“None taken,” I said. “It would pleasure me greatly to turn over the serious ailments to someone capable and confine myself to midwifery.” It would mean a considerable loss of income, but I had few wants and had already been setting aside cash money in the toes of my winter boots for some time. I had thought perhaps I could buy a house one day, a home to call my own. But the boarding house was not the worst place one could live, and if having a genuine surgeon in town meant I must give up that small dream, it was a sacrifice I would not fuss about making. I had kept vigil beside too many dying folks who could have been helped if I’d only had the proper training or medicines or tools.
Palmer took a long drink from his cup. “Miss Owens will need tending for a few days at the least. To be sure she’s out of danger. Beyond that, I don’t know.”
Victor said, “Thank you.”
“Do you think people would accept me as a doctor? After all, I arrived here as nothing more than a hired gunman.”
I said, “We’re a forgiving set of people here, Mrs. Mortimer excepted. What you do now matters more to us than what you’ve done in the past. I think there would be few objections.”
“Then I’ll ponder it.”
I hoped that saving Rosalind had somehow brought him healing as well. Surely telling me about his past had helped. I could see that his burdens had not been lifted completely, not so soon. But perhaps he would be able to stay here and not drift on again like so many others. Maybe he had made a start toward winning his own war. His next words gave me real hope that it was so.
Palmer took a deep breath. “Mr. Owens, I must also ask if you would consider granting me your permission to call on Miss Rosalind. When she’s better, I mean. If I stay. She’s a remarkable girl, and . . .” He stopped there.
Victor cleared his throat. Twice. Finally he said, “I’ll wait to give you my permission until Rosalind is better and can tell me how she feels about the idea.”
“That’s as fair as I could ask.”
I felt a little thrill of wonder at the love story that might begin unfolding right before me. I have never tried my luck at matchmaking, but I do enjoy a good story of true love conquering all obstacles, and to see such a thing in person was so exciting, I wriggled my toes with glee at the thought.
Victor drained his mug. “Would anyone like more coffee?”
I held out my cup, and when he took it from me, his fingers lingered on mine.
I quailed inwardly, startled by the way my hand welcomed his touch. “No, thank you, no more coffee,” I stammered. “It’s time I got some sleep.” I stood up so abruptly I knocked my chair backward. Only Palmer’s quick reflexes saved it from crashing to the floor and waking Rosalind. Flustered, I murmured “Good night” as I hurried off to the safety of solitude behind a closed door.
But once alone, I found my thoughts restless, and sleep eluded me for a long time.
In the morning, when I made my way out into the big room, everyone else was awake. Victor sat beside Rosalind, holding her good hand. By the table, Palmer stirred something in a bowl, his sleeves rolled up and Rosalind’s apron on, of all things. “Good morning,” I greeted all and sundry. “Is that bacon I smell?”
Palmer said, “It is.” He glanced at Victor and looked to be suppressing a knowing smile. “I’ll be right back.” He headed outside without even removing the apron.
“What an odd man.” I wondered then why both Victor and Rosalind were staring at me. Had I forgotten to pin up half my hair? I touched it nervously, but it felt the same as usual, pulled back in an obedient knot. The cabin was so quiet, I could hear the sheep bleating their morning greetings to each other.
Victor stood, an expression on his face I’d not seen before. “Emma,” he said, “this may come as a surprise to you. It did to me at first. But I would like . . . I wondered if you would . . . might you consider marrying me?”
I blinked. I fear my mouth fell open from the shock. A good dozen years after I had given up all thought of marriage, all hope for a home of my own, here stood this man, this friend, asking me to be his wife!
“Victor Owens,” I cried before I could stop the words, “have you taken leave of your senses?”
“I think I’ve come to them.”
I frowned suspiciously. “Is this your way of spiting Mrs. Mortimer?”
Victor threw back his head and laughed heartily. “No,” he finally answered, “though now that you mention it, perhaps it will convince her I will neither marry her nor sell her my land.”
I pursed my lips. “This is the strangest proposal of marriage I have yet heard tell of.” But I could not help smiling then. For I realized that I could live happily there in that rose-covered cabin, passing the rest of my days side by side with Victor Owens. “I’ll not give up midwifery just to keep your house,” I cautioned him.
“I didn’t expect you would. No more than I’ll give up my sheep.” He took both my hands in his, still smiling.
I looked at Rosalind, who lay propped up in her bed. “What do you think?” I asked her.
“I think it would make us all happier than we have been in a long time.” She smiled too, and Blue gave a couple of joyful yips. Seeing Rosalind’s smile widen when Palmer walked back inside, I suspected that we had the real Rosalind back with us for good.
“Are congratulations or condolences in order?” he asked.
“Both, I expect,” I said, linking my arm through Victor’s. “But first, breakfast.”
Born only a few miles from where Jesse James robbed his first train, RACHEL KOVACINY has loved the Old West all her life. She now lives in Virginia with her husband and their three homeschooled children. In her free time, Rachel writes for the online magazine Femnista, reads, bakes, blogs, watches movies, and daydreams.
To learn more about Rachel and her work, visit: www.rachelkovaciny.com
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To the late H. McConaughy: father, professor, writer.
And to the four R’s (RP, R, HR, and RH), without whom I have never finished a story.
Chapter 1
AND IT HAPPENED IN the days of the great heroes, in the years of the warrior shepherds, that the king of Gubla had no son. He took young wives and old wives, rich wives and poor wives, wives from the country and wives from the city. He sent for wives from Piyampetcha to the north, and from Uzu to the south. (He even begged a wife from the King of the Four Quarters, the master of the Black-Headed People; but the Great King did not send him a wife. The Great King did not even receive the king of Gubla’s messenger.) But no matter how many wives the king of Gubla wed, they bore only daughters. Daughters, and more daughters.
“How can I live? I’m drowning in daughters!” the king complained to his chief priest. He sat leaning on one arm of his throne, his back to the wide windows that opened toward the sea. The lesser lords of Gubla stood in ragged clumps on the far side of the white-walled hall and tried to pretend that they were not listening.
The chief priest, Kashap by name, shook his head slowly from side to side. His predatory glare terrified every junior priest in Gubla; now he turned it on the king. “O mighty king, great ox, warlike shepherd,” he began.
“You aren’t composing an epic, Kashap,” the king grumbled. “I know my own titles. Give me a solution!” The king, who was a veteran of more battles than he could remember, was not afraid of Kashap, priest or no priest.
“This plague of daughters—it is a curse,” Kashap replied.
“So you’ve said, but I’ve sacrificed enough sheep to lift a thousand curses. Are the gods not listening? I must have an heir!”
Kashap ran his fingers through his oil-streaked beard. “Obviously the gods are not disposed to lift the curse. My king, it is time to choose an heir who is not of your house.”
The king rubbed the horns of the bull that made up his right armrest. �
��I had . . . thought of that, though the thought is bitter to me.”
Kashap smiled. “You can either adopt your chosen man as heir directly or marry him to one of your lovely daughters.”
“Heir by marriage,” the king said at once, sitting straight. A stranger at the court might have thought the king’s stocky build came from too much royal food; but he would have changed his mind if he had seen the king sparring with the captains of his guard each morning. “But which daughter should the fellow marry? I have so many . . . Kashap, how many daughters do I have?”
Kashap blinked and tried to call the princesses to mind. He knew them only as objects, interchangeable pieces of the royal furniture; he could hardly have named one of them, let alone all of them. “As many as the stars of the heavens, O great ox,” he said smoothly. “The appropriate daughter must be selected by inquiring of the gods, of course.”
The king growled. “If you’re going to insist on asking the gods, we’ll have a long wait! If they were going to help me and not just take every sheep in Gubla, they would have given me a son by now.”
Kashap muttered a quick aversion ritual under his breath, making sure to speak just loudly enough that the king would know what he was doing. “Don’t blaspheme,” he said piously after he had finished. “Perhaps there is some man, favored of the gods, who has been chosen for the kingship.”
The king leaned forward over the arm of the throne. “I remember when you said that I was the favored of the gods,” he said in a low voice. “Were you wrong, Kashap? If you were wrong then, why should I believe you now?”
He leaned back. “Inquire if you must, but bring me an answer!” he boomed, his voice reverberating across the room so that that every man present could hear him.
Kashap bowed and made his way out, shaking with anger. As he passed through the gate and his retinue of lesser priests fell in behind him, he hauled his two chief assistants under the cover of his sunshade. “Start the inquiry as I told you before!” he snarled. “Follow every procedure! Study every omen! But see that the lot falls on the oldest unmarried girl!”
Thaiyu the divination priest shook the arrows one last time and let them fall into the circle. He looked at them gloomily and made a mark on his tablet. It was exactly the same mark he had made the last forty-eight times. He had re-cleansed the circle, changed his arrows, substituted goat’s blood for ram’s blood—but the result was always the same. In all his years as a divination priest he had never seen anything like this.
Some god was actually answering.
Generally speaking, Thaiyu divined answers by the tried-and-true “best out of eleven” method—or whatever number he had to reach to make sure that the answer matched what Kashap had ordered the answer should be. This time, though, there wasn’t a single different answer that he could interpret as ambivalence on the part of the gods.
Leaving the last set of arrows lying on the table, Thaiyu picked up his tablet and left the room, feet dragging.
The priestly court of the Ladytemple was already filled with diviners. “Fourteen livers I cut open, but it was all the same answer,” one complained. “Cow livers! Frog livers! Dolphin livers!”
“You don’t understand!” one of the astrologers shouted at a colleague. “The star of the Cave shouldn’t be visible at this time of year! It upsets everything . . .”
The chief reader of omens, his arms full of scrolls, swayed from foot to foot, his hair standing on end. “I went through the whole omen cycle! The flight of birds . . . numbers of pregnant women . . . the shapes of oil on water . . . the actions of the temple donkey . . . I checked everything.”
Kashap strode out of the temple to stand in the inner gate. “Silence!” he cried, eyeing them as a snake eyes its prey. The priests’ wild babbling ground to a halt. “What answer have you received?”
Thaiyu looked at the chief omen reader, who shrank back behind his husky assistant. No one seemed ready to speak.
“Well?” Kashap demanded.
The astrologer coughed, tugging nervously at his beard. “The . . . positions of the stars are quite clear. There can be no doubt.”
“Yes, yes?”
The astrologer looked around miserably. Some of his fellow priests edged away from him. “The next daughter to be born to King Shokorru is the one who should wed the king’s heir!”
“What?” Kashap roared, flying down the hill to breathe hotly in the astrologer’s face. “A child not even born yet? Incompetent wretch! You don’t know the sun from the moon! I’ll have you banished from Gubla!”
The liver-examiner raised a hand. “Ah? O-mighty-high-priest-chosen-of-the-gods, this was also the result of my liver omens. Fourteen separate livers I cut up, all astonishingly similar! I’ve never seen anything like it!”
Kashap whirled to attack this man too, but now every one of the priests began to speak at once. “The daughter not yet born!” “The donkey lay down as if to give birth!” “The wind—”
“This is a conspiracy!” Kashap shouted.
“It is a god!” the astrologer insisted shrilly. “A star is there that should not be there! It must be a god!”
“Which god?” a stocky arrow-shaker growled. “What god answers?”
“A new star in the heavens!” the astrologer cried. “A new god! One we have not known before!” Then he was on the ground, his mouth open in surprise, a red stain spreading on his robe.
“There is no new god,” Kashap hissed, holding a bloody sacrificial knife in his shaking hand. “We will report that the eldest unmarried daughter was selected by the omens! Do any of you want to argue?”
The priests looked at the astrologer’s still body then looked from Kashap to the skies above. Which was more dangerous, Kashap or the gods? Yesterday, each of them would have named Kashap; but if the gods were starting to pay attention, then—
A burly figure in a brown hood pushed to the front of the crowd. “You won’t report any such lie.”
“How dare you!” Kashap sputtered, raising the knife.
The figure pushed back his hood. “I dare because I’m the king,” Shokorru growled, his grin like the grin of a lion. “Whoever this new god is,” the king went on, “I like him. See that he gets some sacrifices.”
Kashap swallowed, letting his hand drop until the knife was hidden in his robe. “An unborn daughter to be married to your heir,” he said in a strangled voice. “Eleven years until she can be given in marriage! Would you leave your kingdom without an heir for so long? What if something happened to you? Who would be the Guardian of Gubla’s Beauty?”
“Would something be less likely to happen to me if the marriage took place this year?” the king asked sharply. “Or would I meet with an accident soon after the bride price was paid?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” the high priest gritted from between clenched teeth. “Eleven years until she can be married!”
“More than that,” the king said. “My daughter will be a princess, not a worker at the olive press. Let her be well grown before her marriage.”
“But you don’t know what might happen!” Kashap cried in anguish, all his plans in disarray.
The king leaned close. Though shorter than his high priest, at this moment he loomed. “One thing I can tell you, Kashap,” he said in a soft voice which nonetheless rang all through the temple’s inner court. “When my daughter reaches her sixteenth birthday and is married to the man who will be king after me—that man will not be you.”
Kashap howled. “Curses on you! May the moon be eclipsed toward you! May the sun be eclipsed toward you!” He drew the knife from his cloak and held it high. “I made you king! I will unmake you! I—Let go of me!” But the omen reader’s large assistant had him by one arm, and Thaiyu had him by the other.
“Kashap,” the king said. “You are banished from Gubla. My good servants, throw this wretched priest over the cliff. Let the sea gods deal with him.”
The king watched steadily as they dragged Kashap away. “N
ow . . . who’s in line to be the next high priest?”
Several of Shokorru’s wives were pregnant at the time of Kashap’s downfall. In seclusion as they were, none of them heard about the priests’ new prediction.
The first wife to give birth was the girl Perakha. Stolen from a people that lived far south of Gubla, she had been sold to the king by an Ullazan merchant. Enchanted by her huge black eyes, the king had married her.
Those eyes were brilliant with joy now as Perakha rocked her new daughter in her arms. The midwife went out to deliver the news. Out in the city of Gubla, as the sun rose over the horizon, the king announced a week-long feast.
Blissfully unaware, Perakha fed her daughter and sang her a lullaby from her own childhood.
For forty days, mother and child remained in seclusion; but on the forty-first day, heralded by horns and bull-hide drums, both were placed in a sedan chair and carried from the women’s palace up the main street of the city, through the courtyards of each of the seven temples, and finally to the palace gate, as part of the grandest procession any of the people of Gubla had ever seen.
The nervous omen reader, now the new high priest, stood at the edge of the royal dais, frantically reviewing the newly composed princess-dedication ritual one last time. When the sedan chair arrived and the king, his nobles, and the important priests had all arranged themselves on and around the dais, the omen reader began the ritual, spraying the sedan chair with hyssop flicked from the end of a long rod. One of the king’s nobles, rigid with the honor of participating in the ritual and the dread of doing something wrong, took the baby from her mother and moved to stand before the king.
After various invocations of the divine (complete with a hastily added hymn to the new god, the God Who Answers), the high priest painted the baby’s hands and feet with white and black ochre and declared her to be the vessel of the kingship. The whole crowd cheered.
Five Magic Spindles: A Collection of Sleeping Beauty Stories Page 7
