The Smiling Stallion Inn

by Courtney Bowen

  * * * *

  Basha watched as Hastin and Jawen showed off their moves together like they were already married. Hastin stomped heavily and Jawen kicked haphazardly, like she didn’t know what she was doing, but she smiled and waved at everybody she passed by when she wasn’t holding hands with Hastin.

  “The Cloud Rulers knew of her glee, and how it was no mask,” the woman sang. The drummer smacked his stick against a cymbal, which caused the singer to laugh as he clanged and clashed. “So they gave Welda the task that brings us to our plea,” the singer continued.

  When they passed by him, Basha thought that he might reach out and pull Hastin away from Jawen and dance the rest of the way down the aisle with her. He’d tell her he didn’t mean to be with Iibala, if that was the reason she was with Hastin. But Basha knew Hastin outweighed him and a fight with him would be a fight he might lose, and the Courtship Ritual would be ruined for everyone else.

  The band stopped playing for a minute to sing along with the woman. “We call out now to the sky, on this newborn night above…” Everyone else joined in, “To Welda, the goddess dove, that you’d give us no lie this night, and lead these souls to love!”

  All of the dancing couples would’ve been affected by his efforts to reach Jawen; he would’ve plowed right through them, disrupting the happiest moments of their young lives. And everyone would’ve hated him, and Jawen, as a consequence. Everyone had come here to enjoy themselves tonight and celebrate their love for one other, not to get involved in some fight. It was his problem, and he didn’t want to be known as the balnor who had ruined everyone’s night.

  So he let them pass but still fumed to himself as he went on down to the head of the boys’ line. Basha clapped listlessly along with the rest of the party as another pair partnered up at the head of the lines. As they danced gaily down the aisle, Basha was still thinking about Hastin and Jawen. He wondered if it could have been intentional, either on the part of Hastin or Jawen. Or both. Was this a sign of things to come? He was almost afraid to think about Hastin asking for Jawen tonight, and that she might very well say yes. It was very possible she’d fallen in love with Hastin or perhaps she was angry enough with Basha to use Hastin to hurt him.

  Basha thought back to Jawen telling him to keep juggling, to keep trying. That small encouragement wasn’t a yes to his proposal; nor was it a guarantee she’d ever say yes. There was so much going against them, he wasn’t sure that he should keep trying to win her. Maybe he should…just give up.

  Basha looked up as Iibala stepped forward to take his hands. They were at the head of the line now. He numbly went down the aisle with her, stomping his feet as Iibala kicked her legs like there was no tomorrow, but he didn’t feel right. He didn’t feel right about this at all.

  Gods be praised, what was he doing here? He looked up once to see Jawen smiling at him as he passed her, clapping her hands right alongside Sisila, but it didn’t look right to him at all. Why didn’t it look right? Welda would weep, he thought as he stared at Iibala. At the end, he parted from Iibala without saying anything to her. He went back to the boys’ line without even looking at her. He didn’t want to do it, but he had to; dancing with Iibala was the only way he could continue forward in the Courtship Ritual.

  By the time Oaka and Sisila danced down the aisle at the end of the dance, Basha felt tired of the whole affair and hoped that it would be remedied by what was to come at Lovers’ Rock—the last and most important part of the Courtship Ritual.

  The mayor dismissed everyone, and the boys ran out of the inn, dancing and leaping for joy as the taste of tealatte and the spectacle of the dance with their beloved girls lingered on in their heads. They went out onto the main road of Coe Baba in the middle of the night, in the darkness of the boulevard where hardly any light shone through the windows of the buildings lining the way. The darkness wasn’t a deterrent to these young men buoyed up by love. They laughed and sang with one another, enjoying themselves as they headed toward the northern outskirts of town.

  Basha wandered along with them, pausing every now and again to look around at the buildings on Main Street. Coe Baba was his hometown—he’d grown up here—he couldn’t imagine it being any different at night than in the daytime. During the day, you could see the buildings, their clapboard siding or mortar and stone, but you overlooked them, passed them with just a glance. The townspeople like Basha saw these buildings as just a part of the landscape, indomitable and indestructible, unchanging with the tide of years. The buildings remained, even as the people inside them were borne and died, and it seemed to the townspeople that Coe Baba would last forever, as it had for thousands of years, even before the Knights came to Arria.

  Yet in the dark, you could see the true form of this town if you looked hard enough. Basha could see how huddled tightly together the poorer buildings were, shielding their occupants from the outside world and the darkness. Yet Basha wasn’t afraid of the dark, nor was he afraid of the fragility of his hometown, when he could see how the people depended upon their huddled homes for protection at night. He liked to look at the town at night to remind himself how different it all was in the light of day, and how it could change at night into something unrecognizable, something beyond the norm of everyday life.

  Basha looked up at the rooflines of the buildings; steep and pitched, they towered above him as he went along, the boys singing. “Penniless miller, come singing on the road.” “The lovely maiden passes by with hope.” The girls flounced their dresses right by the boys. “Blow her a kiss, and dance away from haven.’” They all sang together, the boys and girls blowing kisses at one another before they danced off together.

  Basha stopped a moment, remembering how hopeful he’d been yesterday morning when he’d sang that song on his way to Jawen’s house. Yet he felt sick as his hopes had been dashed, and now as he turned around, with several other people pushing past him, he found himself staring at Iibala, who was just standing there on the main road of Coe Baba, waiting to talk to him like she’d been yesterday afternoon.

  “Basha, you know you don’t belong here,” Iibala said, approaching him, “with Jawen, but you do belong with me—here or anywhere else in the world.”

  Without giving Basha a chance to speak, she took him aside, wrapping a red scarf around his neck. She led him down the side of a building into an alleyway, where they couldn’t be seen from the street. He knew that she was up to something and tried to loosen the scarf around his neck. She turned around to face him. “We’re different people, Basha,” she said. “Different from anybody else here in Coe Baba.”

  His hands stilled on the scarf as he scowled down at her. “What are you talking about?”

  “Our families come from far away from here, where we would’ve had a different upbringing if we had been raised there.”

  “Let go of me,” he said, trying to force her to release her hold on the scarf.

  “Listen to me, Basha.” She grimaced as he tugged loose and stepped back from her.

  “Please. Listen to me. Our families are still out there. We don’t belong here when our families weren’t born and bred in Coe Baba. I know my family comes from Coe Dobila, at least on my mother’s side, and although I still have relatives there, my father won’t allow me to go see them, but you…Basha…haven’t you ever wondered who your real family is?”

  “Yes, I’ve wondered,” he told her. “But I was raised here, the same as you, with a family of my own. I belong here,” he insisted, though he doubted his own words.

  “Basha, you know that’s not true.” Iibala smiled at him sadly and shook her head. She stepped closer to him and laid her hand on his chest. “You belong in a better place, as do I, far away from here, where we won’t ever have to worry about what people think of us.”

  Basha pushed himself away from her. “You don’t know that.”

  “I do know that. I know who you are,” Iibala said, meeting his almost belligerent glare with a smoldering look. “I can sense it, d
eep down within your soul. The darkness, and the destruction, just the same as it is with me.”

  “What are you talking about?” he asked, frowning even further. “Is this about what happened yesterday afternoon? Because that attack was just a coincidence; it hardly ever happens,” he said, thinking of the crows.

  “Basha, it’s different with you, isn’t it?” she asked, studying him for a minute. “You’ve another level hidden within you, one that lies far below the surface of what even I can reach.” She rushed forward and wrapped her arms around him. “You’ve death hidden within you.”

  “That’s crazy!” Basha said, pulling away from her embrace and brushed her hands away. He was a little freaked out by what she’d said, but he assured himself it meant nothing.

  “Basha, you’re…you’re…” she couldn’t get the words out.

  “You’re wrong, Iibala.” He sighed and said, “You’ve no clue who I am. Or what’s inside me. I’ve no depth, no darkness, and no death inside me. I just have love in my heart, for Jawen, and you can’t divert that love, especially not by appealing to me in such a manner.” He shuddered, deeply disturbed by this episode and Iibala’s inexplicable interest in him.

  “Basha, I’m only trying to help you.”

  He felt the scarf rub against his neck, causing an itch. “Help me? How can you help me? Help me with what? I’m just a young man in love with Jawen,” he said. “And you…I may not have a birth family, but I know myself, and I belong here in Coe Baba, with Jawen. Nowhere else, and with nobody else,” he said, nodding, firm in his belief when it felt right above everything else. He was in love with Jawen.

  Iibala gazed at him, hurt and anger still in her eyes. “Why do you doubt me?”

  “I doubt you because you’ve hurt me in the past! I’m sorry, Iibala, but I don’t love you. Jawen is the one who keeps me going, who keeps me fighting for something more in my life, and she’s the one I was meant to be with. Not you! Why can’t you understand that?”

  Iibala growled and muttered, “I hate you,” to Basha before she stormed out of the alleyway and down the street toward the eastern outskirts of town where she lived with her father. He regretted what he’d said to Iibala only in the way that he’d said it, not in the way he felt.

  If there had been some other way to let her down gently but firmly enough that she’d not have pursued him anymore…well, he would’ve taken it, but the circumstances were just out of his control. He couldn’t handle such strangeness from a woman like her. She seemed so formidable, especially after what had happened yesterday afternoon. He hoped Iibala might someday find the right man for her, as he’d found the right woman for him, but he doubted it when she kept flirting with every man she encountered.

  And now this strange behavior; what was wrong with her? She was acting like Sitha, goddess of mysteries, offering him nothing but strange hints and riddles, and…He shook his head, deciding he’d ignore whatever she’d just said about death. He waited another minute before leaving the alleyway. He was ashamed of himself for getting cornered by Iibala when he was on his way to propose to Jawen.

  He felt self-conscious as he looked around to make sure no one had seen him with Iibala. Now he knew how Jawen felt, a little bit, when she kept looking around for her father. He felt the scarf around his neck then and quickly tugged it off, knowing that he couldn’t be seen with it. He threw the scarf on the ground, and hurried to catch up with the rest of the boys on their way to Lovers’ Rock.

  Chapter 9

  A Woman’s Dilemma

  “What choice do we have in the matter?

  I believe we’ve many options and choices

  Available to us, but whether we take advantage

  Of any of them is another story altogether.”

  —A woman’s protest, Kiwata

  “I just embarrassed myself in front of Basha again,” Jawen said to Sisila, wobbling up to the bar and speaking in a loud voice to be heard over the crowd, their voices pounding away inside her head. She was a little nervous about what was going to happen this evening, but she’d tried to reassure herself and Basha by flirting with him while Old Man told his monotonous old story.

  But then she’d just seemed to confuse him even more, and she’d not promised him anything. She left, confused, flustered, and frustrated with herself, as well as with him. “I don’t even know what I’m doing.”

  Sisila, sitting on the barstool with her feet dangling below the width of her skirt, sipped a cup of ale before she turned to face Jawen. “Why? What happened?” Sisila asked as she removed the drink from her mouth and hiccupped.

  “Uh, never mind, I don’t want to talk about it,” Jawen said, glancing away from the frothy moustache on her best friend’s face toward the vague shapes in the distance. It was a wonder she’d even found Sisila; her vision was a little blurred. Sisila had already drunk enough, and Jawen felt a bit tipsy herself, having gone over to the pub for a drink before coming here, so she decided that she’d not share her concerns with her friend. There had been not enough time to cope, not enough time to think about everything that would be impacted by this decision, the rest of her life as well as Basha’s. Her thoughts were still scattered, her feelings conflicted, to say the least. She was drunk right now, she would admit to that, but that wasn’t anything compared to how she felt in real life. She’d not seen Basha since he’d left her house yesterday, unable to get away from her father or the rest of her family, and the one chance, the only chance that she might have gotten to see him alone, had vanished.

  “Where have you been anyway?” Sisila persisted in saying, slurring her words. “You missed a brilliant fight yesterday afternoon at the militia tryouts, and oh, you should have been there to see—”

  “What? What were the highlights?” Jawen asked, turning to Sisila. Distracted by her own worries, and muddled by her drink, she was looking at Sisila through a haze.

  “No, you wouldn’t believe me, and anyway, you haven’t answered my question,” Sisila slurred out. “Where were you yesterday? You should have been there!” she cried, wrapping her arm around Jawen as she leaned forward. “It was bone-chilling. It was fantastic. You missed so much,” she said. She sounded so dramatic Jawen wanted to laugh.

  Sisila was dressed in a gown similar to Jawen’s in terms of silk and ribbons, but Sisila wore light green, and her gown was shorter than Jawen’s, knee-length instead of ankle-length, and her neckline showed more neck versus Jawen’s high-ruffled collar. Her sleeves were shorter as well, elbow-length instead of wrist-length.

  Sisila was different from Jawen in other ways too, yet the two of them had been such good friends for so many years Jawen couldn’t bear to think of them ever growing apart. “I wanted to be there; you know how much I wanted to be there.” Jawen inhaled deeply, to steady herself so that she’d wouldn’t cry, “I wanted to see Basha fight,” she said, unable to believe she’d gotten the words out without sniffing tears back. “But I couldn’t go out. I couldn’t go see him, because…well, I got into a fight with my little sister Annalise yesterday morning.”

  “Annalise? What did Annalise do this time?” Sisila asked.

  “It wasn’t just what she did; it was what I did too,” Jawen said, sobering up a bit. “We got into an argument yesterday morning after I poured sugar all over her at breakfast. And then Father sent us to our rooms. He said since everybody was so overly excited already, it was his opinion we didn’t need to attend the militia tryouts. We tried to plead with him, all of us, but he wouldn’t allow it; he just told us all to go to our rooms for the rest of the day.”

  “That was mean of him,” Sisila said, frowning. “Was the sugar spill an accident, or did you do it on purpose?”

  “You know me too well. On purpose, of course,” Jawen added, sighing. “You’ve no idea what Annalise did to me that morning before breakfast, all right?” She told Sisila the whole story about Basha’s visit.

  Halfway through, when Jawen got to the part where Annalise was in the hall
way, Sisila sighed, lifting her head from the bar. “What a brat,” she said.

  Jawen nodded and grimaced as she drank more ale. “I was just so mad at her I lost my self-control.” She shook her head. “My father already suspected too much, and I couldn’t be seen with Basha so soon after that.” She finally noticed the sullen look Sisila was giving her. She drew back and looked squarely at her. “What’s got your goat?”

  “You’ve got a big problem, girlfriend, and you don’t even know it.” Sisila gulped more ale. “You’ve no idea what you’re doing to Basha, and you don’t know just how dangerous this all is.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t treated Basha any differently than I have before, and what about what he’s doing to me?” she said. “What about all of the grief and trouble I’m putting up with at home just because I love him and he loves me?” Jawen said, tearing up.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if I should tell you, if it was just a fluke, or if it was just my eyes seeing things that weren’t there. Or more likely Iibala was playing some kind of trick,” Sisila said.

  “What do you mean; what trick?”

  “She’s not listening to me; she’s not listening to me,” Sisila said, banging her head back down onto the counter again. She hiccupped. “So anyway, are you going to accept Basha tonight? I have to know,” Sisila insisted.

  “Why are you asking me that right now?” Jawen asked. “Why can’t you just wait?”

  “You’re making a big mistake if you don’t go after Basha tonight.”

  “Hey, what’s up with you two?” a voice asked, and the two of them turned to face Iibala, who had once been their friend but now was their hated rival. She was the woman all the girls in town feared and avoided.