Daughters of the Great Star

by Diana Rivers

  It was that quaver that decided me, that humble hopefulness. It went straight to my heart. And then I thought again, as I had so often since Kara’s death, what does it matter, what does any of it matter? It is only a way to pass the time, to go on living. “If you wish it,” I said aloud, hoping that Alyeeta had not heard my thoughts as well.

  “And what do you wish?” she asked, looking at me again, no power or pressure with her gaze, only questions.

  “I am curious. Besides, what harm can there be in it?” Not a very passionate response, surely.

  I saw a look of hurt cross Alyeeta’s face, then she laughed and appeared to ease. “Ah, well, no doubt there are worse reasons to be lovers.” She seemed about to move toward me. Instead, she paused, looked me in the eye, and asked with much seriousness, “Are you sure, Tazzi?” I nodded. She gave me more of her deep, probing stare and asked again, no doubt to give me my last chance of escape, “Are you very sure?” This time when I nodded she leaned forward and kissed me. I was amazed at the softness and magic of that kiss, and even more amazed at the waves of passion and longing that rushed up my body.

  When she sat back again I could hardly breathe. To regain my composure and get the ground back under me I asked, using her own mocking tone, “And when do you want to begin with our little adventure?”

  “Now!” she said forcefully, clamping her hand around my wrist and standing up. Suddenly this was no game. I stood up with her, my knees shaking so they could hardly hold me, and my heart pounding. There was a wild roaring in my ears.

  ***

  The lamplight was fading already in the brightening dawn by the time I slept at last. How can I write of what happened between us there, of what Alyeeta shared with me? It was so wild, so different from anything in ordinary life, such a pushing of the senses beyond what I knew or could contain that even now I cannot remember it clearly. Yet I know that never, never, not even if I live to be an old, old woman will I forget it—colors bursting up from a well of darkness, colors never seen before that had no names, and sights and scenes rushing past with every new wave of feeling that surged up my body. Time seemed to stretch out and bend in, filled with brilliantly lit images and quivering bands of light. Then colors and brightness and even light all folded in upon themselves and returned to the darkness, the darkness that is of the beginning, the central core, the deepest source where only feeling is. Then feeling became so fierce that soon it burst again into color and sound, the sound of new things finding voice, the sound of old, old things that have always been. And through it all the feelings of the body, each part and every part and all of it together being called to life by Alyeeta’s hands and mouth till suddenly the sound that filled my head and the shelter and the clearing and perhaps the world itself was the sound of my own voice crying out.

  What I do remember clearly is Alyeeta bringing me back, gathering me together, all the pieces, Alyeeta folding herself around me to hold me close and safe in the gentle pressure of her arms.

  While we were loving I forgot our difference in age and all our other differences as well. Both willing and afraid, I had gone with Alyeeta into that dark, glorious place. There, differences had no meaning. But later, when I awoke suffused with loving and wanting to be held again, the bed was empty. It was not Alyeeta the lover I saw when I looked around for reassurance. It was an old woman, puttering at the fire, hobbling about and muttering as it to herself. She had even put on her kerchief with its rim of white hair, and already it was askew. When I came over to the fire, this old woman cocked her head sideways. She looked at me strangely, with no hint of recognition, and said not one word for my ears. She only went on muttering to herself. I could not catch her eye. It was as if all we had shared had been my madness or a dream.

  Annoyed, disgusted, and most of all hurt, I watched this performance in silence for a few moments. Then I burst out angrily, “Alyeeta, why do you make fun of old women in that way? Someday we shall all become old women.”

  She straightened suddenly, threw off her kerchief, and said in her sharp way, “So we shall, and some much sooner than others.” Then she pursed her lips and looked at me quizzically for so long that I felt uncomfortable under her stare and wished I had kept silent. “So that is what you think, eh, that I make fun of old women? Not so, Tazzia, you mistake me. Why should I do that when I am one myself, older than you can imagine?”

  I looked at Alyeeta—straight-bodied and dark-haired—and shivered again. What was she truly? What did I know of her, this woman who had consumed me body and soul in the night, what did I really know of her?

  “Make fun of old women?” Alyeeta continued with amusement. “No, that is not possible, my dear. That is not my way. Just think, more than half the wisdom of the world resides in old women. What I make fun of is the world. The world sees old women as ugly and quarrelsome or witless, useless, and harmless, and above all, sexless. Remember that, dry as the river bed in the summer drought. That is what I play with, not old women but the way the world sees us. It is the best disguise, the best cover under which to move safely. Who looks closely at an old woman? They are all alike. Who cares what she thinks or does? The old fool, she is hardly human. Dressed this way I can pass anywhere. It is as if I do not truly exist among the living, as if I had become a cat or a ghost or a chair. People will say in my hearing or do before my very eyes the most amazing things, things I would never witness in this present guise.

  “Ugh,” she said suddenly. Hunching up one shoulder and dropping the other, she instantly turned herself into an old hag. One side of her face was drawn up in a grimace, her eyes crossed, her body bent and twisted sideways. “Even looking like this I could have more wisdom in my head than ten pretty young men, and who would ever guess?” she asked, leering and squinting up at me.

  “Alyeeta!” I shouted in exasperation. On waking, my body filled with pleasure, my first impulse had been to put my arms around her in love and gratitude. Now I drew back from her, repulsed and almost afraid.

  She grinned at me. “You see how easy it is? I suppose I should not tease you so, nor Pell either, but it is so hard to resist, especially with Pell. She is so young and serious, so puffed up with herself, so full of grand ideas. It is as if the whole weight of her world, or, rather, the fate of a people rests on her shoulders. She is the commander, the general. She will bring her people together and herself lead them to a land of promise and safety.” Alyeeta drew herself up and with passionate gestures said in Pell’s voice, “And who knows what the future will hold when we have all come together?” At that moment she sounded so much like Pell at her most solemn that I exploded with laughter. Then, suddenly, I was angry for Pell’s sake, seeing her so easily ridiculed.

  “And she will do it, too,” I said fiercely, myself sounding much like Pell. “She has the power and the vision to shape a future for us.”

  “Oh yes, she has, of that I have no doubt,” Alyeeta answered, her voice thick and slow with sarcasm. “She does indeed have the power and the vision and strength and courage and love and much else besides. I have no doubt that she will bring her people together and get them to safety and build something new in this old world. Nonetheless, she is also a green girl, too much puffed up with her own importance and in need of a little trimming down.”

  “Oh, Alyeeta!” I burst out. “Why do you hate her so? It makes my heart ache to watch you two together, to hear how you speak to one another.”

  “Hate Pell?” She seemed genuinely surprised. “No, you mistake me again, Little One. I envy her, admire her, even, but hate her? Never! She is too much what I myself would like to be.”

  I thought she mocked me still and so spit out angrily, “You are only jealous of her.”

  Alyeeta’s face changed. She looked thoughtful, almost sad. Then she said, very seriously, “Yes, in that you are right, Tazzi, quite right. I am jealous, not proud of it, but it is true enough. Pell will make it all happen. She will have her dream, and it lies before her while we Witches have lost
ours. It is all behind us now, lost in the Witch-kills, gone with the passing of the Great Star. We were able to come together enough to fight the Zarns and survive and save our lives, some of us at least, but what we built and made, the glory of the Witches, that has been destroyed forever. We are scattered and alone now. We do not have it in us to rebuild what was. The Witches who ran the convents and were a power in every city are now living scattered in huts in the woods, muttering to themselves with their books for company. Yes, I am jealous. Nonetheless, Pell will have her dreams, and we Witches will help make it happen.”

  “We?” I asked, surprised.

  She shrugged and turned away but not before I saw a bright edge of tears in her eyes. With a sigh I picked up her kerchief and laid it gently on the bench.

  ***

  Things had moved so rapidly since I had left Pell’s shelter that I did not remember Maireth’s little offering till many days later. Then it surprised me by falling out of my tunic pocket to lie shining up at me from Alyeeta’s dark, dirt floor. I picked it up and saw in my palm a pendant in the shape of a circle inside a triangle inside another circle. It had a yellow-green stone at the center that stared at me like the eye of a cat. The coolness of it quickly warmed in my hand and I felt a tremor of power run up my arm. I slipped the thong around my neck. As the warmth of the pendant settled between my breasts, I thought that perhaps Maireth was something more than she seemed. Wearing it, I even felt protected or guarded in some way.

  Alyeeta, when she noticed, looked at it strangely and asked with a gesture of her head, “Where from?”

  “From Maireth,” I said quickly, as if defending something.

  “Ah, I see,” Alyeeta answered. She asked no further questions and made no comment, though I often saw her glance at it strangely as if it held for her some challenge or a puzzle.

  Alyeeta the lover, as she let herself be known by me, was very different from Alyeeta the Witch. The Witch was clever and sharp and bitter and cutting and, above all, critical. Alyeeta the lover was full of such tenderness and kindness and sweetness, had such knowledge of my body it seemed as if she had studied it like a craft. She gave me pleasures I could not have imagined, though never again was it like that first night, neither the tenor of it nor the blinding beauty. For myself I could only give her back my girlish, untrained fumblings, but she accepted whatever I had as if it were a great gift and opened herself to me.

  Alyeeta the Witch was something else. The moment she was upright she resumed her mocking ways, and nothing was said of what had passed between us in the night, no more than if we had merely lain down together for lack of another bed space. When I questioned her on this one day, she looked at me thoughtfully with one of her long silences till I wished I had held my tongue. At last she answered slowly and with no trace of mockery in her voice, “Understand this, Tazzia, for I will not say it again; I love you, I love you more than anything in my life, even more than Gandolair. You have given me hope to live when I was ready to leave this body and this world. You have given me joy in places I never expected to meet it again in this life. You have given me the pleasure of watching something new shaping and forming, something of more worth than all the old, weary games I have already seen played out. All that is true, more perhaps than you can understand, more surely than I have words for. But I cannot change myself altogether. I am still Alyeeta the Witch and my tongue is still sharpened on both sides, though sometimes I myself bleed when it cuts you.”

  I nodded as I listened, tears in my eyes and my hands pressed between my breasts to hold all of that fullness in my heart. I did not think she made such a confession lightly or was likely ever to make it again.

  ***

  Days went by. Strange to say, I seldom thought of Pell or of the shelter and what happened there. It seemed very far away, in a different world, in fact. I worked hard at what there was to learn, especially the reading and the writing now that Alyeeta’s spell had opened the way for me. I even made some progress with the shielding. Alyeeta said it was the lovemaking that had broken through, though who knows where the truth of that really lay. She also told me that I would be a better healer for it. However it may have come about, something had changed. I even started being able to do for myself what Alyeeta had done for me with the touch of her cooling fmgers on my forehead, to tap and use that river of coolness that is the Mother’s healing side. So with my learning and with helping Alyeeta at her chores and sometimes sharing her bed for a time of loving, our life together began to settle into a sort of pattern. Then, one evening when I went out to relieve myself, I was startled by the sight of a man stooped over a small fire in Alyeeta’s clearing.

  Chapter Twelve

  It frightened me that I had not sensed the presence of this man. From the look of his fire he had been settled there in the clearing for some time. In truth he seemed not to have a presence, none of those waves of energy and being that go out from living things and most of all from humans. Ragged and dirty, he looked up sideways at me with no light of wits behind his eyes. Feeling instantly repelled, I was about to shout that there was an intruder when Alyeeta herself stepped from her house. On seeing this stranger she made a slight bow and said, quite formally, “Welcome to my home, Hereschell, and welcome to Soneeshi as well. I am glad that your circle brings you round to my little clearing again. These are interesting times, as you no doubt have gathered.”

  He appeared to take no notice of her, but made a slight nod in my direction. Alyeeta looked at me with one of her unreadable smiles. “Ah, yes, a Ganja,” she said mysteriously. “But not really a Ganja, as you will soon discover.” I could make nothing of all this, but felt some insult in the use of that strange word and the way Alyeeta spoke of me to such a one.

  This Hereschell made no answer, but dished himself up something from his pot and with it went to sit on a rock. Alyeeta settled near him. They leaned close together. If they spoke, it was not in words that I could hear.

  Suddenly I felt a chill go up my spine. I turned quickly to see a gray wolf lying at the edge of the clearing. She was almost hidden in the brush, head up, eyes alert, staring straight at me. It was instantly clear to me that wolf and man were together. Why Alyeeta would be interested in such a man I could not fathom, but as long as he was harmless, he held no further interest for me. The wolf, however, drew me. She pulled at me like a compulsion or a binding spell, yet as soon as I took a single step in her direction she made ready to leap away. Instead of pursuing futilely, I settled myself against a tree and set to calling silently to the creature. At first she only turned toward me and whined. Then she got up, came a few steps, and lay down once more. Silently, with no aid of words I called again and yet again, putting all I knew of creatures into that call. At last, after several more steps, she came the whole way, dropped to her belly in front of me and lay her head in my lap. A rush of warmth went through me as I sank my hands deep in her ruff. There was a gasp of surprise that seemed to have come from Alyeeta. I never even looked up. At that moment nothing mattered but the wolf. I felt at peace in my body and at peace on the earth, blessed as if it was some aspect of the Mother Herself that lay under my hands.

  Until long after dark I sat there, with no thoughts and no cares. I was content just to breathe with the animal that lay against me and be warmed by her warmth. Only when Alyeeta tapped me on the shoulder did I come back to myself. I had forgotten her, and the man as well. When I glanced up, I saw him standing by the fire watching me. For an instant there seemed a spark of mind in his look. It was the illusion of the fire, perhaps, for as soon as he caught my glance I saw again that blank stare of idiocy.

  “Come,” Alyeeta said to me. “It is late already.”

  “No,” I answered quickly. “I will sleep here by the wolf.”

  “No,” Alyeeta said firmly. “You will come with me. Let her go for now. Hereschell needs her.” Though she gave me a clear command, still there was an odd deference or hesitancy in her manner. The man made a sound low in
his throat. With that the wolf got to her feet. Before she left, she took my wrist in her mouth and very gently pressed her teeth into my flesh, as clear a farewell as any human hand clasp. Then, with a bound, she was gone, and I saw her again on the other side of the fire.

  Spell-dazzled, I let Alyeeta take my hand, lead me in, and lay me on her bed. She sat down beside me and leaned forward so that a wisp of her wild, coiling hair fell across my face. “So,” she said in a whisper that was almost like a hiss, “So, you have this great power with wolves, eh? Soneeshi goes to no one but Hereschell, not even to me.” Her tone, as so often with Alyeeta, was an odd mixture of love and admiration and envy and some strange kind of anger. “You think you have power, do you, girl?” She continued ominously, “I will show you something of power tonight. You will ride the winds with me this time.”

  A sudden shyness came over me. “No, Alyeeta, he might hear us,” I whispered urgently, thinking of the stranger in her clearing. She ignored my words as if I had not spoken. And indeed I had no will to resist nor any real wish to do so. There was a force in her that frightened me and thrilled me and made my breath come rough and fast. When she began stripping off my clothes I moaned, moving this way and that to help her.

  This was to be different from other times, that I could sense. Her barely controlled wildness made me tremble. “This time you will feel everything,” she whispered fiercely in my ear. “Everything! And you will remember it all.” She straightened suddenly to light the lamp, saying, “I want to see what I am doing here. I want to light up my work.”