The Shore of Women (29 page)

I stared at it a long time as my heart pounded, then chanced a step back. The cat crouched lower, about to leap. I could not run, would find no safety in a tree. Twigs crackled behind the cat. It turned its head away from me. At that moment, a spear flew and embedded itself in the cat’s side.

I heard the animal screech, and then Arvil was upon it, stabbing with his knife. He released the cat as he stood up. “Why are you here?” he said angrily.

“I was gathering wood.… I only…”

“You didn’t have to come this far. If you cannot be alert to danger, it’s better for you to keep to a safer place.” He knelt by the dead cat. “We cannot eat its meat, but I will take the hide.” He gestured with his head. “The game I have found lies there. You must get it back to the shrine.”

A few paces from the cat, I found the carcass of a small deer. I could not lift it; at last I began to drag it forward by the legs. The effort soon made me pant. I wanted to fetch one of the horses but could not lift the deer to a horse’s back alone.

My back ached by the time I reached our campsite. I dragged the carcass toward the poles, then collapsed beside it, exhausted.

Arvil finally emerged from the trees and threw the cat’s fur down at my side. “When you walk in a wood,” he said, “you must not be careless. You should have been listening and had your sling ready when you first glimpsed it.”

I refused to speak. The beauty of the wood had entranced me; I had forgotten the dangers.

“It is good that I found you,” he said more gently. “It would have grieved me greatly if you had been harmed.” I sat up. “You must light the fire and gather more wood, but do not roam far this time.”

He began to skin the deer while I struggled with my flints. I nursed a spark into a flame and fanned it with my hands until a large fire blazed; then I collected more wood while Arvil butchered his game. “We need more wood,” he muttered as he worked. “This fire must burn for a time.”

He cut thin strips of leather, bound them to the poles near the fire, then draped thin pieces of meat over them. It was night by the time he had finished his labors. He had cut off two large pieces of meat for us, which were roasting on skewers of green wood. I had thought I would be too tired to eat, but the smell of the meat revived me. Once, I would have turned from it in disgust; now my mouth watered.

We ate until we were full. When I yawned, Arvil said, “You must go to sleep now. I’ll feed the fire. We must keep it going—that meat will draw other creatures.”

I might have gone into the shrine but stretched out on the ground, not wanting to leave his side. I did not dwell long on that thought before falling asleep.

I kept the fire going through the last part of the night; Arvil awoke at dawn. He went to collect more wood, then gathered cress from the bank of the stream. As we ate, he lifted his hand to his head for a moment.

“Are you well?” I asked.

“My head still pains me a little.”

Concerned, I peered at his wound. He had healed, but the injury must have been greater than he would admit. “How much does it hurt?”

“It lessens. It grows no worse.”

I sighed. “You have to conserve your strength while we’re here. You’ll need it when we go on.”

“We have food. I’ll be able to rest.” He gave me a sidelong glance. “Is it my well-being that concerns you, or is it only that you need my help to get to the safe place you are hoping to find?”

My eyes met his. “I need your help, but even if I didn’t, I would be sad if I lost your companionship.” I had intended to say that only to ease his feelings but, to my surprise, found that my words were sincere. “On the Ridge, when I thought you might be dead, I grieved, and not just because I thought I had lost a protector.”

He reached for my hand. I let him hold it, fearing that I had said too much. “My soul longs for you,” he said. “Does yours begin to long for mine?”

I slipped my hand from his. “I long for a friend, that’s all.”

“Two friends can share love.”

I stood up quickly and went to the shrine’s entrance. The door opened and I retreated inside. The shrine seemed crowded and cramped; only five couches stood near the wall, and the fabric covering them was worn and shiny. An image of Hecate stood near the altar; I sat down on the couch in front of it. For the first time since I had met Arvil, I had accepted his touch without wanting to pull away; I had wanted my hand in his, and that frightened me.

His footsteps sounded behind me as he came up to the altar. He gazed up at the image for a while, then turned to face me. “I have a question, Birana. Why did the spirit-women choose Tal as my guardian?”

“It wasn’t the spirit-women who chose him. A woman now living would have chosen him. Those who spoke to you must have chosen him.”

“Why was Tal chosen, and not another?”

“It was thought that he could best care for you.” His eyes narrowed; I would have to say more and dreaded saying it. “I must explain something to you.” I looked past him at the altar. “It isn’t the spirit-women themselves who bring boys into the world. Those living in the city do that.”

“I thought it must be so, now that I know you have bodies of flesh, but you must tell me how.”

My cheeks burned. “Men are summoned to the wall, and their seed is taken from them while spirit-women…” I bowed my head, wanting to hide my face. “A woman then takes the seed of a man and combines it with her own, and carries the child that results inside her until it’s ready to be born—to come out of her body. When children are born, they’re small and unable to care for themselves, so all of them, boys and girls alike, those of your kind and mine, stay with their mothers in a city. When a boy is old enough, he is sent outside with a man as a guardian. All his memories of the city are taken from him so that he’ll be able to adapt more easily to his new life.”

Arvil said, “Memories are taken from him so that he won’t know the truth.”

“That is part of it as well.” I stared at my folded hands. “The girls stay, and the boys are sent out.”

“And both the girls and the boys enter life in the same way?”

I nodded.

“Then a boy and a girl can come from the same woman’s body and grow up together, but the female remains in your world while the male is sent from it.” His voice was low, but I sensed his rage.

“Animals must push their young from them when their offspring are old enough to survive. Even a girl must leave her mother’s side eventually.”

“But she can live in her mother’s world.” He paused. “There is a man then who gave seed so that I could live, if what you say is so.”

“There is. I think…” I forced myself to lift my head. His lips were pressed tightly together; a muscle along his jaw tightened. “You have a father, a man who gave his seed to the one who was your mother, and the seed of both gave you life. It is our custom, whenever possible, to give a boy to the man who was his father. You and Tal resembled each other strongly. I think he was your father. I think that Hasin, the boy you both brought out, also had Tal as a father.”

He took a step toward me. “So Tal gave me life, and I brought him death. His seed is in me, his spirit, and this was hidden from me. What kind of sin have I done? He will haunt me even more!”

I held out my hand. He moved toward me, as if about to strike it away, then lowered his fist. “Once,” he said, “female and male lived together, our legends say. I believed you were holy, but there is no holiness in what you do. Your magic is only a shield to hide what you are. Except for my member and your female parts, we are the same, as the stallion and mare are, or the buck and the doe. You could allow us to remain among you if you willed it. You could dwell among us.” He stared at me for a long time, then strode from the shrine.

I was afraid to go to him. I ached; my breasts felt bruised and my abdomen had swelled a little. I thought at first that tension and fear had brought about the aches, and then realized that I would soon begin to menstruate. I had not bled at all since leaving the city and had worried that the rigors of my new life had affected my cycle, but I did not welcome this bleeding now. I remembered my happiness when I first experienced this sign of my womanhood; out here, it was only another sign of my weakness.

At last I rose and went outside. Arvil had rendered the deer’s fat and stored it in entrails; he was now picking over what remained of the carcass for useful bones. He did not look up at me. I went to the edge of the clearing, collected more wood, and carried it back, setting the wood down near him. The day had grown warm; I took off my heavy coat and sat down on it.

“Arvil.”

He glanced at me. “You must cover yourself. Someone may come and see what you are.”

“Arvil, listen to me. You ask me questions, and I answer them. You say you want to know the truth, but hearing it only angers you. I know how hard it is for you to bear, but you frighten me. If I anger you enough, you might injure me in your rage.”

He looked up sharply. “I would not hurt you. I couldn’t, even now.”

“I fear that you may without meaning to do so.”

“Never.” He sat back on his heels. “Those garments you wear— you must change them. Only a small boy who has come from an enclave wears such things, and they reveal too much of your form.” He got up and went to Wild Spirit, then opened a sack.

He returned with a shirt and pants he had taken from the men in the shrine by the plateau. He worked at them with a piece of bone and cut at the edges of the pants with a knife. “You should wear these.” I hesitated. “If you must hide your form from me, then put them on inside the shrine.”

I stood up. “I must wash first, in the stream. It’s warm enough. Will I be safe?”

“I shall stand guard,” he said. “You must be ready to cover yourself quickly.”

I picked up my coat and my clothes and hurried into the shrine, relieved that his anger had passed. Taking off my cloth garments, I tore my shirt into strips, knowing I could use them while I bled and wash them out to be used again. I pulled on my coat and held it tightly around me as I went outside.

Arvil picked up his bow and quiver, then followed me down to the stream. He turned his back to me as I dropped my clothes, took off my boots, then crouched by a tree to remove my coat.

I tested the stream with one foot before plunging into the water. The stream was shallow, warmed a little by the sun. I sank down, letting the water flow over me, loosening my hair as I bent my head back. When I felt clean, I climbed out. Arvil was watching me; he turned away slowly. I hid behind the tree while making a loincloth with my belt and three thick strips of cloth; I looped the cloth through the belt and pulled it up between my legs.

As I reached for the leather shirt, I realized that Arvil was looking at me again. I held the shirt to my chest, feeling shamed and vulnerable. “Please. You mustn’t look at me yet.” He did not look away. I pulled on the shirt and picked up the pants.

“Why do you wear that loincloth under pants?” he asked.

I blushed. “I must explain something else to you. Every twenty- eight days or so, a woman bleeds from her female parts.” He started and stepped toward me. I was burning with embarrassment but knew that I could not hide this from him for long. “It isn’t an illness, and the blood does not come from any wound. It’s something that happens to all women. Inside a woman’s belly there is a womb in which she carries her child, and from time to time the womb sheds its wall. I wear this cloth so that…” I could say no more.

“Does it pain you?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I ache sometimes. There was never much pain for me.”

“I must wash,” he said suddenly as he handed me his weapons. He stripped off his clothes quickly, not troubling to conceal himself, and then walked into the stream. His arms thrashed at the water; he ducked under it and rose, his hair streaming.

He climbed out onto the bank. His clothing had hidden how muscular he was, had made him seem leaner. His member seemed to swell a bit as he gazed at me; he walked out from under the trees and stood in the sun. I clutched at my coat and retreated to the fire. Still naked, he carried his clothes to the horses, took out the other shirt and pants, and went into the shrine.

I stood near the fire, waiting for my hair to dry. My mother had once taken me to the wall, after I had become a woman, to show me the images of men who were inside after being called. Most women would have shrunk from showing such sights to a daughter that young, but Yvara had defied custom in this as she had in so many other matters. I had glimpsed Arvil’s body in the shrine where I first saw him, when he danced, before revulsion made me look away. I knew what a man looked like and had been prepared for what Arvil’s nakedness would reveal.

I had not been prepared for my reaction to this sight of his body. The men I had seen on the screen had seemed ugly and misshapen, with their body hair, flat chests, and stiff members covered by tubes; they had been no more than providers of sperm for new generations. But Arvil’s body did not seem ugly to me. The water on his pale smooth skin had glistened in the sunlight, and, for a moment, I had seen beauty in his form, in the body hardened by his life.

He came outside and sat down near me. I looked away as I tied my hair back with a leather thong. “Those clothes are looser on you,” he said. “They will hide much of your form, although I wish it did not have to be hidden.” He pulled the deer hide to him and began to scrape at the skin with stone. “You will need another garment to conceal what you are, and the weather will grow too warm for your coat. I’ll make you a garment from this hide.”

I seated myself and watched as he worked at the hide, making it supple. He would make me a garment; I was strangely moved by the gesture. Occasionally, he glanced at me and opened his mouth, as though about to speak, and then he set down his tools and held his hands against his abdomen.

“In here,” he said, “in this part of yourself—it is where you say a woman keeps her child before it is born, as an animal carries her young.”

I nodded.

“But you must put a man’s seed there with your own. How do you take this seed and put it inside you?”