Shifting Plains

by Jean Johnson

  “It is nothing more than a bit of flesh, Tava. Delicate, in that the pouch at the base needs to be handled delicately,” he cautioned her. “And bending it is not a good idea. Unless the male in question is forcing himself on you, in which case I urge you to hit him there. I do suggest you stomp on his foot or hit him in the face or throat first to distract him, as the groin is the first spot a man will instinctively move to defend. But if you want to arouse him, you touch him gently, just as you yourself would want to be touched.”

  Tava shook her head. “Oh, I don’t want . . . I couldn’t.”

  “I think you will. You just haven’t thought about it, and you haven’t experimented. If you ever had, you certainly would. But as I was saying, a man has a rod and a sack, and you just caress it—when you’re married—as you would want to be touched yourself. With your fingertips, with your mouth, your lips and your, um, tongue.” This time it was his turn to blush. Kodan tried not to think about it too much. It helped that he caught her grimacing again. “What?”

  “I may not know much about men, but I do know they pass water out of . . . that,” she protested, flicking her fingers at the twisted grass.

  “Yes, but not all the time, just as your body doesn’t pass water all the time. In fact, when a man is aroused, he can’t pass water. It just all shuts off inside. Sometimes, when a man is dreaming in his sleep, his dreams arouse him,” Kodan told her, “and if he wakes up stiff but needs to use a chamber pot or a refreshing tent . . . well, it can be quite painful, waiting for the one need to ease so that he can tend to the other.”

  “Kodan! You were supposed to gather dried apples!”

  The shout startled both of them. Kodan nearly sprained his neck, his head whipped around that fast. Thankfully, his father was closer to the geome than to the two of them, though Siinar was striding their way. Flushing until his ears felt burned, Kodan pushed to his feet, muttering, “I am a multerai who is about to be named Lord of the Family, and he wants me to gather dung?” Raising his voice, he called back, “I sent Kenyen to do that!”

  “You should not be spending so much time with an unadopted maiden,” Siinar called out, closing the yards of distance between them. “That’s why I assigned you that chore, to remind you of your place! Which is not to be spent courting an outlander woman. She will not be one of us until she is fully adopted.”

  “My place is leading this warband, Father . . . and I wasn’t courting her, I was teaching her how to twist grass for the fire,” Kodan countered, moving forward a few steps to meet his father. He braced his hands on his hips. “I don’t know if Medred told you, but your father-in-law sleeps with Mother Earth.”

  “Yes, and with Chodan’s passing, the Councils think to name you his successor. Which is why it is vital for you to be circumspect,” Siinar chided. “You spend more than enough time with her when you drive her wagon. Running off with her into the grass will not demonstrate the self-control of a leader.”

  Kodan gaped, then flung out his hands, gesturing. “We are in full view of the geome, the horses, Mother Earth, and Father Sky! That is not ‘running off into the grass,’ Father. Moreover, with all the misin formation in her background, I am not going to pressure her toward such matters.”

  Siinar held up his hands, coming to a halt a body length away. “I know you wouldn’t, Kodan. I raised you right. But if you are going to be the Lord of Tiger, our people are going to look closely at everything you do because of it . . . and they’ll look sideways at you, too, for being interested in an outlander woman. Thus you must be more circumspect than most. I have your best interest in my heart. I am not saying you should not court her, but that you should be a lot more careful in how you follow the laws. In their spirit as well as in their letter. You must wait to court her until her teaching days are through. You can be romantic then, but not one day sooner.”

  “I would hardly consider the subjects of refreshing tents and chamber pots to be romantic, since that was the topic you interrupted . . . but if you insist that I go spend time elsewhere, then you can teach her how to twist grass-logs while I go gather rora vine for the fire.” Turning to Tava, he gave her a short bow. “Forgive me for such an abrupt end to your lessons. I hope you will consider the merits of the tips I have given you so far.

  “In the meantime, I’m sure my father will continue to teach you the fine art of grass-log twisting in my absence, as well as share many other fascinating tidbits of Shifterai life. Starting with where the refreshing tents are usually dug by custom, in relation to the nearest body of water, to prevent contamination.” He gave his father a dry look, and Tava a pointed one, then turned and strode over to where the brown red vines with their heart-shaped leaves could be found.

  Siinar watched him go, then looked down at the young woman sitting on the ground. “. . . Refreshing tents and chamber pots? That is what the two of you were discussing so intensely?”

  “Yes,” she confirmed, glad it was the truth so that she didn’t have to lie. It was a slightly stretched truth, but it was the truth. “Though I, um, wouldn’t have said intensely so much as, well, embarrassingly—could we talk about something else?”

  “Such as?” Siinar asked, settling himself across from her, next to another clump of somewhat longish grass.

  “Um . . . all my things. And my animals. If you live in tents three seasons out of four . . . it seems kind of silly to be hauling around all those things. Particularly if it takes most of five wagons to carry it all,” Tava admitted.

  “Much of that consists of the cages for your fowl. We do not normally take such animals with us,” Siinar admitted, adjusting the fall of his tunic hem before plucking several strands of grass. “They stay on the farms ringing the City, since chickens are difficult to herd, and ducks are happier with a body of water nearby. If this were spring or early summer, we would give your animals an escort to the Clan Cat farms; as it is, they will just need to wait a little longer before coming home with all of us.

  “When we do get to the Clan farms, your birds will be examined and a value fixed upon them as breeders and layers. Then they will be given to the Clan as a whole to raise, breed, and eat, but you will be given a stipend each year for the value that the birds contribute to the well-being of the Clan as a whole. It won’t be much,” Siinar warned her, “but a little income is better than none. And they are not bad birds to begin with, plus they have the bonus of being fresh stock, as yet unbred with Plains birds. Most likely they will be reserved more for breeding and laying than for eating, which means you will see a steady amount of income.

  “Normally anything gained by the warbands has a one-fifth tax on it, with the tax going first to the Family, and one-fifth of that going on to the Clan. But because these chickens and ducks are your animals to begin with, you’ll get the whole flock listed on your tally. The same with your goats and your gelding, and all the contents of your house. Everything else added to the bargain we made with the village of Five Springs, the extra wagons and horses, the ingots of metal, the lumber, the herbs and the tar-sticks, all of that may be yours in exchange for the sale of your farm, but they were gained after we accepted you among us, so they will be taxed by one-fifth.

  “The remaining four-fifths are more than enough to make you either a very cluttered caravaner, or a very wealthy young woman,” he finished.

  “You’re . . . not keeping all of those ingots and wagons and horses?” Tava asked, confused.

  Siinar shook his gray and brown head, his hair sliding across his shoulders. “Whatever bargain my son may have struck to get you off the Plains, we did not buy you with that bandit-slaying contract. Just your presence among us. I would suggest selling most of what you gained because—as you yourself said—it is kind of silly to haul all of that about. Mostly I would suggest selling it to people in the City when we get there. Your furniture does not fold like most of ours does; it is meant to be used in one house in one place, never going anywhere, so it would be better off in the home of a City-d
weller. You can trade it for coin or for barter, such as camping chairs and tables, a collapsing bed, a washstand, or anything else that might occupy the inside of a geome.”

  “What about a geome itself ?” Tava asked, glancing at Kodan, who was tugging thin vines out of the grass a short distance away. “Kodan said it takes hundreds of fleeces to make the felt for one. Do I have enough wealth to buy myself the makings of one?”

  Her question made Siinar chuckle. “Hardly. Geomes are owned by the men, or by the whole of the tribe, in the case of the Family geome and the maidens’ geomes. It is up to the man to provide the shelter for his family. You could own the sheep, you can own the wood for the staves—you do own enough wood for that—and you can own the canvas and the cord, but you cannot own a geome as a woman.”

  Her days among these men made her brave enough to mutter, “That hardly seems fair. At least I owned my own home, in the Valley.”

  “It is more than fair. A geome is nothing more than a shelter . . . and a cold one, in the spring and fall. You will own the cookstove and any braziers that may heat it. In fact, tending the hearth is entirely the woman’s responsibility. So the first thing you’ll want to buy once we get to the City is your own brazier, and the second thing you’ll want to look at is a good traveling stove, for knowing what you’ll want to buy the day you marry and move into your husband’s geome—you can get by with a brazier for casual cooking, but a good stove will be a godsend. You can ask my wife, Sinya, what to look for in a really good stove.

  “In the meantime, you should start practicing how to twist grass into logs to learn how to keep it in fuel,” he reminded her, nodding at the four twists lying on the ground next to her. “You’ve only made one so far. I see my son had the sense to teach you the three-twist one first; try making another one, and show me what he taught you of it.”

  She started plucking enough grass to twist, and tried not to blush, let alone think of the other things his son had taught her just now.

  Off to the side, Kodan eased back on the sharpness of his hearing. His one fear was that she might reveal what their conversation had really been about, but it looked like she wouldn’t. His own reddened face could easily be explained by all his stooping, gently teasing up long enough lengths of rora vine to burn on the evening fire without breaking the vine and losing some of the precious, pungent sap. But most important, being called to like that had startled the desire roused by their conversation right out of his flesh, allowing him to stand without his father’s sharp eyes noticing anything amiss.

  Father is right, in that I will be Lord of Tiger and must be more circumspect. But . . . I don’t regret sharing that information with her. As much as she needs to hear it from the priestesses themselves, I think it will ease the way, having her hear it from a male first. A nonthreatening, trustworthy male. He nodded to himself as he stripped the seed pods off the vine he had gathered, scattering them toward the south. Yes, she’s better off having heard it first from me. The priestesses will reinforce what I said, but if they’d told her first, she might still have been shy about letting a man touch her, because it would have been shared only by another woman, someone who couldn’t possibly force her.

  But I’m a man, I have stated an intent to court her, and so she needed to hear it from me. He paused, glancing subtly at her. Unless, of course, I’m merely deluding myself because I wanted one last act of rebellion before taking on the leadership of the Family and all its responsibility. Or maybe I just wanted the titillation of sharing something naughty with a maiden . . .

  Kodan stared at her a moment more, listening to her asking his father her questions, and shrugged. Or maybe I was just sating her curiosity, and nothing more. She even asks about refreshing tents. Blushing, but she asks. I’ve never known anyone grown, male or female, with as much curiosity as she has—if the priestesses don’t answer enough of her questions, I’ll gladly answer the rest of them myself, once I’m free to court her again.

  It wasn’t until he had four lengths of rora coiled neatly around his arm that he recognized the phrasing of that thought. A sharp glance showed Tava was oblivious, focused on twisting the ends of yet another half-mangled grass-log into place. Shaking it off, Kodan headed for the geome.

  I am not courting her for myself. I’m courting her for the Plains. And anyone would get aroused with such a demonstration. It has little to do with her, herself.

  It had everything to do with her.

  Unable to sleep, thanks to the dreams that danced through his head whenever he tried, Kodan gave up and shifted shape just enough to grow fur from waist to knees. Leaving his pallet and his neatly folded clothes behind, he picked his way quietly through the others scattered across the floor of the geome, sleeping much more peacefully than him. Or as peacefully as one could, given how both the youngest and the oldest members of the warband snored. There was enough noise to cover the sound of him slipping the latch, easing open the geome door, and ducking through.

  Gently closing the door again, Kodan breathed in the crisp, cold night air, clearing the spicy scent of rora smoke from his lungs. The breeze flowed from the north, bringing hints of scents from the herds and braziers of the Family in the distance. Without the brazier in the warband geome to keep him warm, Kodan grew more fur across his body, until he was covered from neck to feet, leaving only his head and his hands free.

  Facing the other way, he spotted a silhouetted figure a short distance downwind of the trader wagon. Narrowing his eyes, Kodan padded that way. Clouds scudded across part of the night sky, obscuring any glow that might have come from one of the two moons. The starlight was enough for him to pick his way without tripping, but it wasn’t until he drew even with the wagon that he recognized the man standing so still as Deian.

  It was only after he passed the wagon that he heard the soft, frustrated mutterings of its occupant, and smelled what his friend was apparently inhaling. Biting his lip to keep from growling audibly, Kodan stalked straight up to his friend and glared as best he could, given the very dim light.

  Deian raised his finger to his lips. He leaned in close enough to whisper to his friend, “. . . I was wondering if I should go and wake you. She woke with your name on her lips and has since been muttering about not knowing what to touch, or how. Perhaps you know what she means?”

  “You should not be standing downwind of her, sniffing the breeze as if you were in rut,” Kodan hissed back, glad the darkness of the night hid his blush.

  Flashing the younger man a grin, Deian tipped his head away from the wagon. “I’ll go on a long patrol. You stay here and guard her from anything that might . . . shall we say . . . keep her from a satisfying sleep?”

  Shock held him still, long enough for Deian to shift to four legs and lope quietly away. Deian . . . is aiding me in flouting custom? He glanced at the enclosed wagon, then around the encampment. There were at least three others patrolling, but within a few moments he spotted all of them out at the perimeter, their attention more on the possibility of external threats to the horses, goats, and caged birds than on the activity inside the camp. Duty warred with desire, until he heard another frustrated mutter, ears pricking.

  Moving closer to the wagon, he melded with the shadows by the front wheel in time to hear Tava hissing to herself.

  “Stupid stupid stupid . . . None of this works! He didn’t seem like he was lying, but . . . ! If this is desire, it stinks!”

  That didn’t sound good. He hadn’t told her all those things to make her frustrated and doubtful. His intent had been to reassure her that lovemaking was fun, when properly done. Hesitating only a moment, Kodan hissed her name. “Tava?”

  The wagon rocked a little. A moment later, he heard it creaking, and the sound of her fingers fumbling at the latch holding the forward shutters closed. Unlike the ones on the sides, which opened out, these ones opened inward. She swung one aside and poked her head out, visible only because her face was a paler blot against the dark square of the opening.
<
br />   “Who’s there?”

  “Shh,” he hissed, switching to a barely audible murmur. “It’s me, Kodan.”

  He heard her sniffing and lifted his arm up over the side of the bench seat, bringing his scent closer to her. She sniffed again, then sighed. “Kodan . . . what are you doing here? Are you on night patrol?”

  “Shh,” he murmured. “Not so loud. You don’t want to draw attention from any of the others. I only came out because I couldn’t sleep, but then I heard you, um . . .”

  She stilled, and he could almost hear her mental embarrassment. He certainly could smell the source of it, faint though it was. She drew in a deep breath and let it out. “Well,” she muttered. “Now you know. Either I am so stupid, I can’t make heads or tails of your instructions, or I’m as cold to such movements as the surface of the River is in winter.”

  “You’re not cold,” Kodan reassured her. He believed it, too. She was too full of life to be as frigid as her claim. “It’s just like twisting grass into logs, that’s all. It takes practice. You were getting good at twisting logs by the time supper was ready, and you’ll learn how to be good at this. I’m sure of it.”

  She stayed silent several seconds, then muttered, “It doesn’t feel anything like a twisted bit of grass. It doesn’t work.”

  “Hold out your hand,” Kodan told her. As soon as he saw her limb uncurl itself through the opening, he gently caught her wrist in one hand. “The first thing you have to remember—and which some men forget—is that you never start with the loins. That’s like dumping raw meat and uncleaned, raw vegetables in a bowl, and calling it stew. You have to prepare the way, divide things into manageable portions, heat them all up, and let it all cook for a while.

  “The first thing to do is to touch your hands lightly, like this,” he instructed, bringing up his other hand so that he could skim the pads of his fingers lightly over her palm. “Slowly and lightly, explore the feel of your skin. Caress it. Only gradually should you move from your fingers to your wrists . . . and only eventually do you stroke your way up your forearm.”