When Women Were Warriors
Book I: The Warrior’s Path
Chapter 25: Spring Festival
We returned to find new faces in Merin’s house. Many warriors had joined the household while I was away at Greth’s Tor, and some brought their apprentices, who, along with the girls to be fostered with us, now filled the companions’ loft to overflowing. I was about to take my bedding back to my warrior’s room when Sparrow came looking for me. Together we went outdoors, outside the earthworks, and found a shady place to sit in the cool grass.
“Why are there so many people here?” I asked her.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll be back to normal by midsummer’s day.”
“There’s no room in the companions’ loft. Where am I supposed to sleep until then?”
“Some of us come out here at night and sleep under the stars. Why don’t you join us?”
“All right,” I said. “I will.”
The year before, I had spent the springtime with my warrior. Even after she recovered from her injuries, we kept mostly to ourselves. I still had much to learn about life in Merin’s house.
“What happens on midsummer’s day?” I asked Sparrow.
“Many of the warriors will have fulfilled their time of service here. On midsummer’s day, they will leave for home. If Eramet had lived, we would be returning to Arnet’s house on midsummer’s day next year.” There was nothing in Sparrow’s voice to tell me how much she still missed Eramet, but I saw the darkness come into her eyes.
“You won’t ever have to go back to Arnet’s house, will you?”
She shook her head. “I’ll be here for as long as the Lady can find a use for me. Once I become a warrior, I suppose I could go wherever I like, but this is as good a place as any.” She lay back in the grass and gazed up at me. “Did you catch any cattle raiders?”
“No.”
“Too bad.” She reached out and took my hand. “I missed you.”
I blushed and said, “I missed you too.” And I realized it was true.
***
We now had leisure to enjoy the springtime. The fine weather and the freedom to be out of doors after winter’s long confinement made everyone a bit giddy, especially those of us who were still young. We would often steal an hour for ourselves, to go picking wildflowers or to lie in the soft grass, feeling the sun on our faces, breathing the spring-scented air. On warm moonlit nights we slipped away from the household and ran down the hill to bathe in the river. What we did was not forbidden, but we were secretive about it anyway, because it was more fun to pretend that we’d outfoxed our elders.
Some of our elders, though, seemed as giddy with spring as we were. One afternoon I saw Fet and Fodla sitting together in the sun outside the earthworks. While Fodla watched with rapt attention, Fet wove a wreath of yellow daisies. When it was done, she presented it to Fodla, who wore it for the rest of the day with as much dignity as if it were a crown.
Everyone in Merin’s house was happy and at ease. We had survived the winter. The seed was in the ground and growing. No one threatened us or what belonged to us, a few lost cattle notwithstanding. As much as I loved the colors of autumn and the stark beauty of wintertime, the warm air, the scent of flowers and new grass, and the smiles on the faces around me were irresistible. How was it possible to be unhappy even for a moment at such a time?
And yet no matter how beautiful the day, perfect happiness eluded me. For no reason I understood, the loneliness that had haunted me when I first came to Merin’s house returned when I least expected it, and one thing about springtime made it worse. On midsummer’s day, many of the young women the Lady had fostered would return to their homes, taking the young men they’d chosen with them. It was futile trying to keep lovers apart in springtime. I couldn’t go anywhere without finding some young couple sitting with their heads together or lying on the hillside in each other’s arms.
It made my heart ache sometimes to see them. I didn’t begrudge them their happiness, but I couldn’t help wondering how long I would have to wait before that kind of happiness came to me.
One thing more than any other was forbidden to apprentices. No young woman who aspired to become a warrior was permitted to lie with a man, not even during the spring festival. A few had dared, and the year before, one of them conceived a child. She was sent home, because the obligation of motherhood takes precedence over all others, but I was sad for her. She was the first daughter of her house. She went home without her shield, and not long afterwards her younger sister came to take her place.
I had years to go before I would become a warrior. I could give no thought to love until I had won my shield.
***
The first day of the spring festival was the warmest day we’d had so far. For two whole days together, the young people of the household, the companions and apprentices, would be free to do as we pleased, while our warriors would have to look after themselves. It was the time of the Maiden, and we were the maidens in Merin’s house.
Taia and I were both up early. Together we went to the kitchen to see what good things there would be to eat that day. Whole lambs had been dressed and spitted for roasting. Great piles of fresh spring greens, washed and trimmed, lay ready to garnish the meat. For breakfast, there were baskets of eggs, cooked in their shells, and crusty round loaves.
Freshly dug wild roots lay soaking in a bowl of water. I recognized a few that my mother used to make a spring tonic, and I begged a few pieces to make some for Taia and me. While it was brewing, I thought of Gnith, and I brewed another bowl for her.
Gnith lay on her pallet. Her eyes were closed. She appeared to be asleep, but I felt her spirit, alive and bright and waiting.
“Are you sleeping, Mother?” I asked her.
At once her eyes flew open. “Who are you?”
I set the bowl of tea down beside her. “This will do you good.”
“Tamras.”
“Yes.”
I helped her to sit up and held the bowl for her as she drank. Taia sat down on a stool nearby to drink her tea. She regarded Gnith with curiosity.
“Are you well, Mother?” I asked.
Gnith nodded. “Yes, indeed. Very well. Never better.”
Taia leaned toward me and whispered, “I thought she was — you know.” She tapped the side of her head with one finger.
“Hush,” I said.
Gnith ignored Taia and took another sip of tea.
“This is good,” she said.
A trickle of tea ran down her chin. I wiped it away.
“May I ask a blessing, Mother?” I said.
“A blessing? What kind of blessing?”
It was a long tradition in my family, and in every other family I knew, for children to ask a blessing of the oldest woman in their household on festival days.
“A blessing for the day,” I replied. “For the spring festival.”
A twinkle came into Gnith’s eye. She took my hand.
“I see,” she said. “A maiden comes to an old woman in springtime to ask a blessing. There can be only one thing she wants.”
“What’s that?”
“Love.”
I heard Taia give a little snort. I blushed. “Not this time, Mother.”
“Why not?”
“I have so many other things to accomplish before I think about that.”
“Nonsense.”
Gnith’s fingers tightened around mine, and she gave my hand a little shake, as one does to get a child’s attention. She looked around to see if anyone was nearby. She didn’t seem to notice Taia.
“Listen,” she said. “I’m going to tell you a secret.” She crooked her finger at me, and when I leaned toward her, she whispered, “Every thing in the world can wait but one. Only love can’t wait.”
It would have to wait for me, I thought to myself. Out loud I said, “First I have to win my shield.”
“Oh, you will, you will,” she said. “No doubt about that. No doubt at all.”
I found her words reassuring. Sometimes I still doubted I would ever have the strength and skill to be worthy of my shield.
Gnith took my chin in her hand and peered into my eyes. Her eyes were great dark pools that drew me until I felt something within me let go.
“You can’t leave your heart behind,” she said. “Don’t ever try.”
I couldn’t speak. Her eyes had captured me, and I could only wait and listen.
“A blessing you already have within you. You need none from me. You have a gift, and you must use it.”
She let go of me and looked away.
“What gift?” I asked her.
Gnith took another sip of tea. “Who’s that?”
She pointed a gnarled finger at Taia.
“Her name is Taia,” I said.
I didn’t know Taia’s lineage, but Gnith evidently did.
“You bear your grandmother’s name,” she said.
Taia nodded. “Yes. It’s an old name.”
“Older than me?”
“Yes, Mother,” Taia said. “Even older than you.”
“Nothing is older than me,” said Gnith.
***
After breakfast I left the house with Taia and Sparrow and several of the other apprentices. Many people from the household and the nearby farms had gathered in a meadow by the river. As we approached them, music drifted toward us in the still air. The shrill voices of pipes and flutes reached us first, followed by the voices of women and men, singing a song I had known from childhood. I hadn’t much of a singing voice, but I could carry a tune, and I had always loved to join my voice to the voices of others. I sat down among the singers and blended my voice with theirs. Together we sang the old songs, which every springtime felt as new as the tender shoots of grass and the innocent spring light.
Sparrow sat down nearby to listen, while Taia and the others went on down to the river. As the day grew warmer, many shed their clothing to swim in the cold water and lie afterwards on the riverbank to warm themselves again. At last the heat became too much for us, and Sparrow and I wandered down to the riverbank to dangle our feet in the water. A cool breeze caressed my face. Tiny fish nibbled at my toes.
“You look happy,” Sparrow said.
At that moment I was content.
“I am,” I said. “Are you?”
Sparrow shrugged. “Happy enough.”
She didn’t sound all that happy to me.
“Eramet would want you to be happy.”
She sighed. “I thought I’d be over it by now.”
Asking Gnith’s blessing that morning had put me in mind of all the times I had crept into my grandmother’s bed early in the morning on festival days and begged a blessing from her. She had been dead for many years, but I still grieved for her.
“You don’t stop loving someone just because she died,” I said.
Sparrow leaned over the water and gazed down into it. Her reflection made her look like someone in a dream.
“The worst thing of all is knowing I’ll never see her again,” she said. “Sometimes I think I’ll turn around and there she’ll be, laughing at me for missing her so much.”
I took Sparrow’s hand and squeezed it. I hesitated to speak my thoughts, but at last I leaned close to her and said, “I know it hurts, but I envy you. At least you’ve loved someone.”
“Haven’t you?”
“Not in the way that you loved Eramet.”
“Well,” she said, “someday you will.”
I wasn’t at all sure of that just then. I had begun to feel a little melancholy.
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe someday.”
“You needn’t be in such a hurry. Love is a sword with two edges.”
Yes, I thought to myself, and the want of it also has an edge.
“And in the meantime, you have me,” said Sparrow.
She gave me a lopsided grin and pushed me into the river.
***
By midafternoon I was worn out. We had swum in the river and played chasing games and hiding games. Then we’d gone with some of the country girls to gather yarrow. I wanted it for making medicines, but they would put it under their pillows, to give them lovers’ dreams. We sat with them afterwards by the river, weaving wreaths for the maidens’ dance, gossiping and telling the bawdy jokes and stories people tell at that time of year.
When it was time for the feasting to begin, we trudged back up the hill to Merin’s house. Trestle tables had been set up outdoors, on the meeting ground outside the earthworks where we had celebrated the harvest festival. Warriors and country people, women and men, the very young and the very old, picnicked side by side.
Like everyone else, I ate too much and drank too much ale. Sparrow caught me nodding over the remains of my dinner.
“You’d better take a nap or you’ll miss all the fun,” she said.
Since the companions’ loft had become so crowded with new girls, Sparrow and a few of the other apprentices had set up a bower outside the earthworks. Several of us slept there, and it also gave us a pleasant place to go during the day when we tired of the crowded household and the stifling air indoors. It was just a bit of wickerwork on a flimsy frame, but it gave us some shade and some privacy. Sparrow and I took refuge there. Several other girls were there already, sleeping away the heat of the afternoon.
***
Sparrow woke me. “Let’s go,” she said. “They’ve started.”
For a moment I didn’t know what time of day it was. I seldom slept during the day, and I thought it must be morning, but I was fully dressed and I couldn’t remember having gone to bed. The light was wrong, too, for morning. I felt confused and frightened, until I remembered.
Sparrow held out her hand to me and pulled me to my feet. The sun had set, and the golden haze of twilight settled over the hillside. The evening breeze drifted cool against my skin.
I heard music coming from the meeting ground. When we arrived there, people were already dancing. The lively music of pipe and harp lifted their feet, and underneath it all the beating hearts of drums, strong and steady, were more felt than heard.
We watched as people of all ages danced a circle dance. Hand in hand, the dancers flew over the ground. Some wore brightly colored ribbons, pinned to their clothing or tied around their wrists and ankles, that fluttered as they moved. Suddenly a girl wearing a garland of hawthorn flowers broke into the circle, and the circle became a line of dancers as she led them into the crowd of people watching. The line broke apart into several shorter lines. As they wound in and out among the people, they picked up more dancers along the way. When the lines of dancers passed each other, they joined together again, and the circle almost reformed, but at the last moment it spiraled in upon itself. People were moving in all directions and watching them made me dizzy. When the spiral had drawn itself into a knot so tight that the dancers could hardly move, the garlanded girl burst out of it, drawing the line out behind her. The dancers repeated the spiral pattern over and over again. Then they unraveled the knot one last time, and the dance ended.
The dancers collapsed breathless on the ground. A new group of dancers stood up to take their turn. Girls in groups of six or eight formed themselves into circles. Each girl carried a long ribbon, and as they danced, they wound their ribbons in and out, weaving them together like threads on a loom. It was a beautiful dance, full of color and intricate pattern, with a meaning that even the youngest among us understood. For the first time that day, I missed my warrior. I wished she was beside me, asking me questions about the dance and what it meant. These girls were weaving the web of life. I doubted that Maara had ever seen anything like it.
When the maidens finished, it was time for the young men to dance. Their dance was different from the others. Now we heard, loud and strong, the voices of the drums, as each man danced alone, leaping high into the air and turning somersaults and handsprings — anything to catch the attention of the girl he had his eye on. Their bodies were beautiful with strength and grace.
I was surprised to see Kenit among them. I pointed him out to Sparrow.
“Why is Kenit dancing?” I asked her.
“Why not?”
“He’s a warrior. Is he looking for a country girl?”
“It would seem that he is.”
Then I saw what Sparrow had already seen. A lovely girl with pale skin and long, dark hair stood at the edge of the crowd. Her eyes were on Kenit, and it was plain to see that he danced only for her. Other young men tried to capture her attention, but when they came between her and Kenit, she stepped aside, so that she could keep him in sight. He danced closer and closer to her, until, when the dance ended, he stood before her. She reached out her hand to him. He took it, and they walked away together.
It was growing dark. Someone lit the fire at the center of the dancing ground, and another circle dance began.
The young people had begun to pair off. Couples lay together around the ragged edge of firelight. They appeared to be watching the dancing, but I saw the shy caresses, the fingers entwined together, a stolen kiss. Women my mother’s age lay in their husbands’ arms as though they were newly wed. Sparrow slipped her arm around me.
“Dance with me,” she said, and before I could protest, she took me by the hand and led me to join the circle of dancers.
It was a dance I didn’t know, but the steps were simple, and soon I was dancing as if I’d known them all my life.
My body enjoyed moving with the dancers. I felt as I had when I first set out with Laris and her band of warriors, a part of something greater than myself. But this was different. This was the dance. I didn’t need to think about what my feet were doing. They moved of themselves, as I moved with the others, dancing the pattern of our life together.
I saw faces I knew well and faces I knew not at all, caught in a flare of firelight, now here, now gone. Sometimes I thought I saw a face from home, but when I looked more closely, a stranger’s face smiled back at me. Still, in the midst of strangers I was at home, and these strangers were my family.
Someone built up the fire. It lit the earthworks and the palisades of Merin’s house, until they stood out, bright against the night sky. I had never seen them look more formidable. I thought about the people, long dead before I was born or thought of, who had made this stronghold for themselves and for their children and for me.
A generation past, this ground had been a battlefield. My mother’s sisters fell here. Their blood lay in the ground beneath my dancing feet, and perhaps someday my blood too would claim this land again for the children who would be conceived this night. Though I was still so young, I felt the presence of the coming generation, waiting to be born into the world that we would make for them.
The music stopped. Sparrow stood before me, breathless, and took both my hands in hers.
“Where are you?” she said.
I shook my head, to bring myself back into the present moment, into this wonderful spring night.
Sparrow led me out of the circle of firelight.
“You look as if you’ve seen the fairies dance,” she said. “Or have you been dancing with them?”
“No,” I said, but I still felt the souls of the unborn all around me. They lingered in the air, as close as a whisper, waiting to ask me whether I would be the door through which they might enter into life.
I understood then a little of what the young girls were feeling as they lay in their lovers’ arms. More than desire, the deep longing for life that beat like a heart in the ground beneath our feet opened them to their young men and to the souls of the children who would be born to them.
“Come,” said Sparrow.
Hand in hand we walked out into the darkness.
We wandered down the hill. The moon was low in the sky behind us, and the stars gave so little light that it felt as if we were descending into the earth. We must have passed couples lying together on the hillside. I never saw them. They were wrapped in darkness as in a shroud, and what they did was not for us to see.
When we reached the river, we saw a few couples sitting shoulder to shoulder at the river’s edge. We found a place a short distance away from them, where the drooping branches of a willow tree hid us from view.
“You’re very quiet,” Sparrow said, as we stood there together, gazing at the moving water.
We hadn’t exchanged a word since we left the dance. I may not have had the power of speech. I had stepped out of my own time and place, and the night wrapped itself around me like a stranger’s cloak.
Sparrow put her hand on my back, between my shoulder blades. Her touch was comforting and real. It brought me back a little. She slipped her arm around my shoulders. The warmth of her body drew me close.
I closed my eyes, and in this deeper darkness, another world revealed itself. It was the world Maara had tried to show me. Of all the worlds we can’t see, she said, this one was the most important, because every human heart lives in it. I saw in my mind’s eye the image of a spider’s web, whose threads bound every heart to every other, into a web of hearts. Woven into it, along with the hearts of the living and the dead, were the hearts of the unborn. Someday they would stand where I was standing now. They would breathe the air of another fragrant springtime, would wrap themselves in darkness, would join together to strike the spark of yet another life.
Death comes to us in the first moment of desire. I wanted to protest, to speak into the darkness, to say I would refuse to yield, to tell the world that I would not give up my place, until I remembered that I was standing in the place of someone who had already died, of someone who had yielded her place to me.
Sparrow took me into her arms and kissed my brow. I embraced her. We stood there for a long time, until both the dead and the unborn had fled our measured breath and beating hearts. That night we were real, and they were not. We were alive.
Sparrow let go of me. Where her touch had been, the night air chilled me. She took my hand and led me away from the river’s edge, to a little knoll where the air was warmer. We sat down in the long grass.
Sparrow leaned toward me. I thought she was going to kiss me, but she only touched me with her eyes. Instead of the ironic half-smile I knew so well, it was a sweet smile she gave me that night. Her eyes had lost the hint of doubt I so often saw in them. Even my own face felt strange to me, as if for that one night I had become someone else, not someone entirely unknown to me, but someone whom I might someday recognize. And the woman who opened herself to me that night was a stranger too. She was beautiful. She drew so near to me that my eyes lost sight of her. Then I felt her mouth touch mine. Her breath smelled of lemon grass. Did I breathe or did she breathe for me? I had no need to draw life into my body from the air around me. I drew life from her, as she drew life from me.
She drew back, and the night air rushed into my lungs. She lay down, opening her arms to me, and I fell into them. The earth was warm from the day’s heat. Her body was warm with life. My body pressed itself against her.
I slipped my hand under her shirt, to feel the naked skin of her back and shoulders. The places where I touched her were warm and alive, moving with her blood and breath. I pulled her shirt up, so that I could feel her skin against me, and she shrugged out of it. Then she helped me out of mine.
When she touched me, I was unprepared for what I felt. Warmth and pleasure flowed from her hands as they stroked my arms and back. Not only the places she touched, but my whole body, felt her caress. I was comforted, as I had been comforted as a child at my mother’s breast. I lay unmoving in her arms, and all the while her hands were never still.
She turned and pushed against me, until I lay on my back and she lay over me. The fragrance of springtime rose up all around us — the warm earth, the tender grass crushed by our bodies, the cool scent of water from the river. A gentle breeze whispered in the grass. Insects sang us their night songs.
She slipped her hand into the waistband of my trousers and let it rest there. Her lips brushed my face. I turned toward her until my mouth found hers. When I put my arms around her, she pulled away from me and sat up. I felt cold without her body close to me, and I reached out to stop her. With a smile she eluded me. She knelt at my feet and tugged my boots off. She undid my belt and helped me to slip out of my trousers.
She paused then to look at me. As if she had never before seen a woman’s body, her eyes explored my body with both curiosity and desire. I looked down at myself and saw how much I had changed in the year I’d been in Merin’s house. My breasts were still small, but they had a pleasing roundness that was new. What had been just a tuft of curls now covered the secret places of my body. My hips had lost their boyish slimness. While I was stronger than I had ever been, my strength now hid beneath a woman’s softness.
When did I change? When had my own body become so strange to me? The body that in childhood had belonged entirely to me was no longer mine alone. It belonged now to life, and it would yield to desire, whether I would or no.
Sparrow’s body mirrored mine. Her breasts were more full than mine. When she slipped her trousers off, I saw that the curls between her legs were darker. She was too thin, and the joints of her shoulders and her collarbones were plain to see. Her pale skin glowed with moonlight.
I found it difficult to breathe. The night air had not enough life in it to sustain my life. She lay down beside me. My body yearned toward hers, and I wondered why desire drew us together when no child could come of it, but when our bodies touched, I had no need to understand. I couldn’t tell if the heartbeat pounding in my ears was mine or hers. I breathed in the fragrance of her skin and her sweet breath. I breathed her into me. She was life.
If she had turned away from me then, my body would certainly have lived, but I believe that something in my spirit would have died. I never thought that night that something in her spirit might have died if I had not been there to meet it. I knew only that she had kept something alive in me, or perhaps she had brought something new to life. I needed her that night as my body needed food and drink and air and warmth and light. My spirit needed her, to keep my heart alive.
Her arms enfolded me. We wore the night air as a cloak, warming it with our desire. Our bodies clung together, now joined in a tight embrace, now moving in a soft caress. We touched each other with gestures of love forgotten since infancy. My mouth found her breast and gave her pleasure while I found comfort there. I remember lying for a time upon her body, as I used to lie upon the body of my mother when I was small. She stroked my back as my mother had done to soothe me into sleep, but Sparrow’s touch both soothed and awakened me.
For a while I was content to lose myself in the sweetness of her touch. Her sweet kiss lingered on my lips. Sweet sensation flowed over the surface of my skin, pooled around my heart and deep within my belly. Then between my legs I felt a longing. I moved against her, and she made a soft sound beside my ear that sounded like yes.
She put her arms around me and held me for a moment. Then she turned over with me in her arms, until I lay on my back beneath her. I could do nothing but wait for her. Whatever she would do, I would meet. I knew she wouldn’t leave me. I knew she would fill the empty place that she had opened within me like an abyss.
The earth had life in it. Against my back I felt a heartbeat, a trembling. She held me tight as the ground spiraled out from underneath me. She steadied me against it, as the world changed.
She touched me. She opened me and caressed me. She held me trembling on the edge of the abyss. She kept me there.
She entered my body. I wanted to pull her into me, to feel her heart beat against my own heart. I wanted her to reach deep inside me, to find the life that had chosen my body as its hiding place and reveal it to me.
I fell. Deep into the earth, into her deepest heart, I fell.
How long did I lie against the beating heart of life? Perhaps only for a moment, perhaps for longer than a lifetime. Beyond both pain and pleasure, alone in a lover’s arms, I laid my face against my Mother’s breast.
But it was Sparrow’s breast that pillowed my head and her arms that made the world assume its familiar shape again. Her heartbeat beside my ear brought me back. Her need called me out of the dark.
I touched her then, as she had touched me. I carried her where she had carried me. I held her, steadied her, shielded her, and offered her to the beating heart of life.
Copyright © Catherine M. Wilson
