the Year the Horses came

by Mary Mackey

  Mother Asha cleared her throat. When she spoke, her voice was clear and strong, wavering only a little in the higher ranges. "My dear children," she said, "we will now begin taking the bones of those we have loved back to the Womb of Rest." She looked from one village group to another, wondering where to begin. There had not been many deaths this year, but even one was too many.

  "Bring your dear ones to me," she called out, motioning to the people of the village of Shiba, the smallest of the villages and the farthest away. "Let me give them Her blessing one last time." As the villagers from Shiba came forward carrying two bags of bones, a change came over Mother Asha. She might watch the lifting of a new Goddess Stone with mild boredom after seeing it for the twenty-eighth time, but the blessing of the dead was another matter. As the villagers knelt in front of her, untied the bags, and spread the bones out in the sunlight for the last time, she felt the spirit of the Goddess Earth pour up through the souls of her feet. Like lightning, the divine power coursed through her body, filling her with grace until she was no longer an old woman trapped in an old woman's skin but the very messenger of the Goddess Herself.

  "Sleep in peace," she called to the spirits of the dead, waving her hands over the bones. "Sleep as you slept as children, in the womb of a Mother who loves you."

  She blessed the dead, village by village. After she had said the sacred words and passed her hands over the bones, the villagers gathered them up again and carried them into the Womb of Rest through one of the eleven stone passages, called alus. As a rule, only women could pass through the alus. The Shore People believed that since women brought people into the world they should take them out of it, but if a man had become a priest, he too could enter, and there were several men who helped lay their friends and relatives to rest that afternoon.

  The walls of the alus were decorated with sacred carvings that seemed to dance in the torchlight: triangles; snakes; axes of fertility to remind the mourners that life always existed in the midst of death; shepherd's crooks, because She tended Her flock well; and always the Goddess Herself, sometimes rendered with Her breasts and necklace, sometimes reduced simply to Her all-seeing eyes.

  Each of the alus ended in a circular womb-shaped room, leveled and paved with white stones. No two of the rooms were exactly alike: some had corbelled ceilings, some were supported by large granite slabs, and still others were subdivided into smaller compartments, but all had three things in common: darkness, silence, and peace.

  Yet despite the silence and the peace, Marrah was so startled when she first entered that she came to a full stop, very nearly tripping Ama, who was following close behind. The room was cool and smelled of incense and damp earth. The bones of the dead were everywhere — she had expected that — but she had not expected them to be so lovingly arranged. The skeletons lay next to each other, laboriously put back together like pieces of a puzzle. The finger bones of one often touched the finger bones of the next, as if members of the same mother family were holding hands even in death. There were no babies, because when infants less than six months old died, they were buried under the floors of the longhouses, but there were skeletons of young children, curled up front to back as if they were sleeping in the same bed.

  Only three people had died in Xori since the last feast: an old man named Bizkar who had sat on the village council; a woman named Koskor who died in childbirth; and Pentsatu, a nine-year-old girl who had caught the summer sickness last year. Silently, Marrah helped Ama and the other women unpack the bags and reassemble the three skeletons. When they were finished, the women scattered finely powdered red ocher over the bones to symbolize the fertile blood of life, knelt for a few moments, touched the earth, and prayed. Then Ama rose to her feet, reached into her leather pouch, and drew out three objects small enough to hold in the palm of her hand. By Bizkar she placed a stone arrowhead, for he had been good hunter in his youth; by Koskor she placed a single blue bead, because Koskor had always loved the sky and the sea; Pentsatu got a few brightly colored feathers of the sort that would have been woven into her hair if she had lived long enough to become a woman.

  It was a moving ceremony, but after it was over, Marrah was glad to be back outside in the sunshine. As she stepped out of the alu, she took a deep breath and filled her lungs with fresh air. The Womb of Rest might be the most holy place in Hoza, but she was relieved that it would be at least three years before she saw the inside of it again. I may not be cut out to be a priestess, she thought, as she and the other women walked silently past the sacred fires, down the aisle of Goddess Stones, to cleanse their hands in the sea. She splashed cold seawater on her face and licked the salt from her lips. She liked living things: the feel of the wind in her hair, the smell of the seaweed, the rough scrape of gravel beneath her feet. How good it is to be alive! she thought.

  The blessing of the dead took a long time. When it was finally over and all the bones had been carried into the Womb of Rest, Mother Asha withdrew to her tent, ate a small meal, took a long nap, and then limped back to the platform to listen to complaints. By the time Ama of Xori appeared to discuss the stranger who had washed up on her beach, the Mother-of-All-Families had been dispensing advice and justice most of the afternoon and was weary, but it was her duty to solve the problems of her children, so she sat and listened attentively, drinking water flavored with fruit juice to keep her head clear.

  Ama spoke for some time. "And so," she concluded, "that's the story of how Marrah found the stranger. Now what we need to know is what to do next. As I said, he doesn't exactly fit into my family, or into anyone's family for that matter. On the other hand, it's hard to dislike him altogether. He has his good points." She opened her hand and held out the toy animal the stranger had carved for Arang. "He made this for my great-grandson. He's handy with a knife." She refrained from saying that some of her people were afraid he might be too handy with one when he got his strength back. 5 he motioned to the stranger, who was standing a few feet away, looking from her to Mother Asha as if he expected some flash of magic might make their conversation intelligible. "I have to confess I'd like some other village to adopt him, but he does have a bad temper, so perhaps Xori is stuck with him. You may remember what a bad temper old Bizkar had. Well, his temper is worse by far."

  Mother Asha chuckled. "I've seen you take care of plenty of difficult young men in your time, Ama."

  "Well, this one's different. He comes from who knows where? The end of the earth, perhaps. We know he's human, and that's about it."

  Mother Asha inspected the stranger from head to foot, and he returned her stare, not arrogantly but as if he found the idea of two women talking about him mildly amusing. "Does he understand us?"

  Ama shrugged. "I think he's picked up the words for 'yes' and 'no,' but even a dog will do that if you keep it by your side long enough." She sighed. "Mother Asha, what shall we do with him?"

  Mother Asha frowned. "I'll have to think it over. We certainly can't send him out into the wilderness like an outlaw, and in light of what you've told me, I don't know if I can ask another village to adopt him. I'll give you my decision at the end of the feast."

  "At the end of the feast!" Ama had hoped to get the matter settled before village groups started drifting away from Hoza. There were always some who couldn't stay for the whole three days.

  Mother Asha clicked her tongue and shook her head. "That's the matter with you young people: you're too impatient."

  Young! Ama thought. Did she just call me young? Stifling her annoyance, she bowed respectfully, took the stranger by the arm, and went off to inform everyone that they'd have to wait.

  But as it turned out, the wait was a short one. Ama hardly had time to sit in the shade of her own shelter and drink a cup of water before Mother Asha sent a messenger to call her back.

  "She says you're to bring the stranger with you," the messenger said. He was a young man who had obviously come in haste, since he was red-faced and out of breath. "Also, she told me to tell you t
o bring Sabalah's daughter, Marrah."

  Ama was perplexed. "What could the Mother-of-All-Families possibly want with us again so soon?"

  "Another village has arrived, and they brought more with them than the bones of their dead." The messenger pointed to the stranger, who was sitting by the campfire combing out his beard with a bit of driftwood. "They brought another like him."

  Although the stranger was weak, he insisted on walking, so it took them some time to cover a distance that would have taken a well man no time at all. Every step of the way, Marrah and Ama were consumed by impatience, but there was no way to make him hurry even though they tried by waving their arms and making the sounds herders made when they were trying to get the goats into the corral. At last they arrived, to find Mother Asha sitting on her platform like a grim old owl. At her feet stood a group of people Marrah had never seen before. There were five in all, dusty, travel-worn, and bewildered-looking, two men and three women, one by her age clearly a village mother. At their feet lay a litter much like the one the stranger had been carried on from Xori, and on the litter lay a human form covered by a deerskin blanket. At the sight of the blanket, Marrah felt her throat go tight. Whoever lay under it was obviously dead.

  Mother Asha motioned to the oldest of the women. "This is Hega of Zizare," she said. Marrah recognized the name of the village, which was well north of her own. Zizare was famous for its ceremonial jadeite axes, which were traded all up and down the coast. "Hega and her people have come bearing a strange burden." Mother Asha gestured toward Marrah and Alma. "Hega, here are two daughters of Xori, and with them, as you see, is the stranger they found on their beach."

  Hega looked at the stranger and shook her head. "I can't believe it," she said. "May the Goddess Earth take me to Her womb if I have ever seen anything so remarkable in all my life." She was a heavy woman with pendulous breasts, a round face, and sharp eyes, the kind who looked like she could tend a brood of grandchildren, run a village council, and keep her family supplied with fresh venison without even feeling the strain, but as she spoke the color drained from her face. "The likeness is unbelievable!"

  Ama bowed respectfully to Mother Asha and then to Hega of Zizare, but her eyes betrayed impatience. "Could someone please tell me what's going on here? The messenger told us another stranger's been found." She pointed to the form on the litter. "Is that him?"

  "Yes," Hega said, "or rather what's left of him." She turned to Mother Asha. "If I may have your permission to speak, dear Mother, I'll tell this sister what I told you."

  "Speak." Mother Asha pounded her walking stick on the floor of the platform. "Speak and forget the formalities. This is no time to stand on ceremony."

  Hega cleared her throat and folded her arms across her chest. "The long and the short of it is that there's a dead man under that blanket. He looks like your stranger: same ugly yellow hair and beard, same sky-colored eyes, same fish-belly skin. He's even bigger, though, so big we nicknamed him 'the giant,' and I'd say he was quite a bit older when he still walked the earth."

  "Where did you find him?" Ama asked.

  "Same place you did, on the beach." Having been ordered to dispense with formalities, Hega was clearly in no mood to waste words. "He washed up after the last big storm, but he only died the day before yesterday. That's why we're late. We weren't planning to come to Hoza at all. We had no dead to bring — or at least we thought we didn't — and the giant was obviously too sick to make the trip, but when he started to die we decided that instead of waiting to lay him out on a Tower of Silence we'd better hurry down here and let Mother Asha have a look at him. We hoped there'd still be some life in him when we arrived, but it's a five-day walk and the Goddess willed otherwise. He was so strange-looking and he was wearing so many ceremonial adornments that frankly we thought he might be some special kind of priest. Of course we had no idea there were any others like him, so imagine our surprise when we got here and were told the village of Xori had pulled its own giant out of the ocean and that giant was alive and sitting in a shelter on the other side of the camp."

  Everyone looked at the stranger, who was standing in a patch of sunlight, scratching his head, clearly unaware they were talking about him. There was an awkward pause.

  "Perhaps they were traveling together," Ama suggested.

  "My thoughts exactly," Hega agreed.

  "Of course they were," Mother Asha exclaimed, pounding her walking stick impatiently. "How else could two such ugly men come to be on the same stretch of beach?"

  "A good day's walk apart," Ama reminded her.

  "A day!" Mother Asha snorted. "What does a day of walking mean to the Sea Goddess? Amonah's reach is infinite and Her waves carry all things. In my time I have seen seedpods from the ends of the earth wash up on our beaches; I have seen Her give back bits of boats lost for generations; I have seen the dead rise from the very pit of Her fertile darkness and travel faster than any trader. She is no respecter of distances, and She strews her gifts where She wills." She lifted her walking stick and gestured toward the litter. "Heave off that blanket and let the stranger from Xori look on the face of the dead giant from Zizare. Perhaps we'll be able to tell by his reaction if he recognizes him, and if he does, I think we will be able to conclude they were in the same boat, lost in the same storm." She lowered her stick. "Although frankly I fail to see what use such information will be to us. We'll still have the problem of laying the bones of one to rest and finding a permanent home for the other. Still, heave and be done with it."

  "Marrah," Ama commanded, "take the stranger by the hand and lead him over to the litter."

  Marrah did as she was told. Her hand was cold with excitement; as she touched the stranger, he flinched slightly with surprise and turned to her with a questioning look in his eyes. "Come this way," she said softly, and as if for once he understood, he came without protest. Soon he was standing in front of the litter, looking down at the shrouded form with mild curiosity.

  "Ready?" Hega asked, and without waiting for a reply, she seized the edge of the deerskin and drew it back with a quick motion. There was a sudden glint of gold and copper and flesh so white it looked like bone. The dead giant of Zizare lay before them, a huge lean man with a face shaped like an ax blade. He had a wedge-shaped chin under a yellow beard, deeply sunken eye sockets, lips blue with the eternal winter of death. Although his hair was thinner and his face more weathered, he looked so much like an older version of the stranger that Marrah's first impression was that she was seeing ahead in time. Like the stranger, the dead man wore clothes made of matted brown fur; his left shoulder was marked with blue suns and lightning bolts, and he too had rings in his ears and necklaces around his neck. But what rings and what necklaces! There was no copper on him, only animal teeth and gold, so much gold that Marrah could hardly believe her eyes: gold earrings, gold studs in his belt, gold worked into the handle of his long knife, even gold threads woven into the tassels of his boots. The largest piece of gold lay directly over the giant's heart, a pendant the size of a thumb, worked into what by now was a familiar shape: a four-legged deer-not-deer, with hair instead of horns. Beside him lay a strangely shaped bow, bent in the middle like two waves lapping together.

  "Great Goddess!" Ama said. "He looks as if he's wearing all the gold in — " But she never got to finish her sentence. The stranger suddenly gave a horrible high-pitched wail of such grief and horror that all of them froze.

  "Ai!" he cried. "Ai, ai!" Throwing himself on the body, he gathered the dead man into his arms and pressed him to his breast, "achan, doboi dan!" He kissed the dead man's eyes and lips fervently.

  "What's he saying?" Mother Asha demanded. "Does anyone know what he's saying?"

  No one knew. The stranger lifted the dead man and cradled him in his arms, wailing and crying as if he had suddenly gone mad. Everyone was stunned. They had never seen such grief before. Of course you mourned when someone died, but at the same time you knew that the one you loved was going back to the Moth
er, so although you wept you didn't entirely despair. But the stranger seemed half out of his mind. Laying the dead man back on the litter, he began to tear his own hair and rip his clothing. He picked up a handful of earth, scattered some of it over his head, ate the rest, and then, before anyone realized what was happening, he pulled the dead man's knife from its scabbard and began to slash at his own flesh.

  "Stop him!" Mother Asha screamed, trying to rise to her feet.

  The younger people, including Marrah, fell on the stranger and struggled to take the knife from him, but weak as he was, he fought them off. He crouched over the body like a wild animal at bay, screaming at them in his incomprehensible tongue. Blood dripped from his arms, and his eyes rode high in their sockets as if he were about to have a fit. Marrah shrank back, truly afraid. She had never seen anyone so out of control. Suddenly a change came over him. He looked down at the dead man's face and began to tremble. "Achan, Achan!" he cried. Letting the knife slip from his hand, he fell on the body and lay there weeping and shaking.

  "Get that knife out of his reach," Mother Asha commanded. She lowered herself back down on her sheepskins, trembling and shaken. I'm far too old for this sort of thing, she thought, and she felt her ancient heart flutter in her breast.

  Marrah ran forward, picked up the knife, and offered it to Ama, handle first. "Well done." Ama too was shaken. They all were. A crowd was beginning to gather, attracted by the noise. Soon there was a ring of sober brown faces around the litter. People spoke in hushed whispers, unnerved by the sound of the stranger's grief. There was probably something that should be done next, but no one knew quite what it was, not even Mother Asha.

  Hega was the first to speak. "Poor man," she said softly. "Poor lost soul."

  At the sound of her voice, or perhaps its tone, the stranger lifted his head. His face was pale and tear-streaked, and he looked young — so young Marrah thought that if she were seeing him for the first time she might think him no older than Bere. It was a vulnerable, pleading face, and it brought a murmur of sympathy from the crowd.