The Shore of Women

by Pamela Sargent

  Nallei paused for a moment. I sipped my wine, then said, “That band will die out. If they can’t go to a shrine to be called, they’ll have no more boys, and then…”

  “I knew that. It’s not my concern. They think they’ll be honored in the next world. If they die out and can’t betray me, so much the better.” She looked sharply at me. “You show more concern for them than you should.”

  I denied this as forcefully as possible. I saw then how much she still despised men, even after being among them for so long.

  She poured more berry wine and went on with her tale. After a long journey and after many hardships, which she did not detail, she and her companions finally reached the land by the lake. One of the men had met his death at the hands of one of the others some days earlier; Nallei did not tell me why, but I guessed that by that time they might have come to some disagreement over her. Perhaps one had longed for her as Arvil had longed for me.

  The two surviving men had been weakened by the trip; weak as they were, they still gave Nallei the greatest share of the little food they were able to find. As they pressed on, one of these men at last lay down on the frosty ground to die and asked for Nallei’s prayers. Not long after, when Nallei’s own despair made her almost ready to give up, she and the surviving man reached Yerlan’s camp. The journey had robbed that man of the last of his strength, and he died three days later.

  “You see, it worked out well for me,” Nallei said. “No one was left alive who could reveal that I had come here.” Her voice held contempt, and her coldness disturbed me. I had seen the vileness and ugliness of men but had observed other qualities as well. Even my short time with Arvil’s old band had given me a bit of sympathy for them, much as some of their ways repelled me. Nallei had lived with a band for a season and three of its members had died bringing her to a safer place. She had lived among men for years and yet seemed to have no compassion for any of them. I repressed these thoughts. I had not lived outside for as long as she had; I could not judge her. Whatever she felt, she was still one of my kind.

  A feast had been held, and she had dwelled in the Prayergiver’s house until a hut was built for her on the island. At Nallei’s command, the band also began to bar their camp to others and were told that they no longer had to visit the Lady’s shrines.

  Nallei soon learned enough about the band to realize that the other men of the lake would have to be dealt with, and so this band was prepared when the Headmen of those other tribes came to their wall. Knowing that Prayergivers would never leave their camps again and so could not betray her, she ordered the band to summon those old men. The Prayergivers were taken to the island, and there Nallei revealed herself while the Prayergivers swore that they would not speak of what they had seen and would say only that they beheld a holy vision.

  Even then, Nallei feared that she might not be safe, that some word of her existence would find its way back to the cities. But as the years passed, her worries faded. Her band, which now sought its boys from neighboring bands, would continue to serve her.

  “One thing keeps me alive,” she said, “knowing that I live in spite of what my city condemned me to.” She sounded like my mother then.

  She had told me her story, but some of my questions were still unanswered. How had she lived among men for so long without provoking their lust, as Arvil told me I had with his former band? I thought of how Yerlan had handled me. I could not have misread his expression, and Nallei’s full breasts and lovely face should have attracted him even more. How did she control him? What was her life like here from day to day, and how did she pass the time? How much had she revealed to the men, and how much had she kept hidden? There was no point in asking this; I would find out soon enough.

  I finished another cup of wine; the beverage was making me giddy. “I had to take off my clothes in front of the Prayergiver who brought me here,” I said. “I had to take them off here, too.” A mirthless giggle escaped me. “Who would have thought taking your clothes off could produce such reactions?”

  She chuckled. “You should have seen the Prayergivers when they beheld me in this hut.” She threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, holiness! Oh, Sacred One! Oh, how blessed are we!”

  She slapped the ground. I laughed, and then tears came, and then I was huddling next to her, sobbing against her chest.

  “Birana,” she murmured. “It’s over, I’ll make sure that you never go through that again.” She dried my face gently with her sleeve. “I’d like to hear your story, but we both need to rest now.”

  She led me to the mat. I lay down on her furs and she stretched out beside me. For a moment, I thought she might want some love from me, since she had been without it for so long, but instead she held me as a mother might hold a small child.

  In the morning, while Nallei still slept, I gathered up the cups and jar we had drunk from the night before, intending to wash them by the lake. I lifted the hide hanging in the doorway and stepped outside.

  A man was climbing the trail toward me. “Holy One!” he called out as he bowed. “Is there anything You wish of me?”

  I shook my head. “I require nothing. I am only going to wash these.”

  He bowed again, shook back his dark hair, and held out his hands. “I shall do that for You, Holy One.” I let him have the cups and jar, then began to explore my new home alone.

  The island was in a bay; north of the bay, the lake still stretched on, with no shore visible. I came to a cove at the island’s northern end; I might be able to swim here because the cove was hidden from the camp. I continued to walk, climbing over the rocks and moving through the reeds near the water’s edge, until I had nearly circled the island.

  A boat lay on the shore facing the camp. In the distance, men were already gathering in the clearing. Below, near the boat, a man sat on a flat rock, dangling his legs over the water. A twig cracked under my feet; he jumped up.

  “Holy One,” he said as he bowed. “Is there anything You wish?”

  “No.”

  He stared at me. He had a boy’s face and a mass of short but curly red hair. “I would be happy to lead You around this island.”

  “I’ve seen most of it already. It isn’t that large.”

  “I shall fetch You food and prepare it if You wish. I shall light Your fire for You. I shall…”

  “Stay where you are,” I said, suddenly irritated.

  He turned away, crestfallen. I walked back up to the hut and went inside.

  Nallei was awake but seemed groggy from the wine. She sat up slowly and pushed a fur aside. “The fire’s out,” she said. “Call one of the men to light it and ask him to make us some tea.”

  “I’ll light it myself.” I went outside, gathered some wood, then went back inside. As I knelt, I took out my flints.

  “Where did you get those?” Nallei asked.

  “From a dead man.”

  “Sounds as though you have a story to tell, girl.”

  “I do.” I held tinder in my hands and blew gently on the spark until it became a flame, then lighted the wood. While the fire burned, Nallei fetched a waterskin, a pouch of herbs, and two more cups. Tulan’s band had made tea for me during their feast, and I had watched them. I waited until the stones around the fire were hot, covered my fingers with part of my leather sleeve, plucked out two small stones, and put them in the cups to warm the water. I sprinkled herbs into the cups, waited for them to steep, then handed one cup to Nallei.

  She sipped. In the light of the fire, with more light entering the hut through the opening in the roof, Nallei seemed older than she had looked the night before. Two tiny creases were on either side of her wide, full mouth, and her thick black lashes did not hide the lines around her large hazel eyes. Strands of silver were in her long, black hair, and the skin of her neck and chin sagged just a little. She was beautiful still but beginning to age. I gripped my cup. She should not have been aging so soon; she should have had years of youth still. But her youth would pass quickly he
re with nothing to renew it. I would begin to age.

  “You needn’t do this sort of work yourself,” she said. “The men will serve you.”

  “I don’t want them to serve me. I must have something to do.”

  “You shouldn’t be too reckless, Birana. Serving us is an honor for them, and it underlines our place. You wouldn’t want them to lose respect for you.”

  “I don’t see how they can lose their respect if they see that we know some of their arts.” I sat back on my heels. “You must have mastered some of them after all this time.”

  She shook her head. “I haven’t had to do much. Oh, I know about their ways, but I hardly have to hunt or fish or gather plants. They’re happy to do all of that.”

  I gazed at her, annoyed; I had been hoping to pick up a few skills from her. “You’ll have to tell me everything you know of them,” I said at last.

  “I shall, but I thought I would hear your story this morning.”

  Of course she would want to hear it; she had probably heard no new tales for some time. I finished my tea. As I spoke, I sensed that it might not be wise to let her know how much I had told Arvil. From the way the men treated Nallei, I guessed that she had told them little about us. She might see Arvil as a danger if she knew what I had told him; she might turn others in the band against him or find a way to be rid of him. I told her of what had happened to us, but nothing of what had passed between Arvil and me, and he became in my story only a young man who worshipped me, and who had sworn to bring me to a safe place. I said little about Arvil’s old band and nothing at all about how he had been commanded to kill me.

  I had wanted to be completely open with Nallei. It hurt me to feel that I should conceal a few events from her, that it was necessary to shade the truth. It hurt more to relive my mother’s death.

  “That’s quite a story,” Nallei said when I had finished. “It’s remarkable that you survived at all.”

  “Without Arvil, I couldn’t have,” I replied. “You can see why I tried to learn as much from him as I could. If he hadn’t shown me how to use a sling…” I waved one hand.

  “I’m sorry about your mother. I wish she could have been here with both of us.” She lowered her eyelids. “But at least she didn’t have to endure certain kinds of suffering.”

  I wiped at my eyes. “She was so sure there was a refuge for us. It was only that hope that kept her alive even for a few days.”

  “You have a refuge here, but never forget that our lives hang by a thread. I still worry that we might be betrayed somehow.”

  I shivered. “There was another sort of refuge my mother sought. She imagined a place of several women, perhaps a community, not just one or two survivors.”

  “All I’ve heard tells me there is no such place.”

  “There are abandoned lands east of the lake. Maybe there…”

  She shook her head. “There’s no refuge there.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I heard it from the men. A long time ago, apparently when men first came to this lake and settled here, a band that had gone to those eastern lands attacked one of the camps. They killed most of the men and carried off the youngest of the boys. They didn’t go to shrines, you see, so the only way they could add to their numbers was by capturing young boys and raising them. The lake bands made a truce after that, and then went east and killed every man of that band they could find. No one has ever attacked from the east again, but it’s said the easternmost band along the lake still keeps watch over the east.”

  I was silent.

  “No one can live there, Birana. There are no shrines, so the men can’t be called. Any woman who found her way there wouldn’t know how to live alone. You would find no one there.” She patted my hand. “Don’t look so solemn, child. Life here won’t be so bad for you. We’ll be as safe as we can be anywhere.”

  I spent the following days in the simple tasks of preparing the food the men brought to us, keeping the hut clean, and listening to Nallei tell me about the customs of this band, which except for her presence among them and the changes she had brought, seemed much like those of Tulan’s old band.

  Yerlan, the Headman, led the men. He consulted with Nallei from time to time, but she had learned to leave most of the decisions to him except for those matters that concerned her directly. She had seen that the band would need to bring in new members occasionally and had ordered that boys be fetched from the other lake bands. She could not prevent the deaths of older or weaker band members; the men had noted that, but believed that their souls, having seen her in this world, would be blessed in the next.

  Every month if weather permitted, during the first night of the full moon, Nallei was taken across to the camp to preside over a ceremony and to hear the Prayergiver’s prayers in his hut. Only twice, before my arrival, had strangers come to this camp from other regions. The first group of three men had passed through a truthsaying and joined Yerlan’s men, and only then had Nallei been brought to the camp for them to see. Two other men had appeared there a few years later, but she had never seen them. She later found out that they had raised doubts about their virtue and courage during their truthsaying and had been killed. She had told the band to bring no strangers into the camp after that, but to speak to them only beyond the wall.

  She told me much about the band, and yet most of her talk was of what the men had told her or had revealed during their various feasts and festivals. Except for her ceremonial function, Nallei was not really part of the band’s life but lived apart. In her early years, to stave off boredom, she had often asked the men to take her to the camp, where she would watch as the gardeners went about their tasks, the boys tested themselves in contests, and the hunters returned with their game. Sometimes the men took her out on the water in their boats, though they never ventured far from the bay. The novelty of these pursuits wore off, and after a while Nallei kept to her island. She now eased her boredom with jars and skins of the wines the men made from berries and other fruits and plants, making sure that the men gave her an ample supply.

  I learned to do each task I set myself with deliberation, making the work last as long as possible so that empty hours did not stretch ahead of me. I drew out Nallei in conversation; our talks could continue for some time with little being said. I explored every part of the island on foot until I seemed to know the place of every rock and shrub, but the island was small, and soon I was arranging large stones along the sides of the trail simply to have something to do.

  At first, the men tried to help me with the stones until I made it clear I did not want their aid. Two men, and sometimes three, were always on the island. They would remain for two or three days, and then another boat arrived to replace them with two or three others. Each time a boat came, I went down to the water’s edge, hoping that Arvil might be among the men, and was surprised at the depth of my disappointment when he was not. I supposed that guarding us was an honor, and that such a privilege might not be given to a newcomer, even if he was considered my messenger. I was afraid to ask for Arvil, not knowing if others might resent that; I also wondered how Nallei might react to him. I had watched one evening as the men assembled in their clearing, had caught a glimpse of Arvil’s blond hair as he was led before Yerlan; the two guarding me had told me that Arvil was making his pledge. He was one of the band now; he would be safe.

  In all Nallei’s talk about the infrequent highlights of her restricted life, I began to feel that she might be concealing as much from me as I was from her. Occasionally, when she spoke of some ceremony, she would break off and discuss something else, instead of elaborating as she usually did. Once in a while, I wondered what she might be hiding.

  A morning came, after I had been on the island for nearly two weeks, when I thought of the endless day ahead and could hardly bring myself to stir from the mat. Summer weather had come; we had put away the furs. I had to do something different that day, something more than marking time.

  I roused
Nallei, made us breakfast, and then announced that we were going to take a walk together. She grumbled as I led her outside. “It’s too hot to walk.”

  “You need the exercise. You get none at all. We’ll walk down to the water, and then we’ll swim. I’m tired of washing in the hut.”

  She muttered complaining words under her breath. “Don’t you know how to swim?” I asked.

  “I can swim. I haven’t for years. We could catch a chill, you know. One has to be careful here.”

  “All the more reason to build up your strength.”

  We walked down the slope until we came to the northern cove. One of the men was walking along the shore; he hurried over to us. “Holy Ones,” he called out, “is there anything You wish?”

  I shook my head. “We wish to be alone here. Go back to your boat until I call you.”

  When he had hastened away, I took off my clothes quickly. “Come on, Nallei. You’ll feel better after a swim.”

  “You’re my only friend, and you insist on tormenting me.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  She sighed as she took off her garments. Her waist was still small, but her large breasts had begun to sag, and her long, slender legs were growing flabby. We entered the water together. The lake seemed cold at first, but the sun was already warming the shallower water in the cove. She splashed about awkwardly but soon her strokes grew more graceful as she paddled around me. I swam back and forth, then out to deeper water and back until I was panting.

  Our two guards suddenly appeared on the hill above us. “Lady, Lady!” one cried as they descended. “You must be careful!”

  “Do you think that We cannot move safely on water?” I shouted. “Go back to your boat and don’t disobey Me again.” I waited, treading water, until I was certain they were gone, then left the water to stretch out on one of the flat rocks.

  Nallei lay on a rock below me. “Those men had better keep away,” she murmured. “When I used to come here, the bolder ones would sometimes try to sneak up to watch.”