by Judith Tarr
Sparrow was better at cutting and piecing than Keen. Keen was much better at fine work: embroidery of shell and bone and stone beads, which she would do while she listened to Old Woman telling stories; or else she wove fine grass mats and lovely tight baskets. Her hands were always busy.
Sparrow hewed wood and drew water with the skill of long practice, made a fair stew and a very good honeycake, and laid snares and hunted for the pot, or brought fish from the river. She was learning no magic, and few mysteries. In the evenings Old Woman told stories, such stories as the Grandmother had been used to tell, of Earth Mother and Skyfather and the myriad gods. When she spoke of ancestors, it struck Sparrow that these might be ancestors of her own—or of her people at least. Her mother had come from this country.
And yet she did not feel as if she had come home. This was a pause in a journey, forced upon her by the shaman’s will. When she had had enough of it, she would leave. For the moment she stayed, and waited to learn something she could use.
oOo
At night Old Woman slept in the shelter, but the young women elected to sleep outside unless it was raining. They had grown accustomed to the stars overhead, and Keen loved to lie under woven branches, counting stars through the leaves. Keen was happier here than Sparrow was, by far. She liked Old Woman, and Old Woman was gentle with her as she never was with Sparrow.
As the days passed, Sparrow began to notice something else about Keen. It was not only the green face in the mornings and the reluctance to break her fast until midday, when she roused to blooming health, or even the slight rounding of her belly. Sparrow could see. She could look at her friend as if she were made of clear water, and in the middle of her a little silver fish. The fish grew from day to day, till it had the appearance of a human child, tiny and soft but unmistakable.
One morning as Sparrow ate honeycake with good appetite and Keen had excused herself from a half-drunk cup of herb-tea and run off to the privy, Old Woman said, “You begin to learn.”
Sparrow raised her brows. “Oh? What am I learning?”
“Not manners, certainly,” said Old Woman. “But you begin to see.”
“Do you know what I’m seeing?”
“No two people see alike,” Old Woman said. She took the last honeycake, which Sparrow had been eyeing, and ate it with considerable relish. Then she said, “I have to go away. I’ll be gone three days, maybe four. You two will stay here and look after the goats. Have the shelter clean when I come back, and hunt a fat doe for me to dine on.”
“Where are you going?” Sparrow demanded.
Old Woman smiled and rose and took up a bag that had been lying beside the shelter, reached into the woven branches that made the wall and slipped out a staff of polished wood, and left without another word.
oOo
Sparrow thought of pursuing her, but Old Woman would never answer a question she did not wish to answer. She might even be expecting Sparrow to follow her wherever she was going; something in her glance suggested it.
For that, and for no better reason, Sparrow stayed and did as she was told. It was peaceful without Old Woman about, though Keen professed to miss her stories. Keen did not ask where Old Woman had gone. She sat in the sunlight for most of the day, making a deerskin coat into a thing of beauty, while Sparrow tidied the camp and filled the stewpot with squirrel and young rabbit. Then Sparrow could lie in the sun, too, but with idle hands.
She watched Keen for a while, rapt as always at the way the other sight saw her. It came to her that she might see other things so, as well. Goats were a lesser light, with a glint of wickedness. Birds in the trees were small bright sparks. Something larger and darker slipped through the wood, skirting the camp.
Wolf, she thought. It woke no fear in her. It was autumn, when wolves were well fed. It was not winter yet, when, fierce in their hunger, they might bring down the weak of the People.
Smaller creatures fell silent as the wolf passed. Even the birds went still. All but one, a swift bird with a ruddy tail and blue-grey wings. A sparrowhawk, a kestrel, had come to hunt birds in the trees beyond the camp. Sparrow watched it idly, until her sight shifted again, and she saw it with the eyes of the spirit. It shone like the sun at noon, both beautiful and terrible.
For a moment. Then it was a swift grey-and-ruddy bird again, hunting lesser birds and bringing back its prey to its nest.
Her spirit took wing, not as a falcon, no, but as a small brown bird, the sparrow of her name. It was quick in flight, and could fly high, right up to heaven, and from there look down on Earth Mother’s breast.
The lands south of the river were quiet. She saw camps of tribes, herds both wild and tamed, a pride of lions stalking a herd of antelope, and a pack of wolves loping after the red deer. Here and there people walked or rode, hunters, herdsmen, a trader with his laden ox. Or—her? The trader was a woman, stripped to the waist in the day’s heat, with heavy breasts and broad belly.
Beyond the river was much the same. The tribes had returned to their lands, to late-summer camps and hunting runs. She did not see great crowds of them gathered near the river, nor was there any war rising against the southward tribes. One raiding party slunk toward a camp in the west of the world, wild young men with their eyes on the camp’s horses.
White Stone camp she did not see. Where it should have been was shadow and confusion. A storm walked across the plain, veiling the People in rain and blinding her with lightning. That was not Walker’s doing—he had no such power. But the gods were not inclined to let her spy on her father’s people.
They sent her back to her body, a force like a hand closing about her and carrying her away from the storm and the tribe. If she was to know what they had done to win back their king of stallions, the gods would reveal it in their good time.
She had not found Old Woman, either. She might have walked right out of the world for all the sign Sparrow found of her.
There was a way, Sparrow thought, but she did not know it, nor did it suggest itself to her. Veils that the gods had raised, she might not presume to shift aside, but Old Woman was no god.
oOo
She came back into her body with a faint but penetrating shock, as if she had fallen a little distance and struck earth abruptly. She lay getting her breath back, and pondered veils and darkness, concealment and revelation, and the ways in which a shaman might provoke an apprentice to learn in spite of herself.
Sparrow was not this shaman’s apprentice, whatever Old Woman might think. She sprang to her feet. She had to get out, away. She needed to be on the mare’s back under open sky, where her heart was whole and her spirit strong.
When Sparrow leaped up so suddenly, she startled Keen into stabbing her finger with the bone needle. Keen sat sucking her finger, shaking her head as Sparrow found the mare beyond the goats’ pen, mounted her and rode off.
The stallion stayed, which was rather surprising. He liked the goats. They would play with him, he outside, they in their pen, leaping on their hindlegs and shaking their horns. Those horns were a threat, but he seemed not to mind, nor indeed did they: sometimes Keen saw a goat leaning against the wall of the pen, and the stallion stretching his elegant neck over, chewing happily on a horn.
When the mare left with Sparrow on her back, he called after her but did not follow. He had sweet fodder that Sparrow had cut that morning high up on the hill, and shade, and water to drink. He was as content as stallion could be.
oOo
“Pretty, isn’t he?”
Keen started again. This time, fortunately, her needle was out of the way, her mind distracted by the stallion. She stared at Old Woman. “You didn’t go away at all!”
“Wise child,” Old Woman said. She sat in her customary place just outside the shelter, emptied her pouch of apples, and tossed one to Keen. Keen caught it without thinking. Old Woman cut up another with a flint knife, till it was small enough and soft enough for her few teeth.
Keen, whose teeth were strong, bit into the ap
ple. It was ripe and sweet, an early delight; come full autumn, Old Woman had promised her, there would be a whole thicket of them.
It was none too pleasant to think of full autumn, because after it came winter, but in the warmth of late-summer sunlight, Keen could not trouble herself with it overmuch. She ventured to say, “You’re teaching Sparrow. Would I be presumptuous to ask what she’s supposed to be learning?”
“Presumptuous enough,” Old Woman said, “but worthy of an answer nonetheless. She’s learning to see the world for herself. And to cultivate manners.”
“Not magic?”
“Manners are magic,” Old Woman said. “They smooth the way for people in the world, and put an end to wars—or even prevent them from starting.”
“Men don’t want to prevent wars,” Keen said.
“Men on the plains,” said Old Woman. “They’re different here.”
“Really? I haven’t met any.”
Old Woman laughed. “And you would like to. They’d flock to you like flies to honey, with your sunlight hair and your sweet ways.”
Keen flushed. She had not been thinking of that at all—oh no.
And yet Old Woman saw so clearly. Had she seen when Keen lacked wits to see?
Keen had a husband. He had treated her badly, but he had not put her aside, that she knew of. He most likely would not, either, if he found her. He would kill her first.
She was not afraid of it, not really, sitting here in the sunlight with Old Woman smiling at her. It was something that could happen, but not today, nor yet tomorrow.
And she had something else to think of. Someone else. This time she knew there was life growing inside her. She could feel it if she stopped and thought. It felt strong and bright and somehow joyous. That joy warmed her and made her happy, even in this strange country, far away from her kin.
Old Woman could always tell what she was thinking—and never failed to be amused by the way her mind kept wandering. “It’s the baby,” she said. “It makes you silly. But when it’s born, you’ll find a new father for the next one, yes you will. A handsome man and kind. He’ll love you as you deserve.”
Keen did not say that she deserved nothing. She had said that before, and Old Woman had rebuked her smartly for it. “You deserve everything a good woman deserves,” she had said. And that was all she would hear of it, so that Keen learned to keep her modesty to herself.
Old Woman was teaching her, too, maybe even more subtly than she taught Sparrow. Keen could feel herself growing stronger in the spirit. Maybe she was braver, though that might be too fond a wishing.
Out of that bravery, if it existed, she asked, “Who are the people in this country? What are they like? Are they all like you?”
“They’re like themselves,” Old Woman answered.
“Are there any nearby?”
“Ah,” Old Woman said wickedly. “You do want a man. How badly do you want one?”
“I don’t—” Keen stopped. She did not want a man. But to see a tribe of these little dark people—to know what they were like—that, she wanted.
She sighed. “It’s not wise, is it? We’re strangers. I look like an enemy. People won’t welcome me.”
“You look like sunlight in a dark place,” Old Woman said. “People will be delighted to welcome you. But not yet. You’re not ready.”
“Ready?”
“To face that world.” Old Woman rose. She was agile when she wished to be, light on her feet like a much younger woman. “Remember, child: I didn’t come back. I’ll be returning from my great journey in three days, or maybe four.”
She winked broadly. Keen smiled in spite of herself. That smile lingered even after Old Woman had gone, as she took up her needle again and threaded beads and went back to work on the coat that she was embroidering for Sparrow.
33
When Old Woman came back, Sparrow was away from camp again, sitting on a hill while the mare grazed nearby. She had been flying in the spirit, following the kestrel, shaping herself to its shape: handsome sharp- beaked face, swift wings. It had struck her that this hawk was a hunter of sparrows, and that for Sparrow to hunt the kestrel was an oddity to make a god smile.
She was smiling at it as she returned to her body, a smile that lingered in spite of itself—even as she saw who stood in front of her, leaning on a staff. To the eyes of the spirit Old Woman was invisible.
“Tell me how you do that,” Sparrow said.
“What, walk the country?” Old Woman was not going to give her anything—unless she begged. And she would not beg.
Sparrow set her lips together. If Old Woman wanted to talk, Old Woman could talk. She would not trouble herself.
Old Woman stood without speaking, leaning on that length of smooth-rubbed wood. It had no ornament. The top of it was a burl, the base of the branch from which it had come, maybe, or the roots of the sapling it had been. It was much worn, with a sheen on it that spoke of long use.
It was a walking stick, a prop for her age, but there was something more to it. Sparrow reached to touch it. It did not writhe and turn into a serpent and bite her. It was wood, that was all, warmer than stone, denser than bone. Old Woman had grounded it in the earth.
It was long since parted from its roots, and yet it still remembered. It was still, in a fashion, alive.
“Looking for magic?” Old Woman asked her.
“Is there anything to look for?”
“Answer a question with a question,” Old Woman said. “Very good; you’ll be a great shaman among certain of the tribes.”
“Not my father’s tribe,” Sparrow said.
“Probably not,” said Old Woman. “Though once the real shaman is dead and his apprentices weakened with fear, who’s to say that some of them might not grow wise?”
Sparrow stiffened. “The real shaman? My father’s still alive?”
“For a while,” Old Woman said. “Until the dark of the year. Quite possibly longer, but his strength burns low.”
“How do you know that? How do you know him?”
“Why,” said Old Woman, “the same way I know you. I know.”
“Does he know you?”
Old Woman grinned, baring her few blackened teeth. “Do you think he does?”
“I think,” said Sparrow, “that even if he knew you existed, he wouldn’t believe you.”
“There,” Old Woman said. “You see?”
What there was to see, Sparrow could not exactly determine. Old Woman was like this: odd, elliptical, infuriating. She was less like a shaman than a trickster: one of those rare personages, quite hopelessly mad, who appeared sometimes among the tribes. The last one she had seen was a huge man, rampantly male, with a great brown beard and a pelt like a bear, who minced about in a fine deerskin tunic and insisted that he be called Flower of Perfect Beauty. He spoke prophecies, it was said, but so much of what he said was nonsense that there was no telling what was true and what was mad rambling.
Sparrow had found him pitiable and rather disgusting, with his crown of wilted flowers and his grease-encrusted beard. Old Woman was nothing of the sort. But she had that antic spirit, and that refusal to be bound by plain human reason.
“Child,” said Old Woman, “as long as you think you know what you know, you will know nothing.”
Sparrow stared at her.
“Empty yourself,” Old Woman said. “Be a reed in the wind. Be the word the gods speak.”
“How do I do that?”
“Beyond knowledge,” Old Woman said, “you know.”
oOo
Sparrow was ready to leave then: take the mare and the stallion and such belongings as they had, and go. But Keen would not budge. “I want to stay here,” she said. “There’s food, shelter. There’s hope of living through the winter.”
“It’s months yet till the snow comes,” Sparrow said. “We’ll find a place—a place where people are sane.”
“Old Woman is very sane,” Keen said. “Saner than anybody.”
“Old Woman is mad.”
But Keen would not listen. She had finished one coat and was well embarked on the other. Sparrow jabbed a finger at it. “When that is done, we go.”
“When Old Woman is ready for us to go, we go.”
Sparrow had never seen that quiet strength in Keen before, that placid refusal to be moved. It was the baby making her stubborn, thought Sparrow. She wanted to stay in a place that she reckoned safe, even if a madwoman lived in it.
Old Woman had not spoken to her since those strange words on the hilltop. She was back in her place, doing what little she did now that she had two sturdy young women to keep the camp for her. For the most part she sat like a lizard on a rock, blinking in the sun. No doubt, Sparrow thought nastily, she was emptying herself—knowing nothing, seeing nothing, perceiving nothing.
She had been a shaman once. Her tribe had died. Now she was a solitary fool, witless and wandering, who had found two greater fools to look after her.
oOo
Not for long. Sparrow might wish it were summer still, but the days were growing short. The leaves were changing in the wood. The nights were not so warm now, the stars not so close. They were retreating to their winter eminence, to the cold heights.
Keen began to wax like the moon, her belly swelling, it seemed, overnight. There was no doubt now that she was carrying a child. She had that habit of bearing women, of resting her hand on the place where the child was, as if to assure herself that yes, it was there, growing inside her.
Because Keen would not go, they stayed. Sparrow hunted farther and farther afield, avoiding Old Woman and the camaraderie of the camp: the friendship between Keen and the shaman that felt, too often, as if they conspired against her.
