A Gathering Of Stones dost-3

by Jo Clayton

  She settled onto the blanket, folded her legs properly and pulled the laprobe about her shoulders.

  In the distance an owl hooted. She thought about the Old Man, wondered vaguely who and what he was. Some odd manifestation of the Earthsoul, thrust from the soil as stones are ejected by a combination of earth and thaw? Or a creature as ancient as old Tungjii, perhaps even a kind of kin to himmer? Older than the gods themselves, older than the earth she sat on? Or was he the face of the Mountain itself? Was her blanket spread across his flesh? She moved uneasily, that was an uncomfortable thought. She considered the Old Man and the Mountain and Geidranay, Tungjii and her brother, Maksim and his assorted peculiarities, whether he’d managed to rise above his prejudices, sexual and social, and take her as an apprentice. She wanted that rather desperately; she knew by study and experience now what she’d guessed the first time she saw him: there was no one like him. If he taught her… if he taught her, maybe she wouldn’t be so afraid of what she sometimes saw in herself, what she scurried from like a scared mouse whenever she caught a glimpse of it.

  The laprobe trapped warmth around her; sleep tugged at her as she grew more comfortable, threatened to overwhelm her as the night turned darker. A fat, mutilated crescent, the Wounded Moon was already high when the sun went down; its diminished light fell gently on the quiet meadow, cool and pale, drawing color out of grass and trees, turning Korimenei and her blankets into a delicately sketched black and white drawing. Moon moths flew arabesques above the stream, singing their high thin songs. Fireflies zipped here and there, lines of pale gold light, the only color in the scene. A white doe came from under the trees on the far side of the stream. For a long moment the beast gazed at Korimenei, her eyes deep as earthheart and dangerous, Korimenei felt herself begin to drown in them. The doe turned her head, broke contact; as silently as she came, she vanished into the inky shadow under the pines.

  A fragment of old song drifted into Korimenei’s mind, one of Harra Hazani’s songs which had been passed with another gift from daughter to daughter down the long years since she came to Owlyn Vale. Korimenei was born with that gift, Harra’s ear for pitch and tone and her sense of rhythm; she’d long suspected it was a major part of her Talent, when she thought of Maksim’s extraordinary voice she was sure of it. “I am the white hind,” she breathed into the night; the darkness seemed to accept and encourage her, so she sang the song aloud. Not all of it, it had hundreds of lines and three voices, the white hind, the gold hart and the fawn; the hind spoke, the hart answered, the fawn questioned both. Korimenei lifted her voice and sang:

  / am the White Hind

  Blind and fleet

  My feet read the night My flight is silence

  My silence summons to me Free and bold

  The Gold Hart.

  I am the Gold Hart Artful and fierce I pierce the night My flight is wildfire Desire consumes me She looms beside me Fleet and unconfined The White Hind.

  Korimenei let the song fade as the doe had faded into the darkness. Why? she thought. What does it mean? Does it mean anything? She closed her eyes and banished memory and idea, accepting only the sounds of the stream. Fragmented images prodded at her but she pushed them away. Hear the stream sing, she told herself, separate the sounds. First the coarse chords. She heard these, named them: the shhhh of the sliding water, the steady pop of bubbles, the brush-brush tinkle against intruding stones and boulder, the clack-tunk of bits of wood floating downstream, bumping into those boulders, swinging into each other. She listened for the single notes of the song, teased them from the liquid languorous melliflow, concentrated on one, then another and another, recognized them, greeted them. Concentrate, she told herself. It’s gone, it’s gone. Narrow your focus, woman. You know how, you’ve done it a thousand times before. It’s gone. Get it back. Concentrate, separate, appreciate, she chanted. Symmetry, limitry, backbone, marrow, she chanted, the phrasemaker in her head plundering her wordstore. Separation, isolation, disseverance, disruption, rent, split and rift, cleavage and abruption, she chanted, the words drowning the water wounds.

  The Wounded Moon slipped down his western arc, crossing the spray of stars with a ponderous dignity that dragged at Korimenei’s nerves, setting her to wonder if this interminable night would ever end, if she could possibly get through two more nights like it.

  Sometime after moonset, she felt a presence come into the meadow. It was a small meadow with young pines clustering tightly around it. She sat in the center like a rat in a pit. Owl eyes looked at her, immense golden eyes. Owl flew round and round the pinepit meadow, his wings stretched wider than the grass did, but somehow Owl flew there round and round Korimenei. Feathers touched her, wings brushed her head, her shoulder, she smelled him. She trembled, her bones turned to ice. She heard Owl cry something, voices spoke inside her head, there was something they were saying to her, she could not quite understand them.

  She was suddenly on Owl’s back, spiraling up and up until she was high above the meadow. She looked down and saw her body sprawled across the dreampattern blanket, the laprobe bunched beside her hip. She was at once frightened and exhilarated. Owl circled higher yet until she saw points of light sprayed out beneath his belly; stars, she thought, we fly above the stars.

  Owl tilted suddenly. She slid off his back. She fell. Down and down and down she fell. She was terrified. She was screaming. Her throat was raw from screaming.

  Then she was inside her body looking up into the face of Geidranay, a Geidranay made small, his golden flesh like sunlight given form.

  The Groomer of Mountains touched her pullover and it fell open, baring her breasts. He plunged his left hand into the earth and brought it up again; he held an amethyst, a single crystal glowing violet and blue. He set it on her chest above her heart and watched it slip inside her, melting through her flesh. He thrust his right hand into the earth and brought it up again; this time he held a moonstone the size of her fist. He touched the closure of her trousers and they fell open, baring her navel. He set the moonstone on her navel and watched it slip inside her. He touched her forehead. His fingers were cool as the stones. He said nothing, but she knew she must not move. He took up the tin cup she used for drinking and drew a golden forefinger about its rim and it turned transparent, gleaming in the starlight like polished crystal. He reached into the air, closed his hand into a fist; when he opened his fingers, diamonds cascaded into the cup. He knelt, dipped the cup into the stream and brought it back to her, the diamonds like ice floating in the water. He cupped his hand behind her head and lifted her gently, tenderly; he put the cup to her lips and she drank. The water was delicately sweet and smelled of spring orchids. The diamonds melted into the water. She drank them also.

  When she looked up, Geidranay was gone. The cup was tin again, ancient, battered, as familiar as her:hand.

  Feathers brushed across her and her clothing vanished utterly, the laprobe was gone, the dreampattern blanket was gone. She lay on earth and grass. Great wings brushed across her and were gone. Owl walked toward her. It was the Old Man. He stood at her feet and looked down at her. She was ashamed at first because she was naked before him, but she was not afraid. He sank into the earth, slowly slowly. She wanted to laugh when she saw his round stupid face resting on her great toes, then the face slid down and vanished into the earth.

  He was reborn from the earth, rising from it as slowly, silently, easily as he went into it. He was covered with red dust, otherwise he was naked and young and beautiful. He put his left foot on her right foot; gently, delicately he moved her leg aside. He put his right foot on her left foot; gently, delicately he moved this leg aside. He knelt between her legs and put his hands on her thighs. She shivered as she felt fire slide into her flesh. He looked at her, smiled. She cried-out with pleasure, as if that smile were hands touching her. He bent over her, his hands moving along her body; they left streams of red dust on her skin.

  His hands moved over her, stroking, rubbing, even pinching where the small s
harp pains intensified her pleasure. When he finally pushed into her, the pain was briefly terrible, he burned her, wrenched her open, then she was on fire with a pleasure almost too intense to endure. It went on and on until she was exhausted, too weary to feel anything more.

  He rose from her. She cried out, desolate. He stood beside her, his broad tender smile warmed her once more. As Geidranay had reached into the air for diamonds, the Old Man Reborn Young reached up and plucked a square of fine linen from the shadowy air. He came back to her and pressed the cloth between her legs, catching the blood that came from the breaking of her. hymen. He sat on his heels and folded the cloth into a small packet, the bloodstains hidden inside. He leaned over her, touched her left hand, laid the packet on her palm. Again he said nothing, but she knew it was very very important that she keep the cloth safe and hidden, that she should never speak of it, not to Shahntien Shere or to Maksim, not even to her brother.

  He set his right hand flat on the ground beside her thigh. The dreampattern blanket was under her again. He stepped over her leg and squatted beside her, drew the fingers of his left hand from. her ankles to her waist, drew the fingers of his right hand from her waist to her shoulders and she was dressed again. He snapped the fingers of his left hand, spread his hands; the laprobe hung between them. He laid it over her and smiled a last time, touched her cheek in a tender valediction. And was gone.

  She slept. When she woke it was midmorning. The first day and the first night was done.

  4

  At fast she thought the events of the night were a dream, but when she moved her legs, she found she was still sore. The linen packet fell away when she sat up; she looked at the bloodstains for a long moment, then folded it up again and put it in her rucksack. Feeling more than a little lightheaded, she took the tin cup to the stream and filled it. She drank. The liquid was merely cold water with the acrid green taste common to most mountain streams. She remembered water flavored and scented with diamonds, but that might have been something she did dream. She sipped at the water and thought about sleeping. She wasn’t supposed to sleep, she was supposed to keep vigil. She didn’t feel like worrying about her lapse. After filling the cup once more, she carried it up the gentle slope to her blanket and set it on the grass by her foot. She looked around.

  The meadow space, was filled with stippled sun rays, the misty light slanting through the dark needle-bunches on the upslope pines and cedars; there was no wind, the quiet was so thick she could feel it like the laprobe pulled heavy and close against her skin. Her mind was weary; it was hard to tie one word to another and make a phrase of them. She walked about a little, her legs shaky. Her inner thighs felt sticky, the cloth of her trousers clung briefly, broke away, clung again. She grimaced, disgust a mustiness in her mouth. She stripped, dropped her clothing on the blanket and took a twist of grass to the stream. She waded in. The water was knee-high, the cold was shocking. She shivered a moment, then gathered the will and went to her knees. She gasped, then examined her thighs. She’d bled copiously which surprised her, but she didn’t waste time worrying about that either. She splashed water over the stains, began scrubbing at them with the grass. Each move bounced her a little on the gravel lining the streambed, she felt the bumps against her knees and shins, the rubbing, but the cold was so numbing she felt no pain until she climbed out of the water, put her clothes back on and warmed up a little.

  She grunted as she tried to fold her legs; the bruises and abrasions she’d acquired in the stream made themsclves apparent, so she crossed her ankles and straightened her back and began feeling her way into further meditation.

  Flies came from everywhere and swarmed around her; they settled on her and walked on her hands and on her arms and on her legs, everywhere but her face; they were a mobile armor of jet and mica flakes, buzzing through a slow surging dance up and around and down, black twig feet stomping over every inch of her. She sat and let this happen. When the sun was directly overhead, the armor unwove itself and flew away.

  She sat. Something was happening inside her. She didn’t understand anything, but she had fears she didn’t want to think about.

  A one-legged woman stood under the trees across the stream. Vines grew out of her shoulders and fell around her. There was emptiness on her left side; the vines swayed parted, unveiling nothing; the vines on her right side grew round and round her single leg. She hopped. Stood still. Hopped again. The vines bounced. Arms outspread, she began jumping up and down on the same spot, turning faster and faster as she hopped. Korimenei heard a whining sound like all the flies singing in unison. The woman went misty and the mist went spinning away into the dim green twilight under the trees.

  Korimenei considered this. She slid her hand up under her pullover and touched the place where the amethyst had seeped into her. Her skin was cool and dry; there was nothing to show it had really happened. She pulled her hand out, let it rest on the slight bulge of her belly; it seemed to her she could feel a thing growing in her, growing with a speed that vaguely terrified her. She took her hand away, closed her eyes and began humming to herself. After a while she plucked a song from Harra’s Hoard, an Ow’song, and focused all of herself on it.

  Mound midafternoon another woman came slithering from the trees across the stream. She was writhing on her stomach like a great white worm; her legs were all soft from hip to toe; she had no toes, her legs ended in rattles like those on a snake’s tail. She reared up the forward half of her body and danced with her arms and shoulders, shook her rattlefeet to make music for her dance. She had the polished ivory horns of a black buffalo, horns that spread wider than the reach of her arms. Her face was broad, her nose and mouth stuck out like the muzzle of a flat-faced dog. Her ears were pointed and shifted independently, a part of her body-dance. The hair on her head was like black broomstraw and hung stiffly on either side of her face. The hair under her arms was rough and shaggy like seafern; it hung down her sides, lower than the flat breasts that slapped against her ribs. There was a terribleness about her that rolled like smoke away from her, invisible emanations that filled the round meadow and squeezed Korimenei smaller and smaller.

  Before Korimenei shriveled quite away, the horned woman sank into the earth and was gone.

  The sun went down. Korimenei watched for Geidranay, but he didn’t come this dusk; she felt sad, lonely. “Tit,” she said aloud. “Trago, brother, talk to me.” He didn’t come. She was alone in the growing darkness with a thing growing in her.

  She curled her hands and stared at her palms. “I don’t understand any of this,” she said aloud. That wasn’t quite true. The crystals were for eyes to see and ears to hear the things beneath/behind the things one saw in ordinary light. She’d read about them in the books that Shahntien Shere had drawn to her library from the four corners of the world, she’d heard about them from the wandering scholars the Shahntien collected on the temple Plaza and invited to lecture to certain students, those she thought would profit from contact with other symbologies, other systems of visualization. Sometimes the crystals weren’t crystals but roots or flowers, insects or beast organs; the effect was much the same. Her initiation had its parallels also, the event though not the details. The flies… she could call from memory a score of similar happenings and each of these had at least a score of interpretations, meaning one thing to the newly initiate, something else to the same person when he or she was a mature practitioner, something else again to that person when he or she was in the twilight of his or her life. The two women had no referents, but both frightened her, both reeked of danger, of power on the verge of erupting from control. She remembered what the Shahntien said and smiled, then went back to being friOtened; she pressed her hand against her swelling body. This… she laced down her fear, tying it tight inside her… had no parallel she knew of, only the familiar terror before dangers she hadn’t the knowledge or strength to fight against, the terror that swept through her when Trago came into her bedroom and showed her the Godmark that meant h
e was doomed to burn at the stake unless she could manage something, the terror that swept through her when the drunk caught her on the street and she thought he was going to hurt her, kill her before she could reach the Drinker of Souls, the terror that swept through her when Settsimaksimin snatched her from

  0 her bedroom and so arbitrarily threw her to the Shahntien like a beast thrown to a tamer. Terror…

  Sometime after moonset the white doe came from the woods; she stood gazing at Korimenei for several moments, then she lifted herself onto her hind legs, shrinking as she did so until she had the doe’s head still, but a woman’s body with white milky breasts; the breasts were bare but the rest of her wore the doe’s pelt; it glinted like silver wire in the starlight. Music came from somewhere, a flute played, a drum, a lute, something with a high sweet woman’s voice, singing. The doe spoke: “There is music. You are not dancing.”

  Korimenei stood. Her clothing fell away from her. She began to dance. She didn’t know what she was doing, her feet were moving, she felt awkward, she was awkward.

  The doewoman waded across the stream. She took Korimenei’s arm. “Be still,” she said. “I will teach you the proper dance. Come with me.” She led Korimenei toward the stream, choosing the place where there were two stones in the middle of it. She stepped on the first stone and pulled Korimenei onto it with her. There was very little room, Korimenei pressed against her guide, smelled her strong deer smell, gland and fur. The doewoman stepped across to the second stone; it was smaller than the first, there was no room for Korimenei but the woman tugged her after her anyway. Somehow there was room. They stood without moving. Korimenei looked around her. The stream was a river now, split into two strands; it was the widest deepest river she’d ever seen. The water was deep and silent as it flowed, it looked like green-blue grass. There was power and terror in it. And great beauty.