‘Let me warn you, my friend. What others say on the question will matter. Some may even say to kill, and take no chances on these fems, or on you.’
Alldera fixed her eyes on the steadying sight of her own hands clasped one over the other on the peak of her saddle, as she groped for a response.
Nenisi turned toward her, her smooth black face masked, red lipped where the wind had bitten her mouth. ‘You’ve lain in my bed, you’ve bathed my eyes as tenderly as a woman; yet you’ve told me nothing about your feelings. It’s as if we were back when you first lived in Stone Dancing Camp and you were not yet yourself and didn’t dare speak. Well, I know you better now; you lie in the dark in the distress of your thoughts and breathe harshly, like a woman toiling over the plain on foot. Your hands wind together sometimes like struggling enemies. But never a word, no speech to knit us together.
‘Making love is much the same for all, but each person speaks only her own words. I have few of your words from days past to keep with me.’
Words, Alldera thought blankly. I was a messenger, and a messenger should know the importance of words without being told. I haven’t paid enough attention.
She said, ‘I thought you had so much trouble already – your eyes, and this cursed Periken feud – look, Nenisi, nothing is certain yet.’ She stopped. Nothing was more certain, nothing more strange – she had been sent from the Holdfast to find allies, and not finding them she had somehow helped to make them; now she must return with them, years late. She recoiled. ‘Nenisi, you’re a Conor! Find a way to make it right for me to stay here!’
Nenisi shook her head. ‘It’s right to go with your close kindred. All Conors may not agree with me, but there are other women who will – perhaps enough of them to insure safe travel back for you. These last years our borderland patrols have found no signs of men venturing near the plains. No fems have come to us from your country since you came. Many women now think that the Holdfast is a dead place and men no danger.
‘And as you know, there are women of Stone Dancing Camp who would cheer to see you and your people leave our tents, no matter what the long-range risk. Women of my Motherline want you gone for my sake – they see that your otherness, your singleness, has captured me, and they worry that I have become a stranger to my own. It frightens them that we are so close for so long.
‘Don’t worry about Sorrel. We’ll look after her. She has a future with us: tent mates, raid mates, lovers, perhaps even a Motherline to found – everything that matters.’
Everything that matters! Alldera drew her headcloth closer around her shoulders, too dismal to speak.
Nenisi glanced back the way they had come.
‘Tonight we’ll sit in the tent and tell stories about Barvaran,’ she said. ‘Tonight you are with family. Tomorrow and the days after, you’ll be busy with your cousins Daya and the others, talking about returning to the Holdfast. That will take a lot of planning. Later, on the other side of the mountains, maybe you’ll tell some stories of us and this place. We’ll tell about you and how the fems lived among us and left us their child. Most of that will be mine to tell; we Conors remember well, that’s why we’re always right.
‘You and I, Alldera, had better talk now, while we have the chance.’
Alldera stared ahead where Sorrel rode, bowed and weeping, among Shayeen, Jesselee and Sheel. Suddenly she felt the downward drag of her own shoulders, the sting in her own eyes. She turned toward Nenisi and spoke.
Riding slowly toward Stone Dancing Camp, leaning in her saddle toward the dark figure beside her, she stumbled and struggled to say what she needed to say: that she, like her child up there, both grieved and was comforted; that Sorrel was not the only one whose world had been gladdened with kindred, nor the only one to find and lose the mother of her heart.
By Suzy McKee Charnas from Tom Doherty Associates
The Vampire Tapestry
The Slave and the Free
(comprising Walk to the End of the World
and Motherlines)
The Furies
The Conqueror’s Child
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
Motherlines copyright © 1978 by Suzy McKee Charnas.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Motherlines was first published by Berkley in 1978.
An Orb Edition
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
Tor Books on the World Wide Web:
http://www.tor-forge.com
eISBN 9781466821156
First eBook Edition : April 2012
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Charnas, Suzy McKee.
The slave and the free / Suzy McKee Charnas.—1st Orb ed. p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates Book.”
ISBN 0-312-86912-6
1. Science fiction, American. 2. Feminism—Fiction. 3. Women—fiction. I. Charnas, Suzy McKee. Walk to the end of the world. II. Charnas, Suzy McKee. Motherlines. III. Title.
PS3553.H325S55 1999
813’.54—dc21
99-19838
CIP
First Orb Edition: June 1999
Motherlines Page 24
