Shifting Plains

by Jean Johnson

  That made her laugh. The hearty sound pleased him, as did the way her green eyes gleamed with her amusement. Her mirth hardened after a moment, and she folded her arms across her chest. “I don’t think you’ll have to worry. Father explained that sort of thing isn’t always about pain and suffering, but I’m not interested in ‘doing my wifely duty’ either. From the sound of it, gathering dried apples would be more fun. At least for the woman.”

  Kodan opened his lips, then closed them. I see I’ll have to have a word with the priestesses about that. She needs to learn that it is fun for her. For a moment, he pictured her going beyond the lessons of the earth-priestesses, to the moment when she joined some future husband in their marriage bed. Whoever he is, he’d have to understand, deep down, that she doesn’t expect to enjoy the experience. Which means that, if she is to enjoy it, he’ll have to be extra patient and extra careful to arouse her.

  If it were me, a corner of his mind mused, studying her as she turned her attention back to the grass, stooping and looking for the vines in question, I’d spend days arousing her . . . That dress is ugly on her, but what a magnificent rump!

  Whoa—rein in your passion, Kodan. You’re only supposed to seduce her into accepting her rightful place among us. She’s a shapeshifter, and thus automatically desirable, but that doesn’t mean she’ll hold out her hand to you, he chided himself.

  But he couldn’t quite turn his attention toward looking for suitable stalks of straw for twisting. Instead, he found himself moving up next to her, watching her concentrate on the ground. Nor could he let her statement pass unchallenged; her resistance had to be plowed up, like breaking up sod for good farming ground.

  “It’s fun for both, Tava. Women and men. We Shifterai know we approach the matter differently than the people of most other lands. Because our courtship rules are so strict, we know that men and women need an outlet for our natural urges . . . and we teach that outlet.

  “You will learn all these things for yourself in the first ten days of your life among the Family,” he promised her, meeting her wide-eyed look. “Just as you will learn the customs for honoring Father Sky and Mother Earth in each turning of the seasons, how to dance and how to ride, and how to set up a geome and twist grass into logs for the fire. You will learn how to find pleasure in yourself, and how to find pleasure in a man. Self-control is not the same thing as ignorance among the Shifterai.”

  Flustered by his words, embarrassed by the topic, and unsure if there was any pleasure for a woman in such things, Tava didn’t know what to say. All the things her mother had endured according to her book, they sounded horrible. Varamon had tried to tell her it was otherwise, but had admitted his own experience with women was limited. Yet the straightforward way this man spoke, the matter-of-fact look that Kodan gave her, suggested there was some truth to his words.

  Her confusion and doubt manifested in a single word, one she wasn’t even aware of saying until it was already out. “How?”

  Somehow, he wasn’t too surprised by her question. A little embarrassed to be asked so bluntly—even among his people, such things weren’t asked between a maiden and an unmarried man—but Kodan knew enough about her by now to know that being able to ask, feeling free enough to ask, was important to her. Damn those backward Mornai idiots. How are we ever to improve ourselves as a race, if people like them keep suppressing the natural curiosity of their children?

  “Let’s grab some straw for twisting into logs, and I’ll tell you what I can as we work,” he bartered quietly. He felt a little twinge of guilt at what he was offering to do. “An earth-priestess will show you these things, demonstrating on her own body and, um, having you practice on your own flesh . . . but I can give you some knowledge in advance. Just don’t tell the others I’m telling you these things.

  “It’s not entirely appropriate, since you are a maiden . . . but technically, you’re not yet a Shifterai maiden,” he hedged, more to soothe his own conscience than hers. “If you were born to the Plains, raised among us as you properly should have been, this would definitely be inappropriate. But . . . by the letter of the law . . . you’re not yet one of us.”

  “You aren’t going to touch me, are you?” Tava asked, unnerved by that possibility. The way his suntanned face paled, then flushed, reassured her as much as his quick reply did.

  “No! Definitely not. That would be far beyond what I’m allowed to do,” Kodan asserted. “No amount of justification could possibly . . . Look, let’s just grab some of that grass over there.”

  Following him, Tava sat by an uneaten patch of longish, sun-dried grass, plucked up a handful, and did her best to copy his movements. Settling himself at her side, Kodan showed her how to twist the stalks tightly, until they kinked and twisted up in the middle, forming a blunt sort of cord. Adding more stalks to lengthen the twisting ends was definitely a skill that would take practice. He did it by rolling the strands together on the knee-length flap of his tunic, which he spread over his thigh for a base. When she tried it on her skirt, the gathered folds kept trying to bunch up over the straw, forcing her to pull the material tight and tuck it under herself.

  “You’re getting it,” he praised after a few more minutes. “Now make one of the ‘legs’ longer than the other by rolling more straw onto it, and then twist it into a roll, but before it can try to pinch itself into a cord-twist, wrap it twice around itself and the free end, then let it double back on itself.”

  Tava tried to follow his instructions, and failed. Bits of straw kept escaping her grasp.

  “Twist and wrap it down to the loop at this end, but as you wrap, untwist the first two lengths a little and push the third one through, back and forth—adding more straw where necessary,” he said, demonstrating with deft movements of his hands and wrists, “—and untwist this starting loop down here, just enough to tuck the ends of the third twist through. And there you have it: one grass-log, ready to be thrown on the brazier, replete with tinder-ends suitable for catching fire.”

  “Wrap twice around the free end . . . and push it back and forth . . .” Tava struggled to hold on to the twisted straw so it wouldn’t unravel. It unraveled anyway, making her sigh and start again.

  “You’ll get it eventually,” Kodan encouraged her. “But you’ll need to roll in a little more . . . Watch your skirt!” he admonished as it started to tug free from under her hip. “You’ll be glad to wear proper Shifterai clothes, soon. The panel of a chamsa—the women’s version of the chamak, or tunic, which I’m wearing—is a lot less likely to get rolled up in your work than your skirts.”

  “But your pants are gathered,” Tava pointed out. “They’re just like my festival dress.”

  Unfolding one leg, Kodan tugged down the leather cuff of his boot. “My breikas may be gathered, but they’re gathered at both ends, and tied at hip and ankle. My folds won’t get very far, unlike your skirt—watch the free end!”

  Dragging her attention back to her task, Tava twisted, rolled, pinched, and pushed, until she had an approximate version of his tidy, tufted log in her hands. A very approximate version. It kinked and listed to one side, and bits of hay stuck out here and there. She wrinkled her nose at it. “I’m not very good at this, am I?”

  Kodan didn’t see any reason to lie to her. “No, but you merely lack practice. For a first try . . . it will burn. But the twists are loose and it’ll come unraveled more quickly in the fire. That can be a good thing if you want a lot of flames for light, but they won’t last as long, and you won’t have the longer sort of burn suitable for cooking. That’s where the dried apples come in.”

  “I’m not sure I could eat anything that’s been burned over a fire made of dung,” Tava muttered, making a face. “Wouldn’t it flavor the food?”

  “Without rora flowers and a layer of grass-logs, yes. I’ll show you another way to twist a log.” Scooting over to another patch of grass, he stripped out a couple handfuls and started twisting and rolling. “Just like before . . . you do a two
-strand twist . . . with one leg . . . longer than the other . . . but . . . when you get to the end . . . you bend this strand into a loop, wrap both strands twice around its base”—he demonstrated—“then pull both ends through the loop.”

  “Why didn’t you teach me that one?” Tava asked, lifting the tufted lump in her hands. “It looks so much easier than this!”

  “If you don’t pull it tight enough, which takes practice, it will unravel itself and shed grass all over. To prevent that, you’d have to double-back around . . . and tuck through, and then twist the end under itself twice for further tension,” Kodan explained, demonstrating with another bit of dried grass twisted onto the end. “It forms a lumpy knot at one end and doesn’t stack very well—when we start migrating back toward the City, the whole Family will be stripping and twisting grass-logs as we go, to supplement the fuel everyone will need to survive the winter. The version you learned is more tolerant of loose twisting, and it holds together with greater cohesion when burned. This two-strand kind uncurls and spreads out when burned, and is best used in a kiln instead of a brazier. We can use it, but it’ll have to be placed under others to weight it down.”

  “Oh, I see—if it uncurls and spreads out, it could uncurl itself right over the edge of the brazier and start burning the grass on the ground,” Tava offered, thinking it through. “Or anything else lying inside a tent . . . a geome.”

  “Exactly. That’s another reason why we burn dried apples with rora vine, mainly because we burn it after supper is through so that it heats the tent without fear of anything flying out of the brazier pan—as good as the vine is at changing the smell, we try to limit how much we use while actually cooking. We’re not tasteless barbarians, you know,” he teased her. “Literally or figuratively. Why don’t you practice the three-strand twist?”

  “Are you . . . um . . . going to demonstrate that thing you mentioned?” Tava asked. She could feel her cheeks heating, but kept her attention on the nearby stalks of grass, plucking out the ones that looked straight and unbent.

  Kodan rolled a short twist of grass, knotting the end in the third way he had shown. With a smaller bit of grass, he twisted it and stuffed it through the loop opposite the knot just enough that it formed a bump. Scooting a little closer to Tava, he held it by the knot and pointed at the loop with its bump and the two twists between it and the knot. “These are the three parts of a woman’s loins, the places of her privateness.

  “You may have seen or felt this bump up here, which lies closest to the front of your body. You may have even rubbed it. The more you rub it, the better it feels, but you have to take care to rub gently . . . and a little moisture makes the rubbing all the nicer. Just below the nub is the tiny hole through which you pass water, and you have to be careful not to scrape it or treat it harshly.”

  Tava blushed at the mention of that, but he continued on, sliding his hands up to the lowest of the twists and gently prying them apart, forming a small gap in the grass-log next to the knot.

  “This is the other spot to be careful, since it is where one passes, um . . . dried apples, I suppose you could call it. When it is caressed gently, it can feel good—”

  “—Ew!” Tava protested, embarrassed and disgusted.

  “Such things are best only done after one has thoroughly bathed and that area is very clean, since as you said . . . ew,” Kodan agreed. “But it can be quite pleasant—it actually isn’t much different than caressing other parts of the body, such as the insides of the wrists and the crooks of elbows. There are a lot of nerves there, and when stroked very, very gently, it feels very good. It isn’t done often, but it can be fun in the right circumstances and mood.

  “This spot,” he continued, slipping his thumbs up to the next twist and prying it open, “is what is touched most by a lover, along with the bump just above it. It can be touched by fingertips in the same way the bump is touched, or kissed by a lover’s mouth. It even looks a bit like a pair of lips, only they run vertically instead of horizontally, and there are—very thankfully—no teeth. Nor any tongue. But it can be caressed, and it can be kissed.”

  Tava wasn’t sure she wanted to hear these things anymore. She wrinkled her nose, giving Kodan a dubious look. “Isn’t that just as bad as . . . as the lower one? Who in their right mind would want to taste that?”

  “A woman is much like a flower,” Kodan told her. “This part, this opening, releases nectar when a woman is aroused . . . and you arouse her by touching and kissing her all over. Well, I would arouse her. You could touch yourself, of course, but you wouldn’t be able to kiss most of yourself like I could.”

  Her cheeks burned again at his words, but not from the same disgust as before. Instead, his words had conjured up an image of him kissing her cheeks, her shoulders . . . and lower. Flustered and feeling like her insides were being twisted up into a grass-log, Tava cleared her throat. “Um . . . right. I’m not sure . . .”

  Sensing she was losing her courage, Kodan continued firmly with the lesson. He didn’t want her retreating and closing her mind to the things she needed to know. “Tonight, when you retire to the trader wagon, you can touch these things and more, and experiment on yourself. But you must hear the rest of it, so that you understand enough to know what you’ll be doing; otherwise you’ll fail, and not realize that you’re simply doing it wrong.

  “This opening can be more than just caressed and kissed. It can be licked and suckled, and you can dampen your fingers and slide them inside . . . like this.” Carefully holding the twist open from the back side with the fingers of his left hand, Kodan demonstrated with the fingers of his right hand, first swirling and rubbing the knob of grass poked through the loop at the top, then stroking down the sides of the twist, and finally slipping them in and out through the opening.

  It was just a bunch of twisted grass, brittle, scratchy, and threatening to fall apart if he handled it too roughly, but his touch was gentle. It also aroused him, because he wasn’t seeing just the twisted bits of summer-bleached straw; he was seeing the flesh of a real woman in his mind. Voice a little rough and unsteady, he pulled his attention back to the lesson.

  “I was told that it’s a little awkward for a woman to reach deeply into herself on her own. And that for a young maiden, there is often a bit of extra skin around the very opening, making it small and tight, though riding on a horse often stretches or breaks it at an early age. You’re an outlander, so you might still have a full maidenhead. Or you might not. Whoever you, ah, choose for a husband will undoubtedly examine such things while kissing and caressing you down there, and be gentle when proceeding onward. Which would be intercourse.”

  Tava, caught up in the sight of his fingers stroking the twisted grass so gently and soothingly, lost some of her own twisted-grass feeling. “Which is when things will hurt.”

  “Only the first time, if the extra skin hasn’t already been broken,” Kodan defended. A moment later, he realized what she meant, and quickly shook his head. He withdrew his fingers, not wanting to touch his impromptu model while they had this particular discussion. “No. What your mother endured was not lovemaking. No one touched her gently, no one caressed her, nor did they try to arouse her in any way. She did not release her nectar, and without the nectar, she was dry inside—here, dry your lips,” he ordered.

  Puzzled, Tava wiped them with the edge of her hand.

  “Now rub the edge of your first finger along your bottom lip, back and forth,” he instructed. “Do it about seven or eight times.”

  Complying, she rubbed her finger across her lip. It was equally dry, slightly callused, and smelling of dried grass from her efforts. After eight strokes, her skin tingled a little and she was glad to quit.

  “It felt a little rough after a while, didn’t it?” Kodan asked.

  “If I’d done it another eight times, I don’t think I would have liked it so much,” Tava admitted.

  “Exactly. Now lick your bottom lip, and lick the edge of your finger, and rub
the two together, before the wind can dry them out . . . Easier, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “Yes, is it,” Tava agreed.

  “And it feels nicer?” he prompted. “You get more sensations, but they’re pleasant ones, right?”

  “I suppose so,” she said, shrugging.

  “Multiply that by a hundred times. If her body is dry and unready, it’s going to be unpleasant for the woman. But if she is aroused enough that her nectar flows, she will not be chafed, and she will enjoy it a hundred times more. Whoever attacked your mother, they weren’t Shifterai, because Shifterai men are all taught how to arouse a woman, how to make her nectar flow, and how to ensure she enjoys the time spent in her husband’s bed,” Kodan murmured, holding her gaze. “We may be able to take on the shapes of animals, but you will note that animals wait until their females are in heat and their bodies ripe with nectar before they try to claim their mates. The advantage we have over animals is that we can ‘come into season’ at any time we wish, by touching and kissing and caressing to excite one another.”

  That twisting feeling had come back. A little intimidated by it, Tava cleared her throat. “Um . . . men don’t need arousing. They just . . . rut. Don’t they?”

  Kodan stopped, shaking his head, and tugged out the little scrap of grass that had formed the bump. Bracing the knot against his hip, he used it once again to demonstrate. “Men are not like grass-logs. We do not go around all day, aroused and ready to rut. If we did, we’d be poking out all the time, and risk damaging ourselves. Not to mention it’s difficult to walk when it gets that way. Worse, what if we tripped? The fall might break it off!”

  The absurdity of his claim startled a giggle out of her. Covering her mouth, Tava blushed but nodded, conceding his point. “Alright. Men aren’t aroused every single moment. But . . .”