by Judith Tarr
“Sparrow,” he said. His voice was as beautiful as his face, deep and sweet. “Sister. Have you come to visit us, then?”
Sparrow could hardly pretend not to have heard: not with him standing in front of her, blocking her advance. He was a great deal taller than she, and rather broader; he was, she saw in a glance under her brows, smiling that thin smile of his.
People found it terrifying. Sparrow merely glowered at it.
“What, little sister,” Walker said, “no welcome for your brother? Not even a smile?”
“What do you need now?” she asked him—rudely, she knew, but she did not care.
“I could say I only needed your company,” Walker said.
She snorted. “I need your absence. White Bird thinks she’s near her time. I’m to fetch water for the birthing. Or shall I tell her why I’ve been delayed?”
“White Bird, is it?” Walker said. “Well then, you mustn’t keep her waiting. Here, I’ll take one of the waterskins. The task will go the quicker if two of us do it.”
Walker had never in his life offered to do anything out of the generosity of his heart—and certainly not the drawing of water, which was the most menial of labors. He needed her, then, and desperately, if he would stoop so far.
oOo
People saw him. They could hardly avoid it. They had seen him before, keeping company with his ill-favored sister; it was a kindness, they thought, and a mark of his strong spirit, that he had no shame of her company. They admired him the more and her the less, the more often he did it.
Sparrow had never cared overmuch for what people thought.
Since the Grandmother died, nine winters past, she had cared even less. She performed her duties quietly and well, because that was the least troublesome way to do it; then she had the world to herself.
Except, of course, when her brother the shaman vexed her peace. He did not do it often, which was a mercy. Mostly he went his own way, strutting among the men or making a great show of seeking solitude to perform his magics. When he came to her, it was because he needed something. A gift. A thing that he had little or nothing of, and she had altogether too much.
He walked with her down to the river, the image of noble solicitude. As soon as the reeds had risen to hide them, he turned on the narrow path and stopped her.
She had been expecting that. She stopped somewhat out of his reach, even if he stretched his arms long, and eyed him warily. She was not going to give him anything. Not unless he asked.
Of course he knew that. He hated her for it: she saw how his eyes went narrow and cold. There was no warmth in his voice, either. “You’ve been dreaming again. I can tell. What is it now?”
Sparrow considered the lie that veils the truth—the lie the Grandmother had lived by. She was living one, too. She had been living it since the third spring after the Grandmother died, when her women’s courses had come, and with them the dreams. And other things, things that brought her no pleasure and certainly no peace; but the dreams most of all.
Her brother had not been Walker then. He had been Minnow, for the little fish that darts in an eddy of the river. But she had always been Sparrow, and no doubt always would be.
She knew better even then than to trust him. He was a slippery creature, like the little fish of his name. And yet when she woke from the first dream, the dream she knew was truth, he had been there; and in her befuddlement she had seen only the beauty of his face and the clear grey of his eyes, and she had told him what she dreamed. He had listened to every word of it, intently, for he was their father’s pupil, and was to be a shaman when his beard had grown. He had said words that she forgot almost as soon as they were spoken, words that soothed, that bade her rest, be at peace, forget the fear that had flung her into the light of morning.
Then he went away, and when next she heard of him, it was as a wonder and a rarity, a true dreamer, a shaman of power such as the People had seldom seen. But the dream he related to the tribe, the prophecy he spoke in a voice thrumming with power, was her dream. Hers, and never his.
She was still dreaming dreams. He was still taking them and claiming them as his own. It was just as it had been with the Grandmother and the prince. No one would ever believe that a woman could do what she had done. If she tried to proclaim the truth, people would call it a lie. Then where would she go? What would she do? A woman could not be a shaman. That was the way of the world.
That the gods had chosen to give her such gifts and withhold them from her brother—that was their jest. Of course, her brother declared, she was to give those gifts to him, one by one, as each was given. He was the one who had been meant to receive them. She was but the vessel through which the gods passed them to their rightful master.
Now he demanded yet another vision. If he had a gift, it was to know when she dreamed; but this dream she had no desire to share. It was the dream she had most often. It had been the first, though she had not known it then for what it was, nor had she ever betrayed it to him. It came to her the night the Grandmother died, as a sort of death-vision—and that was what she had thought it was, until the spring, when other dreams began to come.
This dream had no fear in it, and no horror. It was a dream of pure splendor. In it, she stood on the steppe under the moon. And out of the moon came a Mare.
It was Mare as the men’s stallion was Stallion—greatest of all her kind, glory and goddess. She was as white as the moon, and she shone, leaping down out of the sky. The earth sighed as she touched it. The stars shone brighter in the light of her. She was splendid; she was beautiful beyond words. She was too holy, ever, to give to this man, this liar, her brother.
Therefore she gave him the other dream, the first that she had betrayed to him. “I saw it again,” she said, flat and hard. “The black claw of winter, and the bitter spring. Then the summer of plenty. The bone-thin horses in the blowing snow, and the bleak plain and the dying herds of cattle and goats; and then, as always, the fat herds grazing in a field of flowers.”
Walker hissed between his teeth. She thought for a moment that he would strike her. Sometimes he did, if she did not give him as much as he wanted. But this time he held back the blow. “Is that all? It’s useless—worse than useless. I need something better!”
“Then let the gods give it to you,” she said. “I have only this. I never ask for it. It simply comes.”
His hand rose then. She braced against it. But again he did not strike. He turned instead, stiff with disgust, and stalked away.
He was still carrying the second, larger waterskin. She shrugged. It was not water she had come for, not really. She was free of him now, and would be, she could hope, for days yet. Everyone else was safe in the camp, or out hunting, or riding with the herds of horses. She had the river to herself.
She shook off the oppression of her brother’s presence, the shadow that darkened her spirit when he had been at her again, stealing her visions. She was not giving him as many as she had before. If she could help it, she would give him none at all; but he was too determined for that. He needed the visions. He could not be a shaman without them.
And she could not be a shaman with them. She was a woman. She could not be anything, she sometimes thought; but that was foolishness.
oOo
For now she was free. She hid the waterskin in the reeds, in a place she had used before, and wandered down the riverbank toward a broad eddy. There, where the bank curved round an islet, was a quiet place, a pool where one could swim, or paddle in the water. The horses came there sometimes to drink, and deer, and once she had seen a bear fishing.
The People knew about the eddy, but mostly they kept away from it. A strong spirit lived there, they said. It was sacred, and therefore frightening. The only spirit Sparrow had ever sensed in that place was a spirit of peace: the lapping of water, the darting of dragonflies among the reeds.
Today she came there as unwarily as she could come anywhere—and found others there before her.
S
he dropped down in the thicket, swallowing a gasp that was more than half rage. That so took her by surprise that she could not move, could only lie and stare.
It must have been a dare. The young men were much given to such. They were there, a whole pack of them, naked and whooping. It was a grand thing, they were telling one another, to face down the spirit that haunted this place, and swim in its pool. And frighten away the fish, Sparrow thought nastily, and drive the deer far away.
The ringleader, as always, was the king’s son. He was not the tallest, but he was far from the smallest, and at an age when the rest were as awkward as yearling colts, he carried himself with lightness and grace. Even in a raw fury, Sparrow could not help but sigh as she watched him. He was beautiful. His hair was like winter sunlight, pale gleaming gold. His eyes were the clear blue of the sky in summer. His face . . .
She bit her tongue. That small pain helped her focus; kept her anger alive. Linden the prince barely knew she existed, nor ever would. She knew that, and yet she yearned after him. He was more beautiful than her brother Walker, as beautiful for a man as Keen was for a woman. When they were younger, Sparrow had believed devoutly that Keen should belong to Linden—perfect beauty mated to perfect beauty. But when Walker laid the courting-gifts in front of Keen’s father’s tent, Keen had let herself be given to Sparrow’s brother.
“They’re both beautiful,” Keen had said when Sparrow taxed her with the choice. “But I prefer a man with wit as well as beauty. Your brother’s mind is as marvelous as his face. Whereas Linden . . .”
“But Linden has a heart,” Sparrow said.
Keen shook her head. She would never believe that Walker was as Sparrow knew him to be: beautiful to look at, ugly beneath. No one believed it. “Walker has a great heart,” Keen said: “maybe not as warm as some, but he can be wonderfully gentle, and very kind. He sees beyond his own face. Linden has no such gift.”
“Walker has a pretty way with words,” Sparrow said; but she did not say the rest. Keen was not listening. She had wanted Walker since she was a child, as Sparrow wanted Linden.
But Keen was beautiful, and her father was one of the great warriors of the People. He accepted a lofty price for his daughter, and returned it thrice over—as Walker had fully expected. Walker, who had had little of his own before he took Keen to wife, was now a wealthy man. And, to be fair, he was still kind to his wife.
Linden would never come asking for Sparrow as Walker had asked for Keen. Sparrow was both daughter and sister to shamans, but the old man’s daughters were legion, and he reckoned this one of little account. She was a captive’s daughter, a little dark bird among the tall fair People. She had no beauty and little grace. Her father’s wives used her like a servant. There was nothing about her to draw the eye of a prince as lovely, and as empty-headed, as Linden.
She knew all that, had always known it, but she could still dream of lying in those long strong arms, and running her fingers through that pale-gold hair, and waking after a night’s loving to that fair-skinned, clean-carved face.
She sighed now as she watched him at play with the rest of the new-made men. They were wrestling in the shallows. Linden heaved up the Bullcalf—all the great roaring mass of him—and flung him into the water.
The Bullcalf bellowed. Linden laughed. He was not particularly broad, but oh, he was strong, and lovely in his strength.
She almost forgot to be angry that they were profaning her secret place. Then she saw a figure that had been hovering about the edges, gathering courage, she supposed, to join the others. As if he had made up his mind at last, he stripped and plunged into the water, swimming as an otter swims, sleek and swift.
The others paddled gracelessly like dogs—even Linden, though his awkwardness had a certain beauty. Wolfcub, who on land was a tangle of knees and elbows, in the water was pure grace. He cut through the yelling crowd of young men, straight for Linden; tweaked his dangling rod, which Sparrow reckoned as lovely as the rest of him; and escaped just ahead of the whole pack of them.
At first Sparrow was too startled to realize what had happened. One moment the eddy was full of boisterous idiots. The next, they were all gone, baying after Wolfcub.
She let her breath out slowly. The quiet was deep. Not even a bird sang. Then, not too far away, one essayed a chirp. Then another. A fish splashed tentatively. A dragonfly ventured out above the newly stilled water. The eddy returned, little by little, to itself.
2
“You were mad to do that.”
Wolfcub grinned at Sparrow. She did not need to know how painful that grin was. One or two of the young men had come close to catching him, and one had flung a stone that smote his shoulder a shrewd blow. He would be nursing the bruise for days.
“Of all the ways you could have freed this place of its invaders, tweaking the prince’s rod was surely—surely—”
Wolfcub enjoyed the spectacle of Sparrow at a loss for words. “It worked,” he pointed out. “I’ll even live. Linden’s been coveting my third-best hunting bow for time out of mind. He was happy to take it.”
“Your third . . .” Sparrow glowered at him. “You didn’t give him that one.”
“It’s pretty,” he said. “It’s carved with a frieze of leaping deer. It draws easy, too, though it doesn’t shoot particularly far. Linden is so happy he’s almost forgotten how he won the bow.”
“And he thought it was your best.” Sparrow sighed gustily. “Someday, wolfling, you’re going to outsmart yourself.”
“You thought I had today.” Wolfcub had been lying on his stomach in the sand beside the river-eddy, to which the spirit of quiet had come back.
He rolled carefully onto his back, lacing fingers behind his head, studying the play of clouds about the sun. If he glanced quickly, he could see Sparrow without her knowing it.
She was watching the river as he watched the sky. Water was her element, as the air was his. Her soul ran as deep and quiet as the river. How deep, no one knew—maybe not even she.
She thought she was ugly. She did not look like the other women: small, round, dark. Her mother had been a captive of the old people, the earth-spirits, whom the People had conquered in battle.
She had been a witch, people said. If she had been a man, she would have been a shaman. The chief of the shamans of the People had taken her as was only fitting, subdued her and bedded her and got this one odd child on her. Then she lay down, it was said, and simply died—walked out of the world, Wolfcub thought, shed her skin like a snake and vanished away among the spirits.
This daughter whom she had left behind, child of a witch and a shaman, could have been all that her brother claimed to be. But she chose to slip like a shadow through the tribe, to be ignored, disregarded, forgotten. It was her protection, he supposed. It kept people from vexing her—or from discovering what she was.
She was not beautiful, no. She was a small brown bird of a woman. Her eyes were as dark as a doe’s, and difficult to meet: she veiled them with her long black lashes under straight black brows. But when she lifted them to his, they came near to stopping his heart.
That was not all of her that he saw, either. Her rounded cheeks. Her firm chin. Her small strong hands. Her breasts, round and sweet, and her broad hips. Even the turn of her ankle, which for some reason he loved to see. Maybe only because it was hers.
Sometimes he dreamed of creeping out in the night and laying the bride-gifts before her father’s door. And when in the morning they all came out to stare and wonder which of the shaman’s many daughters he had chosen, he would turn and stretch out his hand and say, “That one.” And everyone would marvel, and no one would dare to laugh, though he had chosen the least and the smallest. They would all learn then to see what she was.
But he never did it. He was too young yet. His name was not made in the world. He needed to be more, to be worthy of her.
He sighed and filled his eyes with sky.
oOo
Sparrow left him drowsing by the
eddy, found the waterskin and filled it, and went back to her father’s tent. Her duties there, the squabbling wives, slipped over her like water over a stone.
When the sun had set and the men been fed, then the wives, then the children, Sparrow was free at last to eat her portion. She would have settled in a corner to do that, except that a flurry of whispers brought her alert.
The young shaman was coming. People thought he came to see his father, but that could not be so: his father was gone, being a shaman. But Sparrow could feel his presence like fire on the skin. Walker would pause, yes, to pay his respects to his father’s wives, and maybe to speak of visions. But he had no vision but what Sparrow gave him. He needed one—needed it desperately.
He was up to something. Sparrow did not want to know what it was. She slipped away under cover of the women’s uproar—White Bird had decided that it was time to build the birthing-lodge, and was making a great deal of noise about it.
Even as Sparrow escaped beneath the back of the tent, she heard a woman’s voice raised in welcome. Walker had come—and she had eluded him none too soon. Gods be thanked, the younger women and old Mallard who was a midwife were departing in a flock, bearing White Bird with them, for she was at her time. The men knew better than to slow or stop them.
Sparrow made herself a shadow. The camp was still very much awake, with the sun just set and the stars coming out. Some of the young men had gathered round the king’s fire, singing vaunts and dancing their prowess. Linden strutted in the light, brandishing the bow that he had won from Wolfcub.
Wolfcub himself she did not see. He would be wise to lie low, she thought, after what he had done to the prince.
She slipped from darkness to darkness, skirting circles of firelight. The camp dogs might have liked to follow her—she could be relied on for a kind word and sometimes a bit of meat—but she sent them back to their places. She had little enough to eat tonight, and nothing to share.
She went back to the river, meaning to hide in the reeds, eat her meager supper, and sleep as she could. But when she had made herself a lair in the rustling thicket, and eaten the seedcake and the bit of meat that had been her portion, she found herself wide awake.