by B. Muze
She saw where the Gicok slept. He did not sleep with the strangers, but in his own tent, yet it was no different from the stranger’s tents except that it was smaller, had less things in it and no weapons. The Gicok was sitting in it at the time they entered. He jumped up angrily but sat down again at a sign from Bawlner and glared as they curiously looked around. The people of the valley touched very little, but their presence made him obviously nervous.
The sun was getting lower. Jovai’s people wanted to be well away from the camp by dark.
“We go,” she said slowly in her language, pantomiming leaving.
Bawlner said a word in his language that might have been “go” or “leave” or “walk”. She didn’t know. He brought out the mare. It was a beautiful horse and seemed healthy. When Jovai tried to thank him, he held out his hand as he had in the beginning.
“Shake,” she said, to show she remembered, and she shook arms with him again.
He spoke quickly, many more words, and made gestures toward himself and his camp — coming back. He was asking them to come back.
“Will we return?” she asked Massern Leader.
“We will talk about it,” he answered.
She turned to Bawlner and shrugged. He seemed to understand the gesture.
“You,” he said, pointing. “Atty?” He made the gesture of returning again. Again she shrugged, but with a smile. He seemed to consider her particularly welcome, so she had not gone too far in her investigations.
The council that evening lasted long. The elders were worried about what they had seen.
“It is wise we did not make them enemies,” said Jatoyen Elder, “If their weapons are as many as you say. Perhaps there will be more coming or even here, already, in hiding.”
Yaku Shaman did not believe there were any here already. He had spied on them the night before in a spirit wandering and had seen no one else.
“They seemed eager to be friendly,” noted Massern Leader.
“They want something,” Sirfen said.
“They want our metal,” Jovai clarified. It was the first time that she had sat in the council as an equal. Yaku Shaman showed no acknowledgment of anything unusual in that, but she knew that the extra sternness on his face hid his feelings of triumph and his pride in her.
“And they will trade good horses for it,” said Takan Elder. The silver metal was too soft to stand alone except in ornaments and small statues. They sometimes mixed it with other ore to make it strong, but this was only for small things, like healing tools. In general, the other ore in their caves served them better when they needed. The horses, however, were a grand prize. Their strength could serve a farm well, would lend speed and power to the hunt, and their breeding for war would put them on an equal footing with the Gicoks if they ever attacked again.
“Perhaps they will trade us many more horses if we offer them silver,” suggested Nobien Elder.
“Could they be stupid enough to give away their power like that?” asked Sirfen Elder. He directed the question to Jovai.
“They gave away much information about themselves today,” Jovai answered, “as well as a horse, and got nothing for it. That does seem stupid.”
“But we should be careful,” warned Yaku Shaman. “They need not be smart to be dangerous.”
It was decided that they would go back, particularly Jovai, who had learned so much today. They would approach the strangers cautiously, but as friends, and learn as much as they could.
Over the weeks, Jovai went back daily. She kept almost every word she heard and had the sound of the language in her ear so quickly, even Yaku Shaman, who had witnessed her skill before, was impressed. Bawlner kept questioning her about their hills, particularly where they mined their silver. Although she understood the questions, Jovai always shook her head as though confused. She would point toward the south and say “We walk, sometimes, for winter hunt. We find people who will trade.”
Bawlner clearly had difficulty believing her. He would press for more and get less.
“Why tell them we don’t have silver?” asked the council.
“I am hoping they will go away and leave us alone,” replied Jovai.
“But do we want that?” asked Tapeten. “They have horses and weapons and things we could use, fabrics we cannot make ourselves, pelts we have never seen before, and they will trade us this for silver.”
“I do not trust them,” Jovai answered. “The spirits have warned us…”
“Perhaps they warned us so we would not make enemies of friends,” interrupted Tapeten.
“It is rather that they warned us so we would not make friends of enemies,” insisted Jovai.
“You are only a child. What do you know?” said Tapeten dismissively. Her voice was silenced for the night.
“Why do you let them silence you so?” demanded Yaku Shaman, angrily, as they returned to his house that evening.
“They are right, I am only a child,” Jovai answered.
“You are a shaman,” her master argued.
“I am only your apprentice…One of your apprentices,” she replied.
“All you lack of a shaman is your adulthood,” he told her. “As soon as you get your shaman name, I will put the mark on you myself.”
By the time fall was full, Jovai had the strangers’ language well, and the strangers had the trust of many in the council. They would have invited the traders into the village itself, had Yaku Shaman not been so insistent against it. Although two seasons had passed without unusual illness, he still worried about the “disease” of which the spirit had warned.
Jovai learned to ask Bawlner many questions, and he answered them all without the slightest hesitation.
He was from a land to the south that was filled with wise and talented people who made many things, built great buildings so high they touched the sky, and the stars had to make special detours around their tops. It was a land filled with strange and wondrous beasts, birds of plumage beautiful beyond belief, and plants which could cure any disease known to man, which could feed a family for months with a single leaf, and which lent their bewildering beauty to women for their dyes and their adornment. His people were peaceful traders, he told her. They were attracted by many things, but especially the silver, which the Gicoks had stolen from her people. He wanted to know where they got it and how plentiful it was. He would buy it bit by bit, in raw ore if they chose, or he would buy the rights to mine it from their mountains, where he believed it lay. His men had been wandering the hills looking for it. They had not found it yet, but they still believed it might be nearby. She assured him that it was not. He did not believe her. He promised her people wonders beyond their imagination if they would trade him silver. His greed for it was great, and it frightened Jovai.
He asked her very few questions about her people. He was interested in little more than getting silver. He asked her if she were some kind of leader or the leader’s son perhaps. She denied it, which surprised him. After that, he pressed to speak to the leader through her. Massern Leader finally agreed.
To Massern Leader he offered the same riches beyond belief that he had mentioned to Jovai, in exchange for the silver. Jovai was careful in her interpretation to downplay the riches, to make them sound like useless and impossible trash, for Massern’s mind was as split on the question of the strangers as the council was. He had always listened to Yaku Shaman with great respect, but since no disease had infected his people from this contact with the strangers, and since so many of the elders were pushing to trade, he was no longer as sure as his shaman that the strangers should be avoided.
He gave the traders hope. They announced that they were leaving, but that they would return next year with greater temptations. Their leaving was a relief to everyone. Their return — a desire to many.
Life once again became as before. Yaku Shaman spent his time with Kotayu, and Jovai split her time with the normal duties of a shaman and teaching her people what she knew of the strangers’ la
nguage and ways. Languages came too easily to her for her to be able to explain them well to those who were slower. However, she got several of her people to a point where they could talk, in limited ways, to the strangers on their own.
Chapter 18
Journey to the Old Woman
Jovai’s womanhood came upon her late in the winter of that year. She awoke one morning with a sickness in her stomach and her clothes and sleeping mat stained with blood.
Kotayu stared at her as she rose, his eyes wide with alarm.
“Are you hurt?” he asked. “Should I get the healer?”
Jovai could not fully stand. She stooped, her folded arms pressed against the ache deep in her body, and glanced around for Yaku Shaman. He was not there. He was out gathering the Lonik root, she recalled.
“How did you do it?” Kotayu pressed. He peered up at her ashen face and frowned.
“I’m all right,” she told him, but he shook his head and started pulling on his winter shoes.
“You look bad.”
“It’ll pass,” she insisted.
“You look like you’re dying. I’ll get the healer…”
She caught his arm as he rushed toward the door.
“Don’t disturb the healer, Kotayu. It’s really nothing.”
“But…”
“No! And don’t tell anyone.”
“Not even Master?” he asked her suspiciously.
“I’ll tell him…when he gets back. No need to bother him.”
“But…”
“I’ll just lie in today. If anyone asks, just say I’m tired. That’s all, Kotayu. Do you understand?”
The little boy shook his head, bewildered.
“Then say nothing at all,” she instructed him, irritably.
A dour, old widow came to tend the shaman’s apprentices that morning. She came late, without explanation. Jovai knew her to be one who resented the duty to the shaman, thinking it unnecessary while a female lived with him who could do it. She took one glance around and saw Jovai back in bed and the shaman gone. It was enough to raise her indignation.
“If you will be lazy while your master’s away, that is none of my business, but I won’t tend to you,” she told the girl with an angry sniff.
Jovai intended to totally ignore her but Kotayu, suddenly as defensive for her as any little brother might be, angrily answered.
“She’s not lazy! She’s…”
“Kotayu be still!” snapped Jovai. The boy shut his mouth with a guilty look.
“Eh? What is it then?” demanded the widow. She stood over Jovai, squinting down at her, and gave her one or two cautious jabs with her toe. “You sick then?”
“Go to your business,” answered Jovai, “and leave me to mine.”
“If you don’t want my help, I won’t offer it,” said the widow, almost sounding merry, “Just tell us if you’re dying or not.”
“Not!” Jovai answered, meaning the conversation to end there.
“Are you sure?” asked the widow.
Jovai rolled over in her blankets and would not respond further.
“Poor thing,” the old widow shook her head with a show of sympathy. She turned to the little boy and said sadly. “The dying are always the last to realize it. They lose all sense, you know.”
Kotayu looked between Jovai and the widow, his eyes wide with fear.
“Then I should get the healer?” he whispered softly, his expression begging the widow for guidance.
“Ignore her!” Jovai snapped.
“But you’re wounded!” argued the boy.
“Eh? What’s that?”
“Kotayu!” But it was too late.
“There was blood everywhere,” the boy was telling the widow, his hands tracing on his own clothes where he had seen the blood on Jovai’s.
“Blood?” The widow’s sharp eyes took in Jovai’s bundled form. “Ah.” She nodded, understanding dawning. “Ah.”
Jovai winced but did not look up, did not even open her eyes.
“So, he didn’t change you into a boy after all, did he? At least not all the way…” She grunted and nodded, smiling to herself. “Well then, he’ll be done with you now, won’t he? No choice now. Now you’re no good to him…except in ways a shaman doesn’t use.”
She set about her task in good spirits and even chuckled merrily at some passing thoughts.
A cold chill swam through Jovai. “Ignore her” her rational-self counseled, but her emotions were all jumbled today and out of control. It made sense what the widow said. It shouldn’t, but it did. She caught a sob in her throat. Another, behind it, slipped through her defenses. Then another and another until there seemed no point in trying to restrain them. They were not loud, but they shook her.
“What should I do?” asked Kotayu, sitting beside her. He reached out a bowl of food he had brought to her, then pulled it hesitantly away, unsure whether he should offer it to her or not.
She did not answer at first. He sat beside her, confused, waiting.
“Sing to me the Trintoa chants,” Jovai said at last. “Let’s see how much you remember all alone.”
The old widow had been gone for less than half the morning before Jovai heard Misa at the door requesting to enter. Kotayu was working hard to learn the third chant of the Trintoa and had seemed to have forgotten Jovai’s bleeding altogether. He paused when he heard Misa at the door, but Jovai waved him to continue. She did not want visitors.
“It’s not going to work, sister,” said Misa, letting herself into the shaman’s house. She was the only one of Jovai’s living relatives who still acknowledged her as family. Even Katira, in deference to their mother perhaps, was careful to make her friendliness appear such as anyone of the village might expect.
Jovai trembled before her older sister like a little, unnamed child before its angry mother.
“We were…studying the Trintoa,” she fumbled to say. “The third chant. You shouldn’t interrupt…”
“This is more important.” Misa shot a glance at the little boy who was staring at her, mouth hanging in mid-word. “Go visit your mother, Kotayu.”
Jovai grabbed at the little boy, holding him where he was. She moved herself a little behind him, as if he were a shield to defend her against Misa, and held onto him with all her strength, afraid to let him go. He squirmed in pain at her grip.
“The Trintoa isn’t that far away,” she said. “He has to be ready…”
“That can wait,” Misa answered shortly. “What you and I have to do can’t.”
“But the Trintoa is important!”
“Not as important as this. Really Jovai!” She shook her head angrily at her sister’s folly. “Let him go. Can’t you see you’re hurting him?”
With a surge of shame, Jovai let the child go. Misa quickly caught his arm shooed him out the door.
“Your mother’s waiting. Go on.”
The boy didn’t need more urging. He liked visiting his mother much better than reciting unknown words.
Jovai cowered in her bundle of furs, in anticipation of her sister’s scolding.
“One would think I was going to beat you!” exclaimed Misa, laughing.
“What are you going to do?”
“Well, what do you think?” but then she stopped and stared at her frightened little sister, her eyes suddenly watching and wise. “You really don’t know, do you?”
“The woman’s place?” asked Jovai in a voice of terrified reverence.
“No one has ever explained it to you, have they?”
“My master…”
“Your master is a man,” Misa said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “He knows nothing about it.”
“But he’s a shaman!” exclaimed Jovai.
“He’s still only a man.”
Jovai had never heard her master called “only a man” before. She could not believe she was hearing it now. It shocked her beyond words.
Her sister stared at her wonderingly, shaking her head.
“You really have been isolated, haven’t you? In this place full of people, more than half of them women, no one has ever talked to you about it. Not even me.” She dropped her eyes thoughtfully. “I always assumed…but I don’t know why I did. I mean, if Mother wouldn’t, and I know she hadn’t, who else was going to except me?”
She shrugged the wonder away and jumped quickly to her feet.
“No use wasting time,” she said. “We’re going to have to start at the beginning — right back from when you got your first name. Better get started. Where are your clothes?”
Jovai nodded toward a couple winter tunics and a change of leggings hanging from a peg in the wall above her mat.
“Nothing!” exclaimed Misa angrily as she rifled through the clothes. “Some people say he has been trying to turn you into a boy. Is that true?”
“No!”
“Then why is there not one decent thing for a young woman to wear here?”
Jovai stared at the bundle of clothes, not knowing what to say.
“Come on then,” said Misa, tossing off the tunics as though they were rags, “We’ll stop by my house on the way and get you one of mine.”
“On the way to…to the woman’s place?” asked Jovai softly.
“Of course.”
“No Misa. I can’t.”
“What do you mean you can’t?”
Jovai swallowed hard. She didn’t know how to say what she felt. Misa watched her in angry impatience, quickly building to an explosion. If Jovai wanted a word at all, she had to say it quickly.
“My master…”
“Your master has nothing to do with this!”
“I can’t go without his permission.”
“Of course you can. You have to.”
“But he might not think I’m ready.”
Misa grabbed her and pulled her forcibly up from the blood-stained blankets.
“It’s time,” she said. “It is obviously, undeniably time!”
Misa always had her way, Jovai remembered too late. As she walked through the snow beside Misa, her body freshly washed, wearing Misa’s long, beautiful tunic, hair quickly but gracefully braided in the woman’s style on her head, she wondered why she had even bothered to try to argue.