When Women Were Warriors

Book I: The Warrior’s Path

Chapter 17: The Warrior’s Path

Maara was with the Lady for a long time. When she returned, she looked so solemn that I feared she was bringing me bad news.

“Did she talk you out of it?” I asked her.

“She didn’t try. She wanted to be certain that I understand my obligation to you.”

Now I thought I knew what had taken so long. The lists of obligations sometimes seemed endless. Many stories included a recitation of one list or another. They were important. They defined what was expected of the parties to an apprenticeship or an alliance or a marriage. Still, they were the bane of storytellers, because they would put their listeners to sleep.

I smiled. “I’m surprised you weren’t there all day.”

Maara smiled back at me. “I’ve heard the list of obligations before. They’re not so different here from what they were where I became a warrior.”

I almost said, “Where was that?” It was on the tip of my tongue, but I didn’t say it. It didn’t seem right to ask for more than I’d already been given that day. It seemed too greedy. Instead I said, “I promised to release you from your obligation to me, and I will, if you ever change your mind.”

Maara shook her head. “No one should undertake an obligation she doesn’t intend to honor. It may be that circumstances will prevent me from fulfilling my obligation to you, but that is possible in any apprenticeship.”

I thought of Sparrow’s apprenticeship to Eramet.

“Things may happen here that will make it impossible for me to stay,” she said, “so you’ve taken a risk by choosing me. The Lady is concerned about that. You’re important to her, and she wants the best for you.”

I started to roll my eyes, but I stopped myself, because I didn’t want to appear disrespectful of the Lady. Maara read my expression anyway and understood what I was thinking.

“Today,” she said, “the Lady gave you what you wanted against her own better judgment. She could have withheld her consent and forced the issue between you, and you would have had either to obey her or to sacrifice your opportunity. She knew you would not obey her, and while someone else might have tried to punish you for that, she is trying to make the best of it. Few would have set aside their own feelings as the Lady has.”

Maara was right. I resolved that the next time I had a chance to speak to the Lady, I would thank her with more sincerity than I’d felt when I thanked her earlier that day.

“Someone will come for us this evening,” Maara said. “Until then, I think we should stay out of harm’s way.”

“What will happen this evening?”

“Tonight your new life will begin. Tonight your old world will be shattered, so that you can leave it behind.”

“How will it happen?”

“I couldn’t tell you even if I knew. It’s something no one speaks of, and you must never speak of it to anyone except for those who will be there.”

“Who will be there?”

“I will,” she said, “and one of the elders.”

I remembered the time when I became a woman. The women of my family shattered the world of my childhood when I began to bleed. It was both a sad and a joyful thing. It was a simple ritual, but when it was over, I knew there was no going back.

“Will it be like the end of childhood?” I asked her.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know how these things are done among your people.”

“What was it like for you?”

She shook her head. “Everyone’s experience is different. You will stop being one thing and become another. That’s all I can tell you about it.”

Suddenly I realized that everything was going to change. I had been living with uncertainty for so long that I should have been more prepared, but I had been thinking that things would go back to being the way they used to be, to the way that had been comfortable and familiar. Now I knew that could never happen, any more than I could be the same person tomorrow that I was yesterday.

***

Maara and I kept to her room all day. We didn’t talk much. We were both still tired from the celebration of midwinter’s night, and we slept for several hours in the afternoon. The rest of the time I kept busy trying to make a shirt for myself, without much success.

Maerel’s clothing had been shared out among the companions. Although she had been bigger than I was, I found an old shirt of hers that fit me fairly well. Since it was almost worn out, I decided to use it as a pattern to make myself a new one.

Namet gave me a bit of linen cloth. I carefully picked apart the stitches of the old shirt and laid the pieces out on the new cloth, but there wasn’t quite enough of it.

“Maybe you could make the sleeves shorter,” said Maara, who had been amusing herself by watching my clumsy efforts.

“What good is a shirt without sleeves?”

“It might be nice in summer.”

“It will look silly.”

“Probably.” She smiled.

I picked up the pieces of the shirt and laid them out differently. Once again they failed to fit. I was about to try something else when Sparrow appeared in the doorway. When she saw what I was doing, she made an impatient noise and sat down next to me. She picked up the shirt pieces and tucked them around each other so cleverly that everything fit perfectly.

“How did you do that?” I asked her.

“I learned in Arnet’s house.”

“Thank you.”

She had started to get up, but she stopped and knelt in front of me.

“Thank you too,” she said. “For speaking for me.”

“I hope it’s for the best.” I had my doubts about Vintel.

Sparrow grinned at me. “Don’t worry. I can take care of myself.”

I nodded, but I couldn’t manage a smile.

“Listen,” she said. “If Vintel accepts me, my place here will be secure. If she doesn’t, and if no one else will take me, I’ll have to go back home. I will still be a free woman, but I’ll never be more than a servant in Arnet’s house. I have every reason to try to please Vintel.”

I understood, but I couldn’t help saying, “You deserve better.”

Sparrow smiled. “I’ve had better, but now Vintel will do.”

***

By the time I finished cutting out the pieces of the shirt, the light had begun to fade. I was just putting everything away when Namet appeared in the doorway.

“Come with me,” she said.

Namet took us outside, to the kitchen yard behind the house. It was full of the debris of housekeeping — piles of wood and peat to fuel the fires, storage sheds, a place to butcher animals. Two sheds stood close together, with only a narrow alleyway between them that appeared to dead-end against a fence of palings. When Namet slipped between the sheds, I noticed a wellworn path between them.

Maara and I followed her. When we reached the fence, we squeezed through a narrow opening behind one of the sheds and emerged into an empty space enclosed by palings. The area within the fence was the size of a circle made by a dozen people joining hands. I never knew that space was there. None of the windows of the house overlooked it, and it was impossible to see into it from ground level. If I had ever noticed the tops of the palings, I had probably mistaken them for part of the palisade.

Namet slipped off her shoes. She opened the front of her gown and let it fall to the ground. She wore nothing underneath. Maara followed Namet’s example. She pulled her boots off, slipped her shirt off over her head, and dropped it next to her. Then she undid her belt and stepped out of her trousers. She motioned to me to do the same. The hair on my body stood up in the cold air, and the frozen leaves of grass tickled my feet.

At the center of the circle was an opening in the earth. The top of a ladder protruded from it. Namet went down the ladder, and Maara and I followed her. We found ourselves in a small, round chamber that appeared to have been hollowed out of the hilltop. Above us a framework of hewn beams, covered with a lattice of poles and woven mats, supported the earthen roof.

A score of people could have fit easily inside the chamber. The opening through which we’d entered it was several feet above our heads. Inside the air was warm, and although I was naked, I wasn’t cold.

At the center of the chamber was a hearth, where a fire was already burning. From the pile of ash around it, I guessed it had been burning for several days. The elders must have conducted their midwinter ritual here.

Namet motioned to us to sit down beside the hearth. The floor of the chamber was roughly paved with large, flat stones that held the heat. Their warmth made them comfortable to sit on.

Here the sounds of everyday life could not be heard at all. I was so used to the noises of the large household that I never noticed them anymore. Now I noticed their absence. We had dropped out of the living world above into a space between the worlds. I looked up at the small circle of sky. The stars were twinkling out. Soon it would be dark.

A stone table stood against the wall of the chamber. Two upright stones, half-buried in the floor, supported the slab that served as its top. Namet went over to it and stood with her back to us. She appeared to be preparing something. When she finished, she didn’t turn around. She stood very still. She was so quiet for so long that I was afraid to move. I felt a slight chill in the air and heard a whisper of wind above my head. I caught a whiff of lavender.

Namet turned around. She was no longer the plump and smiling red-cheeked, white-haired woman who felt as comfortable to me as an apple dumpling. Her hair was the color of moonlight. It stood up all over her head and shone as bright as if she herself had become the moon. Her face shone with the same silvery light. Her features were Namet’s features, but Namet’s spirit no longer peered out at me from behind her eyes. Instead another being of great power beheld me. She frightened me.

She approached me and handed me a bowl of some strange-smelling liquid, and I drank. Then she took the bowl from me and handed it to Maara, and Maara drank. In a minute or two, whether from the heat of the fire or the effects of the drink, I began to sweat. I looked at Maara. Sweat gleamed on her shoulders and her arms. It beaded on her forehead and trickled down her body. I felt my own sweat running down my sides.

The woman who was no longer Namet brought another bowl and took from it a handful of black powder. She opened her hand and blew into it, and a cloud of dust enveloped me. I had to close my eyes. When I opened them again, the dust had settled over my body. My sweat dissolved it, so that it gleamed as red as blood. She turned to Maara and blew a handful of dust over her too, and we both looked as if we had been bathed in blood.

The woman who was no longer Namet returned to the table. For several minutes she was busy preparing something. Then she approached me carrying another bowl. She knelt down in front of me, and this time she took a handful of white powder from the bowl. She opened her mouth and tilted her head back as a gesture to me to do the same. When I did, she blew the powder into my nose and mouth. At first I thought it would make me sneeze, but the powder lay on my tongue as light as rain. It had no taste, only a slight aroma that reminded me of damp places.

The woman who was no longer Namet returned to the table and brought me back a bowl of tea. She made a sign to Maara not to drink any of it, and Maara nodded. She brought another bowl of tea and handed it to Maara. Then she climbed the ladder and drew it up after her. My warrior and I were alone.

Maara motioned to me to drink some of the tea. It tasted familiar, but I couldn’t recall its name.

The sky was dark. Only a scattering of stars reminded me of the hole through which we had descended into the earth.

Maara took a few sticks of wood from a pile that lay next to the hearth and laid them on the fire. I watched them catch and start to burn. Colors I had never seen before danced over the surface of the wood. One piece had a bit of flame dancing up and down it. I heard the music of the dance as I watched the dancing flame.

Then Maara moved. I had forgotten she was there. I turned to look at her. For a moment I thought I saw my father. Then I saw her breasts, and I laughed at the idea of my father having breasts. When I heard my own laughter, I was afraid, because the sound came from far away. I tried to speak. The voice I heard was mine, but the words were nonsense.

Maara began to sing. I had never heard her sing, nor had I ever heard a song like the one she sang to me that night. The colors of the firelight flickered in her eyes. I forgot to be afraid.

She made me drink more of the tea. She held the bowl for me as I drank. Then I was lying down, looking up at the hole in the sky where another world looked down at me. I tried to raise my arm, to point something out to Maara, but my arm would not obey me, so I gave up trying and lay still.

There were living beings in the air. Some of them noticed me and spoke to me. I understood them, but after a time I had forgotten what they said.

I opened my eyes. Maara made me sit up and drink more of the tea. Although she was touching me, she looked far away.

As I watched her, she began to change. A coat of dense fur sprang out all over her body. Her head grew large. She opened her mouth and bared her long, sharp teeth at me. She touched my face. Her long, sharp claws drifted over my skin. She did me no harm, and I knew that she would not. I forgot to be afraid.

I was cold. I tried to make her understand. She looked so far away. I reached out for her, and she embraced me. Her dense fur warmed me. I rubbed my face against it. It was soft.

“Maara is a bear,” I said.

I heard the words, but I didn’t understand them.

Someone was crying. The world was dark. I heard someone crying.

“Who is crying?” I asked.

“You are,” came the answer.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Someone who cares for you,” came the answer.

I sat up. I forgot that I was cold. The bear was gone.

Someone touched me. I couldn’t see who had touched me. I looked at the fire and watched the world shatter into pieces and fall at my feet. The pieces sprang up and rearranged themselves and made a picture that I understood for a moment. Then they shattered again. I closed my eyes.

Someone was singing. I forgot to be afraid.

Someone gave me more to drink. Someone touched me. Someone was singing. Someone held me. Someone kept me safe. I leapt into the air and flew.

I looked down and saw myself lying in someone’s arms asleep. Someone cradled me as a mother cradles her child. She was not my mother.

I flew with the beings in the air. One of them began to tell me a story. I was too impatient to listen. I liked flying. I flew to the hole in the sky, but before I could fly through it, something stopped me. I flew with the beings in the air.

I began to hear the words. They were spoken. They were sung. They were the words that had been spoken to every woman who would become a warrior. They were the words of courage and of caution, the words of hope and the words of doom. They were the songs sung for warriors, for a warrior’s birth and for a warrior’s death. Every one of them was new to me, and every one of them touched a place deep within me that remembered them. For a time that may have been a moment or a lifetime, I listened to the warrior songs.

A hole opened in the sky, and a pale light sifted in. Through the hole in the sky, I watched the stars fade against the growing light. Through the hole in the sky, light poured in.

I grew tired of flying. I drifted down and settled beside the fire. I saw myself in someone’s arms. She cradled me like a child. I couldn’t see her face.

Someone appeared in the hole in the sky. Someone came down from the sky and touched the woman who held me. She looked up, and I knew her. She was my warrior.

The sky woman helped my warrior lift me from her lap. She bent over me and touched my face, while my warrior stood up and stretched her arms and legs until they worked properly again. All of this I watched from where I sat beside the fire.

I watched myself asleep. I was curious to see if what Sparrow said was true, if perhaps I might be beautiful. I gazed at my sleeping face, but I couldn’t tell if I was beautiful or not.

My warrior picked up my sleeping body, put it over her shoulder, and followed the other woman up the ladder. When she reached the hole in the sky, something pulled me, and I fell upward into the dark.

I opened my eyes. I was lying naked on the frozen ground with daylight all around me. Namet was standing over me. Maara knelt beside me. I forgot to be afraid.

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