the Year the Horses came

by Mary Mackey

  This is magic!" Stavan cried, speaking for all of them, and when Marrah looked at him, she saw he was leaning forward, holding his breath as if afraid to break the spell.

  The crawl out was not nearly as terrifying as the crawl in. Now that Marrah knew what to expect, she took her time, ignored the blue things that swam in the darkness, and spent an uncomfortable but bearable period thinking about other things. Mostly she thought about the magic of the caves.

  When they emerged, it was night. The moon had set, and the sky was strewn with stars that glittered like bits of ice in the thin mountain air. It was cold enough to remind Marrah that winter was on the way. But as she stood shivering outside the entrance waiting for the others, she felt elated. Now she understood why the priestesses of Nar needed no sacred potions to be drunk with happiness.

  The next morning the three took her aside and gave her the gifts they had promised to Sabalah so many years ago. It was an oddly un-ceremonious moment, considering how important the gifts were, but the priestesses were vowed to simplicity in all things. Zahar simply reached into a basket and drew out three small leather bags. "This," she said, dropping the first bag into Marrah's hand, "is dried thunder. You throw it on fire and it makes a great noise. Use it well and be careful; it's dangerous."

  Marrah opened the drawstrings and found that the bag contained several unremarkable looking balls of clay. She took one of the balls and rolled it between her fingers; it was clearly hollow. Perhaps there was something more inside, but if so, Zahar clearly wasn't interested in telling her what that something might be. Marrah tried to thank her, but the old priestess silenced her with a wave of her hand. "Don't thank me; don't thank any of us. These gifts come from the Goddess Earth, bless Her name. We're only Her messengers."

  She held up the second bag. "This is a powder that will make you invisible." She laughed. "Only there's a trick to it: you don't eat it. In fact, I strongly advise you never to let it cross your lips — not that it would kill you. The Goddess isn't all that anxious to have you with Her yet. Still, it packs quite a wallop. You put it in your enemies' food, and poof!" — she waved her hands — "you vanish from their sight. Of course we hope you never have any enemies, but should the occasion arise this may come in handy."

  She handed Marrah the bag. Like the clay balls, the powder was unremarkable, the color and texture of dust but smelling slightly sweet as if it might taste better than it looked. Marrah sniffed it cautiously, closed the bag, and put it into the leather pocket she wore tied to her belt.

  Zahar paused for a moment and held the third bag by its drawstring, looking at it fondly as if she were reluctant to give it up. "This," she said, "is the most precious gift of all. It's one of the Tears of Compassion shed by the Goddess Earth Herself when She saw Her children crying with fear at the beginning of the Great Spring. Her tears are so rare that, old as I am, I've only seen three of them, and this" — she shook the bag slightly — "is the finest of all. Whoever wears it can never be harmed."

  She placed the bag gently in Marrah's hand. It was so light it felt empty. Marrah untied the drawstrings, opened the mouth of the bag, and dumped something into the palm of her hand — something so beautiful she gave a cry of joy when she saw it. It was a stone — or perhaps not a stone; it had no more weight than a breath. Tear-shaped and barely larger than the end of her thumb, it was the color of honey. But that wasn't all: at the center of the tear lay a butterfly, wings outspread, as if caught and frozen in flight.

  Marrah was speechless. She turned the gift over in her hand, trying to understand how the butterfly came to be inside it. At the place where the stone came to a point, someone had drilled a small hole. She realized it was made to be worn.

  As if reading her thoughts, Ume quietly reached out, took the stone, and threaded it on a leather thong. Kissing Marrah formally on both cheeks, she tied the ends around her neck so the tear hung just above her heart.

  Yellow is the color of death," Emzate was saying, as Zahar stood in the background, with an enigmatic smile on her face. "It's the color of bone, the color of going back to the Mother. But the butterfly is life. In winter the caterpillar spins its grave and dies, but in spring it emerges transformed, more beautiful than it could have ever imagined. The Goddess has given the butterfly to us as a sign of her mercy. It's Her promise that death is only temporary."

  Marrah didn't know what to say. Not only had they forbidden her to thank them, no thanks seemed adequate. She touched the stone, awed by its magic. They waited patiently, giving her time to understand how much she'd been honored. Finally Zahar spoke.

  There's one more thing," she said. "Before you go, we want to ask you something." She laughed. "We may be priestesses, but we're as curious as the next person, and just between you and me, our powers to see into the future are highly overrated. We'd like to ask why you and your brother are traveling east wearing pilgrim necklaces. Emzate and Ume think the Goddess must have commanded you to make the forest crossing, perhaps to deliver a message to one of the villages on the Blue Sea coast; is that true?"

  When Marrah told her that she and Arang were not stopping at the Blue Sea but going all the way to Shara, Zahar sucked in her breath and shook her head, and the younger priestesses looked impressed.

  So far," Emzate said. She paused. "And do you carry a message?"

  "Yes," Marrah admitted. Since she was allowed to share the prophecy with priestesses, she told them about the vision she had had and the warning she was taking east. As they listened, all the joy went out of their faces, and soon they no longer looked like laughing priestesses. When she finished speaking, Zahar sighed and shook her head.

  "When I heard you were coming, I hoped you'd bring good news. Your mother told us about those beastmen when she came here so many years ago with you in her arms, and I thought, Now Sabalah's daughter, Marrah, is walking east, so perhaps there's been a new prophecy; perhaps the danger is over. But I see the evil days are just beginning."

  She turned and stood for a moment looking at the entrance to the caves, lost in thought. Marrah kept silent, not wanting to interrupt her.

  At last she spoke again. "We're far away from Shara, and perhaps with the grace of the Goddess we won't ever see these outlaws you speak of, but if they do come, we'll seal up the entrance to the Caves of Nar with stones. Her temple must never be desecrated."

  "Where will you go if you have to leave Nar?" Marrah asked.

  All three priestesses looked at her as if the question had caught them by surprise. "Go?" Ume said. "Why, we'll go nowhere, of course. We'll be where we belong: inside the caves."

  That night Marrah showed her gifts to the others, and they marveled with her, touching the yellow stone reverently, sniffing the powder of invisibility, and balancing the clay balls on the palms of their hands.

  "I had no idea you were such a powerful priestess," Rhom said, and when Marrah tried to explain she wasn't powerful at all but merely a young woman who was inheriting something once promised to her mother, he shook his head and remained unconvinced.

  They left Nar the next morning, walking back to the main channel of the Ibai Nabar in a day less than it had taken them to follow the western branch into the foothills. This time they took the fork that led southeast, and that night, as they sat around the campfire, Rhom announced that tomorrow they would have to leave the Ibai Nabar altogether and set off overland. "If we keep walking in this direction," he explained, "we'll end up back in the mountains. I don't like going off into the forest with no river to guide us; no one does. Still, the trail runs due east, and it's fairly flat and well marked. With a little luck we shouldn't be out of sight of water for more than two days." He picked up a stick and drew a crude map: two wavy lines connected by a straight one. "We'll be heading for the banks of this river, the one my people call the Orugali. As you see, once we pick it up, we'll be able to follow it all the way to the Blue Sea."

  As Rhom had promised, the crossing to the Orugali took two days. Everyone was reliev
ed to see the river, and as they headed east along the northern bank, the traders began to point out familiar landmarks. With every step they took, the forest grew drier and plants appeared that Marrah had never seen before. One in particular, a kind of spiny holly, grew wherever there was an opening in the trees, but for the most part the land was covered with oaks and great pines that sported a purple-brown bark streaked with orange fissures. The soil they walked on was stony in places but fertile, and along creek beds and the banks of the river it was sometimes blood red and sticky to touch.

  The weather turned warmer, and instead of sleeping wrapped in their cloaks they slept uncovered, glad for every breeze. Although they still had several more days to go before they reached the coast, the journey almost seemed over and everyone began to relax. At night they still took turns standing guard, but if there had ever been a lion, they had left her behind on the Ibai Nabar; along the Orugali nothing more fearsome than deer and rabbit prints pressed into the red clay along the riverbank.

  Stavan took to going out hunting in the evenings, and they were all glad to have fresh game for dinner again. Sometime during the walk along the Ibai Nabar, he had made Arang a bow and several arrows tipped with tiny pieces of sharp stone. The arrows weren't good for much but stunning small birds, but by now Arang could hit with reasonable accuracy and he wanted to hunt too. "Absolutely not," Stavan said. And when Arang began to plead, he picked up his bow and walked into the forest without another word.

  "He treats me like a child," Arang grumbled to Marrah. Marrah reminded him that he was a child. "I hate it when you talk like a grown-up!" he snapped, and for the rest of the evening he pouted.

  At first she was annoyed, but then she remembered how patient he'd been, how he'd always carried his basket without complaint, how he'd helped gather firewood. She knew he missed Sabalah, but never cried for his mother the way some boys of his age would have. And what other eight-year-old would have had enough courage to crawl through the tunnel that led to the Caves of Nar?

  The next evening after Stavan had gone off to hunt, she walked up to Arang, who was sitting with his chin on his hands staring moodily at the forest. "Get your bow and arrows," she suggested, "and I'll take you target shooting near camp."

  "I don't feel like shooting at some dumb old tree," he grumbled, and when Marrah tried to cheer him up by promising that there'd be plenty of real hunting once they reached the coast, he told her to go away and leave him alone.

  Well, I tried, she thought, and she went back to her basket to get a line and small wooden bobber. Fishing along the river was a lot easier than fishing in the Sea of Gray Waves, and she had come to enjoy the evenings she spent sitting on the bank, pulling in a few perch or brown trout.

  Sometime later she looked up to notice that Arang was no longer sitting where she had left him. Hmmm, she thought, I wonder where he's gone. She pulled her line out of the water and went to look for him, but he was nowhere in sight.

  "Have you seen Arang?" she asked Rhom, who was sitting by the fire mending one of the straps on his carrying basket. Rhom shook his head. Shema said she hadn't seen him for a while either, and neither had Zastra.

  "He's probably just gone off into the woods to pee," Shema suggested. "He's at that age when children like privacy."

  Marrah wasn't convinced. She walked to the edge of the forest and cupped her hands to her mouth. "Arang! Where are you?" she called. There was no reply. "Arang, this isn't funny. I know you can hear me. Answer me." Still nothing.

  "Well, he can't have gone far," Rhom said. He wandered over to the bank and looked up and down the river as if expecting to see Arang swimming in the shallows, but there were only the usual snags, reeds, and ducks. "Arang!" he called.

  "Arang!" they all cried, but the only answer they got was the quacking of the ducks.

  Zastra turned to Marrah with a worried look on her face. "Where did you last see him?"

  "Under that tree over there."

  "Did he say anything about going swimming?"

  "No."

  "Thank the Goddess. Then he probably hasn't drowned. But where could he possibly be?"

  Marrah stood for a moment looking at the place where she had last seen Arang. It wasn't close to the river at all, but it was very close to the forest.

  "I think he's gone off by himself to hunt," she said. Striding over to Arang's basket, she dumped the contents on the ground. The arrows Stavan had made were missing, and Arang's bow was nowhere in sight.

  For a few moments they stood staring at the evidence.

  "This doesn't look good," Zastra said.

  "Surely he'll come back any minute." Shema stirred the contents of the basket with her toe as if the bow and arrows might still turn up. "You can't separate a boy from his dinner, Marrah. He's bound to get hungry." It was a poor choice of words. Marrah was already thinking about hunger — not hungry boys but hungry animals. She was imagining Arang, lost in the forest, confronting a bear or worse.

  "The idiot!" she cried. She threw Arang's basket to the ground. "How could he do something so irresponsible?" She was angry and scared, and she wanted Arang back immediately. He was her responsibility, and if he was standing out there pouting, listening to them calling him and stubbornly refusing to answer, she was going to be sure it was a long time before he put another honey cake in his mouth. She looked at the river and tried to calculate how much daylight was left. The water was starting to change from green to a dull gray. There was no time to waste.

  "Rhom, go get those long sticks over there, and we'll use them as torches. It may still be light out here, but it's going to be dark in the woods. Zastra, you stay behind in camp, and when Stavan shows up, tell him what's going on. He's a better tracker than any of us and it's a pity he's not here, but I don't think we can afford to wait for him. Shema and Rhom and I will search the woods on this side of the river. I don't think Arang would have been crazy enough to swim across fully dressed, with a bow and a quiver of arrows on his back." She looked out over the water, flowing by quickly like a current of dark soup. She and Arang had both inherited the wild streak that had taken Sabalah all the way from Shara to Xori with a newborn baby on her back. The truth was, he could be anywhere.

  Rhom brought over the sticks, and they thrust them into the flames until the ends caught fire. They were poor torches, fast burning and likely to go out, but mere was no time to make better ones. Fanning out in three separate directions, they plunged into the forest calling Arang's name.

  "Arang!" Marrah cried. "Arang! Arang, where are you? Arang, answer me!" But every time she stopped to listen for an answer, all she heard was the sound of Rhom and Shema calling too. After a while, their voices faded and grew dim. Soon all she could hear was the rustle of the wind in the treetops and the occasional cawing of a crow. The torch cast an unsteady flame that prodded the dusky shadows into life; more than once she thought she saw someone moving in them but when she rushed forward, sure she had found Arang at last, it always proved to be nothing more than a pile of brush or a vine swaying in the breeze.

  When the torch burned out, she threw it to the ground and went on searching, paying no attention to the twigs that stung her face and the brambles that scratched her bare legs and tore at her dress. The setting sun gave off a pale, watery light that barely filtered through the leaves, but she had sharp eyes and rarely stumbled. Once some big animal moved in a thicket, grunting and cracking sticks, and instead of fleeing as she would have if she had been in her right mind, she hurried toward the sound thinking it might be Arang, but when she got there she found nothing but a trampled place and a pile of fresh bear dung.

  "Stay away from my brother!" she yelled, picking up a stick and hurling it at the dung. "Stay away from him, Bear Woman, or I'll make you sorry you ever came into the forest!" It was a crazy threat — even she knew it was crazy — but she no longer cared. A kind of fury possessed her. She picked up another stick and pounded on a hollow log, drumming it into life. The sound was muffled, swal
lowed by the trees, but still she went on drumming and yelling to Arang. Finally she gave up. Exhausted, she dropped the stick and threw herself to the ground, where she lay panting, trying to catch her breath.

  She thought of Stavan and how he could track a deer across stony ground, and she cursed him for being gone when he was needed. Why in the name of that Hansi hell he was always telling her about hadn't he stayed closer to camp? If he hadn't gone off hunting this evening, Arang wouldn't have gone either. But that wasn't fair. How could Stavan have known that Arang would pick tonight to get lost?

  She decided she was going about this the wrong way. It was useless to blame Stavan or anyone else. What she needed to do was try to think like Arang. Getting to her feet, she brushed the dirt and leaves off her dress and headed back to the river. When she got to the campsite, she found that Zastra had joined the search. Perhaps that meant Stavan had come back. She threw a log on the fire and stood for a moment listening, but if the four of them were out there calling to Arang she couldn't hear their voices.

  She closed her eyes. If I were Arang, she thought, what would I have done? Where would I have gone? I would have been angry at Stavan and at my sister and hurt at the idea of being treated like a child so I would have moved quickly the way people do when they're angry, and silently too, because I would have been afraid of being caught before I could get away.

  She opened her eyes and looked around the clearing. The only quick, silent way to disappear from the camp was to walk behind the large bush on the other side of the campfire and then run into the forest before anyone noticed you were missing. Not only would the bush protect you from prying eyes, it also stood in front of a small rabbit trail, one of the dozens that led down to the water. Arang must have taken that trail!

  She hurried over to the bush and looked behind it and was rewarded with the sight of a small muddy footprint. "Stavan! Zastra! Rhom! Shema! Come here!" she cried. "I've found Arang's tracks!" but no one answered. She took her knife from her belt, hacked off another dead stick to use as a torch, lit it, and hurried down the trail looking for more tracks, and soon she found them: not just one, but dozens. There were three kinds: Arang's small bare foot, a larger imprint of a sandal, and a boot. Zastra and Stavan were already on his trail! With a whoop of joy, she ran on, expecting to see Arang at any moment, perched on Stavan's shoulders, looking sheepish and apologetic.