The Foretelling (10 page)

I sneaked out so as not to wake Io. I covered her with my blankets so she would not be cold without me, then I packed up my weapons, went for my horse, and left.

We raced across the grasslands; I didn't let my mare rest until we neared the place where my bear had been killed. I got off my horse to honor Usha before I went on. When I went onto my knees I found the last of Usha's teeth in the circle where the grass still did not grow. I gathered them into a leather pouch and tied the pouch to my waist. Now that I was Queen I didn't braid my hair, but let it fall loose down my back. I had been given four more lines of blue on each of my cheeks, for courage, for protection, for wisdom, for luck.

I thought about Melek, how close his village was, and I wondered if his people had returned. But there was little time to wonder and I knew I shouldn't be thinking about him; I rode hard the rest of the way. When I reached the priestesses’ cave, I tied up my mare, spoke a blessing, and entered into the darkness.

It still felt like winter inside the cave, though there was a fire. Greeya came to me and bowed her head. Her eyes looked red with some foretold sorrow.

How is our priestess?
I asked.

Still in this world, but only because she's waiting for you.

I wasn't surprised that the high priestess knew was coming. She likely understood before I die that I would have to make this journey. I went to pay my respects. I'd brought Deborah a comb made of bone for her hair, since even now she was vain, though her hair was snow white; and I'd brought her a bundle of deer meat that would give her strength. We dined together and then I asked for the Black Horse, Anto.

I told you he was too weak to live,
Deborah said.

My face must have betrayed me because she laughed.

But I made him strong. He's in his place.

Anto was in his nook in the wall, bundled in a blanket. I could hear him making noises, more like a dove than a horse. When I reached for him, he looked at me carefully with his yellow eyes. He was staring at me as though he knew me, perhaps from another life, perhaps from a world-to-be.

Deborah was weaker than ever, but she dragged herself over. She sat beside me as I held the baby.
Mares’ milk can make a baby into a king,
Deborah said, considering what we'd done.

They want me to kill him. And he's a baby now. Nothing more.

That's what I did to mine.
I looked at Deborah, but she didn't seem to notice.
When I had a son I had no choice. It was our way.

The priestess was shaking with the tremor of old age, but also with something more.

It still is,
I said.

Is it?

I looked at Deborah and saw the girl she had been, long before she became a priestess, when her hair was black and reached to the earth. He had been her first child, this son of hers, there in the time when she had no choice. She said she'd done it gently, not the way other women did, leaving baby boys on the steppes for the wolves and the ravens. She'd covered his face and sang to him. She'd been with him when his spirit went on. Even still, she dreamed of him every night.

It may still be our way, but don't all ways change, for bad and for good?
the priestess asked me.
Take a single arrowhead from those scattered around your mother. That will be the foretelling. It will show you the way.

I thought about my own dreams, how in that deep nightworld it was always my duty to run with the Black Horse, not to trap or kill him. I held my brother close. He smelled like mares’ milk and horses. Just a baby. He studied my face. Maybe he was surprised to see yellow eyes, so much like his.

I thought if there was anyone who could tell me what to do it was my mother. I rode to the catacombs, to the secret entrance, and moved away enough rocks to fit through into the chamberway. Since it was pitch-black I took a torch with me; even with the torch, I could hardly remember the way to my mother's resting place. Straight, and then two turns, Deborah had told me, but I circled, lost.

It was hushed and freezing cold beneath the earth. At last I came to the place of my great-grandmother, the Queen who had first spoken to horses. I crept over the rocks that kept my great-grandmother safe from prowlers, then I got down on my knees and sang to her. The bones of her beloved horse had been buried with her, and five other horses as well. The blankets she'd been wrapped in had all been dyed a deep blue, the color of our people. I took the leather pouch from around my waist and took the bear's teeth to leave for her, all but the one I wore around my neck.

Thank you,
I said to my great-grandmother.
For speaking to horses, for being my grandmother, for showing me the way.

I climbed back past the rocks and went on until I found my mother. The earth was streaked dark and light outside her resting place, as if Penthe's tears had reached here. I thought of the look on my mother's face that day when I brought her the priestess's herbs, how frightened she'd been, and I did not blame her for naming me Rain or for turning away from me.

If I don't deserve to be the Queen, then I will go away,
I told my mother.
I will respect your wishes.

I waited there for a long while, hoping she would send me a message from the next world. I sang to her, the song Io had taught me, whose words I still didn't understand. I liked how comforting it was. I liked the sound of it, sister to sister, daughter to mother.

The blankets around the Queen were made of felt, the finest ever made, dyed blue in the way of our people. I took one of the arrowheads that had belonged to my mother, as Deborah had told me to do. There were scores of bronze ones, but only one that was yellow. I took that one.

If you wish me to he rid of my brother I will use your arrowhead,
I told the Queen.
I will be in service to you always, in all things.

I went back to the priestesses’ cave in the dark. Greeya had supper ready and I sat beside Deborah.

What did you decide?
the old priestess asked.

Is there a right and a wrong?
I needed to know.

There's a done and an undone. You need to ash yourself this: Do you wish to dream of the black horse all your life?

I went to where the baby was. He was asleep, yellow eyes closed. I had the arrowhead in my hand. It felt hot. In the dark it looked golden. So yellow it was like sunlight. What I would have done I am not sure, and I never will be, because the arrowhead began to shift as though it were melting in my hand. When I looked down I saw that the metal had bent at the edge.

Greeya had come up behind me.
You took the gold one.
She clapped her hands.
Deborah said you would. It's the only arrowhead that's not strong enough to pierce through human flesh. It's your answer,
she said.

Because of that my brother lived. The priestesses packed up his milk rags, a horn of mares’ milk, his blanket sewn with black thread, and the leather strapping I looped over my shoulders so I could carry him close to my chest as I rode.

I went east, beyond where we'd fought the people of Black Horse's father. It was far past the boundaries of our lands, for we'd chased them all the way to the Black Sea. It took several days to get there, and Anto was as good as any baby could be. My brother did not cry much, only when he was hungry, and I fed him as we rode. He was alive, no dream. Just a baby, nothing more, Black Horse, and he stared at me as he sucked his mares’ milk. I tried not to look at him. He was something I should not have named if I didn't want to care for him, a good baby with yellow eyes.

I tracked Anto's father's people until there was salt in the air. Salt clung to my horse and to me. Anto's father's people had become beach people and had built a city out of stones and shells. I waited on the higher ground above the shoreline, hidden by shrubs, until a boy came by. The boy stumbled into my trap, the sort you make for birds and rabbits. He was so startled he didn't move when I appeared from the bushes and cut him down from the net. I told him in words and motions to find me the man who'd been taken by the warrior women and who had then returned.

The boy held up two fingers. Of course, there had been two men released that night.

The handsome one was the one I wanted. The strong one.
Only tell him and no one else I am here.

I waited in the bushes, feeding Black Horse, wondering if a troupe of warriors would come after me and if I'd have to kill them. I heard someone, so I left Black Horse under a thornbush for protection. It was only one man who stood before me. The handsome one. He had stopped a safe distance away.

He let me know his people didn't intend to bother us again.

In return I told him I had a gift for him.
Wait here.
I went to get the baby.
Your son,
I said.

The man made a motion that he didn't understand what I was saying, but I knew that he did. He saw Anto's yellow eyes and mine as well. I wondered if this man might have known the one of the fifty cowards who had been my father.

Take him away,
the handsome man told me. He threw his arms in the air as though throwing Black Horse away.
If the baby stays here he'll be killed,
the man told me, haltingly, in my own language.
He has women's blood in him.

I laughed at what a fool he was.
Every man does
.

Her blood,
the handsome man said. He spit on the ground. Then I saw him for who he was. Another coward. Useless. He wasn't worthy of our Queen's child. He wasn't a fighter or a leader or anything worthwhile.

I rode away and didn't look back. I hadn't said my brother's name before; now I called him Anto. He was more than a curse or dream. I sang him the song Io had taught me and he grew quiet. I would not give him up to just anyone, leave him to the wolves and the ravens. This was what happened when you named someone: You couldn't throw him away.

I stopped at the place where the bear had been killed. I bowed my head and prayed for guidance. When I looked up I saw a sign. Perhaps my mother had sent it to me, perhaps my great-grandmother, or perhaps the guidance had come from Usha, who had protected me when she was in this world and continued to protect me from the next.

For there was another bear, a tiny cub, smaller even than Usha had been when I found her. Cubs are born in time when the world is growing colder, never in the warming weather, so I wondered if this cub had fallen from the great bear in the sky. Maybe it was a gift, as Usha had been.

Wherever the cub came from, it was a fierce thing, male, a brother for Anto. The cub fought nil’ when I picked it up, but it was starving and gave up the fight soon enough; it took one of the milk rags in its mouth and sucked the mares’ milk.

Don't think you are a horse,
I told the bear.
Remember what you are.

I took a blanket and tied it round the cub, then strapped it to my back. Anto opened his yellow eyes and stared hard at the bear. The ride was long, and both baby and bear were grumpy. But in time, they both stopped yowling and fell asleep. I could feel both of their hearts beating against me as I rode.

I whispered to my sister-horse,
Take me where I need to go.

My mare brought me to the grassy field at the base of the mountain where there were brass bells on every door. I waited in the field until Melek felt me there. He seemed to know when I needed him. I could see him look out of his door just as if I had called to him.

When Melek arrived in the field, I was so tired I couldn't speak. I handed him my brother, showed him where the milk rags were for both bear and boy, then fell asleep at his feet. I trusted Melek with everything that was important to me, and maybe I was a fool to do so. All the same, when I woke he was feeding my horse handfuls of tall grass. He had tied the bear cub to a small tree with a leather rope. As for Anto, he was asleep on his blanket.

Would you like to have a brother?
I asked.

By now, Melek knew much of our language.

I would like to have you,
he told me.

I laughed, but the laughter sounded sharp, like a rock against both of us, or an arrow, one that could indeed pierce through flesh.

I know I can't.
Melek shrugged.
So instead I'll take a brother
.

The bear is his brother as well. So you'll have to take two. But let the one be a boy and the other be a bear.

Melek came close to me. He knew I was now the Queen. He saw the blue tattoos on my face, so fresh they still stung.

I will take anything you give me.

Before I left I gave him myself. Not the way they did at the festival. Not like that at all. There was no koumiss to make me dizzy, no red flower paste to put me into a trance; there was no reason to be together other than what we felt. What that was cannot be put into words. Maybe only that on that day we belonged to each other. That we had found each other in a world where it was nearly always impossible to find what had been lost. I thought of Penthe and my mother and I understood that love went beyond where we were, the snowfields and the grasslands, on into the next world and the world after that.

I made my choice. I had heard my mother the Queen say to Penthe that a Queen must always abide by her decisions. In that way she finds her strength. In a few weeks, Melek and his people would be gone. They were wanderers and might not return. They would go their way, and I would go mine. That was the way it was meant to be. After all, my dreams were of my own country. There were a thousand horses waiting for me and a thousand warriors as well. I could feel who I was in my blood. I had no need to change my name, to call myself anything other than what I was. Queen Rain.

In the morning, when I left that place, I knew that I was made of sorrow. But sorrow is strong. It is lasting. You can't deny it or get rid of it.

I was made out of rain, but nothing could bind me.

Nothing could stop me from being who I was meant to be all along.