Motherlines

by Suzy McKee Charnas

  ‘Go and talk to Alldera about it, if it disturbs you,’ the old woman said.

  ‘I don’t want to talk to Alldera.’

  ‘Then don’t let yourself be provoked.’

  The sky was full of tantalizing clouds that Dusty Season. Soft herds of them floated high over the gritty haze which hung above the ground and sifted into a rider’s mouth, nostrils and eyes. There was, of course, no rain.

  With some help from Alldera the scarred fern, Daya, had taught the two new fems to ride. Those three borrowed mounts and went away for a few weeks to catch wild horses. Alldera said she would wait in camp in case the child should come out; other youngsters of that generation were beginning to emerge from the childpack.

  To Sheel’s astonishment the fems brought back fourteen head of passable beasts which they set about breaking to the saddle under Daya’s direction.

  Sheel could not watch. It hurt her to see fems subduing horses.

  Sheel sat in Periken Tent with her friend Tico Periken drinking shake milk together in bed. Grays Omelly, who had gone raiding and was now visiting as she had promised, was there with them. So was an older woman of the Caranaw line, a raid mate of Tico’s.

  The Caranaw sat by the milk cradle and punched and rocked the bag which hung there, mixing the dried milk and water inside. She rambled along meanwhile about horse breaking, and ended up saying that she did not like to see the new fems riding.

  ‘These new ‘cousins’, Daya and the rest – they don’t act like women. Not at all. What woman stews greens with her meat, or wears a slave smock over her trousers and a blood rag under them, or kicks up dust everywhere she goes with those big, stiff sandals they wear? What woman keeps to herself and speaks like rocks clacking together, what woman steals?’

  Sheel had more to say about the fems than any of them, but she was bound by the ties of kinship and hospitality not to speak against any person in her family’s tent. She tried to turn the conversation by saying shortly, ‘Complaints about the free fems should go to the chief tent.’

  ‘Why, Sheel?’ Grays said, her blue eyes innocently wide. ‘We don’t run to the chief tent with every little thing, like that fem Tua who went there because she couldn’t get Tacey Faller to pay up on a bet. As if anybody can get a redhaired Faller to pay just by asking! I don’t know why these fems can’t go and talk with a person’s relatives and let the lines and families smooth out problems instead of blowing every spark up into a grass fire.’

  ‘Hush now,’ Tico said, rolling onto her belly and reaching for the shake milk skin. ‘You know Sheel can’t talk about the fems.’

  Grays thumped Sheel on the arm. ‘Put their stuff outside the tent to let them know they should move on, that’s the way! Why are there fems in Stone Dancing Camp anyway? Suppose all the fems come over from the tea camp and move in with you?’

  Patiently Tico said, ‘There are only forty or fifty of them in the tea camp, and anyway I hear Alldera had some kind of quarrel with them, so it’s not likely they’ll come here. But those who do come are allowed to stay. I’ve explained it twenty times to you, Grays. They’re blood kin of Alldera. Think of them as a sort of outland Motherline made up of lots of cousins instead of mothers and daughters. Each fem is a distant cousin of each other fern, if you see what I mean. Now, let’s leave it at that.’

  Maralas Caranaw shifted her bottom on the pile of hides under her. The Caranaws were afflicted with sore joints in middle age. She said, frowning deeply, ‘It’s our weapons that bring them, our bows.’

  ‘They have their own weapons,’ Grays sneered. ‘Those little hatchets and those clumsy spears.’

  ‘Never mind what brings them, then,’ the Caranaw said morosely. ‘Look what’s happening because they’re here. The trading crews of their wagons are angry because we let the fems stay, so they want to get even. Did you hear how some Hilliars over in Steep Cloud Camp were cheated over salt last month by a trading crew? Women at Steep Cloud are talking of going for salt themselves as we all used to do before the fems took over the trade. Nobody likes salting her food with sand.’

  Tico gave Sheet a worried glance. ‘We shouldn’t bother Sheel with any more of this.’

  Grays Omelly had been taking objects from her pockets and lining them up in concentric rings on the floor: bits of bone, scratched Ancient fragments, thread, a horse’s molar, buttons, the rubbish with which she made what she called her ‘spells’. When she began to glance anxiously around, Tico contributed her own striking flint to complete the design.

  Grays said, ‘Sheel won’t mind hearing that Alldera Holdfaster sleeps with Nenisi Conor. Or that Daya sleeps with me. Sleeping with Daya is like sleeping with a child, a child you hate. She makes you think she’s helpless, as if you’re somehow taking her by force. And you do, in a way. It’s exciting, like hunting. You should try it, Sheel. She will come to your bed willingly, now that she’s come to mine.’

  Tico tried again: ‘Let’s drop it now. Look, you’re getting Sheel angry with all this talk.’

  ‘Magic of circles, tell me now,’ Grays continued, bowing over the floor, ‘if I killed a fern, if she had a spirit, where would it go? It couldn’t rise to the spirit country above the clouds and rejoin its Motherline because it has no real Motherline. It had no sharemothers to love it and no bloodmother and no horses and no sharu – ’

  ‘You’re raving, Omelly,’ the Caranaw said sharply.

  Grays flung herself headlong into Sheel’s lap. ‘Love!’ she said. ‘Sheel’s love is what all the fems need.’ She nuzzled Sheel’s groin. ‘I pinched Daya’s nipples till she wept, but afterward she hugged me and said it was all right, it was because I am a wild woman and don’t know how to control myself.’

  Sheel pulled violently away, and her feelings burst out. ‘You hug that filthy, man-used fem as if you were her master, you kiss her scars – they marked her like that, and she let them, and never fought back! You drink shame from her body, and now you come to me? Get away from me!’

  The Omelly hugged Sheel’s legs in both her arms, pleading, ‘It’s a plot of the Conors. Nenisi and her line are corrupting me, making me play with these fems!’

  ‘Get – off!’ Sheel shouted, and kicked at her. Grays hit back at breasts and groin, sobbing as she fought. Sheel kept pulling her punches, trying not to hurt her.

  Their struggles scattered Grays’ design all over the floor.

  One morning Sheel stopped Alldera in the tent when Alldera came in alone from running. She held out an iron bit she had missed two days previously.

  ‘I went behind your friends’ curtain, there, and I found this in the bedding of one of the new fems. I also found a dozen arrow shafts that belong to the Bawns and a lot of smaller things – leather lace, sharpening stones, ornaments – who knows how long the fem has had them? You tell her she’d better not take anything again.’

  ‘You know the culprit,’ Alldera replied. ‘Tell her yourself. She’s a relative of yours.’

  ‘Not of mine! This stealing is a coward’s kind of raiding – to live with us and take our belongings little by little! If I catch the thief, will you ransom her?’

  Alldera said, ‘Let her alone, Sheel. Let them all alone. They’re not what I’d have them be, but I share a long past with them. I’d speak for them in the chief tent.’

  Goaded by Alldera’s cool refusal to apologize, Sheel burst out bitterly, ‘It’s thanks to my own blundering that you came here! I had a feeling someone was at that food cache. Not a man; I can smell them miles off. One of your kind. So I said, Shayeen is sick, let’s not take the time to stop. I was careless. I should have taken my lance and made sure, as I have in my dreams since. I didn’t realize how dangerous you were.’

  ‘Then you missed your chance, Sheel, because we are kindred now,’ Alldera said, and moved to pass around her.

  Maddened, Sheel caught Alldera’s shirt in both hands, as if to raise her up and dash her to the ground. But the fem said grimly, ‘Remember, Sheel – we’re kindred. If
you so much as bloody my nose, you’ll be outlawed for it and have to run south.’

  Sheel released her. ‘Your lips are white, you’re scared, fern!’ she sneered, her own voice breathless with rage.

  ‘Yes,’ Alldera said, pulling her shirt straight. ‘You’re a formidable woman, Sheel, and your anger is frightening. But I think you know as well as I do that we’re way past this kind of scuffling. What you and I started in the desert between women and fems is out of your hands and mine now.’

  Sheel sat soaping her saddle outside the tent where Grays Omelly was staying. Nenisi came and sat with her. Nenisi looked worn and tired. Like all women of the Conor line, she was outgrowing her painful teeth at last. But now she kept scratching at her sore, red-lined eyes. The inflammation showed bright as blood in her black face. She had been having eye trouble since the hot winds had begun to blow.

  ‘Are you thinking of leaving?’ Nenisi said.

  ‘This camp is like living in a dust storm for me.’

  ‘Be patient, Sheel. The tent child is growing breasts, and there’s hair between her legs. She’s bound to come out soon. Then it won’t be so difficult, you’ll see.’

  Sheel heaved the saddle into a new angle in her lap and lifted the stirrup leather so that she could reach underneath. ‘I can hardly talk to my friends without getting into a fight. My own tent is full of strangers that I hate, my enemy speaks to me as if she were my mother – and it all goes back to my own mistake, Nenisi. How can I hold up my head here?’

  Nenisi sat with her a long time, saying nothing, looking as troubled and unhappy as Sheel felt.

  On the way to the squats the following evening, Sheel saw that Grays had taken up one of her frozen stances on the dusty dancing ground outside the camp, arms outstretched, face blankly fixed. She could stand that way for hours, captive to the visions that were an Omelly trait.

  The two new fems walked past, returning from practice with their bows. One of them shouted something at Grays, who did not answer. Sheel hesitated, half expecting Grays to leap at them. Someone should have told them to keep away from the Omelly.

  The fems called to Grays again. They walked on. Then one of them wheeled suddenly, stooped, and shied a stone at the motionless woman.

  Shouting, Sheel took a step after them. A rock whizzed past her own head. She yelled for help.

  Women swarmed out of the nearer tents and a brawl spread on the dancing ground. Sheel, barred from fighting against her own kindred, ran for the Shawden chiefs. Hard on her heels came a crowd of women dragging the two fems, so that the chief tent was soon filled with shouted accusations and insults.

  Grays, unresisting, had been stoned by the two fems. They said they had done it because she had mocked them by refusing to speak to them, and that they had not recognized Sheel, their cousin, when they had thrown a stone at her. The Shawden chiefs set them stiff fines of skins and salt, and that was that.

  Sheel avoided the discussions of the incident at other tents and even in Holdfaster Tent, which bore the brunt of the fines. She thought about what had happened through several sleepless nights. It outraged her that women did not seem to know how to deal with these upstart fems, and so fell back on treating them as if they were women.

  The herds had been culled at the beginning of the Cool Season, before the fems came. Now the grass was too sparse, and it was agreed that a second culling would be necessary this year.

  The night before the culling was scheduled Daya slipped away alone after dinner, heading out of camp quietly on foot. Sheel saw. Taking one of the night horses tethered outside the tent, she followed.

  There was a bright moon. Out by the tent herd she found the tracks of Daya’s favorite mount, a stripe-legged dun that Daya had brought with her to Stone Dancing Camp. The tracks led eastward, away from the camp.

  Riding through the moonlight like a real person in a ghost-white world, Sheel could feel the distress in her bones that meant cruelty from the past was accumulated here or nearby. The women called these feelings ‘ghosts’. Not that anything tangible or even visible would arise here to startle her horse or raise her own hair; but in some places you could feel the lingering vibrations of long-ago cries of pain.

  Her horse stopped and stood flicking its ears this way and that. The night hung still around her. Sheel turned in her saddle, seized with a sudden anxiety. Why had she left her tent to wander solitary by moonlight like a person without kindred? Had hatred for the fems done this to her?

  Someone was moving over there, on foot, heading back toward camp: a fern, slender and very graceful. Sheel heard the faint chime of the little bells, love gifts that Daya had taken to wearing bound into her hair.

  Sheel waited.

  Daya did not alter her course but walked right past as if Sheel were invisible. She seemed to be following her own tracks back to Stone Dancing, singing some sorry femmish song under her breath.

  Sheel turned her horse and followed, thinking, No one would know if I did it out here. I might smash Holdfaster Tent once and for all.

  She said, ‘Stop singing. The sharu sleep lightly.’

  ‘My song is a prayer,’ Daya said, not looking up.

  ‘A prayer won’t save you.’

  ‘Not a prayer for me,’ the fem said in her soft, deceitful voice that never seemed angry. ‘A prayer for the safety of my dun mare. She was marked for the culling. Alldera gave her to me for my own, not to be your food.’

  Sheel stood in her stirrups and looked out, away from the camp. ‘You drove the dun off, did you? I suppose you think Moonwoman will take care of her?’

  Daya said, still soft-voiced, always soft-voiced, ‘You have no right to speak of Moonwoman.’

  ‘Why not? The moon shines on my head too. I grew up beside water with tides that answered to the moon – the Great Salty River to the west. I would know if there were some single great moon-being controlling all movement in the world – the tides, the growth of plants and creatures, the weather. That’s the sort of thing the Ancient men believed in. We women know better. We celebrate the pattern of movement and growth itself and our place in it, which is to affirm the pattern and renew it and preserve it. The horses help us. They are part of the pattern and remind us of our place in it. What can a horse do for you, a stranger?’

  Daya raised her hand to touch the shoulder of Sheel’s mount. Sheel reined the horse aside, out of her reach.

  Daya said, ‘A horse can trust me.’

  ‘Trust you for what? Why? Because you think it’s love if you save one horse from the culling? That’s not love, it’s silly and useless.’ She looked contemptuously at the fem’s bent head. ‘There is no way you can make a place for yourself in the pattern.’ She knew what she was saying to herself: it would make no rent in the pattern if I killed you; it would be no crime. Carefully, she chose words Nenisi had spoken once.

  ‘Our bond with our horses is old and true and the center of our lives. The horses lend us their strength, their speed, their substance for food, their own dim wisdom. We protect them from the sharu, we dance with them and look after them and put our bodies in their power, too, in our own way. Then when we die our corpses go to feed the sharu, and what do the sharu do in turn? They dig in the earth for roots and to make their burrows, which prepares the soil for the grasses the horses eat.’

  ‘The dun mare was a wild horse,’ Daya said almost inaudibly. ‘She belonged to me, not to you women. I had my own understanding with her.’

  She looked up at last, and Sheel saw the glitter of tears, the vulnerable face, the delicate line of the cheek rutted with slave scars. She felt no pity. This was a creature who would throw stones at an Omelly.

  A preliminary thrill of violence tightened the muscles of her hands and arms, and the mare pulled protestingly at the bit. Sheel slackened the reins, annoyed with herself for having needlessly hurt her horse’s mouth.

  She remembered who she was, and that was much more important than who or what this miserable fem was. Fems had no kindr
ed to teach them how to behave. They were not women.

  I am never alone, she said to herself. My line and my kindred and our ways are always with me. If I killed now, I would not be a woman. I would be responsible to no one, solitary, worthless. I would be like this fern.

  ‘I’ll show you the way back. You can’t see any more,’ she said. ‘Look, the moon has set.’

  The fem trudged on, head at the level of Sheel’s hip. ‘I can find the camp myself.’

  ‘You claim to be cousin to the bloodmother of my sharechild,’ Sheel said acidly. ‘My sharechild wouldn’t want me to ride on and leave you wandering here to be eaten by sharu.’

  By morning the dun horse had drifted back to the tent herd, having nowhere else to go. It was butchered with the others.

  ‘Don’t be foolish – my horse has never mounted a woman,’ Sheel said impatiently. She hated being fussed over in the middle of a game of pillo. ‘He’s much too big to mate with. You’re safe from him, Shayeen.’ She tightened the reins of the red stallion dancing under her.

  At her side Shayeen said, ‘All the same, he’s got his hanger out. I wish you’d ride a mare, like everyone else.’

  ‘Not in a pillo game,’ Sheel said. ‘Have you seen the rump on that Faller woman’s horse?’ She pointed disdainfully with her chin. ‘Imagine entering the game on a mare in season! That’s why this stud is all excited.’

  Sheel was winner of the previous round in their game, so she was now the quarry. She crouched on the back of her sweating mount, the heavy braided rope supple in her hands. One end of the rope was tied to the pillo itself, a stuffed sharu skin; the other end was knotted. In the hands of a skilled rider the ten meters of rope were a strong weapon, the only weapon permitted on the pillo field. The red dye with which the stuffed skin was saturated left marks like blood on an opponent that took her out of the game, just as if she or her mount had been slashed by a real sharu.