all he was yelling at her.

  "No!" he cried. "No, no, no! why can't you and that old woman understand? I told you before, I don't want Achan's body torn apart by birds. It's a terrible custom; it's disgusting. It's something my people do only to traitors who betray their chiefs."

  "It's more disgusting to let him rot in the ground," Marrah yelled back. She had meant to keep her temper, but she hated being screamed at. How dare this big ugly man call one of the most sacred customs of her people "disgusting" when he was asking them to dig a hole and throw his brother's body in like a piece of spoiled meat.

  The stranger clenched his fist and began to pound on his chest. "Tear out my heart if you must," he yelled, "but don't let the ravens eat the heart of my brother, who was one of the greatest warriors of my people. Achan was my father's heir, his only legitimate son. He would have been Great Chief of the Twenty Tribes if he'd lived, and I'd rather die myself than let you put him on one of your accursed Towers of Silence. I saw a man disposed of that way once, and it made me vomit!"

  "Whatever is he raving about?" Mother Asha interrupted. She hated seeing people get upset, especially when she couldn't understand them. Marrah took a few steps away from the stranger, glared at him, and began to translate, her voice trembling with anger. Stubborn fool, she thought, never suspecting that perhaps he was thinking the same thing about her.

  When Marrah had finished translating, Mother Asha sighed and shook her head. "I still don't understand why he feels so strongly about the holy birds who gather the dead back to the Mother, but as long as his wishes do no harm, we'll respect them. Tell him we'll bury his brother in a deep hole. That should satisfy him."

  And so it happened that on the morning of the second day of the feast, the Shore People were treated to the unheard-of sight of a dead man being laid in the ground with his flesh
still on his bones. Except for his bow, a bracelet, and two small gold rings Stavan took from his ears, Achan was buried with his sword at his side and his necklaces around his neck, and that too seemed strange to the spectators, for why throw away perfectly good ceremonial adornments?

  By Mother Asha's orders, the burial took place as far away from the Womb of Rest as possible because it was an unclean thing, made even more unclean by the ceremony the stranger performed once the earth had been piled over his brother. As the villagers looked on, he took a young she-goat, slit her throat, and bled her on his brother's grave. Even Marrah, who had known about the goat in advance, flinched and dug her nails into the palms of her hands as the animal staggered and fell.

  "Why did the yellow-bearded stranger kill a goat?" the villagers whispered. "Does he plan to cook the funeral feast on top of his brother's body?" They themselves killed animals, but only to eat, never as part of religious rituals. The only sacrifices they knew were sacrifices of fruit and flowers: grain scattered for the birds, petals tossed into the waves to honor Amonah.

  Mother Asha, who only had consented to the killing of the goat after the stranger had pleaded with her for a long time, closed her eyes and passed her hand over her face, thinking that she had made a mistake. True, they would eat the animal, but now that she actually saw it being slaughtered, she felt she should have stood firm and refused. No living thing should be slain to honor the dead, she thought. This is too much.

  This is not nearly enough, Stavan was thinking at the same moment. Achan should have had twenty horses killed over his grave.

  The blood of the goat soaked into the ground, leaving dark stains on the chalky soil. For a moment he almost persuaded himself that he heard the high-pitched gabbling of ghosts coming to drink. He shuddered, wondering if the spirits of the Underworld would be satisfied with something as paltry as the blood of a she-goat.

  Marrah slept badly that night. Her dreams were confused, and once she woke to find herself sitting upright with her hands clenched by her sides. By dawn she was worn out and only too ready to pull the covers back over her head and spend some time catching up, but before she could retreat into the darkness beneath the sheepskins, a message arrived from Mother Asha asking her and Ama to come to the central plaza before the ceremonies began. The stranger, Stavan, was to be left behind.

  Mother Asha was very particular about this last bit and ordered the messenger to repeat it twice so there would be no possibility of misunderstanding.

  "I've come to a decision," Mother Asha announced. She looked out beyond Marrah and Ama toward the new Goddess Stone, which was being decked with flowers in preparation for the final night of dancing, but she saw the she-goat instead — the one that had died for nothing, poor animal. Silly, perhaps, to make so much of the death of a goat, but she was an old woman whose instinct for trouble had only grown sharper with time, and this morning she could feel an ominous undercurrent in the air, as if a cold wind had swept through Hoza, bringing an early winter. Was the Goddess Xori angry because one of Her beasts had been killed at the wrong time in the wrong place? Mother Asha wasn't sure. She only had a sense that something ugly had taken place and she had unwittingly been a party to it.

  She cleared her throat and looked down at Marrah and Ama, who were still waiting respectfully for her to continue.

  "I've decided that no other village can be asked to take the stranger off your hands." There, it was out: simple, plain, blunt, and no way for them to mistake her meaning. Before they could object she went on. "He angers too easily, he grieves too wildly, he's too stubborn, too disrespectful of others, and some of his customs are repugnant." She lifted her hand, taking in the Womb of Rest, the Goddess Stones, the shelters and campfires, and her children, all three thousand of them. "The Shore People have always been a single family, bound together by love and duty." She pointed to herself, I don't exist outside of this family." She pointed to Marrah and Ama "And you don't exist outside of this family. But he" — she pointed in the direction of the shelter, where the stranger still lay sleeping — "he does."

  "Are we supposed to turn him out to starve in the forest?" Marrah said. She might have a quick temper, but she forgave easily. Las night, before they went to sleep, she had talked to the stranger again guardedly at first, then with growing pity. She had learned thing: about him that she didn't entirely understand but that moved her just the same. It seemed he had spent years wandering with only his brother and a few friends for companions, and now they were all dead and he was completely alone. "He's still weak; he has a bad cough that could go to his lungs. Put him out in the wind and damp and he won't last until the next full moon." Realizing she had jus spoken disrespectfully to the Mother-of-All-Families, she put her hand over her mouth and stared at the platform, horrified by her own rudeness.

  Mother Asha was amused. "Ah," she said, "I'm glad to hear you take such an interest in his health, Marrah. It shows you have the instincts of a healer and does the mother who taught you credit. No I'm not suggesting Ama send the stranger into the forest while he' still recovering from his sickness." She paused and looked at Hoza; again, at the purple and yellow heather, the bright sunlight shining; off the great stones. "The summer has begun, and with it the trading; season. This early, only the traders bringing axes from the interior have arrived, but during the long days to come we'll have visitor from as far away as the Blue Sea, and by the time they leave, the stranger should be strong enough to leave with them."

  "And if he doesn't want to?"

  "Then," Mother Asha said briskly, "we turn him out in the forest to fend for himself. There's no place in our longhouses for such a man. But I don't think you need to worry about his staying. I think he longs to go back to his own people as much as we long to get rid of him." With a wave of her hand, she indicated the audience was over.

  Once again Mother Asha was right. When Marrah told Stavan he was to leave with the traders at the end of the summer, he thanked her eagerly. She was surprised by his enthusiasm and even a little annoyed that he seemed so eager to get away. How could she know that ever since he had awakened to find himself in a savage long-house, he had expected to be sacrificed to one of her gods or hobbled and made into a slave?

  As he thanked Marrah, he felt not only relief but cautious admiration for people who could take in a sick stranger, nurse him back to health, and send him on his way without asking anything in return. Achan had always despised the savages, calling them weak and woman-ridden, but during the time he had spent in their care, Stavan had warmed to them. At times he'd feared his friendly feelings might be ignoble and not fit for a warrior, but now that he saw the savages were going to let him go, he knew he'd been right to trust them. He had to take the news of Achan's death back to his father as soon as possible, and he only hoped the other tribes he encountered along the way would be as easy to deal with.

  That afternoon a tall tree was felled, stripped of its branches, and dragged to the central plaza of Hoza. Although teams of young men and women lifted the tree as if it were a Goddess Stone, it went up easily, amid much laughter and joking. When the pole had been raised and its base securely anchored, the young people seized the ends of the ropes and began to dance, women moving one way, men the other. The dance was full of sexual energy yet ecstatically religious, and as the dancers wove up, under, over, and around, beating their feet on the earth and singing songs in praise of the Owl Goddess, a change came over them. One by one, they stopped feeling that they were separate individuals and lost themselves in the group until there were no more men or women, only a great circle that turned and turned, sweeping everything along with it. The circle was the Circle of Life, the circle of the Earth Herself, moving from spring to winter to spring, from birth to death to birth, and all Feasts of the Dead ended with it.

  Marrah was part of the circle, and as she danced she too felt herself disappearing into the group. Like people reaching out to take each other's hands, the minds of the Shore People reached out to to
uch one another, and at the moment of contact they became a single Over-mind, greater than any of Its parts. At the instant Marrah became one with the Over-mind, she felt a rushing sensation that seemed to lift her off her feet, and she remembered things she had no way of knowing. The memories of the Over-mind were not intellectual or even intelligent; they were deeper and much more powerful, like dreams boiled down to their essence.

  As the Over-mind danced It remembered thousands of dances, all going on at the same time like circles within circles with no end and no beginning. Beside each human danced the spirit of all the ancestors who had ever lived, and beside each ancestor the spirit of every animal, and beside the humans and the animals the forest danced, and the sun and moon danced, and even the stars danced around the tree.

  As Marrah moved in the circle, the part of her that was the Over-mind felt the presence of something at the center that was neither god nor goddess, something that stayed perfectly still while everything else whirled around it. Love, the stillness whispered to the Over-mind. Everything is love. And as the center spoke, the Over-mind was suddenly filled with a love so complete that everything was erased by a blinding joy.

  The dance went on and on, and with every step the dancers took, the ropes twisted more tightly around the pole and the circle grew smaller. Finally thirty pairs of women and men stood face to face, unable to move another step. The drums fell silent, and Mother Asha rose to her feet. "All praise to Xori!" she cried in a loud, clear voice, clapping her hands.

  At the sound of the Bird Goddess's name and Mother Asha's hands clapping together, the Over-mind broke back into Its component parts. Suddenly Marrah woke from trance to find herself standing in front of a dark-eyed young man from Shiba.