Moongather

by Clayton, Jo;

  The old woman was frowning. “Damkil sta?”

  “I don’t know Pehiirit,” Serroi said slowly, clearly. She frowned and searched her memory for the other languages she’d studied, though reading them and speaking them were two different things. “Gavarut vist-blec?” she asked, her tongue stumbling over the syllables. The old woman shook her head. Serroi licked her lips. “Um … mosmusweiwend?”

  “N’alalam iy.” Again the shake of the head, the dull jangle of the earrings, the soft flop of the braids.

  “Mmm. Spaeken mijloc?”

  “Ah. Mijloc.” The old woman nodded vigorously, her earrings bouncing wildly.

  That’s a help, Serroi thought. She wriggled around and slid off the jamat, then patted the big animal and pointed to the desert. “I did not steal him,” she said very slowly, again struggling for words. “I found him out there.” Words began coming more smoothly as she spoke. Relaxing a little, she grabbed at and caught the frayed chin rope. “See?” She nodded as the old woman took the rope end from her and rubbed her broad thumb across the frays.

  The old woman dropped the rope with a casual shrug. She obviously wasn’t much interested in the jamat, only in Serroi. “Desert. You?” Her accent was thick and Serroi had to puzzle a moment over the words, then she nodded, smiling. The woman smiled back. “Testing?”

  “Testing?” Serroi blinked at her, not understanding what she meant, then she thought of the Noris and shivered. “I don’t know. I don’t know what you mean by testing.” She moved restlessly, eyes scanning the tents and the unfriendly people moving about them. “What do I do?”

  The old woman dropped a broad strong hand on her shoulder; the force leaped between them again, but she hung on until only a rather pleasant tingle was left. “You have pass the dark gate and come back. You not know this?”

  “There was a dream.” She shook her head. “It was only a dream.”

  “You say it to me soon. Your people, they tell you nothing of the dreamtest? Ah! Pay me no mind, meto.” She laughed; the chains danced again and those earrings swung some more. She began coughing, beat on her chest, laughed some more. “I forget courtesy when I want to know things. Come. Hungry, little one?” She led Serroi to a tent set off to one side. Behind it, a girl crouched beside a black pot, stirring petulantly at the contents. Hate flared in her black eyes when she saw Serroi following the old woman. “T’mek!” she hissed.

  The old woman strode over to her and jerked her to her feet, shook her, snapped, “Davan, fena’kh!” She shoved her back down, pointed at the pot then at a pile of metal bowls sitting by the fire. “Kulek chak m’lao.” She looked over her shoulder at Serroi. “Sit, please, little one. Food soon, when this young viper remember how to act.”

  The girl glared at Serroi then shook the tangle of hair out of her face. “Siy!” she spat. “Gidahi hich yilan-sa!”

  The woman’s big hand swung in a blow that sent the girl sprawling. Ignoring her wailing, the woman picked up a battered bowl and ladled some of the boiled meat and wild grain into it. She stooped and picked up two flat greyish objects from a low square table beside the fire. With a last glare at the cowering girl, she swept over to Serroi and thrust the food at her. “Eat, meto. Apologies for the bira there. She say she die before she feed you.” The old woman shrugged and walked away.

  Serroi held the stew bowl in one hand and the two leathery loaves of bread in the other. She stared down at the warm flat loaves. Hungry as she was, she felt a bit dubious about them, then remembered the raw lizards she’d eaten in the desert and chuckled at herself. She set the loaves down and rested the bowl on her knees, looking about for something to eat with. The big woman came back from the fire, smiled at her, then settled herself comfortably, tore off a piece of the bread and used it to shovel some of the thick stew into her mouth. Serroi sniffed at the meat, smiled with pleasure, then imitated her hostess. In spite of her hunger and her delight in the warmth and taste of the stew, she soon could eat no more. She set the bowl on the ground by her knee and watched the girl as she waited for the woman to finish her meal.

  On the far side of the fire, the girl crawled back to the pot. Her hand on the spoon, sullenly she looked out of the corners of her eyes at the old woman. “Cayalts, Janja?” Her face was still ugly with resentment and jealousy.

  “Caiz.” The woman watched the girl ladle stew for herself, a complex of emotions playing over her broad face as she chewed slowly at the bread. After a few moments she snorted with disgust and turned to Serroi. “Idiot bira.” She narrowed her eyes at the food remaining in Serroi’s bowl. “Is enough?”

  “Is more than enough.” Serroi patted her stomach. “No room.”

  The woman grinned at her then slapped a hand on her wide bosom, making the money chains jingle and all her bangles clank fearsomely. “I nomen Raiki-janja.”

  “I nomen Serroi.”

  “Ah, Maiden bless.” Raiki sucked in a breath, tapped a broad forefinger against the side of her head. “Hunt for words make my head hurt. You learn Pehiirit?”

  Serroi hesitated, uncertain whether she wanted to stay with these people long enough to justify the effort. She felt adrift, no direction left for her now that she was out of the desert. Her eyes moved slowly around the encampment, watching the men sitting by their fire, talking, spitting, sipping at small glasses of cha, at the women working over cook fires or spinning jamat fleece into yarn, at the berbec herd moving slowly off to the grazing grounds under the guidance of the mouscar’s boys. She sighed. “Janja, I bring trouble.” She nodded at the scowling girl crouched over her bowl. “And not just with that one.”

  “I am Janja.” The heavy head came up proudly and the old chatoyant eyes looked about, fierce as a predator’s viewing a herd of prey animals. “What I want, I do. You janja too.”

  “Me?” Serroi stared, then shook her head. “No.”

  Raiki nodded. “You feel the power. You and me, we sisters. You do me joy if you stay, janja-meto.”

  Once again Serroi hesitated; she looked into the old woman’s smiling face, felt again—almost like a fire bathing her—the warmth radiating out from the janja, caressing Serroi, welcoming her. She trembled, tried to smile, nodded. “I stay. Awhile.”

  “Ah. Maiden bless.” Raiki pointed at the fire. “Atsh. Fire.” She uncrossed her legs and pointed at her high-arched battered bare feet. “Ayk. Foot.” She slapped a hand against the ground, scraped up and let fall a pinch of dry soil. “Lek’t.”

  The lessons continued as Serroi trailed Raiki about the camp, watching with curiosity as she tranced then healed an ailing baby, worked an amulet for a woman whose last child had been born dead, went out into the desert and collected herbs and several kinds of beetles. After mid-meal the rounds began again, and the pehiirit words kept coming until Serroi was dizzy with weariness.

  Raiki finally acknowledged this by clucking in distress and leading Serroi into her tent. The air inside was warm and saturated with the woman’s smell. Accustomed to the antiseptic cleanness of the Noris’s tower, this casual attitude to dirt and smell repelled Serroi. As Raiki pulled out a sleeping rug and tossed some pillows into a corner of the tent, Serroi struggled to hide her disgust. She settled on the cushions until Raiki left, then she pulled the rag off her head, ran her fingers through her hair, stroked them across her eye-spot, then concentrated on the pillows, evicting the vermin in them and in the sleeping rug, driving them before her to the tent wall and out into the gravel beyond. She heard a chuckle behind her and wheeled, feeling hot in the face. Raiki stood just inside the tent, hands on hips, a twinkle in her liquid eyes. Serroi lifted her hands, dropped them. “I didn’t mean to.…”

  “Insult me?” Raiki threw back her head and roared with laughter. Still chuckling, wiping at her eyes, she shook her head. “Little one, you don’t. Those small lifes sneak in through my tightest spells.” She cocked her head and examined Serroi with considerable interest, reached out and stroked her face. “The patches are starting to meet. You
’re a misborn of the windrunners.” Her wide mouth spread into a grin. “Do me, by the Maiden.” She swung her massive arms out and up. “Chase ’em, child.”

  Serroi giggled, then both were laughing as the small forms skittered down Raiki’s arms and legs and scuttled away.

  Raiki sat on the cleaned pillows beside Serroi. Quietly, soberly, she touched Serroi’s hand, her thumb moving gently over one of the few remaining rosy patches. “Best keep away from the rest of the mouscar; they don’t understand difference, meto.” She was becoming more fluent in mijloc as she continued to speak it. “And be careful of Yehail. She’ll try to hurt you if she can.” Raiki sighed. “I don’t know what the Maiden means with her; weren’t for the fact she’s the only one with sign of talent, I’d run her home before tomorrow dawn.” She shook her head, passed a hand over her forehead. “And I’m old.” Her voice low and dispirited, she murmured, “Yehail’s jealous and simmering with more resentments than these pillows had fleas. Worse, she’s greedy and short-sighted, not in the eyes but in the way she looks at things. She hasn’t the temperament to be a good janja. I’ve searched them all, not a touch of the talent, even the unborn.” She sucked in a deep breath and let it whoosh out. “You, meto. Let me teach you.”

  “No!” Seeing the hurt in Raiki’s face at her sharp refusal, Serroi went on hastily, “I’ve seen … I’ve felt.… No, I can’t touch power, Raiki-mother, I’m not fit.” She closed her eyes, the Noris’s face dark in her mind. She remembered the sick triumph in her when she shared the Noris’s victory over his challengers. Remembered what the quest for power had done to him and everything around him. Shivering and weeping, tired and afraid, she huddled on the pillows until Raiki caught her in her warm arms and rocked her back and forth, cooing to her, comforting her.

  The next morning Serroi drifted awake, feeling warm and content, opened her eyes and saw with momentary confusion a slanting tan wall rising close beside her. She freed her hand from the tangled rug and touched it, feeling the coarse yarn and the tough, tight weave. As she blinked and smiled, memory returning, she heard voices outside raised in argument. She pushed the rug back and yawned, ran her fingers through her hair, wondering if she could have a bath, wrinkled her nose because she still smelled strongly of jamat.

  The tent flap was jerked aside and Raiki came storming in. When she saw Serroi sitting up, her scowl shifted into a smile. “You slept hard, meto.”

  Serroi yawned and smiled sleepily at her. “I was tired.”

  “Got some things for you.” She dropped a pair of old sandals beside Serroi, then shook out a long wool robe, a tubular garment woven of undyed berbec wool. Serroi looked dubiously at it, unhappy at the thought of putting on another person’s dirt, though it seemed clean enough. Raiki looked thoughtfully from the robe to Serroi and back. “Might be a bit long,” she said after a moment. “Try it on, see how much fixing it needs.”

  As the days of summer drifted slowly past, Serroi was Raiki’s shadow. She continued to refuse to learn Raiki’s magic, recoiling from it with a fear that was burned deep into her; she wanted nothing to do with magic. What she did with her life she was determined to accomplish through the strength of mind and hand alone, it seemed a cleaner way of living, though she couldn’t deny Raiki’s goodness and the need her people had for her. She sternly repressed all mention of her initiation dream in the desert, refused to dream again.

  The Pehiiri mouscar counted five families, the most that their barren territory could support. This territory wasn’t so much a slice of land as a migration route and series of wells that the mouscar had dug and now maintained. They moved in a year-long loop, south in the winter along the inner line and north in the summer along the outer arc of the loop. When Serroi joined them they were close to the northernmost well.

  They camped at the present well for another passage, then packed the tents and moved on. Serroi helped Raiki fold up the tent and lash her belongings on the jamat’s back, then walked beside her as the mouscar began its leisurely progress to the final well.

  The days were hot and dusty and slow. They were forced to move no faster than the grazing berbeci. Serroi walked silent beside Raiki, a small dark shadow, listening while the janja schooled her apprentice. Yehail never forgot that Serroi followed. Her eyes continually swiveled around to her, glinting with triumph when she thought she was monopolizing Raiki-janja’s attention, glaring with hate when her inattention to the lesson brought her a scolding.

  Nights were hot and breathless. There was no water for bathing; hardly enough water for the ritual glasses of cha the men took around their fire at night Food was scanty; there was no time for searching out the wild grains, roots and herbs to supplement the greasy stews. The families slept in their clothes, huddled in a mass of rugs, women on the inside, their men in a ring of hot snoring flesh around them. Raiki and Serroi slept apart, but the night sounds of the uneasy sleepers surrounded them, then groans and snores, the wails of hungry babies, sharp staccato slaps at wandering sand fleas. In the rope corral, jamati shifted about, pawed at the sand, honked mournfully, resenting their daily burdens, restless under the moons. A bit farther out, the berbeci whined and cried out, rose and wandered aimlessly about, sometimes dodging and twisting to get away from the night-herds. When one succeeded, the boy who was nearest would curse, call to his companion, then trot out into the shadowy plain to chase down the escapee through the shifting moon-shadows that made such intrusions a continual stumbling and falling.

  The mouscar reached the Northwell at the end of the ninth day. The tents went up as the women and girls worked quickly to spread the tent cloth and set the poles and drive in the pegs. The men had scattered to look over the grazing lands, checking grass and browse to see how well they’d renewed themselves in the passages of rest. Serroi helped Raiki set up her tent, arrange the rugs and pillows inside and quietly drive out the vermin that had crept back from the jamat and the sand they’d slept on during the trek. Yehail had returned to her family for the night, leaving the two janjai in comfortable silence, stalking away, seething with anger and jealousy.

  Serroi frowned over her cha, watching the girl until she merged with the dark cluster of figures around her family fire. “Raiki, she’s going to make trouble for you. Because of me. She doesn’t even try to understand.”

  Raiki sighed. “Even half a chance, I’d send her home for good. I’ve tried with her, meto. I can’t make myself like her. Can’t.” She sipped at her cha. “She’ll be my death, damn her. Saw it when I went through the gates.” Her eyes, more brown than green now with brooding, moved over the camp. “Them too, meto. She’s going to kill a lot of them. There’s a dark hand reaching for her, the dark hand that loosed you to me, you know what I’m talking of. But she’s the only one with the talent, the only damned one.”

  Serroi stirred restlessly, feeling the pressure of the janja’s desire. She looked up, stared, as five figures left their fires and came-over to them.

  Four of the men stood back, willing to support, unwilling to speak. Yod vo Rehsan stepped forward, scowling at the janja, ignoring Serroi. “There is an outsider, janja.”

  Raiki sat without moving for a long moment, then she rose with slow massive force and stared back at him, her lined face expressionless. “I see no outsider, Yod. There is a guest. My guest.”

  Yod glanced swiftly at Serroi who sat beside the fire, her arms wrapped around her legs. His dark sunken eyes were shiny with dislike. He was a man of quick and violent temper but he had a cunning tongue and was the mouscar’s leader, if that loosely organized collection of families could be said to have a leader. The group lived too close to the edge of subsistence for wide differences in the status of its adult males. Cooperation was essential to their continuance as a group. Yod had an abrasive persistence that wore down opposition. The other men were here now because he’d kept at them until it was easier to go along with him than to keep arguing. While mildly disturbed by Serroi’s presence, they’d come to accept her as the
janja’s pet, but Yod was. Yehail’s father. When Raiki’s eyes swept over them, they plucked at sleeve fringes and kicked at the sand.

  “Guests stink after three days. We got no place for strangers.” Serroi could see his face darkening even in the dim light from the clouded stars. “I speak for the mouscar, we don’t want her here.”

  Raiki chuckled dryly. “You speak for yourself, Yod. And that daughter of yours.” She moved her stern gaze from one face to the other, leaving each man distinctly more uneasy than before. “You going to let an adder-tongued-girl tell you what to do?” She snorted. “Yod, you keep pushing this, you push your janja out too. Understand me, man. I won’t let you stick your nose into my household. So you might’s well trot yourself back to your fire, teach your girl to mind her manners and her business.”

  One of the other men laid a hand on Yod’s arm. “Let it go,” he muttered.

  Raiki sank down on her heels and poured another cupful of cha, her shoulder turned on the men. She smiled at Serroi, tilted the pot, offering her a refill.

  Serroi held out her cup, watching out of the corner of her eye as the men walked back to their fires. She bent her head over the rising twist of steam. “I said there’d be trouble.”

  Raiki snorted. “Pay them no mind, meto. They need me too much to make trouble.”

  “Would you really leave because of me?”

  “Yah, meto.” Raiki chuckled, then drained her cup. “Wouldn’t stay away, couldn’t, you know. But I’d shake them up a bit. Won’t happen.” She sighed. “I wish you’d let me teach you, but you’re right, even if it is for the wrong reasons. I doubt if they’d ever accept you, not with Yehail back-biting.”