Shadow of the Horsemen (Kalie's Journey) (9 page)

“I tried to find some of the girls you were with last night, but none were allowed to speak with me when I went to their tents. Perhaps, if we make enough noise and have enough fun, their mistresses might come see what’s going on, and allow them as well.” Of course, if that happened, there wouldn’t be enough food for everyone. Kalie wasn’t sure which one to hope for.

She knelt and lifted the platter holding the largest of the geese. Varena picked up the basket of flat bread. Hesitantly, as if fearing it was all some kind of cruel joke, Agafa and the other five half-starved, Shadow Women came forward to carry the rest.

She had always assumed that they worked together for foraging and mutual protection—or at least warmth, when the nights were cold. But only a single pair of women were together. Mother and daughter? Kalie wondered. Sisters? Perhaps lovers. For women to love each other in that way was yet another “abomination” to these people. Still, any sign of closeness or caring was hopeful. Agafa and the other three moved separately, like solitary animals forced into a herd.

“Come, Varena. Walk beside me.” Kalie led them through the silent camp. With the men away, there were no bonfires, no boisterous gatherings. Only the faint light of braziers shone through the quiet tents. Entry flaps were closed, but here and there, Kalie saw veiled faces peeking out at them. The shadow women dared tiny bites of food when they thought Kalie wasn’t looking, as fear warred with hunger and lost. Kalie didn’t mind. It appeared it would only be the eight of them, and all that food. Yet as the sky deepened to violet and the sun slid below the western rim of the world in a bed of orange and crimson, Kalie found she didn’t mind that either. Power swirled around her, palpable in the warm sweet air of summer. She walked toward the sunset, keeping her back to the rising moon, almost afraid to face the aspect of the Goddess at Her most powerful.

They reached the spot Kalie had chosen. As the moonlight gilded the lake, and cast a silver sheen over the endless stretch of dry grass, the ugliness of the place receded into the twilight. As soon as they began arranging the food, however, Kalie realized that any rituals would have to wait. Otherwise, they would all be too distracted by the feast to hear a word Kalie said.

Still, anything done in joy was an act of worship. Kalie decided to put that teaching to the test. “We have gathered here, in the light of the Goddess, to welcome a new woman into our midst!” Kalie intoned the ancient words. “Let us welcome her with music and dance; with instruction into the women’s mysteries. But first, in the oldest way remembered: with feasting! Varena will begin it,” she added as two of the shadow women reached forward eagerly. Kalie heaped a plate with the best pieces of goose and stuffing, fish and hard bread soaked in berry syrup.

Varena may not have understood any of what Kalie said about women’s mysteries, but she understood good food in plenty, and what it meant to be the first one served. For the others, it was cruder, more basic: food enough to fill their shrunken bellies, without shouts or blows to drive them away as they gorged themselves. Kalie had to physically force some of them so slow down, to chew more fully, to keep them from becoming sick from the very thing that should be helping to restore their health.

Kalie ate sparingly, more for the joy of eating the fruits of her own labor at her own pace than from any real hunger. As the moon rose, a sense of excitement filled her, driving out any lingering despair that this job was too much for her. She sipped some kumis, and thought about how nice summer wine made from those berries would have been, if she’d only had time to let them ferment. Then she wondered how she would begin.

There were ritual words that the priestess would be saying now, but Kalie couldn’t remember them all, despite the number of these she had attended, and Varena wouldn’t know the correct responses. She could try a story, but translating so many alien concepts into the beastmen’s harsh tongue was beyond her right now.

She watched Varena savoring her last bites of food, eyes dancing as she looked eagerly at Kalie, wondering what was next, all her fears forgotten, and suddenly a voice rose up inside Kalie and burst from her mouth.

Kalie began to sing an old song often sung at these festivals. It told of the ancient Earth, lonely and barren, and the spark that began the miracle of life. How the Goddess gave birth to all that now lived upon her body. Kalie sang in her own tongue, with no thought of translation. Yet as she looked at the faces of the women around her, she knew that no translation was needed. The passion and the power that flowed from Kalie reached them just fine.
          

Women began to emerge from their tents. Most stood and watched from the door flaps, but a few came closer, watching and listening. Kalie beckoned them closer, then began another song; one that went with a circle dance. She grabbed Varena’s hand, then the hand of one of the Shadow Women, urging them into a circle. For a moment, Varena seemed willing to try, but the Shadow Woman pulled away, and none of the others would join. Kalie gave up and finished the song, just as a small group of women approached.

She looked anxiously at the remains of the feast, hoping she could offer them something, then saw it would not be necessary. Arriving before the others, despite her slow gate was the old woman who had taken Kalie’s side against Leja during the dispute over the geese the day before. Behind her a slave woman carried a tray of food nearly as fine as what Kalie herself had prepared. “If you’re going to invite everyone, better make sure you have enough food,” the ancient one was saying, and for a moment, Kalie felt she was listening to a priestess.

That was not all. Brenia and one of the other wives Kalie remembered from a storytelling party carried offerings as well, though not as impressive as the crone’s. She put an arm around Varena and urged her forward.

“I and my daughter am honored by your presence at her Womanhood Ceremony, and thank you for your gifts,” she said.

Some of the women giggled behind their veils, while others grinned with expectation of a new farce. But some seemed genuinely interested.

“I would like to know of this strange custom you speak of,” said the old woman.

“And I would like to know who it is I must thank, not once, but twice,” Kalie answered.

Brenia came forward quickly to make introductions, looking rather shocked that Kalie did not already know. “This is Danica, mother of Chief Zavan.”

Kalie was impressed. A chief’s mother was probably the highest ranked woman in this society, though few lived long enough to attain such status.

“What is this that you do here tonight?” Danica asked.

Kalie felt a strange stirring, as if it was a priestess who had asked a ritual question that would allow everything to begin.

She replied in kind. “We are here to welcome a new woman into our midst, and celebrate the power of the Goddess.”

“This slave girl?” Rather than breaking the mood, Danica’s mocking question felt to Kalie like an opportunity.

“In this place, for this night, when the moon is at her fullest power, there are no slaves. There are no wives or concubines. There are only women, daughters of Mother Earth, chosen at birth to be Her mortal incarnation.”

There was a ripple of whispered exclamations, but Kalie’s attention was focused on Danica, whose gaze grew very far away.

“My grandmother spoke as you do,” the old woman said. “Perhaps only to me. She came as a slave from a distant land, but when she gave my grandfather his only son—my father—he made her his wife. But when I was a child, she told me she had once been a priestess of the Great Goddess. That in her land, all women were as the wives of kings.”

“She spoke the truth,” Kalie said, striving to keep her voice steady, while her heart soared at the prospect of meeting a distant kinswoman. “Come, join our celebration, and find out what your grandmother tried so hard to teach to you.”

She began another song; more like a chant. The cadence was similar to the singing the beastmen did in their own rituals. And while Kalie’s song was only a simple welcome of the harvest, more appropriate for later in the summer, and rarely sung at initiations such as these, she could feel it weave its web of power among the gathered women.

“Come Varena,” Kalie called when the song ended. “Let us make you ready to be presented to the Goddess.” She uncovered the basket of dried flowers, taking out a comb and a tiny leather bottle of oil that she had distilled from the rose-like flowers that grew here. When she removed Varena’s veil, members of the crowd looked around nervously, but there were only women here, so most of them settled down to watch.

“In my land, there would be fresh flowers for your hair, but dried ones will have to do for tonight, as if you had come into your womanhood in winter.”

As Kalie combed the sweet oil into Varena’s hair and wove the flowers into a garland for her, everyone saw Varena transform from despised slave girl to an incarnation of the Goddess in Her form as Maiden. Only her ragged felt clothing bound her to the role her world had thrust upon her. One of the women commented on that.

“Well that is because she is here,” said Kalie. “In my land, she would be naked. We all would be.”

“Abomination!” cried one of the women.

“No!” Kalie rose to her full height. “Abomination is a world where the power to kill is revered, and the power to bring forth life is shunned! Abomination is taking pleasure in hurting others or stealing what they would gladly share if you but asked! Abomination is women who have forgotten their own power while they cower before men who should have been drowned at birth!”

The shocked silence that greeted her words was absolute. All at once, Kalie ran out of words. She had been talking, explaining, arguing and preaching since she came to this land nearly a year ago, and she was sick of it. This was not a night for politics. Kalie felt a rush power inside her more primal than anything she had ever experienced. If she didn’t find a way to release it, it would burn its way out.

Closing her eyes, she drew a deep, steadying breath of the summer night air. She kicked off her leather shoes, and felt the earth beneath her feet, as her toes curled into the tough grass. For a moment, she felt the Goddess she had abandoned reaching out to embrace her, and then something suffocating came between them. It was the clothes; the heavy, scratchy felt.

Her eyes still closed, Kalie pulled the stifling garments from her body one by one, until she stood naked beneath the moon, and felt its power coursing through her.

Then she began to dance.

The power of the Earth rose up through the soles of her feet: ancient and unchanging. Older and wiser than any of Her creations could hope to be. And Kalie had feared the beastmen would destroy this? She laughed at her own foolishness, her dance taking on a merry, childlike gait as she wove playfully among the women, tugging at their garments, and beckoning them to join her.

Yet she didn’t stop to see if they did; rather she spun and leapt with eyes focused only on the moon whose monthly cycle mirrored her own, and who now commanded that Kalie’s dance change. She slowed her steps, stretching her arms overhead. The dance was as joyous as before, but deeper and more sedate; the dance of a woman’s power to bring forth life from her own body, even if that meant dying in the process. Yet when she survived the process of giving birth, joys and sorrows multiplied, and a woman discovered the awesome responsibility of nurturing a child.

Finally, the dance drew itself in, and Kalie became an old woman, not bent and slowed by bitterness or pain, but reaching outward, offering her wisdom to her people as they sought the best path. And so her legs gyrated slowly, as her arms and head swung gracefully, supplely, as only a lifetime of practice could allow.

Finally, still in step, Kalie slid gracefully to the ground, content to melt into the Earth and never open her eyes to the mortal world again. But steady, irregular vibrations beneath her were breaking the mood, and when Kalie looked up, she found the field was filled with dancing women. Many were awkward and uncertain, but some were moving as if the Goddess Herself directed them. Some were as naked as Kalie, though most wore at least a shift. All had cast aside their veils, and their long hair flowed freely.

Agafa danced, as she once must have danced to please her masters. Now, however, her movements—stiffened and slowed by arthritis, but still retaining an element of their past glory—seemed to blend the seductive dance of a horsewoman with the power and freedom of Kalie’s dance.

Larren was there as well, her slave garments cast onto the ground beside where she gyrated, showing her pregnant belly to the moon as if beseeching a blessing. Turning slowly, she saw Kalie, and flashed a smile—perhaps her first genuine one in a long time. Two women stood near Larren, both staring. The older one, probably a wife, looked horrified, but perhaps a little pleased, as if by the knowledge she now had the means to do away with her rival. The other, younger and with a foreign cast to her somewhat slanted eyes and long black hair, moved forward, and was soon dancing with Larren.

But among them all, the loveliest was Varena, her hair a golden halo, her naked flesh glowing with the promise of life and strength, her eyes wide but seeing nothing of the brutal land in which she had been raised.

Kalie wanted to join them, lead them, but they were dancing to their own internal rhythms, and didn’t need her. So she watched in wonder and gratitude, until one by one, they spent themselves, and fell gracefully to the grass beside her.
     

The moon was setting by the time the ecstasy faded, and the disapproving stares of the women who had not joined the dance finally roused them. Some were shaking as they struggled into their stifling garments, but whether from shame, fear or cold, Kalie could not say.

She embraced Varena, who still stood naked, though looking rather confused. “Welcome,” Kalie said to her adopted daughter.

“Must we dress, too, mother?” Varena asked, clearly hoping they would not have to.

“You are a woman, now, Varena, and you must make that decision yourself. May it be the first of many.” Kalie’s smile faded as she realized how unlikely that was. “But for myself…tonight, I will sleep in the arms of my Goddess, under the light of her little sister.” To the crowd she called out, “Tonight is only the first night of the full moon. There are two more.”

Then, without waiting to see if anyone responded or followed her, Kalie strode forth until she found the right place in the grass to make her bed, though she had no intention of sleeping. Midsummer’s night was the shortest of the year, and Kalie and her Goddess had a lot of catching up to do.