by Tara Maya, Elle Casey, J L Bryan, Anthea Sharp, Jenna Elizabeth Johnson, Alexia Purdy (epub)
“But Mama, you said yourself, I’m sick…”
“Are you really going to go find eggs?”
“Of course.”
“Not just go play in the woods?”
“Mama.” Gwenika looked the model of wounded innocence.
“Fa! Go, then. Find eggs. Take them to your Gramma. I’m sure she’ll be glad to prepare them for you.” By mercy, she coddles you. Meanwhile, your sister will stay and practice. At least one of you will not fail her family honor. Go!”
Gwenika scrambled away.
No sooner had Gwenika departed, however, than a niggling suspicion began to plague Brena. “Stay here,” she told her oldest daughter Gwena. “Keep going over the Deer Leaps until I return.”
“Yes, Mama.”
It did not take Brena long to find her younger daughter. Gwenika was climbing a low leaning sycamore tree with fist-sized nest built on a horizontal limb thirty-five feet above the ground. Brena was surprised. Maybe she really is after eggs. She recognized the nest as that of a sycamore warbler. The interior of the nest would be lined with last year’s sycamore balls.
When the girls had been younger, Brena had walked with them in the woods, holding up a feather or a leaf, challenging them to guess the name of the bird or tree it belonged to. Brena’s own mother had used the same technique of those guessing games to pass on the shape of every bird, tree and herb in the woods.
Gwenika apparently hadn’t noticed her. The girl reached the nest. She reached into it—but not to remove something, to deposit something.
Eeeep.
Brena heard the tiny cry.
“There you are, little lost one,” Gwenika cooed. “Safe back at home.”
The eggs in that nest had already hatched, and one of the baby birds must have fallen out. Gwenika had helped one of the chicks back into the nest.
Brena shook her head. She’ll learn soon enough that good deeds are repaid with cruelty, sure as offering food to a wolf only leads to lost fingers. Nonetheless, she turned to leave without saying anything to her daughter. Brena didn’t have the heart to yell at her for saving the baby bird instead of practicing.
Suddenly, Gwenika screamed. Brena ran back to the tree.
An immense, shaggy blond bear, wounded by an arrow and nursing its bad paw, had crashed through the underbrush and now stood between Brena and her daughter.
Brena
Brena stared at the bear, torn between fear and awe. Her tribe used bear hides for rugs and hangings, for door curtains and room dividers, so she knew that bears were large, but she had never encountered one in person. Those lifeless skins hadn’t prepared her for the immensity of a live bear. As large as an aurochs bull, but with sharp teeth, the bear had thick honey colored fur that darkened to cinnamon around its haunches. Black ooze dripped from the arrow wound in its hind leg.
“Girls,” Brena said, “Walk until you are out of sight, then find your sister and run to the clanhold as fast as you can.”
“But Mama, what about you?”
“Go.”
For once, to her relief, Gwenika did as she was told and ran away through the woods.
Slung over her shoulder, Brena wore a bark fiber sack where she kept a number of useful things: herbs, a water skin, a rock-like lump of sugar, another of salt, various elixirs in stoppered jars no bigger than a finger.
“I’ve helped many wounded animals,” she said. She lowered her body to a crouch, with her arms at her sides, as unthreatening as she could make herself. “I can take out the arrow for you and staunch the bleeding.”
The bear shook its head, as if it understood her.
“I know what you are,” added Brena. “I know why you approached my daughters. But if you want help, you’ll have to come to me. I won’t let you subvert them with your faery wiles.”
“Stay away, human,” growled the bear. She had a low, but unmistakably feminine voice. “I’m not so weak yet that I can’t still kill you.”
Bears did not talk. Faeries did. “I knew it. You are a Brundorfae.”
The bear shuddered and tried to back away. Instead, she collapsed. Another spasm rippled through the beast’s body and she howled, in terrible pain.
“Let me help you,” said Brena. “I have herbs. Medicines.”
“I don’t want your damn help!” said the she-bear faery. Dry leaves crackled under her thrashing body.
“Then why did you approach us?”
“Didn’t think you could see me,” wheezed the bear. “Human young see us, but human olds mostly ignore us.”
“Well, this human ‘old’ sees right through you, faery bear,” said Brena. “I know why faeries prey on virgins. Once a woman has been screwed by a man, she’s not naïve enough to trust your ilk either.”
The bear made an odd snuffling sound. Almost like chuckles. At the end, however, the sound turned into another roar of pain, and the bear again twisted in a futile attempt to bat away the arrow.
“Are you going to let me help you or not?” asked Brena.
“No! I told you to leave me alone!”
Brena inched forward in small steps. Her heart was pounding so hard she was sure the bear could hear it. A bear was still a bear, and the fact that it was a faery bear only made the situation more dangerous. Once she reached the bear’s side, she knelt and examined the puncture. The bear writhed in pain, too weak to stop her.
Brena tried to remember everything her mother had taught her about war wounds. Beware the barb. The arrowhead will want to stay under the blanket of flesh to continue its misdeeds. “I’m going to have to cut it out. It will hurt, I’m sorry—”
“Just leave!” ordered the bear, showing her canines. “It’s poison, it will take your life.”
Brena took out a stone knife from her satchel. Though she worked as quickly as possible, the bear still shuddered in pain when she cut out the arrowhead. Brena forced herself not to flinch or pause.
The she-bear groaned.
The arrow, when it finally emerged whole, was black, both shaft and fletch, with no clan markings. The obsidian tip gleamed like a wicked smile. Brena took care not to touch it. She wrapped it in a leather oilskin.
The bear still bled, but the removal of the arrow restored her to greater strength. She was able to rise and shake out her fur. She stood up on her back legs, tall as a totem pole, towering over Brena. Her strange yellow eyes glittered with anger.
“I suppose you think you’ve earned my eternal gratitude and are now entitled to wish for wealth and love and luck and power.” The bear snorted in derision. “But you’ve only removed the weapon, you haven’t healed the wound. The wound cannot truly heal unless that arrow takes a human life. Will you kill someone for me?”
Brena stepped back. “I tried to help you, and you’re demanding a mariah?”
“You humans kill one another all the time,” the bear said. “You have two daughters. Do you really need both?”
“Stay away from them, faery!”
“You brought this on yourself,” snapped the bear. “I never asked for your help. I begged you to leave. The arrow demands death. An immortal can’t quench the arrow’s thirst. By taking it from my flesh, you’ve taken the responsibility of providing a human sacrifice. If you find a mariah for me, I will be fully healed. If you don’t, I will live in torment. I am at your mercy.”
“I won’t kill for you.”
“I will never force you to,” growled the bear. “I didn’t want to foist this choice on you. Despite what you think of the fae, we are not your real enemies. The wound is not mine alone. There is a wound in the world.”
A crow cawed. The bear shouldered her aside and lumbered away, unevenly, into the woods.
Dindi
Tamio recovered his wits most swiftly, in time to pull Dindi off the enemy.
“Dindi! Stop!” shouted Tamio. “That’s my mother’s brother Abiono!”
Dindi stopped struggling.
Coughing and huffing, the leader of the “enemy” Tavae
dies removed his mask, revealing Abiono, Zavaedi of their own Tavaedi troop. The other Tavaedies removed their masks too, and all were men and women from the Corn Hills.
She saw now that the half-dozen Tavaedies and two dozen boys and girls stood on a forested cliff buff with a view of the sea on the far horizon. Pale morning light flooded a lovely expanse of land below them, meadows pimpled by artificial hills. Autumn tinted the fields and trees shades of citron and cinnamon. At the top of each man-made hill, a log stockade enclosed dome shaped houses. Cold tingles skipped down her back when she considered how close she had come to running off that cliff during her blind escape attempt.
“Abiono! Did you rescue us already?” Hadi asked. He rubbed his eyes.
“No, idiot,” Tamio said, giving Hadi a disgusted look. “Don’t you get it? The mock kidnapping is part of Initiation. Isn’t it, Uncle?”
“Yes.” Abiono winced as he adjusted his costume. “Learning to face fear is an important part of becoming an adult.”
A babble of questions and exclamations followed. Hadi kept repeating, “So we aren’t slaves?” as though he didn’t dare believe it yet. Jensi wanted to know if they could bathe now. Kemla declared, “Fa! I knew the truth all along. Your goat-headedness had better not have ruined our chance at Initiation, Dindi.”
Dindi burned with an all too familiar feeling of shame and frustration. How did she always mean to do right and still go so wrong? It didn’t seem fair she violated a taboo even when trying to defend herself and others from becoming human sacrifices.
“It’s taboo to reveal too soon the true nature of your capture. However, since you all know now, thanks to Dindi,”—Abiono heaved a sigh in her general direction—“We may as well distribute the totems. We would have soon in any case. We will be traveling to the Yellow Bear tribehold for your Initiation.”
“What?” Tamio sounded outraged. “Why go to outtribesmen?”
“Once we would have taken you to the ancestral tribehold of our own people, the Rainbow Labyrinth,” said Abiono. “But a generation ago, the Bone Whistler took over there and forbade the practice of Many-Banded magic, Imorvae magic. Those of us who were of the age of Initiation had to go elsewhere for our testing and training. I myself went to live with the Purple Thunder tribe. A few years later the three clans in the Corn Hills made a permanent agreement to bring our Initiates to be tested along with the youth of our allies in the Yellow Bear tribe. We have kept that agreement ever since, even after we heard of the fall of the Bone Whistler. Remember as we travel to the place of Initiation, that we represent not just our clan, and not just our clan-klatch, but our whole tribe. It is we who are the outtribesfolk here. Walk with honor.”
Abiono stared out to sea. He cleared his throat. “Many other secrets you will all learn as you become men and women. Though there are also secrets you will only learn if you become Tavaedies. Now.” He smiled slightly. “We will not let you pass through the lands of outtribesmen as naked as pigs. Look inside your baskets.”
Blushes passed all around. They had grown so used to it that they’d forgotten their nakedness. Girls and boys instinctively edged away from one another. They unwove the cords that fastened down the top flaps of the baskets.
“I knew it,” said Hadi, pulling out a number of flint arrowheads, axeheads and spearheads from his basket. “I have been carrying rocks.”
The first thing Dindi saw when she opened her basket was a ball of fur, who stretched and yawned, entirely pleased with himself.
“Puddlepaws, how did you hitch a ride?” She scooped up the kitten, scratched his head until he purred, then set him aside. He had been sleeping on a long strip of woven cloth, mostly white, but banded in maze-like patterns of purple, blue, yellow, green, red and orange. Below that, she found tools of chert and bone, wrapped in grass—awls, spoons, loom weights and scrappers.
“Your clans will have provided each of you with your Birthright,” said Abiono. “You should find guest gifts to give to our hosts, the cloth wrap of an Initiate—I’ll show you how to wrap it—a dancing costume, and your totem.”
Dindi clothed herself again, in the single piece wrap, just as Abiono instructed. Most of the other Initiates did the same. They helped paint themselves. The symbols included black paint across their eyes to represent blindfolds and red paint around their wrists to represent ropes. Then they all dived back into their carrying baskets, to see what other treasures they could find.
Grass stuffing separated the items in the basket. Dindi kept digging until she found a beautiful beaded costume. Guessing by the exclamations from the others, they found the same. Expensive and ancient, the formal garments were dyed white and embroidered with colored beads and clan markings. Dindi’s dress included a slit skirt, a chest band, numerous hoop necklaces, and a cape and headdress of swan feathers.
“What’s this?” demanded Tamio routing through his own basket. “I don’t need a girl’s toy!”
“The dolls are not toys. The doll is the totem of your soul, made for you in your first seven days of life,” said Abiono. “It will be buried with you when you die. It is precious and you must not lose it. You will need it for the Initiation ceremony. Before you become men and women, you must pass the tests we give you. If you pass, you receive a new totem in addition to your dolls. Men will be given a pestle, and women a mortar. Those chosen as Tavaedies will be given a Windwheel.”
“Oh, mine is beautiful!” exclaimed Kemla. She held up a carved, painted doll made from a corncob. Hers had real horsehair braids and wore a vermillion dress embroidered with luxurious amber and gold beads.
Tamio’s totem doll wore a purple shoulder blanket and held a diminutive riding hoop. It was quite cute. Hadi’s had a little spear and a rather crookedly painted smile. Jensi’s totem doll had corn silk braids and a bone bead dress, not as polished as Kemla’s, but it carried an adorable miniature water jar on its head.
Dindi had to dig underneath the formal attire before she found something wrapped carefully in dried grass. Her corncob doll. It looked old, tattered and half rotted. The paint had been worn down so much that the face was just a blank. Holes for roots testified that the doll had once had horsehair, but now it looked bald. The torn dress had no beads left either. This was not why she dropped it as though burned.
The doll flashed in Dindi’s hand. For one translucent moment, every detail, the blades of grass at her feet, the sun glinting off the distant sea, sprang into vivid relief. Dindi felt she had taken off a blindfold and seen a world of another, brighter sun. The effulgence drove her to her knees, and rushed up to entangle her in another mind, another place, another time.
Vessia
A woman opened her eyes to find herself in a field at dawn. Two people stood before her, an old man and an old woman. They wept and smiled at the same time, and touched her, possessively, as if they owned her, gently, as if they feared her. She did not know them. They tried to look into her face, but she stared past them. They did not matter to her one way or another. The sunlight as it filtered through the leaves, now, that she found strange and wondrous.
When they tried to embrace her, she screamed. Her scream was not one of terror or rage, simply a noise, a discomfort to match the discomfort of their touch, and when their touch withdrew, so ended the scream. After that, her face went still again, as if nothing had happened, and she stared past them, to gaze upon the wonder of the shifting leaves.
They pulled back, still crying, still smiling, still trying to touch her as much as she would allow.
“Daughter,” they called her, over and over, now a question, now a statement. “You are our daughter”—as if they didn’t believe it themselves, but would speak hope into truth.
“You are our daughter,” she repeated. Her words pleased them, not quite.
The field meant nothing to her. The couple meant nothing to her. So it meant nothing to her when the couple led her away from the field. Gradually, however, a new emotion did bloom a little in her—curiosity. The coup
le led her to a domed house of baked clay, with a tiny door at the top of a ladder, so tiny she had to crawl through it. Inside the dome, the round room was spacious, with a hole in the high roof to let in light and air. Rugs woven with patterns covered the clay floor. Patterns of light and shadow crisscrossed chevrons and zigzags on the rugs, creating complexities within complexities. It was beautiful. And she was content with that.
A wildness pulsed inside her, this ‘daughter’ whom they called ‘Vessia.’ She could not stay inside for long periods of time. Outside, she would run, as if searching, and then fling herself headlong into the wind, flipping and twisting to catch the clouds. Instead, the hard ground always claimed her. The old couple loved to watch her, and could do so endlessly, the way one could look again and again at a waterfall, or the sun setting over the ocean, or a baby sleeping, and never tire or cease to amaze at it. If the river itself jumped out of its bed to leap and twirl it would have astonished them no less. Yet her runs and leaps frightened them too, the way that coming face to face with a wild cat or a forest fire fascinates and terrifies. See how she dances, they whispered when they thought she was not listening, never predictable, never repeating herself.
She was not trying to dance. She was trying to fly.
They gave her food, water, a place to sleep. They tried to meet her eyes, but she had no interest in looking at them. They tried to hug her, sometimes, and she would shrug them away, or screech if they pressed her. They clothed her, but she simply removed the garments if they itched. She loved to look at cloth while it was still on the loom, however. Beauty moved her. If she found beauty, for hours at a time it would occupy her. Lights, patterns, colors, movements. Once, the old woman set up the loom before going to bed, and in the morning, found that Vessia had completed the entire weave, a perfect copy of one of the rugs upon the floor.
“You finished the whole thing in one night!” exclaimed the old woman. “And without a single mistake! You are amazing!”
