Aimee Ogden - [BCS285 S01] - A Song for the Leadwood Tree (html)
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The knife flashed.
Nehan’s head dropped backward first. Before understanding, and before pain, which amounted to the same thing. The prison of hands let her go, and she hit the hoof-slashed sand wetly screaming. Drowning on dry land.
Hands found her again, but small ones this time, seizing her elbows, pulling her to her feet. Wet heat dripped down her throat, and it was Ayake there before her, speaking words that foundered in the roar of her ears. Something struck her from behind: the butt of a Buskruten rifle. She staggered. Only Ayake kept her from falling.
They walked away, backward, toward the retreating Watuk line. Stop, her son said in her ear and let go of her. She stood swaying for a moment, and then he was back beside her, steadying her. You’re strong, Mama, he said, like a prayer, and he pressed the weight of the ivory-and-gold headdress back upon her brow. Then they were hurrying again, Nehan stumbling over shifting sand and broken bodies. The Buskruten chased them, only for a while, with leadwood switches and laughter.
The war horse is comforting solidity between Nehan’s knees. A horse’s back is the same to her now as a throne once was: a vantagepoint from which she can understand the world. The weight of Ayake’s arm pulls the breastplate against her hips in front. His spear’s butt end rests in a cup sewn onto the horse’s harness. The spear-point cuts a line through the sunlight that spills down over Nehan’s face, and the faded leadwood-tree banner upon it dances and leaps like a cast-off cloud.
Waves of motion shift the distant Buskruten lines: rifles being inspected, loaded, shouldered. There are fewer Buskruten than there are Watuk, though they will thin Nehan’s numbers before her riders crash down upon them. The advantage between them skews and twists. The shifting wind might push more bullets off-course. Or uneven ground hidden by the long grass might cost the ankles of more horses than she can afford to lose.
Change hangs behind the horizon. Nehan hopes she lives long enough to see its shape.
Her line-captain signals her, alerting her that her army is ready to move. She finds the hilt of her sword and drags it free from its scabbard. Its weight battles the strength of her arm as she thrusts it skyward. A sudden stillness, from the warriors gathered behind her. A cold breeze off far-away Mlaz Nian, big enough to freeze the souls of an entire family. This is supposed to be the moment for a poem, to charge their blood with holy fire, to cleanse their hearts with song in case they should meet the gods today. They are steeling themselves to die unblessed.
Nehan’s mouth is dry, and a coppery tang clings to what is left of her tongue. She opens her mouth and stretches her jaw against the pull of pain. The words are there in her belly, waiting. It’s just that their shape has shifted—jagged rocks rolled together until they are smooth and round. Her voice tears her throat with the round, blunt vowels that she can still muster. “Ah eh-ai anh!” she cries. “Ah uhn-ai oh—”
She hammers the rhythm of the words, her composition from the battle at Five Wings. The shapeless song carries outward from her, like seed thrown to the wind in search of fertile ground. Only the echo of her own voice rolls back to her. Tears sting her eyes as she finishes the verse and starts again.
But now, but now. Other voices rise to join hers, to constrain her open-voweled rage with a precision of soundful substance. The chant picks up swifter than wildfire, a scourge that shakes the foundations of heaven’s palaces:
“The red-stained hand,
the sunbright sword.
My blood today
waters the fields of tomorrow.”
The Buskruten lines ripple. Their left flank gives way as riflemen break and flee. Nehan laughs—the language of laughter is the same, tongue or none. The horse leaps into motion at her urging, and she bears down upon the invaders with a sword of lightning in her hand and the blood-tang of a song in her mouth.
In her ears, Ayake’s soft sturdy voice, raising the song of the leadwood tree.
The sweat of the birthing-bed had not yet dried when Nehan held Udavi out for Katif to see. “There,” she said. “At last, a right hand to your left.”
Katif’s face, so small, so serious. “But Mama,” she said—not whining or complaining, only arguing the points of law that governed her young world. “You’re my right hand, if I need one.”
“I hope it will never come to that.” Nehan reached out to cup her elder daughter’s cheek with one hand. “But only once. A hand turned to war one time will seek it out again, and again. It must be turned aside. Put to gentler—and less glorious—pursuits.”
“Oh,” said Katif, and peered down again at the small creased face cradled against Nehan’s breast. “She is very small.”
“Babies grow. And when she is older, and you are, she will be there if a time comes when you need her. When Watuk needs her.”
“And where will you be, Mama?”
Nehan smiled, and her fingers slid away from her daughter’s petal-soft cheek.
After the battle, before Ayake’s moment comes, she is afraid that he will hesitate, that he will reach out to her in kindness rather than in power. But his jaw is set, a solid foundation in which to hold his sad, swimming eyes. When she kneels before him, to surrender her rule, he takes the headdress from her and throws it down into the dirt. She holds her breath as he lifts his foot; the ivory splinters and gives way on the first blow.
The priestesses approach, singing low in the secret, sacred tongue. Still on her knees, Nehan is gripped by a moment of panic: the silver crown is lost to the capital’s ashes. But here, Hilaj lifts her hands, and upon her palms rests a simple circlet of polished wood. “O Hand of Peace and Plenty,” she says neutrally, and holds the circlet low, at her waist. She gestures for him to kneel. Nehan’s teeth grind.
As quick as dancing candle-flame, he snatches the circlet from Hilaj’s hands. Hilaj, shocked, grabs for it once before wisdom and dignity prevail and she lets go. “Thank you,” he tells her, without sneer or smirk, “but the king doesn’t bow, though your wisdom is great and your years of service are appreciated.” And he settles the crown atop his own dark curls. The vipers may yet snap at the foot of their Gombe king, but they will fear the strike of his staff now, too. Shepherds know well how to deal with the snakes of the field.
With the wordless priestess still standing beside him, Ayake turns to his people, who shift from foot to foot. “O Hand of Plenty,” a few cry, but watchful silence carries the moment.
Ayake’s mouth moves briefly then, without sound. But when he speaks, his voice travels far. “My mother’s words led us here. Her words tore down the walls in our way; her words tore holes in our enemy’s hearts and drained away their courage. I wasn’t raised to be ... I wasn’t raised to be a man of words.” He stops, and his throat jerks with a swallow.
Nehan knows what word is the pebble upon which he has stumbled: man. He is only a boy in an adult’s office, and he feels this as keenly as any. If his burden were hers to lift, she would. But she cannot, not without staining it. “But I’ll learn the words, in time. Not to tear down, but to build up. To heal hearts, not to wound them.” His fingers dart up, to touch the simple crown upon his brow. “And I know where to start.”
A pair of attendants help Nehan rise, as tentative voices lift in the melody of a sweet and simple song: a people finding their faltering way forward as one. Her bloodstained hands will not guide them. She will go to the cloister beside the sea, there to join her father, if he still lives. She will plant seeds in the soil, she will milk goats and ferment sour yogurt. She will learn to slake her thirst with sweeter drinks than blood.
As she walks away, her shoulders are back and her head feels light without the twin burdens of crown and fear. The words of the song bear her up, as familiar and strange as dreams of childhood. She does not look back, and she does not say goodbye. There are some things no words are strong enough to do.
Underneath the leadwood tree
My sheep rest from the sun
Underneath the leadwood tree
We
rest till day is done.
The sun burns bright but quickly
Stars hide from day’s bright glare
The silver moon is cold and shy.
The leadwood tree is always there.
Underneath the leadwood tree
My heart dreams of its love
Underneath the leadwood tree
Who is it you dream of?
—Watuk children’s song
© Copyright 2019 Aimee Ogden