by Jo Clayton
The doewoman made the waters rise. Korimenei lay down in them, her body pointed in the direction of the flow. The water took her. Her body began to undulate like the serpent woman, back and forth in sweeping s-curves. She went that way for a long time. She didn’t know how long.
The singing began again, louder. The drum was louder also, the flute more piercing. A man lifted her, carried her. His head was the head of the Gold Hart. His antlers spread like a great tree of heavy rough-beaten gold. His eyes were hot and piercing, they were gold, molten gold. Force came out of him like heat from a fire. It went into her. He laid her on the water; he stood at her feet, holding onto them. He made her sit up. She discovered that she was under water and she gasped for breath. She started struggling. “Be still,” he said to her. “ I am making you drink this water. Drink it. Drink.”
After she drank, he carried her out of the river and set her on her feet. Water ran out of her, pouring from her eyes, her mouth, from every orifice in her body. The doewoman was there, waiting, a small male fawn pressed up against her. The Hart strode over the grass to the Hind; he put out his hand. She rested her hand on it. They danced, a slow stately pavanne, circling each other, parting and coming together, face to face, then back to back. The dance went on and on. Korimenei should have been cold, but she was not. A Whole Moon larger than the moon she knew swam high overhead, full and white with traces of blue like a great round of pale cheese. The trees around them were bone white and still as stone, though they were not dead; Korimenei felt a powerful life in them. The grass was thick and short and black as the fur on a silver fox.
The dance changed, grew wilder. The Hart came to her, took her hand, pulled her into the dance. The three of them circled, parted, came together, face to face, then back to back.
Korimenei had no idea how long the dance lasted, she suffered no fatigue, she flowed with the pattern and felt only a cool pleasure.
The Hart and the Hind and the Fawn drew back before her. They sank onto four legs and trotted away, waded across the stream and vanished under the trees on the far side. The river was gone, or perhaps it had merely shrunk to what it had been before the white doe came. She was standing on the red dirt of the meadow; she was dressed again in trousers, pullover and coat. She went back to the blanket, settled herself on it, pulled the laprobe about her shoulders. She touched her swelling body, but the fear was gone. Something was going to come out of this, but she knew the dance now and nothing could hurt her unless she let it. Behind her the eastern sky flushed palely pink.
The second day and the second night were done.
5
Korimenei was no longer hungry. She was exhausted, her head swam whenever she moved it. She wanted no more visions, no more harrowing of her flesh and spirit. She refused every flicker of thought, pushed out of her mind’s eye everything but what her body’s eyes saw and she restricted that to the blanket pattern centered between her knees. Her body continued to swell. She ignored that. Her bladder ached. She ignored that as long as she could, went to her latrine bush when she had to. She snatched a handful of needles as she went back to the blanket, rolling them between her palms, crushing them to release the clean acrid pine scent. She threw the wad away as she reached the rim of the meadow, wiped her hands on her sides. She sank onto the blanket and went back to contemplating the patterns on it.
The day lumbered along. Nothing happened.
She refused to think about anything, especially about events and images of the past two nights, but she could feel, down deep inside her, those experiences sorting themselves out, dropping into their proper pattern. The thing growing in her settled into a similar consolidation of its forces; it lay still and serene within her. It was alive, she had no doubt of that; it glowed like an iron stove in midwinter, not with heat, but with a cool power beyond any the doewoman or the deerrnan could show. It was like the great Owl come to nest inside her.
Nothing happened. She waited in a state somewhere between sleep and waking for the day to be over.
The sun crept down the western sky. She saw gold firedragons undulating around it, they were so beautiful she wept awhile; quietly, effortlessly she wept and smiled.
Geidranay came strolling along the mountaintops; he stopped when he was between her and the vanishing sun, lifted a hand in greeting and gave her a great glowing smile. He wandered on, vanishing into the clouds blowing up from the west.
Korimenei sighed and rubbed the back of her hand across her eyes. After the sun was completely down and the sky darkened to a velvet blue-black, she walked shakily to the stream and splashed water onto her face. She scooped up more water and drank from her hand. She straightened and stood rubbing her back. One last night, then this thing was over What good it was, she had no idea. She smoothed her hands over her swollen front, grimaced, then walked upslope to her blanket.
The Wounded Moon went down, the clouds thickened overhead; the night grew darker and darker. Korimenei wasn’t trusting her senses much, but sometime late, she thought it was around midnight, she had her first contraction.
Cool hands closed on her shoulders, eased her flat. Isayana Birthmistress bent over her, humming a song that flowed over her like water, calming her; she floated on a bed of air that the god rocked like a cradle. She retreated to a distant place, looking down on the body she’d left behind. The contractions came closer together. Isayana touched the body and left it bare where her fingers wandered. Korimenei snickered soundlessly, gods were great valets, no bother with buttons or ties.
After an hour, Isayana lifted Korimenei’s laboring body onto its feet and held it in a squat. A thing emerged, slick with blood and mucus. It dropped to the blanket, crouched a moment between Korimenei’s knees, then it tried to scuttle away. Isayana laughed and let Korimenei care for herself as she scooped it up, cradled it in gentle hands. “Oh, oh, oh,” she crooned. She held the small creature against her generous bosom with one hand, stroked it with the other, cleaning it. It was a tiny gray-furred beast with huge eyes, black hands and feet, like a combination of ferret and marmoset.
Korimenei lay back on the blanket, watching, not knowing how to feel about what had happened to her. Her insides churned. She had birthed the creature, what did that mean? What was it? What had she done? NO! what had been done to her?
*This is a mahsar.* Isayana’s voice was deep and caressing, she spoke in sounds like a warm wind makes when it threads through a blowhole, sounds that turned into meaning inside Korimenei’s head. *Your womb received and nurtured her, child, but she is no flesh of yours. Quiet your fears, child, untrouble your souls. Your body was prepared to receive her…* Isayana raised a delicate brow; her large brown-gold eyes glimmered with amusement, *and a pleasant preparing it was it, not so? Don’t speak, child, your blush answers me. Your body was made ready to receive her and she was drawn into you from the place where she and her kind dwell. She was drawn little by little into you until she was wholly here. She is tied to you,. Kori Heart-in-Waiting; were you a witch, she would be your familiar; as you are more, so she is more. She has many talents and more uses, they are yours to discover. She will stay with you until your first true-daughter is born, then go to your child to protect and serve her. Still cuddling the creature against her breasts, Isayana bent over Korimenei and stroked her clothing into existence as the Old Man Made Young had done, as the doewoman and the deerman had done. She tucked the mahsar into the curve of Korimenei’s left arm, touched Kori’s temple with gentle approving fingers and was gone, melting like mist into the night air.
Slowly, dreamily Korimenei sat up, bringing the mahsar around into her lap. She sat drawing her hand over her not-daughter’s small round head, down her springy spine and along her whippy tail. Over and over she drew her hand down, taking pleasure in the exquisite softness and silkiness of the mahsar’s short gray fur and in the warmth of the tiny body where it cuddled against her. “Mahsar, mahsar, mahsar…
She chanted the species name in a mute monotone, making a kind o
f mantra of the word. “Mahsar, mahsar, mahsar..”
She stilled her hands and sat lost in a deep oneness with air and earth. Time passed. The clouds thickened. Rain came, no more than a fine mist that drifted on the intermittent wind and condensed in bead-sized droplets on every surface.
When she was damp and cold enough, she surfaced and pulled the laprobe around her head and shoulders. She tucked it around the mahsar too, smiled dreamily as she felt the little creature nestle cosily in its folds and vibrate with a sawtooth purr. “Ailiki,” she said suddenly. “That’s your name, daughter-not. Yes, Ai… li… ki… Ailiki. Yes. She knew most surely, with a shock that broke her free from her drift that she’d found the first NAME in all the NAMES she’d know the rest of her life, the first great WORD in all the WORDS she’d know. She drew her forefinger over the curve on Ailiki’s head, along her shoulder and down her foreleg to her three-fingered black hand. Ailiki edged her hand around and closed it on Korimenei’s finger. Kori laughed. “Words,” she said aloud. “Do you know, I think I’m going to be a sorceror. Maybe even a prime.” She laughed again, cut off the sound when it turned strange on her.
She pushed the damp hair off her face. Her hand felt hot. “You’re a little furnace, Aili my Liki. Sheeh!”
Later she threw off the laprobe and lifted her face to the unseen clouds. The mist droplets landed on it and puffed into steam. Heat was a river pouring irresistibly into her, coming from the heartroots of the earth and flowing into her. She sat unperturbed and bled it out again, until the air around her was white as daylight with the power of it and she the suncenter, a glass maid filled with fire.
The heat came harder, the river widened into a flood. She bled it off still, but the air burned her now, the radiance reached for the trees and she was suddenly afraid they would catch fire and burn like she was burning. She tried to control the flow, to pinch it down into a thread she could handle, but the attempt to control was enough in itself to send the river flaring hotter. She whimpered, allowing herself that small outlet for the uneasiness building in her, while she concentrated on channeling and, more important, understanding. She saw realization of her potential as a key. What she allowed now would determine the extent of her access to that potential. At worst she would burn to ash… no no, at worst she’d end a mediocrity, death was better than that. At best she had that chance of rivaling Settsimaksimin. Of wresting from him all he was and all he knew. She wanted that. She needed it.
She threw her strength against the flood. She could smell singed hair, the blanket under her was burning. Not that way, no no… all she’d been taught was control, all the Shahntien knew was control. But Shahntien Shere was limited, magistra not sorceror, immensely learned and knotted into that learning. Korimenei drew back as much as she could without giving her body to fire and ashing; she cooled, the heat flowed around her as the river had flowed when the White Hind took her to the island. She’d gone into the river then, she’d given herself to the current, let it take her where it must. Was that the answer? No, not the whole answer.
The Gold Hart held her underwater, forced her to drink, to make the water most intimately a part of her. She gasped and pulled a shield like glass about her. She could endure this, she saw that as soon as the glass closed around her. She could endure and be what Shahntien Shere was, not so bad an outcome. Not really mediocrity. But not majesty either. She stared at the white-gold flames coursing about her, rising in shimmering stabbing tongues to touch the clouds overhead. She felt rather than heard Ailiki hissing with a terror answering her own. “Ahhh..” she said aloud. “Tushzi,” she cried in a voice to match her desires, using an ancient word from the Rukka Nagh ancestors buried deep in her cells, a word that meant fire. “TUSHZI VAGYA. I AM FIRE,” she cried. It was her second WORD. She cast away the shield, she threw Ailiki into a spiraling loop above her head and stretched her arms wide, surrendering body and souls to the fire.
For a moment she was without thought, without perception, she was light itself, heat itself. She flowed with the stream wherever it would take her and it took her on a circle of the layered realities, bursting into one and out between one blink and the next. She was traveling with such speed she took with her only a blurred fragment of each, putting it into memory for the time when she would return though she was not thinking of returning now, she was not thinking at all, she simply WAS. Galaxies turned beneath her, she crossed a universe in the blink of an eye, dived into another and crossed that…
The stream slowed, cooled; she began to draw back into herself, to seek home. A thing called her without words, a fireheart pulsed, drew her to it. She fell like the mist-rain, as slowly and insubstantially and blown about by the sullen wind. She fell into the meadowpit again and landed as she had before so lightly not a blade of grass stirred. Ailiki leaped into her arms and murmured a wordless welcome. She laughed. Her hands were translucent, filled with a light as cool and pale as moonglow. She felt immensely powerful, as if she could walk the mountaintops beside Geidranay and never miss a step. Yet there was more gentleness and love in her than she’d felt before, an outreach to all there was around her, a welcoming in her for all that was, name it good, name it evil, she welcomed all and gave it respect and dignity. She ran her hands over her hair and laughed again. The ends were singed into ashy kinks, as if someone had passed a torch too close to her. She looked around. The ground was charred where her dreampattern blanket had burned. Leave it as you found it, the Old Man said. Yes. Let me think.
Before she was ready, fire leaped to her hand, startling her. She wasn’t afraid now. Without knowing how she knew what she had to do, she shaped the fire and threw it from hand to hand, played with it like a juggler with his props; she squeezed it into a ball, spun it on a finger until it spread like flatcake dough into a wide disc. She dropped the disc on the burnt grass. It soaked into the earth and left behind it crisp new grass, green and springing, smelling like spring. She laughed again and stretched out beside the new patch, weary but immensely content. After a while she slept.
The third day and the third night were done.
6
She woke in cool green morning light.
The Old Man was standing beside her. When she sat up, he held out a battered pewter bowl filled with potato and onion soup. The smell was at first nauseating, then with a shocking jolt, was everything good; she took the bowl and forced herself to eat slowly though she was ravenous. A sip at a time, a chunk of potato or onion, slow and slow, the soup went down. The warmth of it filled her, the earthsoul in it wiped away the haze that blurred her mind. The Old Man sat on the new grass at her left side, watching her, smiling. She snatched quick glances at him, embarrassed at first, but there was nothing of the red-gold lover visible in him so, her uneasiness faded. When the bowl was empty, she sat holding it and smiling at him.
Tungjii came strolling from under the trees. Heesh snapped hisser fingers and Ailiki lolloped over to himmer, her odd high-rumped gait comical but efficient. She climbed himmer like a tree and sat on hisser shoulder, preening herself and murmuring in hisser ear. Male and female, clown and seer, bestower and requirer, the old god stood at Korimenei’s right side and smiled down at her. Heesh pointed at the bowl, snapped hisser fingers again.
Korimenei scrambled to her feet. Bowing, she offered the bowl.
Heesh cupped it in hands of surprising beauty, long-fingered shapely hands that looked as if they belonged with another body. Eyes twinkling, heesh whistled a snatch of song cur-
rently popular in Silifi. A warm yellow glowsphere formed momentarily about hisser hands, dissolved into the pewter. The bowl was changed. It was a deep-bellied bubbleglass filled with a thick golden fluid.
Korimenei took the glass and obeyed the flapping of heesh’s hand; she sank down, sat cross-legged and sipped at the liquid. It was a mixture of fruit juices, sweet and tart, rich and cold; even the Old Man’s soup was not so wonderful. Tungjii plumped down beside her, nodded across her at the Old Man, then sat beaming at
her while she continued her sipping. There was no urgency in their waiting, so she took her time finishing the juice. They were enjoying her enjoyment and she was content to share it with them.
Tungjii took the glass when she held it out to himmer, touched it back to pewter, tossed it into her lap.
Amused by the absurd routine, she fished up the bowl, bowed deeply over it and passed it to the Old Man.
His dead-leaf eyes shone at her. He bowed in answer, then took the bowl in both hands, blew into it and held it out. When she took it, he folded both his hands over hers, his touch was warm and releasing. He got to his feet and wandered off, vanishing under the trees.
Korimenei watched him leave, a touch annoyed because he hadn’t bothered to speak to her, to say something cryptic and satisfying as rumor said he did at other times for other questers. Potato soup, she said to herself, suffering gods, potato soup? She frowned at the bowl and wondered what that meant. She turned to Tungjii to ask himmer to explain, but the plump little god had taken hisser self off somewhere. Nothing from himmer either. Potato soup and fruit juice. The school cook could do as much. She laughed aloud. Well, maybe not quite as much, gods and demiurges and tutelary sprites seemed to be better cooks than retired witches. She stretched, yawned. Three days and three nights. I’d say I’ve done my time. She was changed, she knew that, but she didn’t want to think about it now. She wanted the security of the person she’d known for twenty-four years, not this new thing, this battered creature tampered with by crazy gods and whatever took a notion to have a go at her.
