The Great Alta Saga Omnibus

by Jane Yolen

  “Good. Good. I would have been disappointed if you had accepted all this.” She waved her hand around the hall which turned back at once into a simple grove. “Accepted it without question.”

  Jareth let out a loud breath.

  “Without question? I have hundreds of questions,” said Jenna. “But I do not know which one to ask first. Who are you? Where are we? Why are we here? Where are the Greenfolk now? And …”

  “And what about your sisters?” the woman asked.

  “That most of all,” Jenna said.

  “Come, sit, and I will tell you all I can,” the woman said.

  “But what be we calling you?” asked Jareth.

  The woman smiled and held out her hand to him. “You can call me Alta,” she said.

  He shook his head. “No. Like the Anna, I be not believing …”

  She smiled. “Really,” she said, shrugging, “that is my name.” She gestured to the ground and sat down herself. The others followed her lead. “I was named, of course, after the Goddess, as were many of the girls of my day.”

  “When was your day?” Jenna asked, pushing away Duty who had come to nuzzle against her ear. The mare shook her head vigorously and plodded away to stand near the open fire.

  “You will have to suspend your suspicions, Jenna,” Alta said.

  “How do you know my name?”

  “How did the Grenna?”

  Jenna was silent. She plucked a blade of grass and put it into her mouth, chewing absently.

  “I am that Alta who harvested the hillsides and set up the system of the Hames. I wrote the Book of Light. And I brought the wisdom of the breathing and the Eye-Mind and the mysteries of the dark sisters to the Hames,” Alta said quietly.

  “Then you are Great Alta herself,” whispered Catrona.

  “No, no, my Cat,” Alta said. “I dance over no rainbows nor can I walk over a bridge of light. I was a woman wed to a king and unable to bear a child. So he put me aside and took another wife. And another. In grief, I began to gather the forgotten girl children left to die on the hills of the Dales. I fashioned little carts and towed them behind me, more in madness than with any goal in mind.

  “The Grenna found me wandering, crazed, pulling seven carts full of mewling, stinking babes and brought us down here—to the Green World. They taught me how to care for the children: how to play at the wand, how to see in the woods. They told me what would be in the world to come. They showed me how to control my breath and call up my twin. And when they had done all that, they sent us back into the Dales. But it was not one day or one month or even one year that had passed. It was a hundred. And my disappearance from the Dales had become a story, a tale to frighten children at the hearthfire. Be good or the Alta will get you.

  “When we returned, a new story began and unwanted women—the barren and the homely and the lonely—came to our aid. We built the first Hame near here.”

  “Wilma’s Crossing,” Petra said.

  “Yes, Wilma’s Crossing. And the rest came after. I wrote down what the Greenfolk had taught me, or at least what I could remember of it, intermixed—I suppose—with the wisdoms of the Dales. I called what I wrote the Book of Light. And then …” She sighed deeply.

  “And then you returned here?” Jenna asked.

  “That was much later,” Alta said. “When my work was done; when I was ready to die. My women brought me to the doors of the cave as I instructed and left me. When they were gone, I came down into the core. And I have been here ever since.”

  Marek sat up. “But, Alta, that be …”

  “… hundreds of years,” finished Sandor.

  “Time moves differently here,” Alta said. She reached up and took off the briar crown, setting it by her side. “And I had to wait until the Anna came.”

  “Be others coming afore?” Jareth asked.

  “A few. And they saw the hall and the cradle. They heard the song. They ate my bread and drank my wine. And then they left to find themselves alone and pale on the hillside, their loved ones long in the grave. But they knew me not. They knew only their own dreams.” She took off the thistle collar and set it upon the crown.

  “Why me?” asked Jenna. “Why us? Why now?”

  “Because what I began must now end,” Alta said. “The time has come for the world to turn again. Core to rind, rind to core. The Grenna call it the world’s paring. It happens every few hundred years.”

  “Every few hundred years!” Jenna was both astonished and outraged.

  Alta laughed. “Do you think we of the Dales are all there is in the world? We are but one apple on a vast tree. One tree in a vast grove. One grove in …” She pointed beyond Jenna.

  Remembering the other groves in the meadow that extended to the horizon, Jenna whispered hoarsely, “… in a vast green.”

  “Yes, Jenna. You want to be and not to be The Anna. But there are many Annas. Have been many. Will be again. Oh, they will not all be called Anna. Their names will be a multitude.” Alta touched Jenna’s mouth with her finger. Her finger was cool. “But you are The Anna for this turning. And you have many things yet to learn.” Standing, she said in a voice that, while sweet, could not be denied: “Come.” She stood, taking crown and collar with her.

  They rose and followed her straight toward the fire, Jenna by her side and the others in a line behind. As they approached the fire, it seemed to recede before them.

  “So it is with time here,” Alta commented, continuing on toward the flames. At last, having reached some particular destination known only to her, she stopped and gestured around them.

  Looking carefully, Jenna saw they were in a cozy kitchen just like the one in Selden Hame. Any minute she expected to see Donya, Doey, and their helpers come bustling through the door. There were metal sconces on the wall with tallow candles shedding a brilliant light, a roast on a spit turning of its own accord over a well-set fire. Yet as sharp as the central image was, the edges were soft and unfocused as are things seen out of the corner of the eye. And for all the hominess, there was a strangeness, an aloneness at the heart of the place. Jenna felt uneasy. She drew in three deep breaths.

  At last she spoke. “This is not real either. No more than the cradle; no more than the hall.”

  “Not real?” Marek said, disappointment clear in his voice. “But it be like our Da’s house.”

  “Just like,” added Sandor.

  “It is nothing but glamour and seeming,” Jenna warned. “Look at the candles. Look at the fire. There are no shadows here.”

  “And no dark sisters,” Catrona said.

  “You are right.” Alta nodded solemnly. “You are right in a way. And you are wrong as well. This is only a seeming but it is constructed out of your memories and your desires and your dreams. It is not meant to tempt or distract you. It is meant to comfort and remind you.”

  “It is too odd here,” Jenna said, shivering. “I feel no comfort, only a strange hollowness.”

  “Let it come to you,” Alta said. “Sit—and allow it room in your heart.”

  Petra sat down first, drawing up a solid-looking oaken chair with inlaid panels of wood. The chair was so large that when she sat back, her feet barely touched the floor, only enough to stir up the rushes that had been sweetened with dried roses and verbena.

  Jenna breathed in the familiar scent, remembering. Just so the Great Hall at her Hame had smelled. Just so. She shook her head vigorously and remained standing.

  The boys all sprawled suddenly on their bellies by the hearth, like puppies after a long run. Sandor took a stick and began poking at the fire and Marek stared dreamily into the flames. Jareth put his chin on his arms, but his eyes still moved restlessly around the room.

  Sighing deeply, Catrona lowered herself into an armed chair with a deep cushion, stretching her legs toward the fire. She put her head back and stared at the ceiling, smiling.

  Jenna’s fingers traced the design on the back of Catrona’s chair. Alta’s sign was encised there: the ci
rcle with the two peaks that almost met in a cross. It was too perfect, she thought. She distrusted perfection. In the Dales they said Perfection is the end of growing. In other words—death. I did not bring them all here to die in comfort. Out loud she said, “You told us we had many things yet to learn. Teach us—and then let us go.”

  Alta smiled. “Much I have to teach you, you know already, Jenna. The Game of Eye-Mind that trained you for the woods. The game of wands that trained your sword arm. And you have called your sister even before your first flow. You love both women and men, and that, too, makes you ready for what is to come. But Jenna, Jo-an-enna, you are still so much a child. You fear your destiny. You fear to hold power. You fear to reach beyond your own hearth.”

  “I do not fear that. After all, I am here.” She shifted back and forth uneasily from foot to foot.

  “Annuanna,” Alta said sharply.

  Jenna stood perfectly still. It was her secret name, that only her foster mothers—and they long dead—and the priestess of Selden Hame knew. She felt herself trembling, not on the outside but on the inside; not with fear but with a kind of readiness, like a cat after its prey.

  “When you are in the world beyond the green, you must remember how my fire always goes ahead, expanding as far as I let it, always beyond reach and yet by my hand. So must your dreams be, so must your desires be.”

  The trembling inside stopped, replaced by a sudden icy calm. Riddles, Jenna thought angrily. Then she said the word out loud: “Riddles.”

  “Not riddles,” said Alta, shaking her head. “But like the wisdom of the Dales, which you and your companions so love to quote, merely a useful tool for understanding. For remembering. Remembering is what you must do most of all, Jenna. Remember my fire. Remember the green world.” She waved her hand across the table and it was suddenly crowded with goblets, platters, and plates.

  As if wakening from a deep dream, Petra, Catrona, and the boys came to the table and began to eat noisily and with gusto. There was pigeon pie, salads of cos and cress, platters of fruit. There were ewers of wine, both deep red and golden white, and the soft rosy-colored wine that Jenna fancied most of all.

  “And will this faery food sustain us?” Jenna asked abruptly, reaching over and picking up a loaf of braided bread. She waved it toward Alta.

  “It will,” Alta said. “Just as my fire warms you. Just as my chairs give your legs rest.”

  Downing a second cup of the dark red wine, Catrona added, “Just as this wine strengthens my heart.”

  “That wine …” Jenna began, putting her hand on Catrona’s arm, “does you no good. You know it eats away at your stomach. We cannot have you sick for days with the flux.”

  “This wine will not harm her,” said Alta. “It will strengthen her for the coming fight.”

  Jareth pushed himself away from the table with such force his cup overturned, spilling wine along the grain of the wood. In the flickering candlelight, the wine picked up the color of the oak, looking then like old blood until it dripped over the table in a golden fall. “What be this fight?” he asked harshly. “You be knowing more of it than we. Tell us. Finally.”

  “It is the fight that began in my time and must end in yours,” Alta said. Her voice was so soft, they all had to strain to hear it. “It is the fight that goes on and on in this circle. The fight to bring light and dark together. The fight to bring men and women together.”

  “And if we win it,” Jenna asked as quietly, “will it be won for all time?”

  “One apple on a vast tree, Jenna,” Alta reminded her. “One tree in a vast grove.”

  “One grove in a vast green,” Jenna said. “I remember. I remember, but it does not make me glad.” She stood, and the others stood with her. “Is there more to learn?”

  “Only this,” Alta said. She took off the wristlet of rose, and set it alongside the collar and crown on the table. “Take the crown, young Marek.”

  When he held it gingerly between his palms, Alta put her hands over his. “And you shall crown the king.”

  Then she looked back at the objects on the table. “Sandor, take up the wristlet.”

  He bent over, picked up the wristlet, letting it sit in his right palm. Alta covered his right hand with hers. “And you shall guide the king’s right arm.”

  Alta herself picked up the collar from the table. She held it for a long moment without speaking, staring at Jareth as if weighing her words.

  Jenna felt something inside go hot and then cold. She bit her lip. If Marek was to crown the king—whoever he was—and Sandor to guide his arm, then what could the collar mean? Slave to that unnamed king? Or a noose around his neck?

  Not Jareth, she thought. Not my good friend. She put out her hand to stop Alta’s words.

  “No!” she cried. “Do not give it to him. If it is to be his death, give it to me instead.”

  Alta looked up and smiled sadly. “What you and Catrona and Petra must do is written in your hearts. You learned it from the Book of Light when you were children. You carry it inside. But for the men who do not understand it yet, there must be these reminders. And the collar has been waiting for the last of the heroes. I must give it to him, Jenna. I must.”

  “I be not minding, Anna,” Jareth said, his eyes steady on hers. “And I be not afraid. I be following you, and you already bringing me to a stranger destiny than I might otherwise know, safe in the mill beside my old Da. That Anna be willing to take my death for me be enough.”

  Not Anna—Jenna, she wanted to say. But she saw that for such courage she had to be the Anna for him. So she kept silent.

  Alta placed the collar around his neck and it turned into a band of purest green.

  “You shall not speak again until the crown is in place and the king’s right hand has won the war. After that, all that you speak shall be accorded great honor. But if this collar is broken before time, what you say could shatter the fellowship, lose the throne, and the circle would remain unclosed forever. For with this collar, you will have read the hearts of men and the minds of women and none likes to be reminded of what they think and feel by another.”

  Jareth put his hand up to his throat, turning slowly to gaze at each of his companions. His eyes grew large and small, like moons, as he stared at them. At last he looked at Jenna, until she dropped her glance, uneasy with his fierce examination.

  “Oh, my poor Jareth,” she whispered, putting her hand out to him.

  He opened his mouth as if to speak, but no words came out, only a strangulation of sound. He did not touch her hand, pulling away to stand instead shoulder to shoulder with the other boys.

  “And now,” Alta said, “you must go. I will give you bread and wine for the journey, for it is a long riding between here and tomorrow. And if you speak of what you saw and heard in this green world, you will be believed no more than if you spoke with Jareth’s voice. Farewell.” She raised her hand and, as if they had been commanded, the horses trotted over to her. She picked up their trailing reins, holding them out.

  One by one Jenna and her companions walked to their mounts. Jenna got up first. Next Catrona, her unsheathed sword in hand. Jareth got onto the bay mare, then reached down to help Petra up. Last of all, Marek and Sandor leaped onto their horse.

  “Will we see you again?” Jenna asked Alta.

  Alta smiled. “You will see me again at the end of your life. Come to the doors and they will open for you. You—and one other.”

  “One other?” Jenna whispered the question. When there was no answer to it, she turned her horse and headed in the direction Alta pointed, toward the far horizon.

  The others followed.

  At the beginning they rode slowly, as if reluctant to leave Alta’s meadow. Then one at a time they kicked their horses into a gallop. First the sun, then the stars, fell behind them like snow, though it was neither day nor night but a kind of eternal dusk. As they rode summer followed spring, winter followed fall, and yet the road remained the same. They rode on and on
toward the place where land and sky met.

  Once Jenna glanced back. She saw Alta standing by her grove, in a circle of Grenna. When she looked again, Alta, the mannikins, and the grove were all gone.

  THE MYTH:

  And then Great Alta said, “The crown shall be for the head, for one must rule with wisdom. And the wristlet shall be for the hand’s cunning. But as for the collar, which surrounds the neck, it shall be for the tongue, for without tongue we are not human. How else can we tell the story that is history; how else can we hymn or carol; how else can we curse or cry? It is the collar that is the highest gift of all.”

  BOOK THREE

  BLANKET COMPANIONS

  THE MYTH:

  Then Great Alta drew apart the curtain of her hair and showed them the plains of war. On the right side were the armies of the light. On the left side were the armies of the night. Yet when the sun set and the moon rose they were the same.

  “They are blanket companions,” quoth Great Alta. “They are to one another sword and shield, shadow and light. I would have you learn of war so you may live in peace.”

  And she set them down on the bloody plain for their schooling.

  THE LEGEND:

  There is a barren plain in the center of the Dales, where but one kind of flower grows—the Harvest Rose. Little grass, and it quite brown; little water, and it undrinkable; only dust and gravel and the Harvest Rose.

  It is said that once the plain was a forest of great trees, so tall they seemed to pierce the sky. And the cat and the coney lived in harmony there.

  But one day two giants met on that plain, their heads helmeted but their bodies bare. For three days and three nights they wrestled with one another. Their mighty feet stomped the good earth into dust. Their mighty hands tore trees from the ground. They flailed at each other with the trees as though with mere cudgels or sticks. And at last, when the two of them lay dying, side by side, they ripped off their helmets only to discover they were so alike, they might have been twins.

  The blood from the battle watered the torn and dying earth. And at each drop grew the Harvest Rose, a blood-red blossom with a white face imprinted on the petals, each and every face the same.