The Warrior's Path (21 page)

Namet motioned to us to sit down beside the hearth. The floor of the chamber was roughly paved with large, flat stones that held the heat. Their warmth made them comfortable to sit on.

Here the sounds of everyday life could not be heard at all. I was so used to the noises of the large household that I never noticed them anymore. Now I noticed their absence. We had dropped out of the living world above into a space between the worlds. I looked up at the small circle of sky. The stars were twinkling out. Soon it would be dark.

A stone table stood against the wall of the chamber. Two upright stones, half-buried in the floor, supported the slab that served as its top. Namet went over to it and stood with her back to us. She appeared to be preparing something. When she finished, she didn’t turn around. She stood very still. She was so quiet for so long that I was afraid to move. I felt a slight chill in the air and heard a whisper of wind above my head. I caught a whiff of lavender.

Namet turned around. She was no longer the plump and smiling red-cheeked, white-haired woman who felt as comfortable to me as an apple dumpling. Her hair was the color of moonlight. It stood up all over her head and shone as bright as if she herself had become the moon. Her face shone with the same silvery light. Her features were Namet’s features, but Namet’s spirit no longer peered out at me from behind her eyes. Instead another being of great power beheld me. She frightened me.

She approached me and handed me a bowl of some strange-smelling liquid, and I drank. Then she took the bowl from me and handed it to Maara, and Maara drank. In a minute or two, whether from the heat of the fire or the effects of the drink, I began to sweat. I looked at Maara. Sweat gleamed on her shoulders and her arms. It beaded on her forehead and trickled down her body. I felt my own sweat running down my sides.

The woman who was no longer Namet brought another bowl and took from it a handful of black powder. She opened her hand and blew into it, and a cloud of dust enveloped me. I had to close my eyes. When I opened them again, the dust had settled over my body. My sweat dissolved it, so that it gleamed as red as blood. She turned to Maara and blew a handful of dust over her too, and we both looked as if we had been bathed in blood.

The woman who was no longer Namet returned to the table. For several minutes she was busy preparing something. Then she approached me carrying another bowl. She knelt down in front of me, and this time she took a handful of white powder from the bowl. She opened her mouth and tilted her head back as a gesture to me to do the same. When I did, she blew the powder into my nose and mouth. At first I thought it would make me sneeze, but the powder lay on my tongue as light as rain. It had no taste, only a slight aroma that reminded me of damp places.

The woman who was no longer Namet returned to the table and brought me back a bowl of tea. She made a sign to Maara not to drink any of it, and Maara nodded. She brought another bowl of tea and handed it to Maara. Then she climbed the ladder and drew it up after her. My warrior and I were alone.

Maara motioned to me to drink some of the tea. It tasted familiar, but I couldn’t recall its name.

The sky was dark. Only a scattering of stars reminded me of the hole through which we had descended into the earth.

Maara took a few sticks of wood from a pile that lay next to the hearth and laid them on the fire. I watched them catch and start to burn. Colors I had never seen before danced over the surface of the wood. One piece had a bit of flame dancing up and down it. I heard the music of the dance as I watched the dancing flame.

Then Maara moved. I had forgotten she was there. I turned to look at her. For a moment I thought I saw my father. Then I saw her breasts, and I laughed at the idea of my father having breasts. When I heard my own laughter, I was afraid, because the sound came from far away. I tried to speak. The voice I heard was mine, but the words were nonsense.

Maara began to sing. I had never heard her sing, nor had I ever heard a song like the one she sang to me that night. The colors of the firelight flickered in her eyes. I forgot to be afraid.

She made me drink more of the tea. She held the bowl for me as I drank. Then I was lying down, looking up at the hole in the sky where another world looked down at me. I tried to raise my arm, to point something out to Maara, but my arm would not obey me, so I gave up trying and lay still.

There were living beings in the air. Some of them noticed me and spoke to me. I understood them, but after a time I had forgotten what they said.

I opened my eyes. Maara made me sit up and drink more of the tea. Although she was touching me, she looked far away.

As I watched her, she began to change. A coat of dense fur sprang out all over her body. Her head grew large. She opened her mouth and bared her long, sharp teeth at me. She touched my face. Her long, sharp claws drifted over my skin. She did me no harm, and I knew that she would not. I forgot to be afraid.

I was cold. I tried to make her understand. She looked so far away. I reached out for her, and she embraced me. Her dense fur warmed me. I rubbed my face against it. It was soft.

“Maara is a bear,” I said.

I heard the words, but I didn’t understand them.

Someone was crying. The world was dark. I heard someone crying.

“Who is crying?” I asked.

“You are,” came the answer.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Someone who cares for you,” came the answer.

I sat up. I forgot that I was cold. The bear was gone.

Someone touched me. I couldn’t see who had touched me. I looked at the fire and watched the world shatter into pieces and fall at my feet. The pieces sprang up and rearranged themselves and made a picture that I understood for a moment. Then they shattered again. I closed my eyes.

Someone was singing. I forgot to be afraid.

Someone gave me more to drink. Someone touched me. Someone was singing. Someone held me. Someone kept me safe.

I leapt into the air and flew.

I looked down and saw myself lying in someone’s arms asleep. Someone cradled me as a mother cradles her child. She was not my mother.

I flew with the beings in the air. One of them began to tell me a story. I was too impatient to listen. I liked flying. I flew to the hole in the sky, but before I could fly through it, something stopped me. I flew with the beings in the air.

I began to hear the words. They were spoken. They were sung. They were the words that had been spoken to every woman who would become a warrior. They were the words of courage and of caution, the words of hope and the words of doom. They were the songs sung for warriors, for a warrior’s birth and for a warrior’s death. Every one of them was new to me, and every one of them touched a place deep within me that remembered them. For a time that may have been a moment or a lifetime, I listened to the warrior songs.

A hole opened in the sky, and a pale light sifted in. Through the hole in the sky, I watched the stars fade against the growing light. Through the hole in the sky, light poured in.

I grew tired of flying. I drifted down and settled beside the fire. I saw myself in someone’s arms. She cradled me like a child. I couldn’t see her face.

Someone appeared in the hole in the sky. Someone came down from the sky and touched the woman who held me. She looked up, and I knew her. She was my warrior.

The sky woman helped my warrior lift me from her lap. She bent over me and touched my face, while my warrior stood up and stretched her arms and legs until they worked properly again. All of this I watched from where I sat beside the fire.

I watched myself asleep. I was curious to see if what Sparrow said was true, if perhaps I might be beautiful. I gazed at my sleeping face, but I couldn’t tell if I was beautiful or not.

My warrior picked up my sleeping body, put it over her shoulder, and followed the other woman up the ladder. When she reached the hole in the sky, something pulled me, and I fell upward into the dark.

I opened my eyes. I was lying naked on the frozen ground with daylight all around me. Namet was standing over me. Maara knelt beside me. I forgot to be afraid.

All I remember of that day was the cold bath. They insisted on washing me with cold water. They washed me there outdoors, where Maara had put me down on the frozen ground. After the bath, she put me to bed, and I slept through most of that day and night. Sometimes she woke me to give me something to eat or drink. I could hardly keep my eyes open. I slept, but I didn’t dream.

The next morning Namet came to see me. Although I had been awake since dawn, I didn’t feel like moving. Maara must also have been awake, because she got up right away when Namet came into the room. Namet knelt down beside me. She searched my eyes and touched my face and hands.

“How do you feel?” she asked me.

“Fine,” I said, “but I’m not sure I can stand up.”

“Like a newborn child,” she said, “you have just set your feet on a new path. You’ll find your legs soon enough.”

Namet stood up and moved aside so that Maara could help me up out of bed. She had me sit down on her bed while she and Namet dressed me. Then we went downstairs. We all three broke our fast together. It felt strange to me to sit with the two of them, a warrior and an elder, at the same table, but it was a sign to everyone that I was now a warrior’s apprentice.

After breakfast the three of us settled ourselves by the fire in the great hall. Although I was still tired, I didn’t feel like sleeping. I had begun to remember what had happened to me, and I wanted to try to understand. I remembered the beings in the air, but I couldn’t remember the stories they had told me or the songs they’d sung to me.

“May I ask you something, Mother?” I said to Namet.

“Of course, child,” she replied.

“Maara told me I should speak of what happened only to someone who was there.”

“Yes,” said Namet, “and you should speak of it as little as possible.”

“Why?”

“Because what happened can’t be spoken of. No one can tell you what it means. No one else can know that.”

“How can I understand it then?”

“What is it you feel you need to understand?”

“There are things I can’t remember,” I said. “Songs were sung to me, and stories were told to me, and I can’t remember any of them.”

“Your spirit remembers,” Namet said. “From time to time you may remember something. Each memory will come to you when you need it, or perhaps you won’t remember, but you’ll know what to do without knowing how you know.”

Namet’s words reassured me. I already knew that there was a voice within me wiser than my understanding. When I chose Maara over Vintel, I didn’t know how I knew it was the right thing for me to do, but I could not have chosen otherwise. It made sense to me that the part of me that had heard the warrior songs would remember them and would help me to act from the wisdom that was in them.

“What will happen now?” I asked.

“What you were is gone,” said Namet. “You have declared your intention to become a warrior. You can’t go back to being what you were before. The path you’ve chosen will take everything you can bring to it, and death may be the price of failure.”

I didn’t know whether the feeling in my stomach was fear or excitement.

“I’ll do my best,” I said.

“No,” said Maara. “You will do whatever is necessary.”

That evening Sparrow found me in my warrior’s room. Maara was still downstairs with Namet. She had seen me nodding and sent me up to bed. Sparrow handed me a linen shirt. It was the same shirt I had cut out, but it was finished. It was beautifully done. The stitching was tight and even, and the sleeves had been perfectly set. I couldn’t have done it half as well.

“When did you do this?” I asked her.

“Last night,” she said. “It didn’t take long.”

“It would have taken me weeks.”

“You mean it would have taken you weeks to get around to it.”

I laughed. “Thank you. It’s beautiful.”

She smiled at me. “I’m glad you like it.”

We looked at each other for a moment. Then I took her face in my hand and kissed her.

I woke up feeling well and rested. As I often did, I woke before my warrior, and while I waited for her to wake, I thought about all that had happened since midwinter’s night. Only three nights had passed since I watched Maara’s face as she sat with Namet among the other warriors. Even then, the fear that she might leave me had cast a shadow over my heart. Now I was her apprentice, bound to her, as she was bound to me, by ties that would be difficult to break. I hardly understood how it had happened.

A little flame of happiness kindled in my breast. I let it grow. Only a few days before I wouldn’t have indulged it. I hadn’t dared to be too happy. I had been afraid that something would go wrong, but surely nothing bad could happen now.

I was too happy to lie still. I got up and dressed without waking Maara. I went downstairs and out the back door.

Dark clouds gathered in the eastern sky, and the rising sun turned them as red as blood. The beauty of the sunrise touched my heart. The beauty of the world around me reflected my happiness back to me. I went outside the earthworks so that I could have an unobstructed view. A gusting wind blew out of the northeast, carrying winter’s hard and bitter scent.

I heard a sound behind me. I smiled. Maara must have been awake after all and followed me. I turned to greet her. It was Vintel. I was too surprised to speak, and a fear I didn’t understand prickled along my backbone.

“Have you not the manners to say good morning?”

Vintel smiled at me, but her smile never reached her eyes.

“Good morning,” I said.

“You rise early.”

“Yes.”

“Earlier than your warrior.”

“Sometimes.”

She looked me up and down.

“You’re very small,” she said.

She looked at me as she would have looked at a fish she’d caught that was too small to keep. Her look made me feel small.

“Merin can be persuasive,” she said. “I think your foolishness has saved me from making an unfortunate mistake.”