The Birthgrave

by Tanith Lee

  It ebbed at last. I showed them my palm, outward, my own demand for privacy, and they shrank away, their voices singing. Into the priest’s room I went, and threw the screen close against the door, and here I screamed and beat my hands against the stone walls until they bled and every nail was broken. How like a prison the room seemed to me, and, even then, I did not realize why.

  3

  Three days I lay in the room, not eating what they left for me at the temple door, often sleeping, dreaming sometimes, my eyes wide white jewels behind the mask which I must never take from my face until the Jade lay cool between my fingers.

  On the fourth day, there was a hum outside like bees. I went out then, and found a vast crowd of strangers eddying in the street. As I came there, there came also a concentration and congealing. Soon it was no longer many, but one single thing which waited there for me. For miles around, from every ruined village, farm, town, and steading, they had flocked to me, bringing their sores and burns, entreating my blessing. I, the Goddess of Death, who had justly sent the wrath of the volcano against them for their wickedness, would help them now to make better their lives, that they might serve my shrine.

  I touched them and they healed. And then there were more, new faces and sores, and these I healed too.

  When the streets were empty, and the steps empty of all but their gifts, I went in and lay down to sleep again, until eventually the noise would call me up once more. It was like a poisonous wound, from which the pus must be eased, but in which the pus reformed, gradually, after each easing, until at last it must be eased again.

  Then came a long time, five dawns, five twilights, when there was no sound. I lay still, listening, my eyes wide. I lay, like an insect in chrysalis, awaiting some wrenching calamity to break my cocoon, and turn me out, half-formed. I was still not a living creature. I was a sleeping silent thing, without substance or true life.

  Then life came, but wrongly, not as I would have wanted, if ever I had been allowed to plan.

  There was a great crash of sound: something thrown aside at the temple door, the gifts of untouched food, perhaps. There were steps, brutal, tearing the quiet of the place. I heard and smelled unfear. No terror in this one who sought me, only a raw, uneasy anger.

  “Come out, you she-beast!” a man’s voice shouted.

  It seemed to burst the temple walls, and break inside my head in brass pieces, that voice which had no fear, the first human voice that had no fear of me.

  I got up, summoned irresistibly. I stood by the screen, and already my heart was moving, pounding as it had when I fled from the volcano, although now I ran toward the fire, and not away.

  Then the great hand of the voice was on the screen, and the screen was thrown aside, little bits of the lattice snapping against the floor. He was ready to seize me next, fling me aside, my little bones snapping like the ivory. But he was still. No fear perhaps, but ingrained superstition. They had worshiped the She-One, each from birth, and now he seemed to see her here—red robe, white hair, like the red-hot, white-hot spew of the mountain, and the mask, so terrible because it said nothing but “I am here.”

  Under the deep tan of endless sun, his face paled slightly. His lips drew back from tiger-teeth, wolf-teeth, snarling white. He was so much larger than I, taller, great bones, a big spare frame, beautiful and alien in its masculinity. Yet our looks seemed level. Long curling black hair ran down from his head to his shoulders like the black wool of a ram. He wore no mask but his face shook me through and through in a way I could hardly bear, for this face, this seen face, was the face in my dream—long, male, with high-set, narrow, black-chip eyes.

  He cleared his throat. His tongue darted on his lips to moisten them, and we stood, each one half in the other’s power, and my sex stirred in me, and woman stirred in me, and an ancient humanity I had not known was mine.

  And then he made himself move. His hand closed on my shoulder, hurting and immediate. In the other hand came a dull, sharp hunting knife.

  “Well, bitch, and who are you?”

  I said nothing. I looked at him, drinking him to quench the surge of life burning up in me, which was not quenched but only burned the brighter.

  “You don’t make me quake, bitch. Some healer-witch from a cave in the mountain, eh? Come to live off their charity because they’re fools and afraid?” His hand reached into my hair and pulled it hard. “Hair of an old woman, but not the body of one. And your face, behind this mask—what?”

  His dislike washed over me, his contempt curdled in the pit of my belly, and if this was all I was to have of him, then I made it welcome. But his fingers touched the hook of the mask, and I recalled my face—the face Karrakaz had given me. I pulled back. I put up my hand, palm flat against his chest.

  “To see my face is death to you,” I said.

  His skin burned against my palm; I felt the heartbeat start up under my touch. He ripped my hand away from him, took a step back.

  “Very well, healer-woman, hide your plain little looks. And stay here if you want. But no more food, and no more worship. If you want bread, you can work for it. Help us build their homes again, help us salvage what we can in the fields. Help their women give birth to replace what the mountain took from them. Otherwise, starve.”

  He turned to go.

  I said: “You who were not here when the fire came, where were you then? On the far road, bandit, killing for gold and food. That then was your work. Out of the place that birthed you, without a care for it until the light of the red lava brought you back, hard with your guilt, and cruel with your shame.”

  I did not know how the words came, or why, till I had spoken, but he looked around at me again, and his face was white now, the rims of his eyes red, and his nostrils flared on anger and pain, and I knew I had read him accurately and to the last letter.

  “So someone whispered to you of Darak, the Gold-Fisher. Don’t mouth it at me and think you can scare me with it. I’ve told you what’s for you, and there’s the end of it.”

  He went from the temple with great strides, his hands clenched, and now I knew my prison very well.

  * * *

  Now I could go.

  I was free. No more gifts to me of food, and no more entreaties. He had stopped all that. There was activity and work outside. Once there was screaming, and the noise of things falling just beyond the temple door—some women daring to go against his order.

  I had not eaten now for nine days, and felt no hunger, or any particular weakness.

  I could steal out by night, to be sure no one would see me; I could run across the endless country to the sea, and let them forget their goddess, and let Darak forget her too.

  But now that I could go, I would not go at all. I was chained by the roots of my senses like a bitch-dog to a post.

  How well Karrakaz had trapped me here, and kept me from all knowledge of where I must walk, and what must be done to free myself. First by the need of these people, now by my need. And if all my powers were dead in me as Karrakaz had said, how had I healed? How? Or had they healed themselves by their own belief in me? It was their hands which had snatched mine. And I seemed to remember a book with an open page:

  “Master,” cried the woman, “heal me, for I am sick as you see.” And he said: “Do you believe that I can do this thing?” And the woman wept and said: “Yes, if you will.” “Then, as you believe, so be it,” he said, and went away, not even touching her. And she was healed at once.

  The tenth day. Outside: noise, hammering, shouting, sound of moving logs of wood, a work-gang singing. At midday a bell beating to summon who would to a communal meal. Darak and his men had organized things very well it seemed.

  Then a great crunching of feet, laughter, voices. After that, quiet. A vast, warm noonday quiet, and a slow, still yellow heat.

  I crossed the floor to the doorway of the temple, and stood there.
The village was a different thing, caged in places by scaffolding, here and there rebuilt and half-patched with tiles. Far up the street a rough wooden shelter, a brass bell—pulled from some temple roof presumably—swinging a little on a pole outside. A cow wandered lazily in the sunshine. Otherwise, the place was empty. Darak had called them to some council then, on the low hill beyond the houses. Yes, that would be it. A little king on a little throne, lording it because his subjects were smaller even than his smallness.

  My eyes slid to the volcano. Dark pinnacle, without a cloud. Asleep again, sated, terrible for all that. A black two-edged sword waiting in the sky, to let fall its red blows on the back of the land, whenever its passion moved it. There then, is the king, Darak.

  A darting movement, snake’s-tongue flicker over rock.

  A woman hurried across the open space before the temple, casting an indigo shadow. A man stirred uneasily in a doorway, holding a stave, looking up the road to where the people had followed Darak.

  “Help us!” cried this woman. “Our three children are sick, and the doctor from Sirrain has said they’ll die. I couldn’t bring them—they screamed when I tried to move them.”

  I looked at her closely. She was no more than twenty years. Perhaps I was her age. But she looked old, her young face creased into lines, her hair faded by the sun.

  “Quickly, Mara,” the man hissed from across the street.

  “Please,” she said.

  “Do you believe the goddess can cure your children without seeing them?”

  “Yes—oh, yes—”

  “Then believe I can, and they will be cured.”

  Her face changed, the lines smoothed out, ripples running from a pool.

  There was noise from the hill.

  “Mara!” the man cried.

  She turned to run with him.

  “Wait,” I said. They stopped, nervous, anxious not to offend either Darak or myself. “Tell whom you wish,” I said, “whoever invokes my name, believing in it, can cure or be cured of any sickness. There is no longer any need to come to me.”

  They made obeisance to me, blessing me, then ran like frightened mice.

  Dust billowed down the street. The crowd was coming back, noisier than ever. There had been wine up on the hill. A small shrine there, perhaps, some old sacred meeting place Darak had thought would impress them.

  There was a stone bench set at the top of the temple steps. I sat on it, waiting.

  The cow ran down the street first in fright, lowing indignantly. Then came men, talking, impatient, grasping wineskins, followed by groups of women. Darak’s people were easily spotted. They were better dressed than the villagers, and more gaudy. Leather boots with tattered silk tassels, silk shirts, scarlet and purple. Belts with iron studs, gold rings, fringes on the jackets—torn like the tassels, not so much from wear as from hard fighting. Mostly they were men, but five or six girls slithered by with them, dressed like them for the most part, but with several ounces more gold around their necks, fantastic earrings, and jet-black hair, roped through with ribbons and flowers. This seemed enough. I wanted to go in, almost drunk from the sight of them, but I waited for him as I had known I would. When he came he was thoughtful, discontented, sullen. Whatever he had sought on the hill had not come to him.

  More quietly dressed than the others, the two girls, one on either side of him, made up for it. They were incongruous. Their hair was a kind of parody of a court woman’s—elaborate, but too unruly to be kept in place. It stood up on their heads in hills, in plaited ropes, in twists and loops, transfixed by the blades of gold combs and jasper pins. The one nearest to me had wound pearls in and out like a pale snake trail. Strands had unfurled onto their shoulders where they tangled in the masses of goldwork. Their dresses were silk, one crimson, one black and yellow, and under the fringed and embroidered hems were the boots of bandit-bitches, covered with muck and filth and dust.

  My eyes were moving away from them to Darak, impatient. No one had seen me yet as I sat in the shadow of the door-mouth. Then I saw what hung from the throat of that pearl-haired, crimson girl. A tiny green and cool shining thing on a gold ring and chain. Jade.

  I got up before I could think, my hand went out, and I shouted at her.

  The whole procession stopped, stumbled around, stared at me. I did not see their expressions, only sensed them, my eyes pinned to that green cool thing between her brown bitch’s breasts.

  There was silence, and then he said: “Bow to your goddess, people. Ask her to do a few tricks for you to earn her bread.”

  It was very still then. The hot raw day hung close. I did not look at his face, only at the face of the girl with the jade. She grinned, raised her eyebrows, one after the other, then spat on the ground before the steps. But her eyes were tight.

  I went down the steps very slowly, and I was trembling. I stood a few feet from her, and pointed to the green thing without speaking.

  She laughed, and spat again. Then looked at Darak.

  “What is it you want, witch? You can’t eat a green hard stone.”

  “Give it to me,” I said to the bandit girl.

  She made her fear into anger.

  “Keep off. It isn’t yours. It’s mine. He gave it to me.”

  “Not yours. He stole it. Mine now. Give it to me.”

  In spite of herself, the girl shrank away, back against his body.

  “In our camp,” Darak said softly, “if one of us wants something from another, we fight for it. For food, or gold, or a knife, or a woman. Or a man. Shullatt here fought for me. And I took her. You want the green stone, you can fight her too. Shullatt’s not afraid.”

  Shullatt’s eyes altered. Her courage was back. She was on her own ground again. Another moment and she would have me under her, her cat claws in my eyes, hammering my breasts with her hard elbows. I would rather fight a man than a woman. Another moment—I could not wait. My hand went out. The jade leaped into my fingers. I tugged and the chain broke.

  Like cool water in my palm, the jade lay sleeping but alive.

  Her moment was over, but still she moved. With my other hand I caught her hard and stinging across the whole face. Blood jetted from one nostril as she reeled backward. Darak might have steadied her but did not bother. She went down by his feet and screamed curses at me without getting up.

  Abruptly Darak smiled grimly, set the toe of his boot against the girl’s side, and quite gently kicked her.

  “Be quiet,” he said. “You’ve lost the stone. She fought you for it, in her own way.”

  Someone began crying and shouting. Heads turned. I could not see who it was, but I heard the voice of the woman.

  “She saved my children! The doctor from Sirrain told me they’d die—but they’re alive! She made them live!”

  Darak’s face set hard and contemptuous. He too spat, and turned down the street to a side alley, pushing the crowd out of the way. His bandits shouldered after him, and the girls ran to keep up. The murmuring was growing all around. I went up the steps and into the temple before they could move about me and close me in.

  I pulled the broken screen against the door opening, and lay on the pallet, on my side, my knees drawn up, my hands under my chin, and against my lips the green smooth thing that was made mine, and seemed like a beginning.

  * * *

  Night came and blackened the world, and red stars ripped their places in the sky. I would go tonight, out, across the wide lands. Nothing mattered but the green promise. Even Darak seemed nothing at that dark twilight. But then the need of food came, unexpectedly, and with it nausea at the thought of eating, and the shrinking from the inevitable pain that would come after, and torture and slow me, and keep me from going away. How long had it lasted before? An hour, or two perhaps? Not so bad. I could bear it because I must. But it was ten days now I had not eaten.

  I went out
onto the steps.

  A few lights flickered in open windows, in ruins, in rebuilt rooms, many in the wooden shelter Darak had had put up for the homeless. Food smells from there, thick and musky. I went that way.

  Inside the narrow door fires were burning in stone rings or in iron braziers, and yellow lamps swung overhead. A big carcass was turning on a rough spit, crackling and stinking. The villagers were crowded close as if they liked this nearness to one another. Darak was not there.

  As I went in the accustomed first silence slipped over them. They slid into the grooves of it with stealthy ease. I walked up the center aisle, between the fires and cook-pots. Every bit of food that I passed made me sick, but I found a caldron bubbling in a corner, and the smell of this did not repulse me so much.

  “What is this?” I asked the girl bending over it, poised now, her mouth ajar at the sight of me.

  “Broth,” she stammered, “vegetables—”

  “Will you give me some?”

  She jumped around, beckoned, and a child came running up with a ladle and wooden bowl. Watched by the countless fixed eyes of the people in the shelter, and the swaying gold eyes of the lamps and candles, the girl began to fill the bowl with the ladle, once, twice—

  “Enough,” I said. I took it, and thanked her, and at that moment a big hand knocked the bowl from my grasp, and the girl shrieked.

  “Did Darak not tell you to give no food to the witch, slut?” a voice growled, guttural and menacing.

  The girl took a step back. But the bandit’s interest was no longer centered on her.

  “So, the immortal goddess, who sleeps for centuries under the mountain, still needs to fill her belly, eh? Darak told us you’d come here, and he said, when you came, to take you to him.”

  I looked at the bandit through the eye-holes of the mask. A blank unimpressionable face. He knew their legend even, but had not been reared on it, as Darak had. I had no chance with this one.