by Diana Rivers
She was shaking her head. “Surely with all her power Alyeeta could have found some other way to deal with Rishka.”
“You were not there! You do not know! That woman is a monster and hates us all!” I burst out.
“Oh, Tazzi, how can you say that? Think what has been done to her by men.” Then she stopped as if considering something and said slowly, “So that is the silencing Zari spoke of.”
“Is it all through the camp, then?”
“Well, they know something happened. Alyeeta was loud enough for many to hear, at least at the end.”
Now my feelings were all in confusion. I suppose it should have given me pleasure that others knew Rishka was to be under my orders. Instead, it turned my stomach. As I saw again Alyeeta’s outstretched arm and pointing fingers, a chill of fear rushed up my back. As to the silencing itself, instead of feeling joy in it, I remembered Rishka as she had stood in the firelight, shirtless before that circle of women. In some way my heart went out to her. Then, when I remembered her words from that morning, I thought a little silence was perhaps a blessing after all.
At last, convinced I knew nothing more, Zenoria went away to look elsewhere. I had some peace again, but not for long.
It was Zari who found me next. I was resting there in the late afternoon with all my work spread out drying in the sun. She was out of breath and looked very troubled. “I have been told of Alyeeta’s spell,” she said quickly. “I have heard that Rishka has been made your ‘creature.’ Please do not hurt her in that way. She has already been hurt enough, hurt far too much.”
“She is not my ‘creature’ as you put it, and I have no intention of hurting her at all. This was all Alyeeta’s idea, certainly not mine, though I must say Rishka brought it on herself, every bit of it.”
“Please,” said Zari, looking at me beseechingly, “You do not know, you cannot understand what horrors she has already been through.”
I felt a sudden anger flare up in me at this gentle, timid woman pleading for Rishka’s sake, Rishka who hurt others whichever way she turned, who had punished me with words at every chance. “How do you know what I can understand?” I shouted at her, “Or what I myself have been through?” I wanted to shake her by the shoulders. This was the second one who had come to speak for Rishka. Who was there to plead for me in my pain? Then I saw her recoil from my anger, staring at me with tears in her large, dark eyes. Suddenly I felt embarrassed and ashamed.
“Here, come help me fold these clothes,” I said quickly. “The sun will soon be gone. I promise you I mean her no harm, though she has certainly done me enough. Can she speak again? Did she send you here to beg for her?”
“No! Oh no! She would never do such a thing.” Now there was fear and confusion in Zari’s face. “I came here on my own. Please, I beg of you, do not tell her I spoke to you this way.” She was so full of agitation, I put a hand on her arm to calm her.
“Trust me,” I said gently, not sure what it was I pledged myself to do or not to do. Then I made a motion of my head toward the clothes and she nodded. In silence we gathered and folded and stacked. She helped me carry back the baskets till we were within sight of the clearing. Then she set hers down and ran off, vanishing like a deer into the trees.
When I returned to my shelter it was almost dark. I had delayed as long as I could. Light streamed out at me through the lattice of branches, so clearly someone was there before me. I entered, fearing, of course, that it was Rishka. To my surprise I saw her lying on my mat, stripped naked, legs slightly spread, arms at her sides. Her face was a wooden mask, her eyes dark pits as if they had sunk into her head. “Have your will with me and get it done with,” she said in a cold, dead voice almost before I had stepped through the entrance. “Since this is the price of having my speech returned I will survive whatever you choose to do. Worse has already been done than you can possibly invent.”
I stared at her, puzzled and then incredulous and finally with horror. When at last the full import of her words came home to me, I flushed deeply, a painful heat rising from the back of my neck into my face. “Oh no! We do not...” I stammered, “I do not... This was not what Alyeeta meant...”
“I have no wish to give offense, only to say that I accept my lot. After all, I let myself be humbled by Alyeeta’s silencing and have been given over into your hands. Now that I am in your power I assume you will use me at your will. I have not, after all, been very kind to you.”
I was shaking my head wildly. Now I better understood Zari’s fears. Hers must be a culture that used sex as punishment. Rishka went on in that voice that chilled me to my soul, “There is no more will left in me to fight. I have fought all my life and have been beaten for it over and over. Suddenly today I thought, why? And to what end? What use? What is it all for? Let them do what they will with me. If this is the price of staying with the tribe, then I submit myself to you. After all, what can you do to me that has not already been done and worse. So let us get on with it. I am not an untouched child.”
I looked at her lying there, waiting for her fate at my hands. I thought of how often, when she mocked and tormented me, I had wished her helpless. Now she lay before me, more helpless than I could possibly have imagined, ready to submit to whatever cruelty I could invent, yet it gave me no pleasure. In fact, the flat, dead tone of her voice pained me more than all her cutting words.
My own past resolves of vengeance melted away. I saw Zari’s lovely, stricken face before me and began to shake, hardly able to stand on my own feet. As she saw me swaying, Rishka moved over on the mat. My knees gave way. I fell flat out next to her and began to cry. This was something she had never seen me do, no matter how she had tormented me, though I know she had often reduced others to tears.
I cried and cried, cried as if to end all crying, cried for myself and for Kara and even for Rishka, who thought I meant to rape her, and for her unknown lover whose life had been cut away by swords, and for little Zari who knew too much, and for Pell and Tamara, kept apart by the Zarn’s war. I wept for all of us at that moment, even Renaise, even Telakeet,who was so bitter and had lost so much.
After awhile Rishka put her hand on me to stop me or to comfort me. Gradually my crying eased. I turned to her and slowly put my arms around her, saying gently, “I have not been set up as your master, only assigned as a guide. I want nothing from you and wish you no harm.” She lay in my arms, stiff and passive, not resisting my embrace nor yet yielding to it. For awhile I stroked her hair and her arms, very careful not to touch her back. Softly I said her name over and over, to bring her back from that cold, dead place where she had gone. In just such a way I had once held a fawn in my arms while it died of an arrow. This went on for so long with no change that I thought she had fallen asleep. Then, suddenly, a great shudder passed through her whole body. Sobs came after that, great, violent, wracking sobs that seemed to well up from some unimaginable depth. Soon she began to throw her body about, crying as if those wild sounds were torn from her throat by torture. I struggled to hold her, fearing she might do herself some harm, but she seemed to have no knowledge of me or of the shelter or even of her own body and how it moved. Sometimes she cried out as she thrashed, shouting, “No, no, leave me be!” and then, “Never, never, no matter what you do!” Once she screamed and tried to bite me. Through it all I held on with no sense of time, no memory of any other place. At last she began to still. Finally her crying ceased, and she slowly came back to herself.
I thought she would strike out at me then. Instead, she looked at me with surprise, her eyes all swollen, gone soft and out of focus. Tentatively, she reached out her fingers and gently touched my face. Very moved, I responded in kind. After that she made a slight motion and I made another in return and so it went till soon, to my great surprise, we were touching in the manner of lovers. Not the brutal rape Rishka had pictured, no, nothing like that, nothing even hard or passionate, but slowly, all slowly and tentatively, trading a touch for a touch, and then waiting and the
n another touch. We were sending careful signals to each other and receiving them back and maybe hesitating or maybe sending back something a little stronger, a little firmer, and then waiting again. In this way we moved toward each other slowly, ever so slowly, but building, moving, drawing energy, swelling and rising until just as night turned toward morning, we both reached release together in a great shuddering cry that must have wakened half the camp.
***
Of course, things were not to be so easily mended between us, nor a lasting peace made. For the next few days Rishka followed me around, dutifully doing as I told her. Zari followed Rishka even more closely than before, giving me puzzled looks that were a mix of gratitude and envy, as if Rishka and I were truly lovers. For that time, at least, Rishka was contrite, being carefully polite to others and avoiding Alyeeta altogether. Then her spirit began to rise. She could not resist sharpening her tongue on me again. Fired with passion, I learned to answer her in kind. It was during that time that we really became lovers, though it was never again to be kind and gentle—far from it. It was like a sword fight, all flashing edges. I had found someone who could meet my bitterness and grief with rage and no pretense of love. I threw myself over and over against her hardness with a kind of twisted joy. It satisfied my demons, fed them, and made them grow so that with each passing day, I myself became more and more like Rishka. I even gloried in it. I saw Alyeeta watching with concern and flaunted our passion before her. I can say “our”, for it was clear to me that Rishka met my furies with her own and had the same hard joy in our coming together.
At last Alyeeta summoned me to her shelter, as I knew sooner or later she must. I was ready with a whole stock of clever, cutting words and asked defiantly, “Are you angry with me for my Muinyairin lover? You were the one who sent her to me.”
“Yes, in truth I was, and I have come to regret it as all things done in anger are sooner or later to be regretted. I only meant for you to tame her a little, not to fall prey to her madness yourself. But how can I be angry at you, Little One? I am an old, old woman and you are very young. How can I begrudge you your youthful passions? I only love you. I do not own you.
“You are a great gift in my life, Tazzi, one I could not have hoped for or imagined. Who would dream that Alyeeta the Witch could have learned to love a human, and at my age. No, no, child, I am not angry with you, only glad for your existence and a little fearful for you at this moment. As to Rishka, if you could love her past some part of her bitterness, it would be a blessing. As she is now, she is of little use but for making trouble. Instead, I fear you yourself have become infected with her sickness. It is a dangerous business. Take care of your heart, Dear One. Protect yourself. It could all turn on you in a moment.”
I was not sure what she meant by that warning, but I found myself being gently kissed and firmly escorted out through the hanging ivy before I could gather an answer. I had come to play a good, rousing game of knives or cudgels and had been disarmed of my anger right from the start. Later I thought Alyeeta must have carefully planned it so.
After that I wandered in a daze through the clearing where others seemed so busy, till Pell came up and took my arm. “Tazzi, I need to speak with you in private for a moment,” she said in a low voice.
“So do you also want to warn me to cease my evil ways?” I asked mockingly.
“No, only to speak for myself and say my own truth. It might be better to go where there are not other ears.”
“This will do well enough,” I said, stopping deliberately in the way, where others had to step around us in order to pass by.
“Very well, if you wish it so,” Pell said coolly. She looked at me silently for a moment, as if trying to gather the words, then spoke quickly. “I only need to say that your bed grows too complicated and too crowded for me. I need that part of my life to be simple. Right now the rest of it is hard enough.”
“It seems you have your own complications,” I flung back at her. “I have seen Renaise in and out of your shelter often enough.”
“What you think about Renaise and me is true, but at least I am not such a fool as to sleep with someone I am in love with.”
I recoiled from this verbal blow that hurt all the more for having been unintended. Pell looked stricken as the meaning of her own words came home to her. “You warned me,” I said softly. “You warned me many times.”
“Sometimes no warning is enough. Sometimes I tell myself that I should take no pleasure till all this is over, but I have tried and it is too hard. Goddess hear me, this is a lonely piece of work, even in the middle of this crowd.” She shook her head. “Sorry, Tazzi, I knew of no gentle way to tell you.”
I shrugged and turned away. Women were looking at us curiously as they passed. As I watched Pell walk away, I thought that I had never seen her try to do a deliberate unkindness, nor had I ever seen her take one single step out of her way to avoid doing one.
Of course, I felt some hurt from this rejection and quickly added it to my already full store of hurts. But in truth, my body burned so for Rishka that there was scarcely room for any other feeling. And in all honesty, I was no more in love with Pell than she was with me. She was my captain, my leader, my chief. I would follow her anywhere, even at risk to my life. Besides that, I think we were even beginning to be friends and comrades, at least in as much as Pell was capable of being friends with anyone at that time. But we had never been passionate lovers. At moments, of course, I had had my illusions. Yet underneath I knew it had always been a thing of the flesh only, something that left me more lonely than satisfied when it was over. And in truth I was not in love with Rishka, either. It was only a strange sort of madness. You cannot be in love with a brand that has burned its name into your flesh and will do so again and again.
That evening Renaise sent me down to the spring for water and then sought me out there. Another one today, I thought, as I saw her coming toward me. I had just been settling the jug on my shoulder for the walk back. She came to stand before me, hands on her hips. “Do you perhaps have some time to talk?”
“Tell me if this is going to take long and I will set down my jug.”
“I hear that Pell has finally put you out of her bed. No wonder, since you are making such a scene of yourself all over camp with that ‘wild thing.’ She should have done it sooner.” Her tone was full of contempt and mockery. She even had a sort of gloating look on her face.
I did not respond in kind. I merely nodded, swung the jug off my shoulder to rest between my feet, and said quietly, “What you hear is true, Renaise.” Whatever her feelings toward me, I had made my own peace with Renaise. It had happened while waiting through those long, hard nights so filled with guilt and anxiety when I wanted nothing more than her safe return.
She looked at me in surprise, having no doubt expected a sharp retort. Instead, I said flatly and with no forethought, “The truth is, as long as this strange war goes on, it matters little to Pell who fills her bed, only that it be someone.”
Instantly I saw from her face that, as Pell had done with me, I had given Renaise far more hurt with my thoughtless honesty than if I had spoken words whose sole intent was to cause pain. I quickly put out my hand. “Sorry, Renaise. You may not believe me, but I did not mean to hurt you. I only spoke a simple truth that both of us have had to live with. Perhaps we should do as Pell says, make peace among ourselves and suspend our small war till the larger one is over. Later we can fight again if we need to.”
She looked at my hand a long time, then said thoughtfully, “I have always been jealous of you, Tazzi. You seemed to have so much power and I so little. Also, it frightened me that you were a healer. I thought only Witches were healers and I was afraid of Witches. But most of all I saw how Pell favored you. And what was I? Nothing but a serving-girl.”
“I have also been jealous of you and not kind,” I said, reaching for her hand. “Peace, Sister.”
She hesitated a moment longer, then, very slowly, laid her hand in
mine. “Peace, then. I suppose it is only a truth you spoke that Pell can love no one till this is over. Still, it hurt. I cannot help what I feel for her and will share her bed for as long as she will let me. Perhaps sometime we could...you could...I would not mind if...” She stopped, blushing deeply and stammering with embarrassment, but I could easily read her thoughts.
I shook my head, touched by her offer and struggling not to laugh. It was no doubt the most generous offer anyone had ever made me, and probably the funniest. I knew it had not been easy for her to say even that much. “No, no, it is all for the best,” I said quickly. “Alyeeta and Rishka are all I can handle—more, in fact.” I did not tell her that Pell already had one she truly loved. If she chose not to know of Tamara’s place in Pell’s heart, she would not learn of it from me. My careless words had already been cruel enough. In the end we walked back up to the camp kitchen in companionable silence, trading the weight of the full jug back and forth between us.
After that I saw Renaise differently. Whether she had really changed or my way of looking at her had changed or both I will never know, but from then on we were friends of a sort. It pleases me to write of this, for I think the only sane and decent thing I did during that time of madness over Rishka was to deal honorably with Renaise. Later, that was to serve us both well.
Life went on, death threatened, but whatever else was happening out there in the world, whatever endangered our lives and our future, Rishka and I continued whirling round and round each other in that wild dance that was love and that was not love, that was madness, that was obsession, that was closer, perhaps, to hate. I could have thought it to be a spell laid on us or a compulsion, had I not known how much the Witches themselves all opposed our being together. They would have been only too glad to unspell us if they could have. Each one of them had spoken to me in her own way, and to Rishka also. For the most part we brought out the very worst in each other, not the best. We were like two boulders that had rolled down opposite hills and collided. Crushed and bruised in the encounter, still we were unable to pull ourselves apart.