Storm Bride

by J. S. Bangs

  Saotse stirred. “It was not the Guza.”

  “How do you know?” Nei asked.

  “On the night before the caravan left, I felt the ground quiver and tremble with a strange voice, as if a Power were speaking. But it was a foreign Power, not Azatsi or Prasyala or any of the other Powers whose names I know. Someone else. Someone from elsewhere.”

  Uya quivered with the cold fear rising from her belly. The child inside her seemed to have stilled along with the lodge. “So the Power killed them? There is a new Power on the caravan road that devours men with flame?”

  “No. The Power that I felt was not angry or hungry. It did not seek to destroy men. It was very lonely and very sad.”

  “Then why did it destroy the caravan?” she pressed.

  “Don’t be a superstitious fool,” Nei said. “That is not how the Powers work in the world.”

  Uya’s cheeks burned, and she felt the stares of the other aunts on her. They were all content to remain silent. But Uya had questions, and she didn’t care if they called her superstitious. “But—”

  Nei answered before Saotse could. “Saotse said only that a new Power is present. We need to discover what this means and what it has to do with the caravan.” She added in a quiet, creaky voice, “And we need to mourn.”

  Silence resumed in the lodge.

  “I’m sorry, Eldest,” Jeoa said again.

  Nei tsked. “Bring our report to the Eldest of your enna. I will visit her later and convey our thanks.”

  “Thank you again.” He passed the gathered women, avoiding their eyes, and slipped out the door.

  A mournful sigh filled the still air of the lodge. Uya bit her lip to keep silent. Nei descended from the Eldest’s seat with a rustle of furs and the creak of skin on wood. One of her hands closed over Saotse’s.

  “My children,” she said. “Oh, my children.”

  A sob broke through the silence from somewhere to the right. Uya tried to stave off the weeping, because once she began, she thought she would never stop. But the baby kicked in her stomach, and the bitter irony of it set a shower of tears loose like dew shaken off a branch. Uya’s mother clasped her hands on her shoulders until she regained herself and looked up.

  Nei was watching Uya with her head lifted high, trembling slightly, as if she might fall at any moment. “At sunset we will begin to sing the dead into the west. Prepare yourselves.”

  The sun dropped into the sea. There was silence around the enna, save for the lapping of the seawater on the shore.

  Nei came to Uya with the beam of burnt ash. She paused, putting her wrinkled hand on Uya’s belly, then kissed Uya’s cheek. They hesitated for a moment with their faces touching. Then she smudged Uya on the forehead and signed both of her rouged cheeks.

  Chrasu was the last one to be marked for mourning. When Nei had finished, she moved to the center of the circle of the enna and sat. She took up a small white drum and began to beat a slow, irregular beat.

  For a long moment, there was no sound but the pattering of the drum.

  I don’t want to be here. Uya knew what was coming, had been through many other funerals with the enna, but this time it seemed too much to bear. Rada, my father, my uncles. One dead was enough to fill the enna with mourning for a year, and handling them all felt like drowning.

  Nei began with a quiet, throaty ululation. Uya hadn’t heard that sound since they buried her uncle twenty years ago. She had forgotten how it sounded—or perhaps it hadn’t been quite so doleful then. Nei mourned Asa, her husband, now. Her song was a quavering, wordless wail, rising and falling with drunken imprecision, growing suddenly loud then feebly draining away.

  The sun dimmed in the west.

  One by one, the other women of the enna took up the song. A few of them used words, but most simply wailed with the same wordless agony that Nei had expressed. Chrasu began to sing. Saotse did not, but her lips twitched in silent agreement.

  Uya held back. She did not want to join the mourning. Her composure was at the edge of a chasm, and she felt as if a sea’s worth of grief were welling up from her stomach and trying to break through her chest. They would sing this song for a year, never letting the drum go silent or the mourning cease all that time. Her child would be born with the sound of sorrow in the lodge. She didn’t want it to start. Once she started, it would go on and on, the whole sea of grief breaking through her ribs and drowning all of them in the flood.

  She wanted to believe that Rada would come back. She wanted to believe that her uncles and grandfather would come back. She didn’t want to believe that they had all died in some ravine—

  And it broke out of her like a wave crashing against the shore. Her wail was high and piercing, almost a scream, until it tumbled into the murmuring pool of the enna’s grief. She had no words. The matrix syllables heia haoa fell from her mouth like rocks, and she lost herself.

  The sun drowned in the west, and the stars came out. A cold wind blew in off the sea.

  At some point during the night, the drum passed into her hands, and she drummed until her fingers were numb. The drum passed to someone else. She drank a little water. She sang more. The fervor of the song waned, then flared up again when someone let forth a fresh wail.

  Some of the aunts began to chant the names of their sons and husbands, recounting their names or favored memories. Uya said nothing about Rada. What would she say? Their marriage was young, and she had only a little affection for him. But none of that mattered. He was her husband, and the father of her child, and now he was gone. She wailed again.

  The sun began to brighten the east. Chrasu had fallen asleep beside her, but Saotse and the rest of the women were still awake. A few of them had stopped singing, but there were never less than a half-dozen voices trembling with sadness. The drum passed to Nei. The Eldest rose to her feet, beating more slowly now, and began to walk into the lodge. The enna followed her, singing.

  The wood of the entrance creaked under their feet as the women ducked through the door and drifted to their places. Nei settled in the Eldest’s seat and continued to drum. An aunt knelt and began to blow on the banked fire. The sound of mourning echoed in the rafters of the lodge. Uya found a bench that could support her belly and pulled it next to the fire, crooning softly.

  Oire’s hand touched her shoulder. “Go. Sleep,” she said. “Go with Saotse.”

  “What’s wrong with Saotse?”

  “Nothing except the weakness of age. The night was hard for her. You should sleep.”

  Uya looked into the flames beginning to flicker in the fire ring. Having started the mourning, it seemed too soon to stop. She had barely begun to drain the ocean of sadness from her heart. “I want to stay.”

  Oire shook her head. “This is just the first day of mourning. You will have plenty of time later.”

  Uya relented. Saotse knelt behind her, and Uya took her hand and led her to the women’s side of the lodge, where they both dropped into beds and slept.

  The drum was the lodge’s heartbeat. It stuttered all through the night and battered against the sunrise, underlining the daylight with dolor. Uya took it when her turn came and spent her hours by the fire, chanting softly the names of the dead, then lapsing into a murmur of heia haoa. Hours creaked by. She played beneath the ancestor totems until someone took the instrument from her hands.

  Days dribbled past. She slept too much. She did not measure the time in sunrises but in her rounds with the drum, and she almost forgot how to speak except in chant. The drum was a refuge. Playing and singing the dead into the west, she forgot that her child would be born without father or grandfather, except for when the baby kicked and reminded her that it still lived. When she stopped, sadness enveloped her like a winter fog rising from the sea. Her limbs felt heavy and clumsy, as if she had swam too long in cold water. She could not think.

  There came a brig
ht day when Uya rose from her hammock and came to the fire that burned before the ancestors. Her back ached from too many days sitting in the lodge and lying down, and her belly seemed to have gotten larger in the meantime. Were her feet always so swollen? She needed to move.

  Saotse pattered on the drum and chanted, and Nei sat next to her with her eyes closed, swaying gently.

  “Where is everybody?” Uya whispered.

  Nei opened her eyes. “The Prasada called them into town.”

  “Why?”

  “Do you really not know? Haven’t you heard a word that’s been said these past days?”

  “I haven’t paid much attention to the rest of the lodge’s whispers. Aren’t we all supposed to be mourning?”

  Nei considered her words for a moment. “Yes, but the sun rises regardless. You’ve done more than your share of singing away the dead. You should let others take their turns with the drum more often. As for your question, there is an earthworks being built at the north perimeter of the city.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Nei sighed. “The raiders are coming. The Prasada has ordered all of the ennas to help build earthworks around the perimeter of the city to defend it. Yesterday the Eldest of every enna assembled to determine the contributions of food and labor for the next ten days.”

  Uya had overheard fragments of talk about raiders destroying farms and plundering caravans on the high roads, and hadn’t Saotse said something about strange Powers? But she had amalgamated these into an image of demons devouring the caravan and tearing apart the unlucky that crossed their paths. It had not occurred to her that they might move with a purpose, that they might threaten the city. She wanted to ask Nei if they were men and not spirits, but Nei would just berate her for being superstitious, the way she always berated Chrasu. Instead she said, “Then I will go see the earthworks.”

  “Why would you want to see the earthworks?”

  “So that when the raiders are driven back, I will know where to stand so I can spit on the bodies of the men who killed my husband.”

  “That’s not a seemly attitude for a woman with child.”

  “Should I scrub my face with ash and mourn for another month? Oarsa hear me, I’m going into the city, and I am going to see the earthworks.”

  With a strike like a heron, Nei slapped Uya’s cheek. “You be careful with your oaths. One day you’re going to wake up and find that your words are a thorn in your heel.”

  Uya’s cheek stung, and her hand drifted up to cover it. “Yes, Eldest.” She hesitated a moment before adding, “But may I go?”

  “Go. Your mother is at the Prasada’s lodge taking inventory for the construction, but she can rouge you. And take Saotse with you.”

  Saotse stirred. Her song faltered. “Why are you sending me away?”

  “I’m not sending you away. You, too, have mourned more than your share. Go. I’ll maintain the song.” She pulled the drum from Saotse’s hands.

  Saotse rose to her feet with a groan. “Uya? Give me your hand. You can tell me what it looks like when we arrive, I suppose.”

  Uya stretched her hand out, Saotse took it, and they set out for the center of Prasa.

  The enna’s lodge hid in a pocket of firs with the sea to their west, part of a district of well-spaced, stately lodges on the south shore of the river. Bands of piny woodland separated each of the lodges in their district, though a footpath ran through the woods and past the doors of their nearest neighbors before joining the south road into the city. Uya walked quickly, but Saotse’s hesitant gait held her back. Saotse was so confident on the paths around the lodge itself, but the moment anyone took her past the enna’s holdings, she became as shy and cautious as a rabbit. Uya nearly scolded her, but seeing the pained look on Saotse’s face, she held her tongue.

  Half an hour later, they had left the grand, private lodges on the southern fringe of the city and come to the crowded, muddy district that crouched on the south shore of the River Prasa. These were the fishing ennas, and they built their lodges close to the river and lined up long rows of unpainted canoes on the shore. Their ancestor totems were grubby and ill painted. Uya usually pinched her nose at the miasma of humans and horses and fish guts that muddled the streets here, though today the paths between the greasy lodges were nearly deserted. “There’s no one here,” she muttered, just loud enough for Saotse to hear.

  “I hear two old women gossiping and a girl addressing her doll,” Saotse said. “There are no ponies or men anywhere. They’ve all gone up to the earthworks.”

  Uya couldn’t hear anything other than their footsteps in the mud, but she could see the lack of animals. “Really?” she said. “All of them, just for a little mound of dirt?”

  “From what I hear, the mound of dirt is anything but little.”

  They came to the bridge, the only passage over the River Prasa, built where the main trade road running north from Kendilar met the river. It was practical and unlovely, long cedar slats tied together with bronze, lying across stone piles built up on the river bed. Most of the city proper was on the north side of the river, and Uya much preferred the clean, tidy lodges that ringed the city’s core to the grubby south shore. The lodges here were spaced farther apart and left a few spruces between them, and their ancestor totems were tall and painted turquoise, carmine, and white. Nei always told her not to be so judgmental, but she didn’t see any excuse for the mess that the fishing ennas made of the south shore.

  They approached the center of the city where the Prasada’s lodge lay. This was the market district, where women traded bales of dried kelp, casks of salted salmon, mother-of-pearl, polished turquoise, whale ivory, vast buffalo hides from beyond the Gap, the hammered silver of Kendilar, and boxes of dried lemons and spices from Tsingris. The streets should have been noisy with travel. But Uya saw only a few women hurrying along with their heads down. The stone pavement before the Prasada’s lodge was nearly bare. The Prasada’s raccoon and heron totems seemed to look down on the space with menace.

  In all her life, Una had never seen the market when it was anything but brimming with buyers and sellers, and the sight of it still and dead portended doom.

  A small crowd of women sat in the shadows of the Prasada’s lodge. Oire was among them, a plank of cedar balanced on her lap and a reed pen in her hand. Her face was smudged with white ash. Uya called quietly, “Mother!”

  Oire looked up. “Uya, what are you doing here? And Saotse with you…”

  “I came into the city.”

  “Why aren’t you rouged? You left Nei alone with the drum, and you—”

  “Mother! Nei told me to come and for you to mark us. Besides, it’s not as if there’s any doubt about my condition.”

  Oire pursed her lips in disapproval and looked at Uya’s belly, but Uya thought she saw a shadow of pleasure in it. “Fine.” She set the plank of cedar aside with her birch-bark page, then she bent and withdrew two small clay jars from the basket behind her. “And what if I hadn’t brought the colors with me?” she muttered.

  “I suppose you’ll have to take that up with the Eldest.”

  Oire looked at Saotse. “And you? Why did you come?”

  “I have not been to the earthworks,” she said in a small voice.

  “Well, I suppose if Nei let you.” She opened the jar of white ash, dipped her first three fingers in it, and drew matching white stripes down both cheeks on both Uya and Saotse. Then she dipped her thumb in the jar of oily carmine and drew twin red suns on Uya’s cheeks.

  “There. I hope I don’t hear anything about my daughter’s disrespect for the dead.”

  “If I disrespected the dead,” Uya said, “then why haven’t I left the enna for a month?”

  Oire wiped her fingers clean on the edge of her skirt. “If you want to see the earthworks, take any of the north paths. The battlements encompass the
whole north side of town.”

  “Thank you,” Uya said. She grabbed Saotse’s hand and began walking north.

  The cold, empty feeling of the city gradually thawed as Uya and Saotse began to encounter people on the path. There were men carrying shovels and spades and canteens of mare’s milk, and clusters of young men holding hands. A young woman led a pair of ponies ahead of them, and she glanced back at Uya’s white-and-red cheeks and pumpkin-shaped belly and shook her head in pity. Uya felt a twinge of self-consciousness. The white of mourning and the red of childbearing were not meant to mingle on the same cheek, though she had managed to forget that since she had left the lodge.

  “I smell dirt that’s been overturned by a spade,” Saotse said. “And I hear—”

  “Oarsa’s foam.” Uya finally spotted the earthworks and dropped Saotse’s hand in awe.

  She had imagined something reasonable, something small, something else. Something like the little dike that separated some of the riverside enna lodges from the overflow of the river. But this was a wall. The construction was incomplete but already impressive: a stack of four earthen terraces, each the height of a man, reinforced with stone and retained by walls of pine logs, with more earth dug out from inside the city to raise the height of the ravine. One could hide an entire lodge in the interior of the mound and pass a river through the ditch that had been dug inside the city. The structure crawled with men, from boys to gray-headed Eldest, with young women scampering along the outside to carry baskets and relay instructions and pack clay into the crevices between logs.

  So this was why the entire city seemed to be deserted. Nei had said that the Prasada had called up help from the ennas, and Uya realized that this meant every man from every enna, and a good portion of the women, besides. The city felt empty because every hand in it was hard at work.

  Saotse squeezed her hand. “What do you see?”

  “Something amazing. And terrible, and troubling. I don’t understand what’s going on. Why didn’t anyone tell me? Can you—”