the Year the Horses came

by Mary Mackey

  "Just try to relax and enjoy the wait," Sabalah had advised, but surely she had never in her wildest dreams imagined that the wait in Lezentka would be so long, for as it turned out, the three of them were forced to stay in the traders' village not one month or even two but an entire winter, hoping every day a boat would appear to take them across the sea to Gira and going to bed every night disappointed.

  Actually, the problem was not that there were no boats; there were half a dozen small ones right in Lezentka itself, but like the boats of the Shore People, they were made to hug the land, never sailing out of sight of the beach and putting in at the first signs of heavy weather. Gira lay far beyond the range of any of them, many days' journey across open water. Only the most intrepid traders made the trip, trusting in the mercy of the Goddess and guiding themselves by the stars, and their boats were altogether different from the lightweight dugouts that ferried goods locally from one village to another.

  Known as raspas or "sacred birds" because of their white winglike sails, these long-distance boats were not quite ships in the modern sense; they lacked complicated rigging and were small and hard to steer, but they had deep keels that kept them upright and gaff-rigged linen sails reinforced with battens that allowed them to plow forward when the weather was fair. When the wind failed the raspas could be paddled — not an easy task, since the paddler had to stand balanced precariously as the waves slapped against the hull — and although there were no hatches, grass mats and oiled hides could be tied over the cargo if the weather looked threatening.

  Still, compared to the winter storms, the raspas were fragile, and it was not unheard of for them to disappear without a trace. In Lezentka more than one mother clan threw food and flowers into the sea on the day the dead were honored, and there were more children being raised by aunts and cousins than was usual in such a small village. The men and women of the coast even wove special designs into their clothing so their bodies could be identified if they drowned, and every once in a long while a strange boat would put in and traders from far away would kneel, kiss the earth, and hand a village mother a bag or two of bones that had once set off gaily to the sound of drums and flutes.

  Because of the danger, the raspas did what their namesakes the birds did: they migrated, which is to say they made open-water crossings from late spring to early fall, lowering their sails as soon as the first hard rains fell and not raising them again until the gray geese flew north and the weather turned fair again. In theory each of the two raspas owned by the village of Lezentka made three or four round trips a season, leaving for the last time in the Moon of Dry Grass and returning well before the equinox, but whenever Zastra, Shema, and Rhom made the forest crossing, the boat known as the Gannet always waited for them. The fine jadeite axes and soft feathered capes of the Shore People were so valuable that the village council had long ago decided it was worth taking a chance that the crew might have to winter away from home, especially since the worst that could happen was that the Gannet would be forced to spend the rainy months on the most beautiful island in the Blue Sea.

  This year, however, the side trip to the Caves of Nar had cost the traders more than a week, and when they arrived in Lezentka, the first thing they found out — after being kissed and stuffed with food — was that the Gannet had already sailed.

  "Why in the name of twenty curses did they do that?" mild-mannered Shema had yelled, setting her bowl of squid stew down so hard the inky black gravy slopped over the sides and stained the fresh linen skirt she had put on to celebrate her homecoming. She and Rhom and Zastra were sitting beside their mother, Sirshan, surrounded by so many aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews, and friends that it would have taken days for Marrah to sort them all out, but it was already clear that the Lezentkans had one thing in common: all of them talked, and none of them listened. Rhom and Zastra added their curses to Shema's, the various friends and relatives offered explanations, the dogs barked, the babies cried, and for a few minutes no one could understand anything — especially not Marrah, since the traders had lapsed into their own tongue.

  Finally Rhom turned to her and translated. "The boat's gone," he growled. "The one you were supposed to take to Gira. The fools got it into their heads that the rains were going to come early this year, so they left ten days ago. Never mind that they promised to wait, never mind" — he pointed to the bit of sky that was plainly visible through the open door — "that there's not a cloud out there bigger than the ends of my idiot cousins' noses; they threw the divining shells and decided we were in for bad weather, so off they went."

  Arang gave a small moan of disappointment. Stavan, as usual, understood nothing and wouldn't until one of them bothered to translate a second time for his benefit.

  "Does that mean we're stuck here all winter?" Marrah looked at the unfamiliar faces of Rhom's relatives, the strange tentacled fish in her bowl, the small square house of Rhom's mother that never could have been mistaken for one of the longhouses of Xori. For the first time in many weeks, she felt almost sick with a longing to go back to her own people. Since that was clearly out of the question, they had to keep moving forward. Only the importance of the message she was taking to Shara made up for the pain of missing her mother, not to mention Bere and Ama and Uncle Seme and all her friends. How could she possibly sit in Lezentka for months knowing the beastmen might be riding out of the Sea of Grass at any moment? If she had had wings like the seagull she was named after, she would have flown away with Arang on her back in less time than it took Rhom to answer her question, but instead she felt trapped in this cursedly friendly place like a fly that had stumbled into a pot of honey.

  Her impatience must have shown, because Rhom stopped swearing at his irresponsible cousins, grabbed her hand, and patted it soothingly. "Now, now," he clucked, "don't get so upset, pretty dark-eyed Marrah. You've missed your chance to get to Gira on the Gannet, but the Gray Goose will be back any day now, and maybe if the rains hold off, the village council will let it take you to the island before winter begins." He pointed to her necklace. "After all, you and your brother are wearing Her sign. What sailors wouldn't like to have that kind of luck in their boat, eh?"

  Marrah was somewhat reassured, but not completely. As Rhom went back to cursing his cousins in his own language, she put a comforting arm around Arang and drew him close.

  "What are we going to do now?" he whispered, resting his head on her shoulder and looking up at her as if she had all the solutions.

  "Why, wait for the Gray Goose to come back," she told him cheerfully, but from the look Arang gave her, she knew that, as usual, he wasn't deceived.

  "What if it doesn't?"

  It was a good question, one she had no answer for. What could they do if neither raspa showed up before winter? Could they bypass Gira and travel by dugout from one village to another until they got to the next place on Sabalah's song map? Or, if that was impossible, could they walk from Lezentka to Shara the way they'd walked from Gurasoak to Lezentka?

  When the welcome-home feast was over, she took Rhom aside and asked him to speak plainly without patting her hand or calling her a dark-eyed beauty. "Because," she told him, "I'm in no mood to wade through your compliments trying to get at the truth." Perhaps she spoke a little harshly, but Rhom didn't seem offended. He might be full of goat dung under ordinary circumstances, but when you really needed advice he could treat you like one of his sisters.

  "The local boats aren't a possibility," he said. "They don't have any set schedules, and you might have to wait for months to get from one village to another, especially with winter coming on. As for walking, it takes so much longer to walk around the Blue Sea than to sail across it that no trader I've met has ever tried. Besides, once you left the route your mother sings of, how would you and your brother find your way? You'd be walking into the unknown without her spirit to guide you. No, put it out of your mind. There's only one way you should go: in a good, swift raspa straight to Gira."

  He looked
toward the sea, which was barely visible in the moonlight. "The Gray Goose could be heading straight for us this very minute." He smiled. "Why I bet you three combs of honey you won't be here more than a few days at most."

  Unfortunately, she won the honey. The days turned to weeks, the weeks turned to a month, the rains fell early, as Rhom's unreliable cousins had predicted, and soon it was obvious to everyone that the two raspas had decided to winter away from the village.

  And so Marrah settled down to wait. Later, she would always say that the months in Lezentka taught her patience, and sometimes, when she was in a particularly nostalgic mood, she would describe the little temple with its whitewashed walls and cobbled floor as one of the most peaceful places on earth. When she was a master potter, she would tell her students that it was in the pottery workshop of the temple of Lezentka that she first came to appreciate clay, and she would describe the simple red and yellow bowls of the village as if they were old friends she had reluctantly left behind.

  But at the time she felt more like a goat forced to spend a long winter in a small shed. Still, as she often told Arang, there were worse places they could have been stuck. The people were friendly, the food was good, and whatever beauty the village lacked, nature provided. They had been given a small house to themselves, and they only had to step out the door to see the Blue Sea, bluer even than the morning glory of Marrah's vision. The water was warm and clear, full of strange fish and exotic shells, and the beaches were covered with small white pebbles. When the waves washed over the stones, they made a soft hissing sound that was as sensual as a caress.

  If Marrah hadn't been so anxious to get to Shara, she might have even chosen to spend a few months in Lezentka. In many ways, it was more beautiful than Xori. There was something voluptuous about this land, something sweet and mysterious that whispered of the joys of surrendering completely to nature. Golden wheat grew waist-high in the fields, trees were heavy with fruit, and the sunsets were extravagant spectacles: first a great fiery ball descending behind the western hills, then a crown of light that cast ribbons of pink, vermilion, and purple across a vast, empty sky. Within the first week, Marrah had tasted her first olive, drunk her first cup of wine, pried butter-fried land snails out of their shells, and eaten the first fig she had ever seen, sucking the sweet dried flesh into her mouth and licking the sticky sugar off her fingers.

  Although it was soon winter, the weather was mostly mild and sunny. Sometimes a cold, blustery wind would blow down from the north and it would rain for a day or two. When this happened, the villagers would crouch next to their fires and complain, but Marrah and Arang, who remembered the finger-numbing frosts of Xori, went out in all weather. Often they would take a basket with them and dig for the sweet little clams that lay buried under the strip of sand where the river joined the sea, but more often they simply walked for the pleasure of walking. Soon the rain would stop, the clouds would drift out to sea and become no more than a strip of white on the horizon, the birds would begin to sing, the villagers would spread their clothes out on the beach to dry, the air would grow thin, and the golden light would return.

  Stavan for some reason rarely walked with them, preferring to go off by himself to fish or hunt. Sometimes he took Arang with him, but he was still cautious. When he went more than a half morning's walk from the village, he left Arang behind, and on those days he made a special effort to spend some extra time with him after the evening meal, telling him stories or teaching him how to string a bow properly or chip a bit of flint into a passable arrowhead.

  Marrah was pleased to see him taking his role as aita so seriously, but when the two of them went off together, she was left with a lot of time on her hands. The people of the Blue Sea coast spoke a language that sounded like birds twittering; often, as she sat watching them go about their daily business, she wished she could join in the gossip and laughter, but except for the traders and one or two priestesses who spoke Old Language, no one could understand her. Occasionally she managed to have a long conversation with Rhom or his sisters, but having returned to their own families after an absence of many months, they were understandably preoccupied. Shema, who had left her four children with her mother, was trying to make up for lost time; Zastra's partner, Rusha, was pregnant and about to give birth; as for Rhom, it seemed he was aita to half the children in the village.

  So one afternoon when Zastra came over of her own accord and settled down to talk, Marrah was both pleased and surprised. For a while they discussed Rusha's pregnancy. Rusha was a strong-willed woman who fished with her brother and uncle in the deep water out beyond the breakers. Zastra had been trying in vain to get her to stay on land now that she was in her seventh month, but Rusha only laughed and told her the more pregnant the woman, the better she floated. Since Zastra and Rusha had gone through six pregnancies together — three each — Zastra should have known there was no persuading her, but she still felt obliged to try.

  "I love that woman like my life," Zastra grumbled, "but she has no sense." She sighed and sipped some of the fish broth Marrah had offered her and appeared to settle into her own thoughts. Marrah was reluctant to disturb her. Taking up a net, she began to mend it with a piece of twisted fiber. There was a long silence broken only by the sounds of a baby crying and someone pounding meat with a wooden mallet.

  Finally Zastra spoke. "Actually, I didn't come here to talk about myself; I came to talk about Stavan. Shema thinks you know what's going on and so does Rhom, but I don't. 'Leave her alone,' Rhom said, 'it's none of our business.' Shema, as usual, was less diplomatic. She told me she could tell that you weren't interested in Stavan, and if I went poking my nose into other people's love lives I'd probably get it cut off someday, but I'm a matchmaker at heart. I can't help it. I'm not much attracted to men, but I never like to see one going to waste. Did you know that almost every night after you and Arang go to sleep, Stavan goes down to the beach and sits there staring at the sea and brooding like a thirteen-year-old who's never had a lover? Now you and I both know there are any number of unpartnered women in this village who'd be more than happy to take him into their beds even if he is a little strange-looking, so naturally people have started wondering why he's not sharing joy with any of them. 'He probably loves men,' Shema says, 'and there aren't any unpartnered men who love men in Lezentka at the moment,' but I say no, I don't think so. I think he wants Marrah and she doesn't know it."

  Marrah had dropped the fish net into her lap and was staring at Zastra with a very odd expression on her face. Suddenly all sorts of things were falling into place: the way Stavan had trembled when he held her hand in the cave, the way he so rarely met her eyes, the look he sometimes gave her when he didn't know she was watching.

  "Well?" Zastra took another sip of broth. "Am I right?"

  Marrah picked up the net and began to mend it again. Her hand was steady but her mind was racing, trying to put the evidence together, trying to see if it added up to something. "You're right that I didn't suspect Stavan was spending his nights on the beach, but the part about his wanting me..." She paused and thought some more. "Maybe you're right about that and maybe not. It's possible, I suppose, but on the other hand, I've been with him night and day for weeks now and he's never once said anything to me that would lead me to think he had the slightest interest in sharing joy. In fact, most of the time he treats me like I'm a village mother." She tossed the net down, folded her arms around her knees, and wrinkled her forehead. "If he wants to share joy with me, why doesn't he just ask?"

  Zastra took another sip of fish broth. "Good question. I've been giving it a lot of thought, and I've come to the conclusion that he doesn't ask you because he doesn't know how."

  Marrah smiled. "You're saying you think a full-grown man doesn't know how to ask a woman to share joy?"

  Zastra nodded. "Right. Any other man would have walked up to you long ago and said something like 'Sweet woman, I'm fond of you and I'd like to share joy with you,' and then you could have said y
es or no or told him you were already partnered and not interested, or unpartnered and willing, or whatever in the usual way. Of course it's always possible that in his land the woman always asks the man."

  Marrah thought this over. "I doubt that. From what I've heard, Hansi women don't live much better than dogs."

  "Well, it's a mystery then. But I can tell you one thing: when Arang was lost, I thought he was going to go crazy. When he saw those lion tracks he gave a scream like a man who had been scalded, and when he saw Arang's tunic lying there on the ground all bloody and ripped to pieces, he took out his long knife and slashed at the trees and cursed. And when you yelled at him that it was all his fault, he cried. You didn't see the tears because he turned his back to you, but the rest of us saw them. There are a lot of things you don't see. When you're not looking at him, he stares at you like he wants to eat you." She finished off the fish soup, put the bowl down on the ground beside her, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Who knows, maybe I'm way off the mark; maybe I'm just a busybody who sees a reed and thinks it's a basket. But if I were you, I'd at least have a talk with him and find out why he's spending his nights on the beach."

  Marrah knew it was good advice, but she was slow in taking it. Despite what Zastra had said, it was hard for her to believe Stavan was suffering because he couldn't tell her he wanted her, and since he had taken the trouble to go off by himself after she and Arang were asleep, she was reluctant to invade his privacy. Most likely he was thinking of something else when he stared out to sea — horses, maybe, or who knew what, but certainly not her — and she was going to look pretty foolish when she took him aside and asked him if he was harboring a secret desire to share joy with her. Either he'd be offended by the implication that he didn't know how to ask a woman, or he'd think she was clumsily asking him, which would have been fine if she'd wanted him, but she wasn't sure she did. She missed Bere even though she might not ever see him again, and although she liked Stavan a great deal and had even begun to think that yellow hair and blue eyes weren't so ugly after all, her feelings about him were still complicated and ambivalent. To invite a man to share joy with you and then in the next breath tell him that you didn't mean it was so rude and insulting that she wouldn't blame him if he never spoke to her again, and since she was planning to spend a long time in his company, that wasn't a pleasant prospect.