The Shore of Women

by Pamela Sargent

  “I must be careful. I don’t want the others to think I like you more, especially after that fight.”

  “Do You?”

  “No.” She reined in Flame. “Get off, you can walk. I’ll ride.”

  I slid off and walked at her side. She was silent until Flame stopped to graze on a few green shoots. “I thought I would never be able to let one of you touch Me without getting sick. I suppose I’m getting used to you.”

  “Surely the Lady can prevent an aspect’s illness.”

  She tossed her head and her hood fell away. She had tied her brown hair back with a leather thong, but a few strands curled around her face. “You’re smarter than the others, Arvil. Wanderer and Wise Soul probably know more, and Shadow’s no fool, but I think you’re quicker. Maybe you’re too clever.”

  “Not too clever, just clever enough.”

  “What did you want to tell Me?”

  “That I know you are not what you seem.”

  “Be careful, Arvil.”

  I stepped back. “Let there be truth between us. I do not say this in front of the men, but to you alone.”

  “You didn’t say it in front of them because they would have torn you apart for speaking that way to me.”

  “Can you be so certain of that?”

  She lashed me in the face with the reins. I threw up an arm. “Don’t get Me angry.”

  “My only wish is to serve the Lady.”

  She seemed bewildered as she gazed down at me, as if she were wondering what I knew. “I thought…” she began. “I thought you might be someone I could talk to more freely.”

  She did not sound like an enemy, like one who sought to ensnare me in evil. I narrowed my eyes. I had my weapons, and our camp was safely distant, yet I hesitated.

  Ulred had seen me ride off with Birana. The others had seen me follow her down the hill. If I returned without her, I would have to explain that. I practiced a few stories silently. Another band attacked us. I rejected that, for there would be no signs of such a band, and I would have to explain how I had escaped. The others might not forgive me for my carelessness.

  She was thrown by the horse. But she rode too well, and Flame was gentle. The men would be suspicious if I did not come back with her body.

  She was called by the Lady and ascended with Her to the heavens. That was more promising, but I wondered if I could tell such a story convincingly. I thought of what Shadow had said to me and did not think he would believe such a tale.

  “What are you thinking about?” Birana asked when we stopped again.

  “Nothing.”

  “Wanderer and Shadow told me about you. You were with a settlement that was destroyed. I imagine those men must have thought they were wiser than they were. You’d better remember that.”

  “I know only what I need to know.”

  “And what is that?”

  I readied my spear. I would bring this into the open and see what weapons she had; I was now sure that she had none. “If you will stand before me,” I said, “I shall tell you what I know.” She did not move. “Are you so frightened of me that you cannot do that?”

  I was ready to pull her from the horse before she could ride away. Instead, she dismounted. “I don’t fear you. What can you know?”

  “That you are not of the Lady,” I answered. “That you are not a true aspect and not part of the Unity.”

  “You learned something in the city!”

  I forced myself to look directly into her eyes and saw her fear. “Do you think I can’t reason?”

  “You betrayed me! I should have known you would! You weren’t strong enough, you… I should have…” Her throat moved as she swallowed. “I can ride back and tell the others to kill you.”

  “They may not listen. They begin to question the meaning of your presence among us. Shadow spoke to me of that today. Can you be certain that they won’t listen to what I have to say?”

  “Why are you telling me this? Do you think you can win some power over me?” Her face was pale; her hand trembled as she held onto Flame’s reins. “I don’t want to be here. I shouldn’t be here—I should be dead. I don’t know how long I can bear it. Sometimes I wish I would never wake up, and other times, I wish I would, so I could find out it’s all a dream.”

  I shivered. She was speaking as though she knew what the Lady had ordained. She was telling me she knew my purpose. She wanted to die, she had accepted that. I gripped my spear.

  She backed away, then mounted Flame. I did not move, could not move to stop her. She kicked the horse with her heels and galloped south. I dropped my spear and readied my bow, but could not shoot. Birana disappeared below a rise in the land.

  I picked up my spear and ran after her. Lady, I prayed, do not make me do this. Tell me it is only a test, and that Birana cannot die. I suddenly knew that to see Birana lying dead would cause a pain that might burst my heart, and then it came to me that this feeling was one of Birana’s weapons. She had unmanned me.

  I tracked her to the stream. She had tied Flame to a sapling and was sitting on the bank. She might have ridden far, and yet she sat there, waiting.

  I went to her side. “I can’t run,” she said. “Where would I go?” She turned toward me. Her eyes were rimmed with red, and tears streaked her face. The sight of those tears made me tremble—made me despise myself for causing them.

  At that moment, I understood at last that she was one like me. I could have slain her then, but did not, for I was gazing into another imprisoned soul reaching to me for help. If the Lady had heard the thoughts racing through my mind at that time, She would have destroyed me, yet I stood there and lived.

  “Arvil,” Birana said, “tell me what you think I am.”

  “The Lady broke your spell,” I said. “Your name was torn from my lips. I was told that you are an evil one sent to deceive us, to lure men from the right way.”

  “Is that what you believe?”

  I would speak the unholy thoughts inside me. “I think that if the Lady is all-powerful, She wouldn’t suffer you to come among us for such a reason, for there is wickedness enough in the world to test us and many ways for us to fall into evil. When I was in Her realm, I had a vision of a room with strange objects where my guardian lay bound in a silver web. It wasn’t a place where souls reside, but another place, and it showed me that the Lady is not what She seems. I see you among us and although you wear Her form, your body has the weaknesses of ours. Birana, I was sent out here to kill you.”

  Her eyes widened; she covered her throat with one hand. “And will you?”

  “How can I kill you? You are one like me; I see it now. You live in our world, and something in you calls to me.” I looked toward the sky. “What has the Lady done to us? Is it She who has cast a wicked spell on the world? Has She led us to falseness and made us believe it is truth?”

  I was not struck down. The Lady did not appear with Her weapons of fire to destroy me. The murderous impulse She had planted inside me was gone, but speaking those dread words tore at my soul. The world I knew had vanished. There was nothing left to guide me.

  I fell at Birana’s side and wept. The cries of a beast came from my throat. I wept for my lost faith and my wretchedness, then felt a hand on my brow.

  “Arvil,” she said, “you glimpse the truth.”

  I sat up. “The Lady may not be what She seems,” Birana went on, “but the Lady is powerful nonetheless. She can still destroy.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “She’ll want to destroy me, to be certain I’m dead. I wish I didn’t want to live so much. Even out here, I want to live.”

  “You aren’t safe here,” I said. I was thinking of what I had witnessed on the plateau and what the Lady might send here against us, but I was also thinking of what Shadow had told me. “Others in the band are coming to question your nature. Shadow believes that you came among us to give us the blessings the Lady sends those who wear Her crown in shrines.”

  Birana started at that and drew away f
rom me. “What can I do?” she whispered. “I might escape you. I might ride away on Flame and never set eyes on you again, but how will I live out here? Another band might kill me. Even if they don’t, they’ll come to see what I am, as your band is beginning to see. If the city knows I live…” She gazed out over the stream. “It might be better for you if you killed me now and found a story your band could believe.”

  “I cannot do it. You are all I have now. I have nothing to guide me and have lost what I took to be the truth. If you die, I may never come to know what the truth of the world is. I cannot kill you, Birana.”

  “I don’t think you can prevent my death.”

  “Then I’ll do what I can for you and learn what I can before I die also. Your soul has called to me, and I…”

  The horse lifted its head and whinnied, then pawed at the ground. I heard a rustling on the slope behind us and was on my feet in an instant, raging at myself for my lack of caution as I whirled to face what was there.

  Tal walked toward us. “You grow careless, Arvil,” he said in our tongue. “I can still sneak up on you, I see.” Birana pulled her coat closer about her as I lowered my spear a little. “You will not have a better chance,” he muttered as he came near.

  “This is not the time,” I said.

  “It is.”

  He was next to Birana in one bound. He yanked her up by her hair. Her eyes were wide with terror. “Strike!” he shouted as he raised his spear.

  “Arvil!” Birana cried.

  “You must die,” Tal said in the holy speech. “The Lady has commanded it, and Arvil must strike the blow. You won’t trap me in your evil ways. Strike!”

  Tal thrust her toward me. She fell at my feet. My hand moved. My spear found Tal’s heart.

  His gray eyes looked at me not with rage, but with shock and bewilderment. He was my guardian, and I knew his spirit would haunt me during the time I had left, but I could not take back that deadly thrust. I slashed at his throat, then pulled my spear from him as he fell to the ground.

  Birana’s shoulders shook. A hoarse, rasping sound was coming from her throat. It came to me that she had led me into evil after all. Then a black sea flooded into my soul, and I knew no more.

  THE

  REFUGE

  BIRANA

  I thought he was dead.

  He lay on the ground without moving. His spear was stained with the blood of the man he had killed to save me. I could not look at him. My hands were cold; my body icy with shock.

  I had wept over my mother’s body but had no tears for this man. I had been sent outside to die; it seemed that the harder I tried to escape my fate, the more death would surround me.

  Then I glanced at Arvil and saw that he still breathed.

  I could not go back to his tribe. I might have ridden away from that place and left Arvil, but I also knew that I wouldn’t live long alone.

  I began to shake until my body was shivering violently. Flame pawed at the ground as though scenting the death around her. I was surrounded by beasts. I had forgotten that fact during my short time among men, when the light of reason flickered dimly in their eyes, and their mouths uttered familiar words in my own language.

  Arvil’s knife lay next to his hand. I could take that knife, cut my throat, and end my struggle, but my will to live was still too strong. Even then, I clung to the hope my mother had aroused in me.

  There was a refuge, she had said. Against all of the evidence, she had believed that.

  We will be spared, I thought. The Council will only frighten us and then forgive. I held to this hope until the wall closed behind us.

  I hardly saw where we walked. No one in the city had spoken for me; no one had visited me. I thought of one former friend, the gray-eyed girl who had once been close to me, but who had grown more distant as my feeling for her grew. I had waited for the time when she might notice me again, would no longer care what her friends thought of me, when she might return my love. She would forget me as completely as though I had never lived; that thought was the most tormenting of all.

  We were in a forest; the trees were so thick around us that we could not see what lay ahead. “My mistake,” Mother said suddenly, “was in not making sure that wretched Ciella was dead.”

  “You would have been found out anyway,” I replied.

  “True enough, but I would have had that satisfaction.”

  I did not want to hear more; her deed had condemned me. I had gone to her rooms that day only out of concern for her. I should have left before she and Ciella began to lash out at each other, but I had not, and Yvara had struck before I could stop her. My mother’s love for Ciella had somehow fed on the pain, the cruel remarks, and belittlement that Ciella had inflicted on her. Ciella had bent my mother to her will before striking the one blow Yvara could not stand—the announcement that Ciella was leaving her. I had waited while Ciella’s life was seeping away, and had done nothing although part of me rejoiced that Yvara had finally struck at her tormentor.

  “I’ll tell you why I was punished,” she continued. “Ciella lived, so they might have shown some mercy, but the Council fears it’s losing its grip, and Ciella was so convincing when she spoke against me. I have only one regret—that I brought you to this.”

  “It’s too late, Mother. You don’t have to pretend you feel something for me now.” Yvara had given birth to me only reluctantly; that was one of the truths Ciella had revealed to me in her insidious way. My mother had not thought of me while striking at Ciella, but then she rarely had.

  She groped at her neck and pulled out a necklace; a compass hung from the gold chain. “Where did you get that?” I asked.

  “Someone gave it to me long ago,” she answered. “It was useless in the city, of course, so I wore it only as an ornament once in a while. I happened to be wearing it when they came for us, and no one thought to take it away.” She stopped and pulled the chain over her head, then pushed back my hood. “You wear it, Birana.”

  “Why are you giving it to me?”

  “Take it and speak more softly.” She hung it around my neck and covered it with my coat. “If we’re separated, you may need it. You’re younger and stronger than I am, with more of a chance to survive.”

  “We mustn’t be separated,” I said. I was not thinking of survival, but only that I did not want to die alone. I touched the necklace, thinking of other small gifts my mother had given me, gifts that were substitutes for the feelings she lacked.

  We walked through the wood for most of the day without seeing signs of men. The forest was thick and often the sky was hidden from us, but the compass guided our steps. At last the trees grew more sparse, and we were able to look back at our wall from a hillside.

  I gazed one last time at the city that had condemned us. We had been given warm garments, some water, a little food. This, I saw now, was not an act of mercy, or a way to be certain that we died at some distance from the wall and any witnesses there who might pity us; it was part of our punishment. It would have been kinder and quicker to strip us of everything and thrust us from the wall.

  The sun was setting; the lights of the distant towers winked on. I thought of the world I had lost and wept.

  We took shelter at the bottom of a hill. The air had grown colder; the ground was blanketed with snow.

  “We can’t rest long,” Yvara murmured as we huddled together. “We’ll freeze to death if we do.” She swallowed a handful of snow. “Eat only a little food—it has to last as long as possible.”

  “Why?” I said. “So that we can postpone our deaths?”

  “We’re not going to die. I won’t let us die, do you hear? Other women have been expelled. Some of them must have survived.”

  “The cities would know if they had.”

  “They could be hidden. There are many places to hide: lands we haven’t mapped for ages, places our ships rarely see. There are lands to the east and west we surrendered to the Goddess, where no man can dwell. We might find a refuge t
here, where women wait to welcome other exiles.”

  “You’re not defying the city now,” I answered. “You don’t have to say such things to me.”

  “Do you think I didn’t believe it when I spoke? We’ve been fortunate so far. And you forget one thing, Birana. These men have been taught to worship us; we can use that to survive.”

  She was mad. A tribe of men spying two lone travelers would not see what we were before taking our lives. She was deluding herself with her talk of refuges and survivors. I shivered, afraid to look up at the sky, remembering that a force field no longer protected us.

  “There are places to hide,” Yvara continued, “wildernesses we haven’t mapped, shores near the oceans where women might hide. The cities have grown lazy and complacent and are no longer as vigilant as they once were. Earth could hide many things from their eyes.”

  “And what good will staying alive do?”

  “Living, when all the cities believe one is dead? It would be my triumph over them. When I’m older and ready to give up my life, I’ll return to the wall of our city and show those who condemned me that it was I who defeated them.”

  Her exile had unbalanced her; whatever shreds of rationality she had possessed were gone. Her talk of growing old only reminded me that, even if we avoided starvation, a violent death, or a thousand other perils, disease could still claim us. Unlike the men who were called, we could not enter the wall to be cleansed of infectious diseases. Our immune systems, untended, would start to weaken. Without rejuvenation, we would age more rapidly.

  I despaired, and yet a bit of hope had been planted in me. I was just beginning to nurture the seed of my own delusion—that if I could survive, my city might choose to forgive me and take me back, believing I had been punished enough.

  “Exactly how do you plan to live?” I asked.

  “We must get to a shrine. We’d have warmth there and a place to sleep.”

  “Men would come there.”

  “They can’t attack others in shrines, you know that. Keep this in mind, distasteful as it is—we’ll need the protection of men.”