The Foretelling (6 page)
I thanked him in the way I could. I gave him my scythe, the one with the bears and the bees engraved. The one the smith had made especially for me. At first, he would not take it, but I insisted. I grabbed his hands and then he stopped waving the scythe away.
He was my enemy as well, I was sure of it. And yet it didn't feel that way.
When I asked his name he said Melek. He didn't have to tell me more. I knew that in his world and among his people, it meant king.
By the time I rode back to our city of tents, I felt I would never cry again. That girl was gone, and I had returned in her place. Covered with blood, my throat turned blue and yellow with bruises from the grasp of the red-haired man, a scar down my back, still bloody, throbbing with pain. I had killed four men. They were nothing. Flies. Buzzards. Beasts.
But they were the thing that made me what I now was. The daughter of the Queen.
The whisper of my return went before me, and by the time I reached my tent my mother was there. She had some of the priestesses bring me water in the ritual buckets that were made of horsehide. She watched as I took off my blanket and poured water over myself to wash the blood away. I could feel my mother's eyes on me; she seemed surprised that I was a woman, as tall as she.
Did they hurt you? Did they do what they wanted with you?
She wanted to know if the priestesses should bring me the bark of the laurel tree, the offering for those who'd been violated. I shook my head.
I had fought the wind and lost Usha. I said,
They got nothing.
Io embraced me and took me back to my tent. She brought me milk and stew. I fell asleep as though I had never been to that country before, but I didn't dream. When I awoke, I saw the scythe that the smith had made for Io had been placed across my blanket.
To replace the one you lost,
Io said to me.
Now I'm your sister the bear.
I could have cried if I'd had any tears.
With you as my sister, Io, I'll never need another,
I told her.
Afterward people said that my horse had a fleck of blood between her eyes that wouldn't wash away. They were afraid of her; they whispered that she was marked with death. I think they were also afraid of me. I had defeated men who had killed a bear; in doing so, I had become the bear. I carried Usha with me. I was more silent, and I practiced more with Asteria and the warriors she trained. I was dutiful now, ready to become the Queen. And yet I was still thinking of other things, things I should have closed myself to.
One day when the summer was still hot but slipping away, I rode back to the place where Usha had been killed. My mare almost bolted when we reached the grasslands, but I made her go on. I rode fast and hard; I didn't think of what I was doing. When I stopped, my horse stood on her hind legs and pawed at the air. I whispered to her that this was another time even if it was the same place; when I jumped off I tied her to a low shrub so she wouldn't run away.
I knew I was in the right spot because the ground was red. Nothing grew in this place, not grass, not wheat, not brambles. There were bones outside the circle, picked clean by birds and wild dogs. White as snow.
I looked down to make sure I still had my shadow. There it was, as tall as a tree.
Inside my shadow was a basket, made of reeds. I knelt down. I could smell Usha here, her blood in the yellow dirt. I lifted the cover of the basket.
It was a gift for me.
Melek had made Usha's claws into gloves for me to wear in battle, just as my great-grandmother had worn the claws of a lion, which were then given to my grandmother, and then to Alina, our Queen. It was some time before I found the courage to reach inside the basket. I took my sister's paws and slipped them over my hands. All at once, I felt stronger. I stood and lifted my arms in the air. I screamed my war cry, and I let it echo in my head and shake the grass around me and raise earth into clouds of dust.
What happens when someone gives you a gift? I felt something inside me that I didn't understand. I replaced the claws into the basket, which I tied to my horse blanket. I got back on my horse and went west. I was not a great tracker, but good enough to find his people, the wanderers who had been lost for so long.
It was a small tent village, nothing like our city. But because these people were smiths what little they had shone with light. There were doors made of wood on their tents with brass markings. Their well was made of stones that were pink, carried from some far-off land, perhaps so they would always be reminded of home.
I lay down in the grass and watched his people light their fires, cook their evening meal. Men and women lived together here, and I wished I could see the way they looked at each other, but I was too far away to see their faces. Doves were flushed out of the grass and the beating sound of their wings made me dizzy. I heard something that made my heart race. Some man was playing an instrument I hadn't heard before. It sounded as if his spirit was in the music, rising far above us.
Melek may have been a magician as well. Without being told, he knew I was there. I supposed I was calling to him in some way, and he heard me.
He left his people and came to where I was. He put his hand up and I did as well; somehow our palms came together. He saw the basket I had tied to my mare. He saw the look on my face before I even knew it was there.
We lay down together in the grass, even though he must assuredly be my enemy. We whispered about the demons we had fought together and the way the earth was still red in our meeting place. We didn't really have to speak. We taught each other some words, but they seemed foolish. Melek ran his finger over the line of blue on my wrist.
There was no need for me to cry.
If this was his kingdom, it wasn't much. No horses, no beehives, no thousand warriors all loyal to a single Queen. But as I lay there, listening to the music for so long I had to spend the night, falling asleep beside him in the tall grass, I thought perhaps he had enough. I wasn't the sort of person who said good-bye. I left while it was dark, walking my horse until we were far enough away for me to slip onto her back and ride away.
I left him my horse blanket, made of red horsehair thread that Io had braided.
Now he had two things that were precious to me, this King of Nothing. And I had my sister the bear to wear into battle. A fine trade if you asked me.
So why was it I felt I had taken too much? Why did I feel as though I had given too much away?
Somehow Io sensed a difference in me. She was gentle and she didn't ask questions, but she knew me. I had changed. The wild girl I had once been had been replaced by a woman who wasn't certain of anything, least of all the future. At night, Io stayed in my tent; she knew I still couldn't sleep. She thought I had bad memories of Usha's death. She still believed I was the brave one, fearless in battle. But the truth was, I was too afraid to dream. Afraid of the future that had been foretold.
I went to see Deborah. She was so old she had to be carried to the fire by two of the younger priestesses. I had come to get my second tattoo, another line of blue marking the battle I'd fought for Usha. Because I had not been alone in that battle, I felt like a liar, undeserving of any honor.
I brought Deborah a headdress made of raven feathers I'd found in the grass, sewn together with black horsehair thread.
Sometimes a gift is meaningless, sometimes it means the world
, Deborah said.
I was frightened by how powerful she was, how she had the ability to know a person from the outside in.
After we'd drunk the koumiss, after they'd burned the blue into my face, I begged Deborah to read my fortune one more time. She sent everyone else away. Her daughter, Greeya, begged to stay. She worried that Deborah was too frail to read the future, but Deborah insisted even Greeya must leave us.
She waited until we were alone. She nodded like the ravens do. Her fingers trembled as she shook the augury box. Inside were beads, shells, bones, two green stones.
I hear rain inside
, Deborah said.
Listen.
The augury box did sound like rain, but then my head was spinning from all I'd had to drink. My face was burning. My tongue was burning, too. Who was I? That's what I wanted to know. The Queen-to-be or the girl in the grass? Who was I now and who would I soon be?
Deborah threw the augury. Two stones hit against each other and Deborah breathed in as though she'd been hurt.
It's the same, isn't it?
I said.
A bad fortune.
To have any fortune at all is a good thing,
Deborah reminded me.
Are you still dreaming of the black horse?
I don't dream.
I leaned forward when Deborah threw a handful of earth into the fire even though I was afraid to see what might appear. It was the end of summer and the nights were cooler. We could feel the coming winter, the way we could feel the passage of our own lives. Inevitable. Eternal.
Look,
the priestess said to me.
There in the fire was the black horse.
And it was I, no one else, who was running beside it.
It was the time of year when the great bear in the sky's tail was moving to the west. Every night, colder. Soon we'd leave the pastureland for high ground where there would be more to eat and we could spend the winter in caves. I didn't want to leave this place. I didn't want the stars to move. The truth of it was, I didn't want anything to change. But none of that was in my hands.
Only my own fortune was there.
I
N THE HEART OF A WARRIOR QUEEN
there can be no confusion. She must at all times know who she is and what is expected of her.
She is the fearless, the brave, the murderous if need be.
When my mother's scouts told her that men from the east were moving toward our city, my mother prepared herself for battle. Sometimes the battle comes to you, but there are other times when you must go to battle before it can arrive at your door and destroy you where you live.
This time I would not ride with the prophecy women, but with the warriors. It was what I had always wanted, and yet I felt myself shiver, as though it was already winter. I felt something in my heart, a heaviness, a stone.
We rode for a single day, that's how close these people had come to us. We arrived before the sun came up, so many of us that the dust that arose behind our horses could be seen all the way from our city, or so the old women who'd been left behind later said. Perhaps the men from the east had heard of us and wanted wives; perhaps they'd only blundered into our land. It didn't matter what they intended or what they wanted. Our people wanted things, too.
Firstly, we wanted not to lose our own people. We were warriors, but there were many ways to fight a battle. We knew tactics men had not yet learned or even imagined. Our people waited on the steppe while Cybelle and her beekeeping women went forward in the dark. They smelled so sweet as they entered the village, no one from the eastern people awoke from their dreams. The enemy slept heavily, lulled by a buzzing sound. Carefully, Cybelle and her women used wooden funnels to let the bees enter beneath the tent flaps. No one noticed the bees at first; they slept on long enough for Cybelle and the women to come back to us, like shadows over the rocks, across the steppe, the log bee houses they carried now empty.
All at once, our enemies ran from their tents, shouting, confused, stung by our good neighbors. They had panicked, as warriors never should. The instant they did, we went forward. I could hear my mother's war cry, and I rode along with the women my age, Io's scythe at my knee. I was wearing the bear claws, pulled up to my elbows, so that my wrists were protected by Usha's claws and my hands were free.
Even my own people looked at me differently in this battle, as though I were a sister to the bear. I aimed my arrows and felled two of the enemy. I saw the way they went down into the dust out of the corner of my eye, yet I kept on seeing it. An arm lifted into the air, a thud on the earth, a cry that rose and then disappeared like snow in a fire.
But I was not proud of what I'd done. Usha's spirit must have entered me, and only I knew she was not a warrior, not truly a bear at all, but a horse. I hated what I saw before me and I felt sickened. I could not abide the hot scent of blood. In the midst of battle, I felt as though I were seeing what was happening, rather than being part of it, seeing for the very first time what had been around me all my life. Pain and grief and sorrow and loss. Brutality. What had happened to me? Was I under a spell? Weakened by the amulet of Usha's claws that should have made me stronger?
One of our enemies tried to pull me from my mare, and I pushed him off, nothing more. I could have used Io's scythe, I could have spilled his blood, chopped him in two, but instead I watched him run, and I felt something I shouldn't have.
Pity. Mercy.
Those burning things.
Our people captured six of their men, killed many, and chased whoever was left to the borders of our land. It didn't matter if they sneaked back for their tents and belongings; they would not bother us for a very long time. They would dream of bees and of women who were half-horse, and they would stay where they belonged: away from us.