the Year the Horses came

by Mary Mackey

As Marrah struggled to keep from sliding two steps back for every one she took forward, she wondered if Stavan and Arang found the news that it would take at least two weeks to lighten the baskets as discouraging as she did, but she couldn't spare the breath to ask them. Grabbing for a tuft of grass, she slipped, pulled off balance by her load, which felt as if it were made of stones instead of feather capes and food. In front of her, Rhom was leaping lightly from one bit of level ground to another, chatting with Shema about some cousins of theirs who were in the obsidian trade. Marrah grabbed for another tuft of grass, wondering if she would ever be able to leap around like that without noticing the weight on her back. At the moment it seemed unlikely.

  They didn't see the river again until evening, when they made camp on a beach that was barely large enough to accommodate six people, six baskets, and a small fire. By that time Marrah was so exhausted she curled up in her cloak immediately after dinner and was asleep almost before her head touched the ground.

  Days passed and slowly, step by step, they moved southeast, always following the river. Gradually, as Zastra had promised, Marrah stopped noticing the weight on her back. Her feet grew hard and her legs grew strong, and she began to walk like Rhom and his sisters, not bent under her load but upright and sure-footed. When she looked at Stavan, she saw that his skin had turned an almost normal shade of brown, but his hair was stranger than ever, streaked by the sun and so light that in some places it looked like flax.

  Sometimes they came to settlements where the people farmed in a small way, living mostly off fish and wild game. The houses of the River People were built on poles; usually there was a dugout canoe tied up to the front door, and there were always children splashing in the water and old people sitting in the shade mending nets or weaving fish baskets.

  Although they had nothing to trade, the River People were hospitable. Often when they saw Marrah and Arang's pilgrim necklaces, they would put the tips of their fingers together or pick up sticks and draw a triangle in the mud.

  "They're welcoming us in the name of the Goddess Earth," Marrah explained to Stavan. "The triangle is Her universal sign; it represents the holy triangle of fertility between Her thighs."

  When she asked Stavan what the universal sign of his god was, he seemed reluctant to tell her. Finally he admitted that the universal sign of Han was a dagger stuck into the ground point first.

  As they moved upstream, the settlements became fewer, and instead of following footpaths they began to follow deer trails. When they could, they walked along the bank of the river, but often the track led into the forest. When this happened, Marrah found herself constantly checking to make sure the Ibai Nabar was still on their left, but the traders never seemed to worry about getting lost. They appeared to know exactly where they were going at all times, even when the trail was so faint Marrah could hardly see it. "This is an old route," Zastra reassured her, "one that's been used by traders for time out of mind." She pointed to a small scar on a nearby tree. "You see that bit of missing bark? It's a blaze. The trail is marked from here all the way to the Blue Sea."

  Reassured, Marrah relaxed and began to enjoy the forest. Like a great green ocean it extended north, south, and east, covering the earth. Perhaps if she had walked long enough she might have come to the edge of it, but as the days passed it seemed to go on forever, silent and unbroken as if it had no beginning and no end. It was mostly the size of the trees that created the impression of endlessness. Rising up from ground level like the posts of a great longhouse, they met overhead, spreading their branches to form a leafy canopy. Although there were alders, hazels, elms, lindens, and beeches, almost all the largest were oaks, some so big that two people holding hands couldn't have spanned their trunks. When Marrah stood at the base of one of these giants and looked up, she felt like a dwarf, and she could easily imagine that far above her head the trees were talking to one another, whispering secrets no human was allowed to hear.

  Everything in the forest made it seem different from the world outside. When they walked along the river, they often had to struggle through brambles, vines, dense brush, and willow thickets, but once they were under the roof of trees they found themselves walking on a soft carpet of ankle-high leaves that muffled their voices and dampened the sound of their footsteps. Every time they took a step their feet disappeared, and when they lifted them they took the leaves along, creating a soft swishing noise that sounded like the murmur of invisible brooks.

  The trees themselves gave off a peculiar musty odor that reminded Marrah of mushrooms and decaying leaves and the herbs Sabalah kept in her medicine bag, and sometimes there was another odor, something sweet and voluptuous that must be coming from some invisible flower blooming high above their heads.

  But the most remarkable thing about the forest was how quiet it was. Except for the sound of their own voices, the warning cries of the jays, and the chattering of an occasional squirrel, they walked in silence. It was so still that from time to time they found themselves speaking in whispers as if the trees were sleeping giants who shouldn't be disturbed. Whenever this happened, Rhom would break into a song, but no matter how loudly he sang, the forest swallowed up his voice. When he had finished the last chorus, he would pull a small bone flute out of his pouch and play a tune. At this, they would walk more quickly, and sometimes Arang would dance down the trail ahead of them as if he were leading them off to a feast.

  Most nights they did feast, for when Stavan shot an arrow it rarely missed its target. Almost every evening after they made camp, he would wander off with his bow, returning with a few fat rabbits or a brace of ducks. Sometimes he even shot fish, bringing them back strung on a sharpened stick. Once, to everyone's distress, he appeared with the tongue and liver of a deer.

  "What did you do with the rest of the meat?" Shema cried. Marrah translated and Stavan shrugged and said that of course he had left it behind. "The deer was too heavy for one man to carry, and we don't need it; there are lots of deer in this forest. We could eat venison tongue every night if we wanted to."

  When Marrah explained that it was considered an insult to the Goddess not to use every part of the animal, he looked thoughtful.

  "Tell Shema I'm sorry I upset her; I won't kill any more deer if you don't want me to."

  Marrah still wasn't convinced he understood, so that night she made a special point of sitting down beside him and describing how animals were hunted. "First," she explained, "we ask the animal's pardon. Then we shoot it. After it falls, we thank it for giving up its life so we can eat. For example, if it's a stag we might say, 'Brother stag, thank you for becoming food for my family.' We never kill more than we can eat, and we use everything: hide, flesh, entrails, even the hooves and horns, which we carve into spoons or cups or grind up into a kind of paste. If there's any meat left over, we dry it or give it away even if we have to walk to the next village, but we never cut out the best parts and leave the rest to rot. Animals are sacred; they're children of Earth just like we are."

  He listened gravely. "I'll hunt whatever way pleases you," he said, so politely she was sure he still hadn't understood the point she was trying to make. Frustrated, she gave up trying to explain, but the next morning she realized she had underestimated him. He and Arang were standing at the edge of the forest, and Arang was trying, without much success, to draw the string of Stavan's bow back far enough to launch an arrow into the trunk of a large beech tree.

  "Remember," Stavan was telling him, "before you shoot an animal, you have to beg its pardon." And stepping behind Arang, he put his arm around him and helped him bend the bow and send the arrow into the tree.

  That afternoon, when they stopped for their midday meal, Arang sat down beside Marrah, folded his arms around his knees, and gave her the look he always gave her when he was going to ask for something.

  "Well, what is it?" she said, handing him a piece of jerky.

  Arang got straight to the point. "I want Stavan for my aita."

  Marrah remin
ded him that he already had an aita. "Mehe, mother's partner," she said. "Remember him?"

  Arang wrinkled up his nose. "I knew you'd say something like that. You haven't been a woman three months yet, Marrah, but you're already talking like you're the mother of a whole family. Of course I remember Mehe, but he's too far away to look after me, and I like Stavan. He knows everything."

  Marrah, who was not at all convinced that Stavan knew the kinds of things Arang should be taught, promised to think it over. She meant to wait a few days and tell Arang she'd decided it was a bad idea, but that same afternoon something happened to make her reconsider. Once again they were taking a short break, eating a few pieces of dried fruit and talking about nothing in particular. Arang was sprawled at her feet, picking his teeth with a twig. "You know," he said, "I've been wondering something. Where are all the animals? Stavan brings back game nearly every evening, but where does he find it? I haven't seen anything larger than a squirrel since we left Gurasoak, and it's so quiet around here I'm starting to think I'm going deaf."

  Stavan, who had overheard this, laughed so hard he nearly choked on a piece of dried plum. "You aren't seeing any animals for a very simple reason," he said. "The six of us have been crashing through the underbrush like a herd of cows." He pointed to the ground. "When the leaf-eating animals walk, they don't make a sound. Only a few of the meat-eaters make noise: just bears, who are so big and mean they don't care who knows they're coming, and wild pigs, who'll surround other animals like a wolf pack."

  "I thought we were walking softly," Arang objected.

  Stavan grinned. "Softly for humans, perhaps, but I've hunted in forests like this for almost four years, and I can tell you that we've been making more noise than stags in rut. If you want to see the animals, you have to walk like the she-lion does." He rose to his feet to demonstrate. "You have to lift your legs up high like this instead of shuffling through the leaves, and when you put your feet down you have to pretend you're about to step on duck eggs."

  Marrah and the other adults agreed. "Not that I've ever been much of a hunter," Marrah admitted, "but Stavan's right." Soon they put their baskets on their backs and started down the trail again, and it wasn't until some time had passed that Marrah realized what Stavan had done: gently, in the most subtle way possible, he had reminded Arang that there were dangerous animals in the forest.

  Perhaps they all needed reminding. The forests along the coasts were tame compared to this one. Except for a few bears, most of the big meat-eating animals had been hunted out generations ago. Marrah had almost forgotten Mother Asha's story of the trader taken off by a she-lion, but Stavan had made her realize it was dangerous to forget. He had traveled through the wild forests of the north, and when he warned that they might run into wolf packs, wild pigs, bears, and — most terrifying of all — lions, she was inclined to believe him. She had never seen anything larger than a wildcat, but she had once seen lion claws on the necklace of a priestess who had gotten them from a trader in exchange for several baskets of rare herbs. They were brutal, as long as a man's finger and as sharp as needles, and she didn't like to think an animal with such claws could hunt without making a sound.

  Arang was right. Stavan knew much more than they did about the forest. He might make Arang an excellent aita, but she would have to make sure he didn't tell her little brother about things like war and concubines. She walked on, considering the matter, only pausing long enough to look over her shoulder occasionally. The forest no longer seemed quite as peaceful or as safe as it had a short time ago.

  Stavan's warning came none too soon. A few nights later, they woke up sure they had heard some large animal, and in the morning Stavan confirmed that a bear had been prowling around the camp. Fortunately, they always hung the food baskets too high for a bear to reach, and after clawing a few times at the trunk of the tree, this one had evidently become discouraged and left without doing any harm.

  "We've never had trouble with the big animals," Rhom said as they set out that morning. "It's the little ones you have to worry about. The bears are well fed this time of year, but you have to keep a sharp eye out for squirrels, because those little turds can eat a whole basket of food while your back is turned."

  When Marrah saw how unconcerned the traders were, she relaxed. Perhaps the forests along the Ibai Nabar weren't as dangerous as the ones Stavan had traveled through. But just as she was feeling secure again, she woke up suddenly in the middle of the night. This time there was no noise, not a sound, not even the chirping of a cricket. The river flowed noiselessly like a great skirt of soft leather, and even the strip of stars that hung over it seemed unnaturally bright and still.

  Looking beyond the dim light of the campfire, she thought she saw a large animal sitting in the bushes watching them as they slept. The animal, whatever it was, was so still that at first she wasn't sure if it was alive or just a tree trunk turned into a lion by her imagination. Then the fire flared up suddenly and she saw two bright yellow eyes, as cold as death, looking straight at her. She rose to her feet with a scream, grabbed a burning stick from the fire, and hurled it into the shadows, but by the time she threw, the beast had disappeared.

  In an instant Stavan was beside her, clutching his long knife in one hand and his dagger in the other, but when she pointed to the place where the animal had been, there was no sign of it. After searching the perimeter of the camp as best they could, they spent a bad night huddled around the fire, afraid to go to sleep. The next morning Stavan confirmed that something heavy had been sitting in the reeds, but there were no tracks, not even an overturned stone.

  "I can't tell if it was a lion, but it might have been," he warned. "Lions usually hunt by day, but no squirrel crushed those reeds. Whatever it was weighed almost as much as a bear, and bears don't have yellow eyes." He put his hand on Arang's shoulder and was silent for a moment. "I don't want to frighten Arang any more than he's frightened already, but I think he should know — I think all of you should know — that lions particularly like to stalk children. I'm telling you this so you'll understand how important it is to stay together at all times from now on. Arang in particular should never go off by himself. Also, I think that starting tonight we should take turns standing guard. With a little luck, this lion — if it is a lion — will decide we're too much trouble. The beasts tend to hunt in one particular area; in a few days we should have walked out of her territory. There's even a chance she doesn't think of humans as food; we may just be strange, puzzling creatures who may or may not be dangerous, so she's watching us to find out, but I wouldn't like to stake my life on that."

  Everyone agreed. The traders were shaken; even Rhom didn't have anything amusing to say about lions.

  From that night on, everyone but Arang took a turn at standing watch, and even Stavan stopped going off by himself in the evenings to hunt. Either the precautions worked or there had never been a lion in the first place. Several nights passed without incident. By day they walked steadily, eager to put that part of the forest behind them. The river had been growing gradually narrower ever since they reached the fourth fork and turned west toward the mountains. The smaller it became, the more furiously it flowed; by the time they climbed into the foothills among the pine trees, the great Ibai Nabar was little more than a noisy creek.

  As they drew closer to the Caves of Nar, Marrah began to get excited. Would there be gifts as the priestesses had promised Sabalah, or would they have grown tired of waiting for so many years and given them to someone else? She tried not to hope too much, but secretly she longed for some bit of magic or a sacred charm that would take her and Arang safely to Shara.

  The night before they reached the caves it was so cold that Marrah and Arang slept rolled up together in their cloaks to keep warm. On the other side of the fire, Zastra and Shema were doing the same thing. Stavan had the first watch that evening, but Rhom suggested he forget about it. "Come share my bed," he offered, eyeing Stavan with a look that said, You may be thin, but yo
u look warm. But Stavan wouldn't hear of it. Not only did he take the first watch, he insisted on standing guard until sunrise, and poor Rhom, who had only a thin cloak, spent the night shivering.

  The next morning, just before noon, they came across three rocks with white handprints painted on them. Shortly after that, Arang spotted the entrance to a shallow cave. The cave was sheltered under the overhanging edge of a limestone cliff, and when they explored it they found a small female figure carved on the back wall. The figure clearly represented one of the aspects of the Goddess Earth because Her hips and breasts swelled with fertility and She held the crescent moon in Her left hand, but Marrah had never seen a goddess who looked so much like a real woman. She was only about a foot and a half tall, but the people who had carved Her had used a natural outcropping in the limestone for Her belly and two smaller ones for Her breasts. The result was a figure that seemed to be stepping out of the wall.

  They were all impressed, but Arang was particularly taken by Her. For a long time he stood in silence, looking at the carving. "She's so pretty," he said at last. He reached out and touched Her belly lightly with his fingertips. "Who made Her?"

  No one had an answer for that. Rhom said he had once seen a terra-cotta statue from the land of the Hita. The Hita were great sculptors and the figure had all the roundness and grace of a real woman's body, but even that statue wasn't as alive as this little goddess.

  Before they left, Arang picked a handful of flowers and placed them at Her feet. They saw nothing else of interest after that, but it was clear they were on the right path and would soon reach the Caves of Nar.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  From the Caves of Nar to the Blue Sea

  "Hail, Marrah of Xori, Sabalah's daughter," a clear voice said suddenly. Marrah spun around, surprised to hear her name spoken in such a deserted place, but she saw nothing but rocks, brush, and pine trees. The voice echoed off the limestone boulders and repeated itself until it was lost. The travelers stopped and stared at one another.