by Diane Wilson
The blue roan that my father had been riding stood tethered outside, so I pulled myself into the saddle. The fat horse grunted as I kicked him into a jarring trot toward Karakorum’s north gate, where the festival horses were grouped for sale or trade.
As I circled Karakorum’s mud walls, bouncing closer to the north gate, my mouth opened in amazement. There were so many horses! I counted five tethered rows of twenty horses each in front of me, which would be a hundred horses, and I could see at least two more sets of a hundred beyond them. Their sleek rumps, tails swishing lazily in the sunshine, stretched in brown and black and gray waves endlessly before me. Heart thumping wildly, I started down the first row.
Almost instantly my heart sank. For riding between the rows, I counted many empty spaces on the ropes: the best horses had already been led away. After all, the festival had been going on for three days now, and for my people, few activities held more pleasure than horse trading. I sighed. So these were the leftovers, the ones nobody wanted.
But a small determination started within me. My father was a noted horse breeder. The foals of our old spotted stallion were valued all across the steppes. And my mother had been an excellent rider, with an eye for a good horse as well. Surely their daughter could find one horse in these hundreds that had been overlooked, one horse that I could train to be a racing champion. You see, I was remembering the boy and his brown horse I had seen as a child—the champions with the sky blue scarf of good luck. And I was remembering how my mother had watched that boy’s mother. And I was deciding right then and there that this was how I would capture some good luck: I would carefully choose just the right horse, train it day upon day until it could gallop the morning without so much as a deep breath, and then, next fall, return to the festival to win the long race.
So, shading my eyes from the bright August sun, I held the roan to a bit-champing, short-stepping walk, frowning at first one and then another potential winner. Occasionally I fingered my mother’s jade horse pendant, trying to remember everything I had learned about choosing a good horse: the slope of the shoulder, the length of the back, the angle of the hip. And gradually my excitement returned. How surprised everyone would be, how proud my father would be, I thought, when I won next year’s long race with a “leftover.”
Ahead of me a reddish brown back rose past its neighbors and I reined in to examine an extraordinarily tall animal. Four black stockings wrapped beautifully straight legs, but the bony hips jutting against a dull coat mimicked the distant Hangay Mountains. Needs a little fattening, I thought, but he’s a possibility. Loosening the reins and clucking, I moved on.
My gaze passed over sorrels and duns and pintos. The sunny blond mane of a high-spirited chestnut filly made me stop again. She was young, probably not having seen two whole years, and the strange odors and noises were making her prance and snort. Already a cloud of dust blurred the brilliant white splashing her face and forefeet. How easily I pictured myself astride her in my red silk del, matching strides with the antelope darting across the steppes. What a racing team we would make! Surely she could be a champion.
But I just had to see all the horses, so, squeezing my legs, I pushed the roan on. Past grays and goldens. Past blacks and bays. I disregarded the ones with sagging backs or swollen legs. I shook my head at the mare with the hazy eye and the gelding who yawned, revealing crooked teeth.
Rounding the last row of horses, I had almost decided on the young chestnut filly when shrill squeals burst from a knot of horses tethered ahead. Already a cloud of yellow dust swirled around the kicking and biting animals. The roan came instantly to life, snorting anxiously.
Now, I remember this next part as clearly as the blue morning sky. From out of that cloud of dust came these words: “Help me away from here!”
Well, at the terrified sound of those words I urged my roan into a bounding gallop. Even before reining him to a stop I slid off, plunging into the dust storm stirred up by angry hooves. I knew the only smart thing to do was to approach this squabble from the front, so I ducked under the tether and then, rather bravely, I might add, shoved my way between the sweating bodies. Scolding and slapping at what turned out to be three horses, I finally stopped the kicking, though ears remained pinned, teeth bared.
Coughing, I searched under the bellies for the person that had called for help. But there was no one. Forward and back I walked, peering through the dust for what must be a trampled body. But I couldn’t find anything. The horses stood more calmly now and I patted one of them on the rump, thinking. The frightened person must have already escaped, I decided, and run back toward the festival. It was probably one of the younger boys who took pride in testing his skill against unbroken horses. I shook my head in disgust and, as long as I was there, stepped back to examine the three.
All were mares. The one on the left was a plump sorrel with a star almost hidden beneath her shaggy forelock. In the center was a ragged old white mare who had taken the brunt of the beating. Her far hind leg was hitched up painfully, blood trailing a red streak through her dirty yellow coat. The mare on the right was a dappled gray, middle-aged, with a shiny black mane and tail. She was trim and well muscled and I mentally added her to the list of possibilities.
Pitying the beaten-up old white mare, I worked my way down her side to examine the injured leg. She was hopping around painfully, still fearful of the horses on either side of her. The leg wasn’t broken, so I moved back to her head. Grasping her halter, I spoke to her for a few minutes, trying to calm her. She responded immediately, lowering her muzzle and blowing softly into my arms. Her black eyes looked directly into mine.
Help me away from here. Those same words formed in my head as clearly as if I had heard them spoken. But I had to have heard them spoken, I thought. Still grasping the halter, I looked carefully over my left shoulder, then over my right. I saw no one nearby.
The sun was warm for late August and sweat ran down my back. Yet a cold chill prickled the skin on my arms. I stared into the mare’s eyes, doubting. Her eyes looked back at mine, into mine. And I heard the words again. Help me away from here.
I stumbled backward. My level head told me it had to be a trick. And then I knew. Kokochu! That was it! The great shaman Kokochu lived within the walls of Karakorum. He could make spirits talk, make people see things that weren’t real. It was a joke. He was having fun with me.
Trying to hide my embarrassment, I walked as straight as I could on my crippled leg toward the fat blue roan, again dozing in the sun. My hands were still shaking as I gathered the reins and a hank of mane and pulled myself into the saddle. As we moved off, something made me turn.
And there was the white mare, her head straining against the tether to look at me. Eyes eager, ears pricked forward, she whinnied frantically.
Suddenly the horses around me swayed back and forth, duns blending into browns blending into bays blending into blackness. The heat, I thought, clutching for the arching front of my father’s saddle. Get out of the heat. Blindly, I pushed the roan into his jarring trot and headed, I hoped, toward our ger. But as clearly as the sun cuts through the clouds, the words formed in my head even as I retreated: Help me.
8
The White Mare
From the tailboard of our oxcart, with Bator snuggled beside me, I watched Karakorum grow smaller. Winter was whispering its coming on the back of a raw wind that bit at my cheeks and nose. Below my dangling feet, the dried grasses shivered in the pale half-light of a hazy sun. The festival was over. All across the steppes, ger-laden oxcarts were drifting, like giant white butterflies, away from the walled city. Each carried with it a sampling of the great city’s nectar. Champion archers clutched new bows. A wrestler beamed beneath the hard-won title of Arslan, “Lion.” I had watched with envy as a young girl upon her prancing bay horse was showered with silk scarves, surrounded by an approving crowd. She had won this year’s long race, even beating the older boys
. I had had to swallow hard and force my heart to wish her well. But how I longed to place my feet in those stirrups.
Dwarfed by the cart’s towering load, I sat with my back pressing into it, just listening to the farewell shouts, the oiled wheels creaking, the ox grunting. And thinking about prizes.
My father was carrying home his prize. Hands upon the reins, he talked and laughed with his new wife, while her two sons sat wordless behind them. My father had been unable to award me. While a brief sadness darkened his face in the telling, I had quietly sighed with relief. And for my own prize? I stared at the braided brown rope clutched in my fist. My eyes followed its looping arc, swaying with the rhythm of the wagon, down, then back up and around the bobbing head of the white mare. Yes, limping behind us was my choice, my champion. The white mare.
But I had had to choose her, hadn’t I? She had spoken to me. Although I could hardly explain this to my father.
“Oyuna,” he had said sadly, shaking his head as we stood beside the white mare and her owner. “Are you sure this is the horse you want?”
I had nodded, though hesitantly enough to show my own uncertainty. My father was looking into the mare’s mouth. “How many winters?” he asked her owner.
“Only seven,” the man answered.
“Hmph!” my father grunted. “Closer to twelve if she’s seen one.” He was walking around her then, running his hands along the white legs already fuzzy with a winter coat. When he saw the bloodstained hind leg, he bent for a closer look. “Trot her out!” he ordered abruptly.
The owner tugged on the halter until the mare reluctantly stumbled into a painfully unbalanced trot. I cringed as my father’s scowl fell upon me. “Why do you choose a crippled animal, Oyuna? You know better! Who would pay silver for such?”
But the white mare was being led back to me, her dark eyes looking into mine. My father was right. Who would pay dear silver for a cripple?
“No one,” I answered quietly. “Because no one would pay silver for me.” Looking into my father’s face, I saw that he flushed. “But this is the horse that I choose.”
Grumbling, and still shaking his head, my father quickly counted out silver coins and the man handed me the mare’s lead rope. We walked back to our ger in silence.
Every day since then I had searched the black eyes of the mare and waited for her to speak again. But there was only silence. And it had been five days now.
At that moment the mare stumbled, nearly jerking the rope from my hands before she regained her balance. Tears blurred my eyes as I thought how I had wasted my chance for a champion on an old, crippled horse that could barely plod to the pace of an ox. She wasn’t even suited for breeding, I now knew, for after the silver had changed hands, her seller admitted he had had no foals from her.
The pale sun crept across the arching sky, then slowly began sinking toward earth. Still I stared into the black eyes of the white mare. She was staring back at me now, steadily, but no words filled my head. All I heard was a small explosion of laughter from the front of the cart, then the same rhythmic creaking of heavy wheels and straining harness. The hard beating of grouses’ wings reached my ears as a pair was flushed from beneath the cart’s path. Then I heard the soft cry of cranes somewhere in the distance. Between my own heartbeats, which suddenly pounded in my ears, I thought I even heard the water rippling away from one crane’s plunge after a fish. And then, as I held my breath near to bursting in amazement, the even softer scurry of tiny mouse feet through the grasses tickled my ears. The animals of the steppes, even though hidden from my eyes, were suddenly made known to me by their loud bustling. The grasslands were practically roaring with hooves tromping, wings flapping, claws digging, bills snapping.
At last, blue-faced, I’m sure, I let my breath out in a rush and sucked in lungfuls of fresh air. Blood raced through my veins. My shoulders shook. Already panicky, I startled when the corner of my eye caught the flashing white tail of a bounding rabbit. Glancing to the right, I instantly picked out the stone-still squat of a well-camouflaged suslik and, to my surprise and fear, I saw crouching directly behind the little squirrel, not more than a good leap from our oxcart, a yellow-eyed, grinning fox. My eyes darted to the left. Deep within the grasses, clinging to a swaying stem, perched a leathery grasshopper. A fat beetle beneath it crawled through the shadows striping the hard dirt. Had these creatures always been so close? Why had I never spotted them before?
I flinched even before I saw them: a dozen saiga antelope spilling down a far hill. The white mare snorted, dancing sideways to watch with me. My heart doubled its beat. I tensed; fingernails cut into my palms. Somehow I wanted to leap from the cart and race with them.
What was happening to me? Why did the world suddenly seem so loud, so wild? I squeezed my eyes shut and focused on calming my breathing. Slowly I sucked in the cool air, pushed it evenly out over my pursed lips. Again, I breathed in, rhythmically, slowly. In and out. Steady. Easy.
The faint moldy odor of cheese reached my nostrils. It must have been coming from the felt-wrapped package I had placed in the cart’s front seat. I thought I could even make out the sweet smell of the millet flour in a bag slumped beside it. But how could that be? Curious, I sucked in the deepest breath I could hold. This time countless smells swept through me, even, I was certain, the salty sweat beading on the wide pink nostrils of our ox. Somewhere below us I could sniff the days-old droppings of an animal I couldn’t name. Eyes still closed, I inhaled the peppery fragrance of wildflowers mixed with the light scent of moisture-filled grasses. That made my tongue grow wet. I inhaled a coolness. Frowning, I breathed in again. Yes, I could taste it. Turning my head west, toward a fading sun shedding its warm glow upon my eyelids, I opened my eyes. The white mare was already looking at the same dusty shallow my gaze had fixed upon. Water! Somehow I just knew it was there. I had already smelled it and tasted it. At least, I thought I had.
I called to my father, hollering the words over the swaying bulk of our cart. I heard him call to the others. The oxen slowed, then swung toward the sinking sun.
How had I known?
The white mare was calmer now, bobbing her head with each step. And again she was looking at me. I studied the black eyes, encircled in white lashes, and it occurred to me that they were twinkling. The mare, it seemed, was enjoying a private joke. She was laughing at me! There were no words in my head. Just sounds. And sights I had never seen. And tastes. And smells.
9
In the Ger of Echenkorlo
On a clear wintry morning, five months after the festival, the ger of Echenkorlo, my shamaness grandmother, appeared. I had spotted it at dawn, small and black, seated alone by the frozen stream, well apart from my ail’s clusters of white. But when I pushed my head back inside our ger to shout the news to my waking father, he hissed at me, forbidding me to approach the grandmother I had not seen since my mother was alive.
“Her mind is twisted,” he said, spitting into the cooking fire. “Too many years traveling alone.” He snorted—“Selfish fool!”—as he bundled into a heavy blue del, its hood trimmed in the stiff black and gray fur of the wolf. “Echenkorlo should journey with the tribe,” he growled. Then, pointing a finger at me, “You don’t see a bird flying apart from the flock, do you? Or a marmot tunneling in a direction of its own choosing?”
Shuraa, my father’s new wife, worked around us silently, not taking sides.
Arguing with my father was always a mistake, yet once again that didn’t stop me. And so my retort began, “But the eagle flies alone—”
“Echenkorlo is no eagle,” my father shouted, stomping outside with his saddle in his arms. “She is but a silly old woman who has confused her dreams for her travels.” Even in the morning’s cold, his stubby fingers darted about the braided horsehair fittings, expertly fastening the saddle upon the back of a dozing horse. Hastily he mounted and kicked the horse into a grunting leap.
“Echenkorlo is your mother’s mother—your only grandmother still walking this earth. It is right you should see her, Oyuna, but not alone, for she is…different. You must wait until I walk with you. Do you hear me, Oyuna? You are not safe with her alone.”
His dark eyes held mine, waiting. I nodded, slowly, for a sudden uneasiness at the pit of my stomach had chilled my desire to run toward the small ger by the stream, even in my father’s company. And so, when my father galloped away, I took but one more quick glance at that silent ger before ducking inside our own.
All that day I worked at stirring and sewing in silence, though my mind buzzed with questions. My mother had spoken of her own mother, Echenkorlo, on few occasions, and we had seen her even more rarely. But I did know she was a shamaness and I knew shamans possessed the answer to any question. So what I longed to ask her more than anything was this: Where would I find a swift horse?
Anxiously I waited for my father’s return, thrusting my head through the door flap after the completion of each task to make sure my grandmother’s ger was still there. But by late afternoon my father had still not left the herds. Shuraa was also away, milking the goats. Both the sun and the temperature were dropping rapidly, and though an icy shiver tickled up and down my back, I could rein in my curiosity no longer. I threw the leather water bag over my shoulder and meandered toward the stream.