Lady of Horses (33 page)

Sparrow hewed wood and drew water with the skill of long
practice, made a fair stew and a very good honeycake, and laid snares and
hunted for the pot, or brought fish from the river. She was learning no magic,
and few mysteries. In the evenings Old Woman told stories, such stories as the
Grandmother had been used to tell, of Earth Mother and Skyfather and the myriad
gods. When she spoke of ancestors, it struck Sparrow that these might be
ancestors of her own—or of her people at least. Her mother had come from this
country.

And yet she did not feel as if she had come home. This was a
pause in a journey, forced upon her by the shaman’s will. When she had had
enough of it, she would leave. For the moment she stayed, and waited to learn
something she could use.

oOo

At night Old Woman slept in the shelter, but the young
women elected to sleep outside unless it was raining. They had grown accustomed
to the stars overhead, and Keen loved to lie under woven branches, counting
stars through the leaves. Keen was happier here than Sparrow was, by far. She
liked Old Woman, and Old Woman was gentle with her as she never was with
Sparrow.

As the days passed, Sparrow began to notice something else
about Keen. It was not only the green face in the mornings and the reluctance
to break her fast until midday, when she roused to blooming health, or even the
slight rounding of her belly. Sparrow could see. She could look at her friend
as if she were made of clear water, and in the middle of her a little silver
fish. The fish grew from day to day, till it had the appearance of a human
child, tiny and soft but unmistakable.

One morning as Sparrow ate honeycake with good appetite and
Keen had excused herself from a half-drunk cup of herb-tea and run off to the
privy, Old Woman said, “You begin to learn.”

Sparrow raised her brows. “Oh? What am I learning?”

“Not manners, certainly,” said Old Woman. “But you begin to
see.”

“Do you know what I’m seeing?”

“No two people see alike,” Old Woman said. She took the last
honeycake, which Sparrow had been eyeing, and ate it with considerable relish.
Then she said, “I have to go away. I’ll be gone three days, maybe four. You two
will stay here and look after the goats. Have the shelter clean when I come
back, and hunt a fat doe for me to dine on.”

“Where are you going?” Sparrow demanded.

Old Woman smiled and rose and took up a bag that had been
lying beside the shelter, reached into the woven branches that made the wall
and slipped out a staff of polished wood, and left without another word.

oOo

Sparrow thought of pursuing her, but Old Woman would never
answer a question she did not wish to answer. She might even be expecting
Sparrow to follow her wherever she was going; something in her glance suggested
it.

For that, and for no better reason, Sparrow stayed and did
as she was told. It was peaceful without Old Woman about, though Keen professed
to miss her stories. Keen did not ask where Old Woman had gone. She sat in the
sunlight for most of the day, making a deerskin coat into a thing of beauty, while
Sparrow tidied the camp and filled the stewpot with squirrel and young rabbit.
Then Sparrow could lie in the sun, too, but with idle hands.

She watched Keen for a while, rapt as always at the way the
other sight saw her. It came to her that she might see other things so, as
well. Goats were a lesser light, with a glint of wickedness. Birds in the trees
were small bright sparks. Something larger and darker slipped through the wood,
skirting the camp.

Wolf, she thought. It woke no fear in her. It was autumn,
when wolves were well fed. It was not winter yet, when, fierce in their hunger,
they might bring down the weak of the People.

Smaller creatures fell silent as the wolf passed. Even the
birds went still. All but one, a swift bird with a ruddy tail and blue-grey
wings. A sparrowhawk, a kestrel, had come to hunt birds in the trees beyond the
camp. Sparrow watched it idly, until her sight shifted again, and she saw it
with the eyes of the spirit. It shone like the sun at noon, both beautiful and
terrible.

For a moment. Then it was a swift grey-and-ruddy bird again,
hunting lesser birds and bringing back its prey to its nest.

Her spirit took wing, not as a falcon, no, but as a small
brown bird, the sparrow of her name. It was quick in flight, and could fly high,
right up to heaven, and from there look down on Earth Mother’s breast.

The lands south of the river were quiet. She saw camps of
tribes, herds both wild and tamed, a pride of lions stalking a herd of
antelope, and a pack of wolves loping after the red deer. Here and there people
walked or rode, hunters, herdsmen, a trader with his laden ox. Or—her? The
trader was a woman, stripped to the waist in the day’s heat, with heavy breasts
and broad belly.

Beyond the river was much the same. The tribes had returned
to their lands, to late-summer camps and hunting runs. She did not see great
crowds of them gathered near the river, nor was there any war rising against
the southward tribes. One raiding party slunk toward a camp in the west of the
world, wild young men with their eyes on the camp’s horses.

White Stone camp she did not see. Where it should have been
was shadow and confusion. A storm walked across the plain, veiling the People
in rain and blinding her with lightning. That was not Walker’s doing—he had no
such power. But the gods were not inclined to let her spy on her father’s
people.

They sent her back to her body, a force like a hand closing
about her and carrying her away from the storm and the tribe. If she was to
know what they had done to win back their king of stallions, the gods would
reveal it in their good time.

She had not found Old Woman, either. She might have walked
right out of the world for all the sign Sparrow found of her.

There was a way, Sparrow thought, but she did not know it, nor
did it suggest itself to her. Veils that the gods had raised, she might not
presume to shift aside, but Old Woman was no god.

oOo

She came back into her body with a faint but penetrating
shock, as if she had fallen a little distance and struck earth abruptly. She
lay getting her breath back, and pondered veils and darkness, concealment and
revelation, and the ways in which a shaman might provoke an apprentice to learn
in spite of herself.

Sparrow was not this shaman’s apprentice, whatever Old Woman
might think. She sprang to her feet. She had to get out, away. She needed to be
on the mare’s back under open sky, where her heart was whole and her spirit
strong.

When Sparrow leaped up so suddenly, she startled Keen into
stabbing her finger with the bone needle. Keen sat sucking her finger, shaking
her head as Sparrow found the mare beyond the goats’ pen, mounted her and rode
off.

The stallion stayed, which was rather surprising. He liked
the goats. They would play with him, he outside, they in their pen, leaping on
their hindlegs and shaking their horns. Those horns were a threat, but he
seemed not to mind, nor indeed did they: sometimes Keen saw a goat leaning
against the wall of the pen, and the stallion stretching his elegant neck over,
chewing happily on a horn.

When the mare left with Sparrow on her back, he called after
her but did not follow. He had sweet fodder that Sparrow had cut that morning
high up on the hill, and shade, and water to drink. He was as content as
stallion could be.

oOo

“Pretty, isn’t he?”

Keen started again. This time, fortunately, her needle was
out of the way, her mind distracted by the stallion. She stared at Old Woman.
“You didn’t go away at all!”

“Wise child,” Old Woman said. She sat in her customary place
just outside the shelter, emptied her pouch of apples, and tossed one to Keen.
Keen caught it without thinking. Old Woman cut up another with a flint knife,
till it was small enough and soft enough for her few teeth.

Keen, whose teeth were strong, bit into the apple. It was
ripe and sweet, an early delight; come full autumn, Old Woman had promised her,
there would be a whole thicket of them.

It was none too pleasant to think of full autumn, because
after it came winter, but in the warmth of late-summer sunlight, Keen could not
trouble herself with it overmuch. She ventured to say, “You’re teaching
Sparrow. Would I be presumptuous to ask what she’s supposed to be learning?”

“Presumptuous enough,” Old Woman said, “but worthy of an
answer nonetheless. She’s learning to see the world for herself. And to
cultivate manners.”

“Not magic?”

“Manners are magic,” Old Woman said. “They smooth the way
for people in the world, and put an end to wars—or even prevent them from
starting.”

“Men don’t want to prevent wars,” Keen said.

“Men on the plains,” said Old Woman. “They’re different
here.”

“Really? I haven’t met any.”

Old Woman laughed. “And you would like to. They’d flock to
you like flies to honey, with your sunlight hair and your sweet ways.”

Keen flushed. She had not been thinking of that at all—oh
no.

And yet Old Woman saw so clearly. Had she seen when Keen
lacked wits to see?

Keen had a husband. He had treated her badly, but he had not
put her aside, that she knew of. He most likely would not, either, if he found
her. He would kill her first.

She was not afraid of it, not really, sitting here in the
sunlight with Old Woman smiling at her. It was something that could happen, but
not today, nor yet tomorrow.

And she had something else to think of. Someone else. This
time she knew there was life growing inside her. She could feel it if she
stopped and thought. It felt strong and bright and somehow joyous. That joy
warmed her and made her happy, even in this strange country, far away from her
kin.

Old Woman could always tell what she was thinking—and never
failed to be amused by the way her mind kept wandering. “It’s the baby,” she
said. “It makes you silly. But when it’s born, you’ll find a new father for the
next one, yes you will. A handsome man and kind. He’ll love you as you
deserve.”

Keen did not say that she deserved nothing. She had said
that before, and Old Woman had rebuked her smartly for it. “You deserve
everything a good woman deserves,” she had said. And that was all she would
hear of it, so that Keen learned to keep her modesty to herself.

Old Woman was teaching her, too, maybe even more subtly than
she taught Sparrow. Keen could feel herself growing stronger in the spirit.
Maybe she was braver, though that might be too fond a wishing.

Out of that bravery, if it existed, she asked, “Who are the
people in this country? What are they like? Are they all like you?”

“They’re like themselves,” Old Woman answered.

“Are there any nearby?”

“Ah,” Old Woman said wickedly. “You do want a man. How badly
do you want one?”

“I don’t—” Keen stopped. She did not want a man. But to see
a tribe of these little dark people—to know what they were like—that, she
wanted.

She sighed. “It’s not wise, is it? We’re strangers. I look
like an enemy. People won’t welcome me.”

“You look like sunlight in a dark place,” Old Woman said.
“People will be delighted to welcome you. But not yet. You’re not ready.”

“Ready?”

“To face that world.” Old Woman rose. She was agile when she
wished to be, light on her feet like a much younger woman. “Remember, child: I
didn’t come back. I’ll be returning from my great journey in three days, or
maybe four.”

She winked broadly. Keen smiled in spite of herself. That
smile lingered even after Old Woman had gone, as she took up her needle again
and threaded beads and went back to work on the coat that she was embroidering
for Sparrow.

When Old Woman came back, Sparrow was away from camp
again, sitting on a hill while the mare grazed nearby. She had been flying in
the spirit, following the kestrel, shaping herself to its shape: handsome sharp-
beaked face, swift wings. It had struck her that this hawk was a hunter of
sparrows, and that for Sparrow to hunt the kestrel was an oddity to make a god
smile.

She was smiling at it as she returned to her body, a smile
that lingered in spite of itself—even as she saw who stood in front of her,
leaning on a staff. To the eyes of the spirit Old Woman was invisible.

“Tell me how you do that,” Sparrow said.

“What, walk the country?” Old Woman was not going to give
her anything—unless she begged. And she would not beg.

Sparrow set her lips together. If Old Woman wanted to talk,
Old Woman could talk. She would not trouble herself.

Old Woman stood without speaking, leaning on that length of
smooth-rubbed wood. It had no ornament. The top of it was a burl, the base of
the branch from which it had come, maybe, or the roots of the sapling it had
been. It was much worn, with a sheen on it that spoke of long use.

It was a walking stick, a prop for her age, but there was
something more to it. Sparrow reached to touch it. It did not writhe and turn
into a serpent and bite her. It was wood, that was all, warmer than stone,
denser than bone. Old Woman had grounded it in the earth.

It was long since parted from its roots, and yet it still
remembered. It was still, in a fashion, alive.

“Looking for magic?” Old Woman asked her.

“Is there anything to look for?”

“Answer a question with a question,” Old Woman said. “Very
good; you’ll be a great shaman among certain of the tribes.”

“Not my father’s tribe,” Sparrow said.

“Probably not,” said Old Woman. “Though once the real shaman
is dead and his apprentices weakened with fear, who’s to say that some of them
might not grow wise?”

Sparrow stiffened. “The real shaman? My father’s still
alive?”