Shifting Plains

by Jean Johnson

  “—When I stand across a fire from him, yes. I was warned about that,” Tava agreed.

  Soukut chuckled. “We have a smart one, Daughter. No, no—don’t crouch just yet,” she ordered Tava, who had started to sink down to begin rinsing the soap from her hair and skin. “We’ll fill our buckets first, so you’ll have mostly clean rinse water at the end.”

  There was a pause in the lecture while they helped Tava to rinse herself, splashing and sluicing the suds from her skin.

  “Anyway, to honor the strength of our shapeshifting blood, it was decided that only a Princess of the People could become the Queen of the Shifterai, gaining the Ai honorific in front of her name. But only if she displayed great strength and skill,” Soulet told Tava, holding out a towel for the younger woman to step into, now that her bath was done.

  “Which you will see for yourself this winter, when we return to the City,” Soukut agreed. “Every winter, there are shapeshifting contests held. Many are for the men, and some of them can be quite amazing to see, but for the women, it is the contests between the princesses that hold the most interest. These are judged by the purity of one’s shape. It’s not enough to just lengthen your legs or swap feathers for your hair. You have to take on the shape of an animal so realistically, it would be difficult to tell you from the real thing. If you were a shifter.”

  “Purity of form is very difficult,” Soulet warned Tava. “Every detail must be kept in the mind and molded into the flesh, and the shifter must be strong enough to manage not only the differences in shape, but the size, the muscles, and the movements.”

  “To mimic one of the beasts that fly, swim, or run through the world is seen as a way of honoring Father Sky and Mother Earth. I would say . . . one out of every twenty men can manage as many as five pure shapes. One out of every forty can manage seven or more, and fewer than one out of every eighty can manage ten shapes or more, making them a multerai. Those among the men who can become multerai are expected to lead the warbands—the honorable warbands that they have become—and even to be the Lord of a Family if it has no princesses . . . such as Family Tiger currently lacks,” Soukut admitted. “Our last princess, Apeta, died with only sons in her bloodline.”

  “But . . . that doesn’t make sense. There are hundreds of people in this Family,” Tava pointed out, accepting a second cloth to rub some of the dampness out of her hair. “If one in fifty women is born a shifter, there should be . . .”

  “There should be sixteen or seventeen in Family Tiger . . . if such things bred randomly,” Soukut agreed. The elderly woman scrubbed Tava’s hair with a vigor that belied her apparent age. “But shapeshifting runs more in bloodlines. Four out of five daughters born to a princess will also be princesses . . . but first she must have the daughters, and that is the random chance of the Gods.”

  “Clan Cat overall has the correct ratio of shifter women to non-shifters, being one in fifty,” Soulet agreed. “Unfortunately . . . right now, most of them were born into Family Lion, which has over two thousand members, and over one hundred princesses, a ratio of one in twenty instead of one in fifty. Mind you, most of them can’t take on more than two to five pure shapes . . . but it’s not like they’re expected to ride with the warbands. They have that right if they wish, but not every princess does.

  “In fact, every young man gets at least one summer’s chance to ride with the warbands if he’s a shapeshifter, but only the one summer is guaranteed. The warbands only accept those with five shapes or more for permanent membership, unless they’re particularly good at fighting, or tracking, or bartering, that sort of thing.”

  “What about the ones who aren’t shifters?” Tava asked.

  “The non-shifter men, like most of the women, can learn any trade they like. A lot of the men settle in or around the City. They take up farming, or blacksmithing, woodwrighting, pottery . . . the sort of crafts that usually work better when kept in one place. We do have blacksmiths, woodwrights, and such that travel with us,” Soukut admitted, “but most of the training and all of the large metalworks and carpentry take place in the City. The hardest part of their life is getting the raw materials for their crafts. We do have trees on the Plains, but if we cut them all down at once, we’d have no more. Trees take far too long to grow back. And there aren’t any significant deposits of metal anywhere, and only so much clay, very little sand, and so forth.”

  “That explains why Kodan was so insistent about getting ingots of metal and long, straight lumber in exchange for my farm,” Tava said, half to herself. Something Kodan had observed earlier came back up in her thoughts. “Kodan said the current Queen has a dilemma regarding Family Lion, whether to split it in half and make a new Family, or to relocate some of its members to the other Families and Clans. You say that Family Lion has too many princesses, while some others, like this one, have none. Why not just break up the excess and send them to the other Families, so that Tiger will have its own princesses?”

  Both women exchanged a startled look. Soulet’s brows rose, and her mother shrugged.

  “She’s rather smart, for an outlander,” Soukut muttered, giving Tava a small, pleased smile.

  “It’s not a bad solution, Mother . . . except that it’s also a strong tradition that the shifter stays with his or her Family, when people marry across the tribes. To lose a princess would be like . . . like losing a tail, or a paw. It’s too much a part of that Family’s identity,” Soulet added, turning back to Tava. “It might be a nice gesture to the other Families to give them extra princesses, but that’s assuming a Lion princess would want to be parted from her Family, let alone given to someone else. You cannot make a woman go to another Family, though it is strongly encouraged if her husband is a shapeshifter.”

  “Not to mention, most of those princesses are weak, in the sense that they only have so many shapes they can make . . . and this latest generation doesn’t seem to be casting as many shapeshifter daughters as before. If they gave only weak princesses to the other Families, it could be construed as a backhanded compliment, a hidden insult,” Soukut pointed out. “Yes, a princess of only two shapes might technically outrank a multerai that can shift twelve . . . but the multerai with twelve shapes will have a great deal more experience in leading a Family than a princess who is at the bottom of her particular kinship hierarchy. It might just be better to break up the Family by creating a new one.”

  “They could invoke the Five Year law,” her daughter argued. “They do it with the top five princesses each winter—you cannot shift more shapes than the current Queen, and expect to be instantly crowned,” Soulet explained. “You have to undergo five years of apprenticeship to the Queen and her Councilors—which includes the Council of Princesses and the Council of Crafters, as well as the Council of Shifters and the Council of Sisters. At the end of the five years of apprenticeship, if you are the strongest heir, and have shown good judgment, the Councils can declare whether or not you are qualified to be the next Queen, and the current Queen can decide whether she wishes to remain in place for another year, or abdicate in favor of her top successor.”

  “You’d be surprised at how many do wish to step down, at least for a few years,” Soukut revealed. “They don’t have to go through the five years of apprenticeship all over again, but they do go into the pool of the top five princesses for reconsideration if they wish it. This helps ensure that a bad Queen can be ousted fairly quickly and replaced by someone provably competent, and gives those that need a rest from all the pressures of the job the chance to have that rest, without vacating the leadership of the nation.”

  “That sounds very complex,” Tava murmured, thinking it over. “But it does make sense. Um . . . what are those?” she asked, distracted by the scrap of fabric the younger priestess had plucked from one of the benches.

  “Undershorts. The long-legged kind you were wearing are the kind we reserve for winter, when we need the extra cloth for layers. These are much more practical to wear with breikas, since they
don’t bunch up,” Soulet told her, handing over the legless scrap of linen. “Well . . . they can bunch up in back, but all undergarments do that. Try them on, to make sure they fit. Then we’ll try the breikas, though it’s more about fitting those to your leg length than to your hip size.”

  “What shall we talk of next, Daughter? Ah! The Grieving Day. When we don’t have a princess to lead us,” Soukut explained, “we have a Lord of the Family, being the strongest male shifter. Well, our strongest shifter, Chodan, passed away a few weeks ago. A Family is best run by a single person to make the best decisions, based on the many choices the two Councils, the crafters, and the priesthood can bring to her or him, so we’ve all agreed that the warlord of South Paw—your escort, Kodan—shall become the new Lord of Tiger.

  “Chodan was well liked as our Lord, and so we held a Grieving Day for the majority of the Family three days after his passing. When the last warband comes back, which will be the Tailtip Warband, we’ll hold another Grieving Day about three days after their return. It’ll be a little hard on the new Lord, since he is one of Chodan’s grand-sons, but Kodan is a strong young man. As for what happens on a Grieving Day,” Soukut continued, “we take the whole day to remember the one who has passed on into the arms of Mother Earth. We tell stories, we remember words, and we allow ourselves the chance to miss them and to cry.

  “A special hole is also dug,” the mother of the pair added. “Into this, our grief is shouted, our anger screamed, our final words whispered. We give ourselves the opportunity to say the things we never had the chance to say while the deceased was still among us. It makes a good release of our emotions, so that we can let go and move on. It’s not too good to let the grief wait too long before it can be fully expressed, but it’s also not too good to have too much mourning. Animals must be milked, children must be minded, and everyone must be fed.”

  “Life flows on,” Tava murmured, remembering her own recent acquaintance with grief. “The waters come and the waters go, for the River flows on and on . . .”

  “Is that a liturgy from among the Mornai?” Soukut asked, while her daughter held up a couple different sets of gathered pants next to Tava’s hip, trying to gauge their length.

  “Yes. My father . . . my father died from a bandit attack, just a few days before the South Paw Warband showed up at my village,” Tava confessed. “They avenged his death . . . but with his death, the Alders of my village wanted to steal my home. It’s a good farm, up on the second embankment, so it has good enough soil, but doesn’t flood very often. Kodan bartered for the cost of my farm plus a few other things in exchange for destroying the bandits. If he hadn’t convinced me to come here, I’d either be a servant in the Aldeman’s house or traveling on my own, trying to find work as a scribe.”

  Soukut patted Tava on her bare arm. “You’re much better off up here, trust me. We may not have much need for scribes, in the sense that we teach all of our children to write, but that doesn’t mean all of us like to write. Or have the time or the health for it. One of Kodan’s aunts is the record keeper for the Council of Sisters, but her fingers are starting to cramp from arthritis. You may not have the herds a Shifterai woman normally inherits, but you should be able to make a good living.”

  “Speaking of which, that is a good segue into inheritance laws,” Soulet pointed out, handing Tava the darker blue of the two breikas in her hands. “Here, try this on, and we’ll go into an explanation of inheritance and lineage. By the time we have you dressed—if you continue to be as sharp as you’ve proven so far—we’ll have you able to figure out lines of leadership, kinship, and fellowship by the time lunch is ready.”

  “Yemii isn’t cooking it, is he?” Soukut asked her daughter quickly. “He puts too much cheese in everything.”

  “It was either him or Tanali, and she’s busy helping the other earth-priestesses greet the men of the South Paw.”

  “Pardon, but . . . what is an earth-priestess?” Tava asked. “You’ve explained what a hearth-priestess is, a teacher of knowledge, and a mage-priestess is equally obvious, but . . .”

  “An earth-priestess is a widow who has agreed to serve the needs and urges of the men of her Family. This ensures that the men always have a safe outlet for their urges, that our maidens remain maidens, and that our men are given proper instruction on how to be considerate, skillful lovers . . . which our maidens appreciate in turn whenever we choose to marry. Or remarry. A widow is given one year in the maiden’s geome to grieve, at which point she is free to either remarry or become an earth-priestess for at least a year. I myself was widowed when my husband fell from his horse while trying to divert a cattle stampede,” Soukut explained. “Soulet was only four at the time. I grieved for a year, then agreed to be an earth-priestess . . . and I’ll admit I enjoyed it enough that I agreed to continue being one.”

  “Whereas I didn’t think about becoming a priestess, period, until I realized I was able to do strange things just by thinking hard, and was brought to the City to study with the mage-priests. That’s where I met Yemii, my husband,” her daughter told Tava. “He’s a Healer-priest, and a very, very minor mage, most of which he uses to augment the effects of his herbs and potions. I help him as much as I can, though my powers are attuned more toward other applications. I was lucky in that I had the choice to come back to Family Tiger and that my husband could come with me; mage-priests are often assigned where they are needed most.”

  “You will meet Yemii at lunch,” Soukut said. “In fact, you can’t miss him. He’s the tallest non-shifter in the Family, with hair almost as pale as the grass outside. He’s also a very good Healer-priest. A lot of the men who feel called to serve Father Sky and Mother Earth end up as Healer-priests, since so many of the women end up as earth-priestesses.”

  “How do you get picked to be a hearth-priestess, then?” Tava asked. “Is it only the women, or . . . ?”

  “Men can be picked, too. But you do have to be able to fool others into thinking you know everything,” Soukut joked. “In other words, be old enough. Come, finish getting dressed, and we’ll talk about inheritances next.”

  Knowing there was a lot more ahead for her to learn, and relieved that her many questions would be answered, Tava gladly complied.

  TEN

  It wasn’t until late that night when, tired and head reeling with information, she finally had the chance to think about what she had learned.

  Lying awake in the dark of the priestesses’ geome, Tava listened to the aging woman’s soft snores, and the occasional squeak from her own bed as she shifted, trying to get comfortable. Soukut had shown Tava how to set up a Shifterai bed, with its woven web of ropes that needed to be pulled tight, particularly on a damp night when the ropes threatened to stretch, but which was easy to transport. It had more give to it than the platform-style bed she was used to sleeping on. Between that and her whirling thoughts, the younger woman just could not sleep.

  Why didn’t Kodan tell me about Shifterai princesses? Did he want to keep it a secret, or was it just forgetfulness? No, she decided, curling her hand under her cheek. She wasn’t in her own bed with her own duck-feather mattress and pillows; those were probably still back with the wagons somewhere. Currently, she was sleeping in a narrow bed reserved for guests of the priesthood, with a thick wool pallet and fluffy goose-feather pillows, which didn’t give the same thick support she was used to. No . . . Kodan does think things through. He doesn’t seem to forget much.

  So why didn’t he tell me? The blankets were felted wool, a little scratchy against her chin where the linen sheet didn’t quite overlap the upper edge. Tava wanted to curl up her knees, since she was lying on her side, but there wasn’t room on the frame. Twisting onto her stomach—listening to the ropes squeak softly as they rubbed against the holes carved in the wooden frame—she tried to puzzle it through. Take it back to the beginning. He said . . . he said I shouldn’t tell the others that I was a shapeshifter because . . . I didn’t understand their culture.
/>
  But it was more than that, she remembered. He said the others would react to that news, and react in a way that could frighten, alarm, or confuse me. That they wouldn’t think of me as an outlander, but as a Shifterai . . . and would expect me to be a Shifterai princess, right from the start. Which, given the reverence Soukut and her daughter placed on women shapeshifters, would be understandable from their point of view, and would have indeed confused and frightened me. Women just aren’t given that kind of authority in Mornai culture. Some of the women had status because of their husbands, like Abigan, but only among the other women, not among the men.

  So the question is, did he secretly think I would react out of proportion to suddenly having status? Tava hadn’t really seen women doing such things, because of the patriarchal attitudes of the Valley folk, but she had seen men letting a sudden elevation of status go to their heads. Half the time a man gets elevated to the status of an Alder, he struts around, giving orders to the women, the children, and even to his own friends. And in that one village to the north, when I went with Father to watch him scribing a marriage contract . . . that girl . . . I can’t remember her name, but she was getting married to one of the widowed Alders up there, and she took on airs in private while we stayed in her family’s home overnight, ordering me about like she was twice my age, instead of only four or so years older.

  I can see why Kodan might hesitate to tell me I’d gain status. I wouldn’t want to deal with anyone that obnoxious, either. Restless, she twisted onto her back, draping one arm over her head, partly to bunch up the goose down so that it supported her neck a little better. It would be even worse. That girl in that village knew how far she could press, and what she could get away with around me. She grew up in the Valley, the same as me. But I don’t know what I could “get away with” here on the Plains.

  They can fill my head with all the facts and figures—and in some cases, gossip—that they know, but you can’t teach a culture in a single day, nor learn it by rote. It has to be lived, with adjustments made for each new situation.