15. A new Mother

This is a dangerous moment

This is an installment in a serialized novel. To start at the beginning, go here or navigate from the Table of Contents.

Though some in the clan opposed Azayan’s ascendance to Mother, grumbling about her youth, no one else was put forward as a rival. There was no other woman in the tribe with Sight like hers. And a Mother they must have, for so it had been with the Veyta clans since they rode north into these lands from the frozen southern steppes. Before that, who knew? The songs did not tell much of that time.

And so when the debate was ended and the decision made, Azayan strapped a bow to her back and a knife to her belt and journeyed upward into the mountains. The air was cooling now, and the trees in the foothills were beginning to turn, but all gave thanks that the time for the ceremonial hunt had come before the snow and ice set in, and that Azayan’s child was newly weaned. The old Mother must have seen this in her wisdom, they said, and departed at the right time.

On the third evening, Azayan returned bearing the sacred lynx across her shoulders, its silvery blue fur still glistening. The important women of the tribe–the elders, the family leaders, and the ashavela–gathered that night in the House of Vision, with Hashar standing guard outside.

The House of Vision was a round structure with a gracefully curved roof. Though it was built of the same stone as the other buildings in the settlement, it did not share their austerity, being carved all over with intricate designs and images of birds in flight.

The moment came when the moon was high and streamed with bright, cold light through the single glass window at the apex of the building. As they all stood near in their gray ceremonial robes, the woman Erlonar laid the lynx on a rectangular plinth. Then she opened the animal with her knife. From its gut, she cut and removed an organ–a sac of a deep blue color.

Carefully, Erlonar carried the sac to a pedestal which held a small bowl of polished stone. There, she split the sac with her knife and emptied its contents into the bowl.

Then Azayan approached. As she stood ready, the women draped a thick robe of fur around her shoulders. Finally, she took the bowl of shafa and drank.

This was a dangerous moment, for shafa, when ingested in adulthood, sometimes causes the heart to stop. But Azayan’s breath came steadily as the women laid her body on a low stone platform.

A strange thing happened then– several small white birds appeared, coming to flit about Azayan and rest upon her hair and hands. The other women turned to look at each other, unsure what to make of this. But Erlonar continued, swinging a bronze censer above Azayan’s form.

The smoke billowed near her body, then gathered above her, revealing the impression of a large, long-necked bird resting peacefully on Azayan’s chest. Though the quantity of smoke was not sufficient to fully define the bird, some of the women speculated later that it had been a great heron. This, again, was odd, because Azayan’s birdform at the time of her Awakening was said to have been a small heron variety, and one’s birdform did not usually change.

The bird, whatever its kind, rose slightly and, with a silent flap of its wings, ascended. It hovered for a moment in the chamber before passing through the roof, where the smoke, limited by the physical bound of the glass pane, dissipated into its natural chaos.

After a time, the great heron returned through the glass, gathering the smoke again to itself. When the bird spirit had returned to her body, Azayan rose. The women noted later that when she looked at them, her eyes shone with an even brighter green than before. If this had happened to the previous Mother, no one remembered it.

From that time, Azayan was called Mother and Hashar swore himself to her service. The new Mother spoke to the elders of what she had seen, of early snowfall in many parts of the range, of more raids and chaos on the plains, and of poor harvests on many Enedram farms.

She had counsel to give as well, of preparation and conservation, and even those who had thought her too young to lead acknowledged the wisdom of her words. And when a dust storm rose up and swept across the dry plains, reaching unusually close to the base of the foothills, Azayan directed that the herd animals be brought into the settlement. Then as the storm approached, she grasped the hands of the other ashavela, and all watched as the cloud parted and passed around the settlement, leaving a path of grit and destruction on either side.

And so the agitation and discord engendered by the raid and the death of the old Mother began to fade, and the people forgot that Azayan had been a girl only recently, and gave thanks that they were guided by a Mother of wisdom and power greater than any they had heard of, except in the old songs.

Some remarked that the new Mother’s ways were unusual, that she retreated into the House of Vision more frequently than during the customary visit during the full moon. They saw that when she entered, she did not take shafa, but still returned with information and counsel. And as time went on, she entered the House more often. Though she still bore herself with dignity, those close to her noticed a weariness around her eyes.

…

Rahn drifted during this time, and people drifted around her. Maybe they had forgotten the riot, how they had nearly cast her out along with the Enedram, treating her with only the mild ostracism she had been accustomed to since her first failed Awakening.

But Rahn had not forgotten. Not long ago, her thoughts had been dominated by a yearning to have the Sight, to be true Veyta, to be whole and not defective. At night she had laid on her bedmat, entertaining fantasies about how she would gain the Sight one day, that it might even come the stronger for having come so late–perhaps she would even become an ashavela!

Or in more desperate moments, she had searched wildly in her thoughts for a way to gain what she lacked. Perhaps she would slip off one night, steal a bottle of shafa, and climb to the Doorway herself for another attempt. Or maybe she would seek another Veyta tribe with different ceremonial rites. Or, she had thought with a feeling of darkness, she would hunt the sacred blue lynx, eating its meat and drinking the shafa fresh from its body. Surely then she would gain whatever power laid within it!

But since the riot, these daydreams had gone, and now Rahn knew that she was not Veyta. She was sprana, and these were not her people.

No one seemed to notice or particularly care when, a few days after the early descent, Rahn asked her cousin Huki to exchange his role as a goatherd with her job helping with the fortification of the settlement. He had agreed eagerly enough, complaining that the goats didn’t understand any of his jokes. But for Rahn, goats were better company than people, though even the animals seemed determined to ignore her and wander off, absent Huki’s knack for anticipating their digressions with his Sight. But Rahn was happy enough to pitch her tent in the foothills near her herd, rather than staying with her father and his wife. More than the woman’s cold disapproval, she could not bear her father’s silent regretful looks.

The dayhawk was her companion now. Its wing was fully healed, and though it was not bound, it did not abandon her. But it was still full of fury, and Rahn’s hands were red and scabbed from its frequent bouts of violence. It was stubbornly resistant, too, to Rahn’s attempts to train it. It was perfectly capable of hunting its own prey, but it only did so on its own terms and for its own sustenance, never returning any to her. Huki had teased her again about the bird, questioning its supposed intelligence and offering to make it a leather hood. “You can’t hood a dayhawk,” she had insisted, and in spite of the bird’s temper, she was glad for its company.

Rahn shot her own rabbits and small fowl, which were abundant enough here in the foothills where there was still some surface water. She roasted her game over a small campfire at night, and thus avoided returning to the settlement as much as possible. Where her thoughts had been full before of daydreams about a better future, she avoided thinking of the future now, letting her mind be full of nothing more than what her senses brought her– the bleating and smell of goats, the cry of the dayhawk in the cooling air, and the the heat of her campfire that warmed her feet almost to burning, given her habit of resting her boots a little too close.

All these things brought her a measure of peace. The only thing that disturbed her was the sight of the settlement below and the expanse of the dry plains before her. It was a reminder of the world she had no place in, a world she couldn’t avoid forever.

For this reason, she enjoyed bringing the herd to drink near the stream sink. Here, a mossy ridge and a thick growth of trees obscured the horizon, and she felt comfortably hemmed in, like she did in the valleys of the Summer Home. It was beautiful, too, with the creek tumbling recklessly down the ravine, then coming briefly to rest in a broad pool before plunging into the darkness of the earth, swallowed by a cave to pursue its course across the plains underground.

Here she was, watering the herd in the late afternoon while the hawk circled above, looking for prey. Rahn was watching the young goats romp about and keeping a sharp eye on a curious spotted kid that kept wandering too close to the opening of the sink. She wondered where a goat– or a person– would end up if they were swept down the waterfall, under the earth. People sometimes frightened children with stories of a man who had cast himself into the stream sink. His body, they said, was swept down to the center of the earth, but his ghost sometimes still emerged from the cave on moonless nights to haunt the descendants of those who had wronged him.

Rahn was less worried about ghosts than about how she was going to cook her fish. She had made a small weir, more to pass the time than anything, out of sticks pounded into the shallows on one side of the pool. It had been an experiment–she hadn’t expected to catch anything and had been shocked to find a silvery fish in it. But she had never eaten fish before; there were very few fish in the cold mountain lakes, and almost no surface water on the plains. Besides, people were superstitious about eating something that spent much of its life beneath the ground.

And yet, Rahn was determined to eat this fish. She was contemplating the best way to do so when the storm came in. She heard it before she saw it, rumbling ominously far above, clouds obscured beyond the nearest peaks. She was glad to be down in the foothills. As much as she loved the Summer Home, mountain storms could be terrifying.

It was not long, however, before a chill wind began to blow and dark clouds swept in overhead. Most storms stayed in the heights, declining to share any water with the parched plains, but this one was extending its grasp over the foothills. The previously glassy surface of the pool blurred in the rain. Rahn shivered and looked up with some concern at the ravine. The rainfall was light here, but the goats were growing antsy, and the hawk returned from its circling to alight on her shoulder. The eastern sky was black and the peaks were fully obscured by heavy rainfall further up. Time to move the herd away from this place.

That was easier said than done. The goats, jittery from the thunder, seemed inclined to go everywhere except where she wanted. By the time she had them all gathered, it was raining harder and the creek was already rising. But as she looked back to check, she saw the troublesome spotted kid standing frozen on a rock at the edge of the fast-moving water. “Come on!” she yelled fruitlessly.

Cursing, Rahn turned back toward the herd, shouting and running at them, spurring them further up the slope away from the pool and the creek that fed it. The water level continued to rise. Rahn turned and made her way back toward the stranded kid, sliding on the muddy slope. Suddenly the hawk flew from her shoulder. “Where are you going, stupid bird?” yelled Rahn, frustrated. But as she watched in amazement, the hawk circled and swooped downward with a cry, talons extended, nearly grazing the baby goat. The kid jumped onto the bank and ran upward, harried by the hawk. Rahn grabbed the kid, and soon she was with the herd, away from the creek on higher ground.

And then there was a loud rumble that did not dissipate like thunder. Rahn watched in awe as a great wave barreled down the ravine, engulfing the area near the pool. The water inundated the stream sink and began to flow around it, finding new paths down the slope along the surface.

The hawk alighted again on Rahn’s shoulder. She raised an eyebrow at it. “I’ve never heard of a goatherd hawk. Maybe you’re not such a stupid bird after all.”

There was still too much lightning for comfort, so despite the water rushing toward the plains, Rahn steered the herd down toward the settlement, keeping to ridges that were clear of running water. Near where the foothills met the plains, she enclosed the goats in a pen that seemed unlikely to turn into a lake. The animals huddled together in the middle, keeping each other warm.

Rahn shivered. She was soaked and cold, and her tent was far up the slope at her little camp– if it hadn’t been blown or washed away by now. So with some reluctance, she trudged toward the settlement in search of a roof and a fire.