A Hero's Tale (7 page)

When at last I lay in Maara's arms that night, I was more than ready to retreat into my woman self. My glimpse into the world of men had frightened me a little. Though I felt no less the privilege of having been included in the day's adventure, their nighttime tales created in my mind a vision of the hunters of the forest people standing on the edge of an abyss into which someday each of them would fall. I too had once stood on the edge of an abyss, before I fell into the Mother's arms, but it seemed that these men would fall into a cold and lonely place. If they knew or thought they knew what fate awaited them, they never said so.

I slept until midmorning, and I might have slept the day away if Maara hadn't brought me breakfast.

"We should check our snares today," she said.

I smiled. Checking our snares was our excuse to spend time together, just the two of us. We did set a few snares, so that we could make a contribution to the village of meat and furs, but oftener than not, we had more than half the day to spend in our hollow tree. There we could speak our own language without being rude and talk of private things. In the village of the forest people, we did as they did and made love at night, hidden by the dark, and they pretended not to hear us, as we pretended not to hear them. In the hollow tree we could make love in the open, in the light.

That day I was glad to find all our snares empty. We arrived at the hollow tree before midday. Maara had brought a thick elk robe for us to lie on. She lit a fire, and while we waited for it to drive off the chill, we huddled close to it and to each other.

"What do they do in Merin's house when an apprentice becomes a warrior?" asked Maara.

I was surprised to discover that I didn't know. There was no public ceremony. One day an apprentice would appear in the great hall with a sword hanging from her belt, carrying a shield that bore her own device.

"I think her warrior presents her with a shield," I said.

"So it's a private thing between warrior and apprentice?"

"I suppose so."

"I believe your shield hangs now in Merin's hall," said Maara. "Unless Vintel took it down."

"You mean the wolf shield?"

She nodded. "Wolf shield, wolf skin. If Tamara he is a hunter of the forest people, then Tamras she must be no less than a warrior in Merin's house." Maara turned to me and gazed into my eyes. "I have no other token to give you, Tamras, Tamnet's daughter."

"Your regard means more to me than any token," I told her.

She smiled. "Then from this day let us be comrades in arms. Your apprenticeship is over."

I nodded, but I accepted her decision with mixed feelings.

Maara touched the frown lines on my brow. "Why does that make you unhappy?"

"My apprenticeship bound us together," I said. "What binds us now?"

With her fingertips she lifted my face to hers and kissed me.

The desire of the body we satisfied too quickly. I wanted to stay longer in that place where I felt our bodies mingle with each other until I knew what she was feeling as intimately as she did herself. Afterwards, as I lay exhausted in her arms, I let my mind ponder the meaning of desire and its fulfillment, as if it were possible to comprehend a mystery.

With pleasure come the things that matter. Could I name them? Trust, of course. Without trust, how could we so entirely unclothe ourselves? Sometimes, as I made love to her, I felt her rise up into me, felt my spirit welcome hers, make room for hers, let her come in where anyone else would have felt to me like an intruder. In my spirit's house, she was welcome everywhere.

I trusted her not to be careless with my heart or with my feelings. I trusted her to understand and to accept what might be broken or imperfect. In some dusty corner there may be things I tossed away, forgotten, things that might once have shamed me. I trusted her with those things too. I trusted her to accept me as she found me and to love me as I was, as I loved her.

Of course I accepted her completely, and everything about her. Her virtues I found admirable and her faults endearing. More than endearing. They filled me with compassion, because I knew their source. And for all these years she'd had so much patience with my faults. She must have loved me for a long time.

That thought startled me and made me wonder.

"When did you begin to love me?" I asked her.

She yawned. "I don't remember."

"When I revealed my love to you, you loved me then."

"Mmmm," she said.

"How long before that?"

"I don't know."

"A long time?"

"Yes," she whispered. "A long time."

"All summer?"

"Longer than that."

"All year?"

"Longer."

I leaned up on one elbow and looked down at her. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"What could I have said?"

"You could have told me about your feelings for me."

"I didn't know if they'd be welcome."

I was beginning to be impatient with her. How could her love for me ever have been unwelcome? "Why would you think that?"

"Because you had a lover."

"No I didn't." Then I remembered. "Oh," I said, and at once I understood what I had done. Without meaning to, I had allowed her to believe that for the second time she loved someone who loved someone else.

"I'm so sorry," I whispered.

"Hush," she said. "It doesn't matter."

"I should have told you about Sparrow long ago."

"It doesn't matter," she said again.

The thought that I had caused her pain was at that moment a cause of great pain to me.

"Of course it matters," I insisted.

"Why?"

"Because I hurt you."

She laughed at that. Then she slipped her arm around my waist and rolled me over onto my back. Her eyes sent a wave of desire through my body and at the same time kept me still, so that I could hear what she was about to tell me.

"Today," she said.

"What?"

"We have today."

"And tomorrow."

"Perhaps."

I opened my mouth to protest that of course we would have tomorrow and many more tomorrows after that, but she kissed me lightly on the lips, then laid her cheek against my cheek and whispered, "Be careful what you say. The gods may hear you."

Something kept me quiet. Instead of brushing her words aside, as I would have liked to do, I let their meaning settle around my heart, until I saw more clearly a side of her that she kept turned away from me. This was how she saw the world. It could take from her in a moment everything she loved. It could deny her anything she wanted. The world had granted almost my every wish, and none more precious to me than this one. The world had granted her only this.

"If I saw the world as you do," I said, "I don't know if I would have the courage to risk my heart."

"Do you doubt that your heart is at risk?"

"I don't think about it," I told her.

"Ah," she sighed against my ear. "It's just as well."

Our conversation ensured that I would think about it. I thought about it as I lay in her arms that afternoon, as I walked home with her that evening, as I sat beside her by the fire, as I held her in my arms that night. In the morning I remembered to be grateful that we would have another day together.

What I could not face was the thought of life without her. Nothing else the world might offer me could ease the pain of it. I understood now why Sparrow had almost followed Eramet and why only my mother's presence in the world kept Merin in it.

Before I loved Maara, life seemed filled with endless possibility, yet I knew even then what I was waiting for. Love was only an idea to me then, something to hope for, a promise of happiness, insubstantial and immortal, until it found the one to settle on. Now love and Maara were one and the same, and love had become as mortal as she was.

As the days went by, I lived more and more in the present moment, not only because of the fear of loss that Maara's words awakened in me, but because that was how the forest people lived. They spent little time looking forward, either in anticipation of some good thing that might happen or in dread of some trouble that might come. Present pleasures were enough for them, and while they did attempt to foresee trouble and forestall it, they considered worry a waste of time.

They spent even less time looking back. They learned from their remembered past, but they never allowed it to intrude upon the present. They refused to regret what was past changing or carry with them the useless burden of things best left behind. They teased their children out of pouts and grudges. Aamah would sometimes remind them that the story of an old dispute should be retold only when no aftertaste of bitterness remains upon the tongue. I admired Aamah's wisdom. Too many of my people retold the stories of their grievances with the intention of fanning into flame the hot coals of their resentment.

One afternoon I spoke these thoughts to Maara.

To my surprise, she said, "Don't live so much in the present moment that you forget your home and those who love you."

She had anticipated me. More than once I had entertained the thought that I would be content to spend my life among the forest people. Here Maara belonged as she would belong nowhere else. Here no great responsibility would fall upon my shoulders. I would be the heir to no great house. I would never have to face Vintel, to challenge her, to take by force the inheritance I didn't want. Here Maara would be safe, and together we could live out our lives in peace.

"We've been happy here," I said. "We could be happy here all our lives."

"Don't you care for the happiness of others?"

"I care for your happiness."

In spite of herself, Maara smiled, but I felt she was about to scold me.

"I care for my mother's happiness too," I said. "And for Namet's, who must miss you terribly. And Merin's. And all the others."

Before I could say their names, the faces of my friends came back to me, and I was a little ashamed of myself, that I had forgotten my love for them, and theirs for me.

That night, while I was drifting into sleep, I heard the echo of my own words, spoken to Maara not long before we met the forest people.
The fairy folk live in the hollow hills, in vast caverns lit by a thousand lamps, where feasting and merrymaking go on for days on end.
I remembered stories of people who had been invited to a fairy banquet, who had tasted of the fairies' meat and drink and listened to songs and stories that told of a world older than the world they knew. Charmed by all these things, they fell into forgetfulness, until one morning they awoke back in the world above, and although it seemed to them that they had been only a short time among the fairies, they found that in their own world a hundred years had passed. Were we now among the fairy folk? I dreamed that night of going home and finding Merin's house full of strangers who knew my name only from stories of a girl who disappeared a hundred years ago.

At the time I didn't see that Maara was preparing me for my return. The end of my apprenticeship was more than a recognition of my ability or the change in our relationship. In her cunning way, Maara had made a connection in my mind between the wolfskin I wore as a hunter of the forest people and the wolf shield I had won in battle and hung in Merin's hall. I could not go wolf-clad to the hunt without remembering that my shield awaited me. Maara had given it to me as a token that I was now a warrior, but it was not a gift. I would have to win it for myself.

The end of my apprenticeship was also a recognition of my independence. I had been in the habit of looking to Maara for direction. Now she often left it up to me to decide how we would spend the day. Sometimes, if I said I wanted to go out, she would make up her mind to stay at home, and I would have to go alone. I knew better than to change my mind. It was almost worth missing her all day to come home to her at night. She let me know she'd missed me too.

The brook had frozen, the snow lay deep, the days were short and dark. Even in deepest winter, men went to the hunt. When there was moon enough to see by, we left long before the sun came up. Game was scarce, and too often we returned home empty-handed.

Although I had been called to nearly every hunt, I had not yet hunted with the wolves. Then one early morning I awoke with a wolf's cry in my ears. None of the hunters had come to wake me. When I got up, I saw that they too had only just got out of bed.

We walked for several hours, into a part of the forest where I had never been. I had almost forgotten about the wolves when I caught sight of one. Soon I saw that there were at least three traveling with us.

One of them, bolder than the others, stayed in plain sight. He was the largest wolf I'd ever seen, and though his winter coat was silver-tipped like the others, his undercoat was black. In the changing light he appeared at times as dark as a shadow, at other times as faint as a ghost. He was their leader, and he assumed the leadership of us as well. He kept ahead of us, so sure we would follow that he never bothered glancing back.

The wolves took us into hilly country where the snow had piled up in deep drifts. On their great paws they glided easily over the surface of the snow. The hunters of the forest people had learned from their wolf brethren to make big feet of their own. They bent supple branches into hoops and laced them with a webbing of leather strips, with wide straps to fasten them to their feet.

Worr, the leader of the hunt, had made a pair for me. It took me several days of practice before I learned to walk in them. They kept us from sinking into the snow, but the wolves had four feet to hold them up while we had only two, and I felt their impatience with our clumsiness.

A shiver of fear ran down my spine when I remembered the hunting stories of the forest people. What would happen if we found no game? Would the hunters turn upon each other?

As the day wore on, I began to tire. A cloudy sky hid the pale winter sun. I didn't know how late it was until the light was almost gone. Whether we found game or not, we would have to camp out for the night. Then I wondered if the wolves were leading us through this rough country to wear us out, so that they could make a meal of us.