When Women Were Warriors
Book I: The Warrior’s Path
Chapter 26: Lost
When I opened my eyes, the morning star was peeking over the horizon. We lay together on the hillside. Pieces of our clothing pillowed my head. Sparrow’s head lay upon my breast. Our only covering was a shirt pulled over our shoulders, but I wasn’t cold. Sparrow’s body warmed me, and the still air of early morning lay warm against my skin.
In just a little while the sounds of morning would begin — the music of birdsong and the sigh of a spring breeze. Now I heard only the soft murmur of the river and the whisper of Sparrow’s breath. I would have held back the dawn, so that I could stay suspended in that perfect moment, but the demands of the body intruded. When I got up to relieve myself, I tried not to disturb Sparrow. She woke up anyway and rubbed her eyes.
“It’s still dark,” she said. She sounded grumpy.
“Not for long.”
I went a short distance away and squatted down in the grass. She sat up and watched me for a moment. Then she got up and joined me. The picture of the two of us squatting side by side there on the hillside struck me as so ridiculous that I had to laugh. Sparrow looked at me, puzzled. Then she too began to laugh.
“We must be a sight,” she said.
“With any luck, no one will notice.”
“There isn’t that much luck in the world. Almost everyone we know is lying somewhere in sight of this hillside.”
“And they’re probably doing the same thing we are.”
“I suppose they are,” she said.
Sparrow took me by the hand and led me down to the river. Hand in hand we leaped into the water. The shock of the cold water took my breath away, but before long I was used to it, and when at last we climbed out onto the riverbank, the air felt warm and welcoming.
I lay down on my back in the grass and looked up at the lightening sky with its scattering of fading stars. Sparrow sat down beside me. She took my hand, turned it over in her hands, examined it. She ran her fingertip along the lines of my palm and played with my fingers. I watched her face. She looked thoughtful, and a bit sad.
“Are you sorry?” she said. She kept her eyes on my hand in hers.
“Sorry? What for?”
She didn’t answer me.
“Are you?” I asked her.
She looked at me, surprised. “No, of course not.”
“Then why should I be sorry?”
She shrugged. “We haven’t had much time for each other. I wondered if you still cared for me a little.”
“Of course I care for you.” I leaned up on one elbow and touched her face. “You’re my friend. I’ve never had a better one.”
She gave me half a smile. “Neither have I.”
A teasing look came into her eyes. Before she could say something that would push me away, I sat up and embraced her. I kissed her cheek and gently stroked her back, and her body relaxed against me. I held her for a moment longer. Then I let her go.
“Let’s go home,” I said.
We found our clothing and dressed ourselves. When we started back up the hill to Merin’s house, I took Sparrow’s hand. I remembered walking up that hill hand in hand with her at the harvest festival, when she had been unhappy because Eramet was with someone else. Now Eramet was gone, and no doubt Sparrow would give a great deal to have that day back again. I took a lesson from it. I resolved to keep my heart open to those I loved, no matter what they did, even if they hurt me.
Other couples were straggling home. I was surprised to see Fet and Fodla among them. They too walked hand in hand. Fet was as serene as usual, but Fodla’s smiling face glowed with joy and a peacefulness that was quite unlike her. Her restless eyes that seemed always to be darting here and there, trying to take in everything happening around her, now gazed steadily off into the distance. If she saw anything at all, it was something no one else could see.
The household gathered in the great hall. No one spoke. The couples who had spent the night together seemed reluctant to separate. I too wanted to keep Sparrow close to me. Cael and Alpin sat side by side. Taia sat shoulder to shoulder with a young girl who had only just arrived in Merin’s house. Then I wondered where Laris was.
Servants brought us steaming bowls of tea and hot barley cakes, along with meat and eggs left over from the day before. I was hungry, and I gave all my attention to my breakfast. By the time I had taken the first edge off my hunger, people were talking and laughing as they did every morning. The benches had begun to fill with warriors. I hadn’t seen many of the warriors at the bonfire. Where had they been all night?
“Why don’t the warriors join in the spring festival?” I asked Sparrow.
“Some do,” she replied.
“But not many. Where were they?”
“I imagine the elders had their own work to do. As for the rest, why not ask your warrior?”
For some reason I was reluctant to do that. I wasn’t sure I wanted her asking me where I had been or what I’d been doing.
“Is there some reason not to?” Sparrow asked.
I shrugged. “It’s no business of mine what she did, just as it’s no business of hers what I did.”
“I see.” Sparrow looked at me out of the corner of her eye. She started to say something else, then changed her mind.
“Last year,” I said, “did you and Eramet — ”
“Yes.”
Suddenly I felt awkward. I opened my mouth, to tell her I was sorry for intruding on a private grief, but she spoke first.
“That’s why I’m glad you were with me last night,” she said. “I don’t think I could have borne it, to spend the night alone.”
I reached for her hand under the table and squeezed it.
“Of course, there are a few other reasons too,” she said, and winked at me.
***
The rest of the day was uneventful. Since most of the young people had been awake almost all night, no one felt up to doing much, and for us it was still a holiday. Sparrow and I spent the day together. In the morning we found a sunny place outdoors to sit. In the afternoon we napped in the cool shade by the river. We talked a bit about nothing important. Most of the time we simply shared a comfortable silence.
More than once I found myself watching for my warrior. Many of the warriors were outdoors enjoying the day. I didn’t see her among them. Neither had I seen her in the great hall at breakfast time nor at the midday meal. I asked a few of the apprentices. None of them had seen her either.
I tried not to feel uneasy. In spite of the fact that she had made some friends in Merin’s house, I knew she wouldn’t be among the groups of warriors I’d seen in the great hall entertaining themselves by drinking too much ale and boasting to one another of their victories. More likely she had found one or two who preferred to spend a quiet day, or perhaps she had kept to herself.
At last the day was over. As the sun was setting, we made our way home. We had our supper in the great hall. Maara never came downstairs.
Sparrow saw me looking for her.
“Why are you so worried about her?” she asked me. “Can’t she look after herself for a day or two?”
“Of course she can,” I said. “I’m not worried.”
But my words convinced neither Sparrow nor myself.
Sparrow sighed. “Why don’t you take her some supper? Maybe she feels left out of things. She’s still a stranger here, after all.”
Sparrow had said aloud what I’d been thinking. As much as I wanted to protest that Maara was no longer a stranger in Merin’s house, I wondered how much she understood of what was happening around her. I regretted that I hadn’t thought to talk to her about it. After supper I took some food upstairs. Maara wasn’t in her room. I sat down on her bed to wait for her. As I watched the twilight fade, I grew more and more uneasy. I tried to tell myself that I was being foolish, that I should go on to bed and that in the morning I would find her there, safe and sound.
When it was quite dark outside and I could no longer believe that she would be home that night, my uneasiness turned to dread. I went out to the bower and found Sparrow sleeping there. I almost lay down beside her. I wanted the comfort of her arms around me, but I knew I wouldn’t sleep, so I turned away and walked down the hill.
I sat for a while by the river. The night before, people had been everywhere out on the hillside. This night no one but me kept vigil. I felt more peaceful out under the stars. A little of the enchantment of the night before lingered in the air around me. The loneliness that had hurt me so much that springtime was gone. Before last night, I had felt abandoned by love. Now love surrounded me.
Then I thought of Maara. For the first time it occurred to me to wonder if she had been lonely too.
On my way back up the hill I stopped by the oak grove. I had no gift to bring, not even a scrap of cloth to tie around a branch, but the Mother would surely know what was in my heart. I sat down in the darkness under the trees. Here and there a moonbeam reached down through the branches and cast a lacy pattern on the ground. I brought into my mind the image of my warrior and asked the Mother to take Maara to her heart, as she had taken me.
I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck. Someone was behind me. Although I had heard nothing, I knew someone was there as surely as if she had tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to see Maara sitting not far away, her back against the immense trunk of an ancient tree. Her face was in shadow, but I could feel her eyes on me.
I got up and approached her. I almost asked if I was disturbing her. Then I thought better of it. I didn’t want to give her a chance to send me away. I knelt down beside her and said, “Are you all right?”
She nodded.
“I was worried.”
She said nothing. She simply looked at me. Her look reminded me of the way my mother used to look at me when I had done something mischievous and she didn’t know whether she wanted to hug me or scold me.
“Why are you here?” I asked her.
“Why are you?” she said. “Why aren’t you with your friends?”
I tried to listen, not to her words, but to her tone of voice. Her words made no sense. I had been with my friends because of the holiday, and now the time had come for me to return to her. Surely she understood that.
“Because I’m bound to you,” I replied.
“Bound to you,” she echoed.
The wind stirred the branches overhead. Moonlight flickered across her face. Her eyes were empty.
I tried to set my fear aside. “Have you eaten?”
She shook her head.
“Are you keeping a fast?”
She didn’t understand me.
“Sometimes people will fast to open themselves to the Mother,” I said.
“She’s not my mother.”
The bitterness in her voice shocked me as much as her words.
“She is,” I said. “She is everyone’s mother. You can’t disown her, any more than you can disown the woman who gave you birth.”
“I hardly remember the woman who gave me birth. And I never disowned the mother you speak of. It was she who disowned me.”
I felt as if I were skirting the edges of a bog, where one false step might tip me into it.
“She did not,” I said.
Maara looked away from me, but not before I saw the tears shining in her eyes.
“She’s here,” I whispered.
And at that moment, I could feel the Mother all around me, as I had felt her by the river, as I had felt her holding me while I lay in Sparrow’s arms. I felt the Mother’s love as I had felt the love of my own human mother all my life, but Maara could not feel it. She looked at me with the eyes of an abandoned child.
Something occurred to me then that frightened me. “Were you here last night too?”
She nodded.
I thought I knew the answer, but I asked her anyway, “Was no one with you?”
She shook her head. “No one.”
In a way I was relieved to hear it. At the back of my mind was still a gnawing fear of Laris and her intentions. Maara’s words put that fear to rest for the moment. At the same time I found another reason to fear for her. What must that night have been like for her? On a night meant for lovers, she had been alone. She should have stayed at home, safe with the other warriors in Merin’s house. Instead she had been in this powerful place, unshielded in the magical night.
“Why did you come here?” I asked her.
“I don’t remember,” she said. “I don’t remember coming here.”
“Perhaps the Mother called you here.”
Anger flashed in Maara’s eyes. “She lied to me.”
“What do you mean? Did you see her? Did she speak to you?”
“She lied,” she said again. “I thought this time I could trust her, but she lied to me.”
“What did she say?”
“Not a word.” Maara gripped my arm. “She doesn’t love her children. She uses them. Then she devours them.”
How could Maara fail to feel the love that I still felt all around me?
“Sometimes she uses us,” I told her, “and someday she will devour us all and give birth to us again, but not yet. She hasn’t taken you yet.”
But as I looked into Maara’s eyes, I feared I might be wrong. The woman before me was no longer the woman I knew. Something had been taken from her. Not her life — not yet — but it seemed as if a door had opened and some part of her spirit had fled. Fled from what?
I tried to understand what could have happened to her in the grove. The night of the spring festival is a joyous and a perilous time. It is a time, more than any other, when the Mother makes use of us for her own purposes. That night I had been with someone who loved me, and I had needed Sparrow then. It was she who carried me into the heart of life and laid me in the Mother’s arms. It was she who called me back again.
Perhaps the Mother opened Maara too that night, but no one had been there to meet her spirit, to fill the emptiness within her, to ease that terrible loneliness. No one had been there to call her back. To me, the Mother’s arms had felt like home. To Maara, they must have felt like death.
I reached out to touch her. She stood up so suddenly that I toppled over backwards onto the ground. She strode out of the grove, and I scrambled to my feet and followed her. When I caught up to her, she was standing out on the open hillside, breathing hard. She gazed up at the sky. Moonlight fell across her face. Sparrow’s words ran through my mind. They wonder if she’s not out dancing to the moon. She looked fey enough to do almost anything.
I took her hand. She turned and looked at me as if she’d forgotten I was there. I led her like a child farther away from the grove. I made her sit down in the grass on the hillside and sat close beside her.
I had no idea what to do for her. Namet would know what to do, but I was afraid that if I left her to go fetch Namet, she might wander off or fall into the river or find some other place of power that would steal her soul.
Then I remembered how she had sung to me on the night when I first set foot upon the warrior’s path. I began to hum a simple tune from my childhood. Bit by bit the words came back to me, and as they did, I sang them. It was a lullaby.
Maara lay back in the grass and stared unblinking at the sky. She didn’t seem aware of me at all. Still I held her hand in both of mine and sang. After a while, she pulled away from me and turned over. She cradled her head on her arm, as if to sleep, but her spirit was restless, although her body was exhausted.
I lay down beside her and put my hand on her shoulder. She quieted a little. I stroked her back and felt her body yield to sleep. She moved in her sleep, visited by unquiet dreams.
Even while she slept, I sang to her restless heart.
I was beginning to doze. Suddenly she sat up and turned to face me.
“You left me,” she said.
I struggled to sit up. What could she mean?
“You left me,” she said again. “You left me to die.”
“What?”
“They couldn’t have killed everyone. How could they have killed so many? Yet no one came for me.”
Then I understood. She was talking to her mother.
“I would never have left you,” I said. “If I had lived, I would have come back for you. I would have looked for you. I would never have stopped looking for you.”
She stared at me with haunted eyes. Then she covered her face with her hands. I held myself very still. We were not quite in this world and not quite in the other, and I feared to upset such a precarious balance.
When at last she looked at me again, in her eyes I saw the unmet need of long ago. I knelt beside her and took her into my arms. I rocked her and whispered to her a mother’s words of love and comfort.
“No,” she said. She pushed me away. “It’s too late for that.”
She stood up and strode away from me down the hill. It was all I could do to keep up with her.
“Where are you going?” I asked her.
She didn’t stop or answer me. When she reached the path by the river, she turned north to follow the trail we had taken so often together through the snow. We walked for a long time. I began to worry that she might never stop, that we might walk and walk until we trespassed on one of the northern tribes, and what would we do then?
“Where are we going?” I asked her again.
“We’re going to find her.”
“Who?”
“The child.”
“What child?”
“She’s alone,” she said. “Her mother let her go.”
“Her mother died.”
“No!” She whirled around and raised her hand as if to strike me. When I lifted my arm to shield myself, she grasped hold of my wrist so hard I thought the bone would break.
“Please,” I said. “Don’t hurt me.”
The pain in my arm was so great that I fell to my knees, and she let go.
She looked around, confused. “We’ve come too far. It couldn’t be as far as this.”
“We should go home,” I said. “It’s late. They’ll be worried.”
“Home,” she said. Then she turned and walked away.
I don’t know how long I stumbled along after her. I was afraid to keep going and afraid to turn back. Every choice I made would be wrong but one. I would not leave her.
She turned onto a footpath that followed the river. A swirling mist lay over the water and in places encroached upon the riverbank. Whenever we passed through a patch of it, I had to pay careful attention to my footing, so that I didn’t slip on the muddy ground. Then I did slip. I fell to one knee and was soon up again, but when I looked for Maara, I saw only the mist, closing in around me. I listened for a footfall or the rustle of her clothing. All I heard was the sound of the river, and even that was muffled by the fog. I took a few steps, then stopped again to listen. I took another step and went up to my knee in water. It might have been a bit of boggy ground or the river itself. I couldn’t see well enough to know which it was, but I dared not take another step.
I called out once to Maara. Then I began to cry.
Strong arms lifted me. A voice whispered in my ear words of comfort I didn’t understand. I put my arms around her neck and laid my head down on her shoulder. She carried me to higher ground and set me on my feet. I was afraid that if I let go of her she would disappear again into the fog, so I held tight to the sleeve of her shirt.
The ground was uneven. I couldn’t see a thing. I took a step and lost my balance. As I fell, I reached for her to steady myself and pulled her down with me. All around us the fog lay thick over the ground. It hid the starry sky. It hid the earth we sat upon. It hid us from each other.
I still clutched her shirtsleeve, now torn to tatters, the most frail of ties binding us together. My body sought her out, and when I touched her, she took me into her arms. We clung together in the dark. She rocked me and soothed me with her strange, incomprehensible words.
I have never known a deeper darkness. Neither moonlight nor starlight could penetrate the murk. I didn’t understand the meaning of her words, so I listened to the music of her voice. I settled myself against her and laid my head down on her shoulder.
I was tired. Fear had worn me out. I slept.
I dreamed of home, of my mother putting me to bed on a summer’s evening when I was very small. I lay awake through the long twilight, listening to the muffled voices of the grown-ups and the chirping of crickets outside my door. All the world had loved me then, and as I drifted into sleep, life whispered her sweet promises in my ear.
“Tamras.”
I was so tired. I didn’t want to wake. I felt myself lifted and carried in someone’s arms. I snuggled against her.
“Mama,” I said.
She set me down and sat down beside me.
“No,” she said. “It’s me.”
Reluctantly I opened my eyes. The stars twinkled overhead. The moon shone down on us. I sat up and looked around me.
“Where are we?” I asked her.
“I don’t know.”
She looked exhausted. She was watching me, a guarded expression on her face, as if she expected me to tell her something she feared to hear. I wondered how much she remembered of what had happened that night and if she was herself again.
“Are you all right?” I asked her.
“I don’t know.”
“Are you unwell?”
She shook her head. “Why are we here?”
I heard a tremor in her voice. She was afraid.
“Don’t you remember?”
“No.”
“You were looking for someone,” I told her. “A child.”
“A child? What child?”
“The child you were.”
“Oh.” She looked away from me. “I thought it was a dream.”
I studied the sky. It would be a few hours yet before the sun came up. Our hair and clothing were damp with mist, but the air was warm. Her body sagged with weariness.
“Lie down,” I said. “Sleep a little. We’ll go home in the morning.”
She lay down, and I lay down beside her. When I put my arm around her, she shrugged it off and turned away from me.
“Please,” I said. “Don’t push me away.”
She kept still for a moment. Then she turned to face me and let me put my arms around her. I kissed her lightly on the brow and rubbed her back, and before long I felt her slipping into sleep. She murmured something I couldn’t hear.
“What is it?” I asked her.
“You left me.”
You left me too once.
“Never again,” I told her. “Never again.”
Copyright © Catherine M. Wilson
