by Sharon Shinn
She touched him carefully on the shoulder, and he looked up from his hedonistic union with the water. Drenched and flat to his head, his copper hair looked brown and unremarkable, but his eyes glittered out from a falling veil of water.
“Yes,” she said, aiming her finger at the water where he now splashed. “No,” she added, pointing upstream to the place where they drew all their drinking water.
“Yes,” he said, mimicking her actions. “No.”
She smiled and touched her finger to her chest, and then gestured back at the camp. “Miriam go,” she said, though she was not sure he had deciphered the word go yet.
“Toteyosi,” he replied.
“You’re welcome.”
She left him at the water’s edge to give him some privacy and headed back to tell Tirza the news. At first, when the rhythms of the camp had dictated that Jossis would be left alone for a little while, Miriam had fretted. “What if he leaves?” she had asked.
Tirza had shrugged. “And what if he does? He is not our prisoner. He is our guest.”
“No, but he could get lost, he could get hurt—”
“He could find his friends and direct them back to us,” Tirza had said. “I cannot do anything about that. I have too much to do to sit and watch a stranger every day and make sure he does not bring harm or come to it. And so do you.”
But it was still hard for Miriam to leave Jossis alone at the pool and not worry about what might happen next.
He was fine, of course. He returned in about thirty minutes, soaking from head to toe and smiling so widely that no one who saw him could help smiling back. He came up to Tirza and Miriam where they stood around the cook pot and loosed a torrent of unintelligible words. The women could not help but laugh, for he was so clearly explaining how good it felt to be clean, how miserable it had been to be so dirty for so long, how fresh the water felt, how kind the god was.
“Yes,” Miriam said, for she knew no other syllable of approval that he would understand. “Yes. You’re welcome.”
After that, Jossis could be found down at the stream almost as often as Miriam. Miriam was surprised at the difference a good thorough cleaning made in the stranger’s appearance. The matted copper hair took on a fineness and a bright radiance that made it look milkweed-soft and firered. His skin was still black as good dirt, but it glowed with a smooth ebony luster that made her think of fine wood sculpture crafted by the Luminauzi carpenters. His face seemed more expressive, now that it was clean—although that might be, instead, the effect of returning health and boundless curiosity.
Everything interested him. He would walk around the camp and examine every pack, every carton, every cauldron, every tent. If anyone was nearby and looked agreeable, he would pelt them with questions, “Ska?” and “Yes?” coming out of his mouth most often. If someone took the time to give him a word, and repeat it to him often enough, Jossis would stand there for nearly an hour, repeating it over and over until he had the inflection right. Thus he learned fire, tent, stew, boot, rabbit, marrowroot, Tirza, Claudia, Anna, Amram, Dathan, Bartholomew, knife, crossbow, blanket, pot and any number of other words that surprised Miriam when she had her own conversations with him.
Tirza had decided to make use of his affinity for water and teach him how to fetch buckets of it from the stone pond. Miriam was doubtful about this, because if Jossis really was their guest, was it fair to put him to work? But he seemed happy enough to perform this task for Tirza, once he understood exactly what it was she wanted of him. He even learned a new word, and would come up to her often during the day to ask, “Bucket?” He kept her so well-supplied with water that eventually no one else had to make a trip to the stream at all.
It was clear he was restless, and used to physical activity, so Miriam began to take him with her on expeditions to hunt for food. Once she had identified for him the shapes of the leaves and twigs that denoted edible plants, he was an indefatigable assistant, digging with great patience and concentration through the rockiest and most impenetrable soil. Now and then his zeal led him to dig up a plant that she did not recognize, and he would hold it up to her and inquire, “Ska?” She would spread her hands in a gesture of uncertainty and then say, “Yes,” and they would bring it back for Anna or Claudia to identify. If it was something they could eat, Miriam and Jossis would continue to look for it in the following days. If it was not, she would tell him “No,” and he would never accidentally dig up that tuber again.
Jossis was not really interested in women’s work, though; that she could tell. Every day as the men left for the hunt, he would watch them, his bright eyes a little duller, a despondent expression on his face. But Eleazar had argued vociferously against teaching him the uses of the crossbow, and everyone else had been forced to see the wisdom of this stance. Jossis could say “knife” and “crossbow,” but he was not allowed to handle either one. And he did not seem to question this, he just looked sadly after the instruments and occupations of men, and knew they were not for him.
“Wherever he comes from, I think he must be really smart,” Miriam said to Tirza one day as they cut up dried vegetables for the simmering cook pot. “He catches on so quickly! He seems to understand even the things that are hard to explain.”
Tirza looked at her with a little smile. “You have not been around young children much, have you?”
“No,” Miriam said a little defensively.
“Jossis reminds me of a two-year-old. He knows a few words, he knows how to convey when he is hungry or sick. He understands what is forbidden, though he may not like it, and he understands that there is more to the world than he has been able to grasp somehow, and he is determined to learn it.”
“He is much smarter than a two-year-old!”
“There are few things in this world craftier than a small child just figuring things out,” Tirza said mildly. “I agree with you. I think he is very intelligent. But perhaps they are all intelligent where he comes from. I do not know how to judge him.”
“Well, and I think he must be more good-natured than the others of his tribe,” Miriam said defiantly. She could have no way of knowing this, either, but she was certain it was true. “He is so willing to help. He works very hard. Have you noticed how often he smiles? When he was sick, he didn’t smile at all. It makes him look very happy.”
Tirza reached for another tuber, a brown misshapen form that was grotesque on the outside but quite delicious on the inside, and began chopping it up for the pot. “Yes, he seems like a good-hearted young man,” she agreed, but her voice did not hold enough enthusiasm for Miriam.
“I thought you liked him,” the younger girl challenged.
Tirza looked over with a faint expression of astonishment. “I do! He seems to have many good traits. He works hard and is determined not to be a burden on us. I admire that. He is easy to care for and eager to learn. But, Miriam, he arrived with men intent on killing us. I do not think he is such an innocent as you would like to believe.”
Miriam had already worked this out to her own satisfaction. “He’s very young, you see,” she explained. “You can tell, because of how thin he is and how his beard does not grow. He is very young, and this was the first time the men of his tribe took him out into—into battle. And he was shocked at what they intended to do. And—you know, I always thought that I caught the other man off-guard when I threw my rock, but maybe that’s not what happened. Maybe Jossis had already turned to grab the other man’s arm, to push aside the fire stick. Because his good heart would not allow his kinsmen to kill us in such a fashion.”
Tirza put down her knife and her brown tuber and laid both her hands on the blond girl’s shoulders. “Miriam,” she said softly. “When I was a little girl, my tribe came across the body of a dead wildcat, mauled by some other hunting animal. And beside that dead wildcat was a kitten, crying and starving for milk. I begged my father to allow me to keep that baby wildcat, and he agreed, and I fed it scraps of meat and let it sleep beside me in m
y tent. And it would follow at my heels when I left camp to do laundry or gather roots. And it would come to my hand when I called its name. But one day, when it was about six months old, it saw a rabbit scooting through the high grass, and it dashed out and with one swipe of its paw, it brought that rabbit down. And two days later, it was gone from camp, and I never saw it again.”
Miriam looked away, too angry to speak, but Tirza’s hands tightened on her shoulders. “You can bring a wild thing to your side, and you can think you’ve tamed it, but it will always be the wild thing it was born,” Tirza finished up in a gentle voice. “You may think you have made this man your friend, but he is a stranger here, and his allegiances lie elsewhere. Be prepared to see him hurt you, and the ones you love, and be prepared to let him go when the time comes. He is what he was fashioned to be, and only Yovah knows what shape he will finally take.”
Tirza was not the only one to speak of Jossis with an air of caution. Claudia—who liked him, and who would save special treats for him when she was making the evening meal—told Tirza within Miriam’s hearing that the allali girl should not be allowed to spend so much time with the stranger. “You can just see she’ll form an attachment for him and break her heart,” Claudia said. Eleazar, of course, had never relaxed his vigilance and would never say anything remotely kind about Jossis, though Miriam tried over and over to make the Edori confess that Jossis was not a monster.
“He’s a banked coal ready to burst into flame,” was all Eleazar would say, which sounded enough like the baby wildcat theory that Miriam finally gave up.
Eleazar, in fact, was the one to cause a little flare-up that came after they had been camped beside the mountain for nearly three weeks. The men had been out hunting the day before and had come back with a good haul of meat, and they had left again in the morning to look for more. All the women had gathered around yesterday’s carcasses to begin skinning and dressing the animals. It was still a job for which Miriam had no love, but she could do it, and rather competently, too. So she had settled in beside Tirza and reached for the nearest rabbit.
In a moment, Jossis was beside her, crouched down flat on his feet in a pose he could hold for hours. “Ska?” he said.
Miriam pointed to the various dead bodies. “Rabbit. Grouse. Deer. And—something. I can’t recall what Eleazar called it.”
“Furdebeest,” Tirza supplied. “Fairly rare, and I hate to see it brought down to fill our cook pots, but. . .” She shrugged and went on with her skinning.
“Raaaaabit,” Jossis said, putting out his hand to touch the bloodied side of the smallest animal. Then he pointed to the deer again. “Ska?”
So Miriam went through the litany again, and this time he had them all. Next he touched an unused knife lying on the ground before the women. “Jossis help?” he asked.
Miriam was so surprised she dropped her own knife. She had already discovered how hard it was to teach someone verbs, and she had no idea where he had learned this one. Walk and run were fairly easy to demonstrate, of course, and even sleep and eat had been simple to simulate. But help was a concept more complicated than any of those and one she couldn’t imagine anyone taking the time to teach him. Perhaps he had picked it up on his own.
What was even more surprising than his word choice was his offer.
“Jossis help?” he asked again, his voice a little more insistent. He gestured again at the knife.
Miriam glanced at Tirza, who had not paused in her own work, and the older woman merely shrugged. So Miriam picked up the extra knife, handed it to him, and said, “Yes. Jossis help.”
She expected to have to demonstrate skinning, but it was clear as soon as his fingers closed around the hilt that he knew how to handle a small weapon. And when he tugged a small furdebeest out of the pile, it was also clear that he knew how to dress game, because he set the sharp blade to the animal’s throat and slit the fur down the belly in one quick slice. Then he turned to Miriam for confirmation. “Yes?” he asked.
“Yes.”
She glanced over at Tirza, who only shrugged again and kept on with her own work. Claudia, however, came to her feet and wiped her bloody hands on a rag. “You’ve got enough hands here you don’t need me for a while,” she remarked. “I’ll go start the bread.”
Jossis worked beside them happily for the next hour, clearly finding this chore a little more to his taste than the other women’s work. Maybe in his tribe, men both hunted for game and cut it up afterward. The question seemed too complicated to ask.
They were still working on the carcasses from the day before when the men returned with a much smaller haul, mostly game birds. Miriam was talking quietly to Tirza and did not pay much attention when Eleazar came striding over, two dead pheasant swinging from his fingers.
She noticed instantly when he gave a shout, dropped the birds, and sprinted across the pile of skins to snatch the knife from Jossis’ hand. Jossis scrambled to a low crouch, but Miriam jumped to her feet, all the while astonished by the sound of Eleazar yelling.
“Are you mad? Has Yovah struck you dumb? Giving a knife to this man, our enemy! How long has he sat here today with a blade in his hand, trying to decide which of you to kill first? Is all of this animal blood, or has one of your sisters been killed while you sat here smiling?”
Miriam immediately launched her own attack, so angry that she actually reached out and shoved Eleazar’s arm. “Don’t you say such things! He is not our enemy! He is our friend—at least, he wants to be our friend, and yet you, with your bitter mind—”
“My bitter mind may yet keep us all alive. Stupid allali girl, who would have thought you would be so trusting?”
“I am not stupid—it is you who are stupid, you who are unkind and unwelcoming, like no Edori I have ever met—”
“Yes, now lecture me upon the Edori—”
“Stop it. Both of you,” Tirza intervened, moving between them as if with her body she could cut the cord of anger that bound them. “Eleazar is right, Miriam, we have been a little too trusting to put a weapon in the hand of our enemy.”
“But he is not—”
“And Miriam is right,” Tirza said, turning her shoulder in Miriam’s face and staring at her lover with calm eyes. “He does seem to want to be our friend. He has only offered to help us. Since he has been in our camp, he has not been angry or violent or cruel. We Edori have been taught to judge the individual, and even then not harshly. This individual has done nothing to hurt us.”
Eleazar stared back at her with an unrelenting fury. “This individual would have killed us all,” he said coldly. “You cannot call him harmless.”
“He is a boy,” Tirza said. “And he can be taught better ways.”
“We will not live to be the ones to teach him.”
“If he—” Tirza began, but she did not get a chance to finish. Jossis, who had stayed in a crouch all this time, now slowly rose to a standing position. Moving carefully—as if trying not to alarm Eleazar, Miriam thought—Jossis took the few steps necessary to put himself next to the angry Edori. Both Eleazar and Tirza turned to look at him, Eleazar frowning, Tirza questioning. Jossis did not look at them. He had his head bowed, his eyes trained on the ground at his feet. Now he put his hands out, slowly, and turned them palms up, showing his hands empty of anything except animal blood. Keeping his arms out and his head down, he slowly sank to his knees in a gesture of submission and docility that was impossible to mistake. He stayed that way, unmoving, almost unbreathing, while everyone in the camp stared down at him.
Finally, Eleazar spoke, his voice low and hard. “I don’t know what you want from me,” he said.
Jossis still did not look up, and his voice, when it came, was muffled and soft. “Friend,” he said.
“I do not trust you,” Eleazar said flatly.
“Friend,” Jossis repeated.
“You are no friend of mine,” Eleazar said, and turned on one heel and stalked away.
Jossis stayed where he was,
head down and hands outstretched. Tirza dropped to her knees beside him and put her hands on his shoulders. “You are my friend,” she said softly.
Others had come over to watch the drama, some curious, some troubled. Disharmony was rare among the Edori, rarer still between lovers, and no one liked to see anyone as angry as Eleazar was. But this man was their guest; they had taken him in. Most of them could not summon the mistrust Eleazar had exhibited—they had no practice with it.
“Friend,” Bartholomew said, stepping close enough to lay his hand on Jossis’ head, and then stepping back.
“Friend,” said Thaddeus, and Shua, and Dathan, and Anna, mimicking Bartholomew’s action. One by one, the other Lohoras came forward, repeated the word, then backed off to make room for another kinsman.
Miriam was the last one to make her declaration. Like Tirza, she knelt before Jossis, face-to-face with him on the blood-soiled ground. She put her hand out and placed it under his chin, turning his face up so she could look into his jeweled eyes. “Friend,” she said, and leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek.
There was absolute silence in the camp as she drew back. Jossis was staring at her—but then, so was everybody else. She still had her fingers under his chin, and now he lifted both of his dirty hands and wrapped them around her wrist. His grip was strong and the pressure of his hands took hers down to rest on his knees. He was still watching her with those bright eyes, and she could not look away.
“Meerimuh,” he said at last. “Friend.”
Neither Eleazar nor Tirza attended the communal dinner that night, but Miriam thought that might be a good thing. She had seen Tirza prepare two bowls of stew and carry them away from the campfire, and she thought perhaps the quarreling lovers were going to take some private time to discuss their differences. The tent would be empty while the others were at dinner; they might find their problems easy to resolve in the oldest and most traditional manner.
