I Live With You (7 page)

“Please
get up.”

I kiss his foot.

But I’m way, way, way…. I’m way….

… on a hill holding the ankle of (of course!) a black stallion. (Who would be holding the ankle of a gelding!) There’s moonlight. There’s a breeze. Blue-black clouds scoot across the sky. It’s a witch kind of land. Scary. I knew it would be. I knew
all
this.

The stallion paws with the hoof I’m not holding, impatient. I know he means, “For Heaven’s sake get
up
! I asked you to before.”

I do. I should at least be wearing something flowing so I’d match the setting. (I knew I’d need my nightgown, but where is it now?) But I’m dressed as I was, lacy mule-nose-colored shirt and loose old lady jeans. For sure, here, I’m no younger than I was in the other place. I can feel that in my knees as I get up.

He shakes his head, hard, up and down, mane flying, impatient still. (In this world it’s the good eye, the black one, that seems odd.) He walks away, looking back at me. I follow. The grass here is soft against my legs just as I knew it would be, not like my grass, all scratchy and in clumps. Not far away I hear water running. It sounds like a small stream, nothing of the flash flood about it. He, the stallion, comes to a rock and stops beside it as though I should use it as a mounting block.

I wonder if, in this world, I might know how to ride. Maybe know how to stay on even if bareback with nothing to hang on to but the mane. And how do you steer?

I mount. Now I’m glad I’m not wearing something flowing. Except, without a skirt and scarves, there’ll be nothing to blow out behind us as we gallop. Only his mane and tail, not my hair. It’s much too short. And would gray hair count anyway?

He starts away at an easy trot—but I’ve already fallen off the other side. We go back to the mounting-stone. This time I get a better grip on the mane. I hadn’t thought his back would be so slippery and bounce so.

There will be a castle. Or perhaps a smaller cozy summer castle (I’d like that) where they (
we)
pretend to be ordinary people. Pennyroyal, the princess all in white. Her beauty is in the look in her eye. (Everybody says so.) And in the tilt of her head. There is no kinder princess. (Everybody says so.) She does nothing but smile. But her voice is a little like mine was when I screeched. (Now I know that sound I made, birds don’t do that, it’s mule.) She smiles. At me. She calls me Sweetheart.
(Everybody
calls me Sweetheart!)

I curtsey. Sort of a curtsey. It isn’t until I try it that I realize I don’t know how. Where do the arms go? How low is low enough?

I’m thinking Penny is his little sister so I could be his wife. That is, if he ever can, in
this
world,
not be
a stallion. Perhaps all it takes is my kiss (like with frogs) but on his lips, not just his ankle where I kissed him before. Was it that kiss that started all this? That turned him horse in the first place?

But they don’t need any more princesses here.
Everybody
can’t be one. What they need is….

When I leaned my cheek against his foot back in his cabin, I’d thought how nice it would be if I could clean up the shack, scrub and dust, do the dirty socks and shirts, darn, wash the dishes. Pull down hay for Penny. Sleep in the sweet-smelling shed. Be his little helping-elf. Or anything he wants me to be. I even thought: When can I start?

But here, I’ve already started—shoveling out the stables. “Sweetheart, could you kindly go….” And I was even stroked a bit before I go there.

Here… even here… what they need is a scullery maid. I’m to sleep in the stables. It’s not at all the same as it would have been if I’d been set to clean Penny’s stall and sleep with her and clean his shack up, up there under the piñons.

How to get out of it? The stallion must know. If I could get him to take the bit—I’d bloody up his mouth if I had to—to make him go back to that hill where the entrance to all this might be.
Maybe
might be.

Or if I could wake up and it would all have been a dream (it looks like a dream and feels like a dream) and I would be there, my cheek still on his foot. If that happened, I’d not kiss, as I did, I’d bite.

Or if I could go into his stall and bite his foot
now
and be instantly transported back to his shack. (I do creep in to try that and he heehaws as if he was a mule.)

Or what if I could put out his eye? But which one! That’s important. If the wrong one, then I might be here forever.

And all this after I gave him water from my tank. It isn’t as if water grows on trees around here—back there I mean.

If I ever do get back, I’ll have to end up hugging the warm rock bellies like I used to. I’ll have to make do with whatever slithers by. But I don’t care anymore. I’ll wave at crow or snake or sweet gray fox….

Those townspeople were right. Jack Blackthorn! I should have known all this (as they did) from his name and his off-kilter eye and from those bushy eyebrows.

BOYS

W
E NEED A NEW
batch of boys. Boys are so foolhardy, impetuous, reckless, rash. They’ll lead the way into smoke and fire and battle. I’ve seen one of my own sons, aged twelve, standing at the top of the cliff shouting, daring the enemy. You’ll never win a medal for being too reasonable.

We steal boys from anywhere. We don’t care if they come from our side or theirs. They’ll forget soon enough which side they used to be on, if they ever knew. After all, what does a seven-year-old know? Tell them this flag of ours is the best and most beautiful, and that we’re the best and smartest, and they believe it. They like uniforms. They like fancy hats with feathers. They like to get medals. They like flags and drums and war cries.

Their first big test is getting to their beds. You have to climb straight up to the barracks. At the top you have to cross a hanging bridge. They’ve heard rumors about it. They know they’ll have to go home to mother if they don’t do it. They all do it.

You should see the look on their faces when we steal them. It’s what they’ve always wanted. They’ve seen our fires along the hills. They’ve seen us marching back and forth across our flat places. When the wind is right, they’ve heard the horns that signal our getting up and going to bed and they’ve gotten up and gone to bed with our sounds or those of our enemies across the valley.

In the beginning they’re a little bit homesick (you can hear them smothering their crying the first few nights) but most have anticipated their capture and look forward to it. They love to belong to us instead of to the mothers.

If we’d let them go home they’d strut about in their uniforms and the stripes of their rank. I know because I remember when I first had my uniform. I was wishing my mother and my big sister could see me. When I was taken, I fought, but just to show my courage. I was happy to be stolen—happy to belong, at long last, to the men.

Once a year in summer we go down to the mothers and copulate in order to make more warriors. We can’t ever be completely sure which of the boys is ours and we always say that’s a good thing, for then they’re all ours and we care about them equally, as we should. We’re not supposed to have family groups. It gets in the way of combat. But every now and then, it’s clear who the father is. I know two of my sons. I’m sure they know that I, the colonel, am their father. I think that’s why they try so hard. I know them as mine because I’m a small, ugly man. I know many must wonder how someone like me got to be a colonel.

(We not only steal boys from either side but we copulate with either side. When I go down to the villages, I always look for Una.)

To
DIE FOR YOUR TRIBE IS TO LIVE FOREVER
. That’s written over our headquarters entrance. Under it, N
EVER FORGET
. We know we mustn’t forget but we suspect maybe we have. Some of us feel that the real reasons for the battles have been lost. No doubt but that there’s hate, so we and they commit more atrocities in the name of the old ones, but how it all began is lost to us.

We’ve not only forgotten the reasons for the conflict, but we’ve also forgotten our own mothers. Inside our barracks, the walls are covered with mother jokes and mother pictures. Mother bodies are soft and tempting. “Pillows,” we call them. “Nipples” and “pillows.” And we insult each other by calling ourselves the same.

The valley floor is full of women’s villages. One every fifteen miles or so. On each side are mountains. The enemy’s, at the far side, are called The Purples. Our mountains are called The Snows. The weather is worse in our mountains than in theirs. We’re proud of that. We sometimes call ourselves The Hailstones or The Lightnings. We think the hailstones harden us up. The enemy doesn’t have as many caves over on their side. We always tell the boys they were lucky to be stolen by us and not those others.

When I was first taken, our mothers came up to the caves to get us back. That often happens. Some had weapons. Laughable weapons. My own mother was there, in the front of course. She probably organized the whole thing, her face, red and twisted with resolve. She came straight at me. I was afraid of her. We boys fled to the back of the barracks and our squad leader stood in front of us. Other men covered the doorway. It didn’t take long for the mothers to retreat. None were hurt. We try never to do them any harm. We need them for the next crop of boys.

Several days later my mother came again by herself—sneaked up by moonlight. Found me by the light of the night lamp. She leaned over my sleeping mat and breathed on my face. At first I didn’t know who it was. Then I felt breasts against my chest and I saw the glint of a hummingbird pin I recognized. She kissed me. I was petrified. (Had I been a little older I’d have known how to choke and kick to the throat. I might have killed her before I realized it was my mother.) What if she took me from my squad? Took away my uniform? (By then I had a red and blue jacket with gold buttons. I had already learned to shoot. Something I’d always wanted to do. I was the first of my group to get a sharpshooters medal. They said I was a natural. I was trying hard to make up for my small size.)

The night my mother came she lifted me in her arms. There, against her breasts, I thought of all the pillow jokes. I yelled. My comrades, though no older than I and only a little larger, came to my aid. They picked up whatever weapon was handy, mostly their boots. (Thank goodness we had not received our daggers yet.) My mother wouldn’t hit out at the boys. She let them batter at her. I wanted her to hit back, to run, to save herself. After she finally did run, I found I had bitten my lower lip. In times of stress I’m inclined to do that. I have to watch out. When you’re a colonel, it’s embarrassing to be found with blood on your chin.

So now, off to steal boys. We’re a troop of older boys and younger men. The oldest maybe twenty-two, half my age. I think of them all as boys, though I would never call them boys to their faces. I’m in charge. My son, Hob, he’s seventeen now, is with us.

But we no sooner creep down to the valley than we see things have changed since last year. The mothers have put up a wall. They’ve built themselves a fort.

I immediately change our plans. I decide this will be copulation day, not boys day. Good military strategy: Always be ready for a quick change of plan.