The Shore of Women (57 page)

BIRANA

Often I thought of my mother and how she had hoped for a refuge. She had, I supposed, imagined a place where women lived in a settlement not unlike a primitive city, where they practiced what arts they could and ruled over the male servants they might need to survive. My time with Arvil had given me another image of a possible refuge, a place where men and women might have learned to love, to live as comrades.

I now saw how foolish such hopes had been. A settlement large enough to be viable, to avoid inbreeding, to be able to move from a life of hunting and gathering to farming, would grow too large to escape the notice of roaming bands of men and, eventually, the attention of the cities. Only small bands were possible, groups that might cling precariously to life for a few generations, until they grew too weak and too few in numbers to survive.

I had hoped to find companions, women who had retained some knowledge of the cities and their accomplishments, with whom I could talk of what I had read and learned; I had imagined men who might open their minds to this knowledge. But such ideas were useless in this world, where the only knowledge that mattered was of which plants to gather and which animals to hunt and how to make tools and shelters.

These women had lost the knowledge of their ancestors, and the cities were only fabled places of magic to them. The demands of their children, the fact that the women had to bear them and nurse them and look out for them when they were small, forced them to depend on the men. The men in turn exacted their price for this dependence.

Violet, the oldest of the women, did not see things this way. She took pride in the women’s endurance, in those children they had been able to bear, in their ability to do their work and tend to the men’s needs. Although the men might glory in their greater strength, the women, among themselves, mocked this pose while dreaming of the day the cities would reach out to them and raise them up. They lived among men, and yet in some ways their lives were as separate from the men’s as they might have been in a city, for they hid many of their thoughts and allowed the men to believe what they wished.

When I first arrived in the camp, they waited until the men were asleep and then came to me with questions. If I had been sent out of a city, did that mean that others would follow me? Was this a sign? I had answered them vaguely, saying that the Lady had hidden Her purpose from me, for although I did not want to encourage false hopes, I could not bear to dash them either. They believed that the Lady would send others to them—if not this season, then the next; if not during their own lives, then during the lives of those who followed them. They believed that their souls would be reunited with the Lady at death, but that the men might be punished for scorning the Goddess.

Other questions, asked of me in secret when we dug for roots together or sat around the hearth at night, were usually about life in the cities. The women did not seek knowledge, but tales of a place where food appeared whenever it was wanted, or where women rode through the air in ships, or where it was always warm and snow never fell. They marveled at my compass, a sign of the city’s magic, but grew distracted when I tried to explain magnetism to them. The technology that had made the cities possible—the energy that powered them, the discoveries in physics that had produced our shields, the chips and circuits that allowed the cyberminds to mimic human thought—was of no interest to them. The fact that the cities had once dreamed of building upon their scientific knowledge, or of exploring the cosmos, but now clung only to what they had, was not something these women could understand. Only Lily seemed interested in my talk of the stars above and what lay beyond the earth, but the demands of her life, I knew, would dull her curiosity in time.

The women listened patiently when I encouraged them to change their conduct toward the men but scorned such an idea. “Let them believe in their strength,” Violet said. “It keeps them content and holds back their anger, and we know the truth of it anyway.”

“You should not be so easy in Arvil’s presence,” Hyacinth advised me. “It will only enrage him, and then he may hunt for you no longer, or give you no more children. He may stop summoning you and find one who is more yielding.”

“Better to act as they believe us to be,” Willow would murmur. “A time will come when we’re raised above them and will have magic that can bend them to our will.”

Only Cress did not offer such advice to me. “Arvil is not like other men,” she would mutter, “and Birana has some of the Lady’s magic in her still. Let them act as they wish as long as they do not offend the men. Perhaps if their child is a healthy one, our men will note that and treat us as Birana is treated.”

The air was often damp and heavy, making the days seem colder than they were. The wind from the sea, so fresh and soothing in the summer, was now cold and often fierce. The band abandoned the central fireplace for fires inside the huts, as they had before whenever it rained. Instead of serving the men and then eating with them, we carried food to their hut before eating by ourselves in our dwelling. We had stored food but could not rest; wood was collected, mint, nuts, and other plants were gathered, fish were taken from the river. The men hunted whenever the weather broke.

I soon thought of little except my child. I moved through the camp as though my surroundings were only part of a dream, doing my work automatically until I could rest. I told few tales of the city and passively followed the commands of the men instead of bridling at their words. Only the child was real; even my body and brain were no more than a host to serve it. I did not want to think of what might happen after it was born, how it would live, how we might escape this place.

Cress fed me green plants, fish, and potions made with finely ground shells and bone, assuring me that these would aid my child and keep me strong as well. Arvil practiced his healing with the men, bandaging a wound on Skua’s leg so that it did not fester, draining an abscess in Tern’s mouth and removing a rotting tooth. It seemed that we might pass through the winter without illness or misfortune.

The first light snowfall came and a colder wind with it. Violet began to cough, then to rasp when she breathed. Two mornings after the snow fell, she was unable to rise from her mat. I touched her fevered face, then ran to fetch Arvil. He covered her with hides, brewed potions, wiped her brow. Violet babbled wildly as her fever raged, twisting and turning as she tried to throw the hides from her body. Arvil sat with her during the day and Cress tended her at night.

Violet struggled against her illness for three days, and then her body grew quiet as her breathing became more labored. Lily sat in one corner, trembling as Hyacinth held her. Arvil turned his head toward me.

“Will she live?” I asked in the lake language.

“No,” he replied. “Her chest fills. She cannot breathe. The fever has burned away her strength.”

Violet opened her yellowish eyes. “Do not fear,” I said. “You will be with the Lady. Your soul will struggle no more.” It did not matter what I said as long as she was comforted.

“My son,” she whispered.

“I will get him.” I hurried from the hut. Skua, who had given Violet her son, was standing by the men’s dwelling. He had not come to see her, had refused to believe she might die.

“Skua!” I cried out, forgetting the phrases the women used when addressing the men. “Fetch Egret. Violet would see her son now, before…”

The boy came out of the hut as Skua drew himself up. “Do not order me about, Birana.”

“I beg you and the boy to come now.”

He strode toward me, the boy at his heels. “Be gentle with her,” I said more softly.

“Do not tell me what to do.”

“Forgive me, brave spirit,” I said harshly. “These may be Violet’s last moments and if you and Egret won’t make them easier for her, then leave us so that I can.”

“She cannot die. Arvil will heal her.”

“Arvil has done all he can.”

Skua groaned, pushed me aside, and entered the hut. I waited outside until Egret’s wail told me that his mother was gone.

We carried Violet’s body to the shore and shivered on the snowy beach as her body drifted into the sea. The band sorrowed, but Violet had been old by their standards. She had given birth to no children for some time, had been weaker that year; if she had lived, she might have become just a burden. The band, grieved as they were, could accept her death.

Only a few days later, another illness came to the camp, one which struck all three of the children. They burned with fever and vomited while their bowels ran. The women refused to let me near them, fearing for me and my child.

Arvil carried the children to the small hut. There, he and Cress tended them, doing what they could. Egret and Pelican survived. Lily, unable to recover, died.

The men had paid little attention to the girl. Even Willow and Violet had sometimes mocked her tremors and her lisping speech. Yet Lily’s death affected the band more deeply and drew more sobs from them than Violet’s had. Lily, whatever her afflictions, had been one who would have grown into a woman and given new life to the band.

Once again we bore a body to the beach and laid it at the edge of the gray, wintry sea. The women tore at their hair and wept while the men mourned silently. As the waves carried Lily off, I felt the eyes of the band on me. Violet was gone, Willow was still without a child, Cress would probably bear no more children, and Hyacinth seemed doomed to have children who could not live. I sensed them all clinging to life through me.

I left the camp to gather wood. A snowstorm had blown through the camp two days before, forcing us to retreat to our dwellings; from the women’s hut, I was barely able to see the men’s house through the swirling flakes.

The snow now lay in drifts along the riverbank, in mounds under the trees and along the path leading up from the camp, covering what wood was on the ground. I searched for twigs that had been blown into shrubs and dead branches that rested in the lower limbs of trees; my belly made it impossible for me to stoop very low. I could no longer recall what it was like to move freely, to bend, sit, and stand without the burden of my child.

In the city, I would have been anticipating the child’s birth. I would have spent time with other pregnant women, would have prepared a room for the child, heard reassuring comments from women about their own pregnancies and deliveries. A physician would have tended me; I would have known what my child was to be. I wondered what I would bear, whether the baby would die, whether I would live. I wanted the birth to be over and yet dreaded it.

As I reached for a piece of dead wood, a sharp pain stabbed at me; I groaned as my belly cramped. My time was coming. Somehow I remembered to pick up my wood before stumbling down toward the camp.

I set down the wood and called out; Cress ran toward me from the riverbank. “It is time,” I said, and nearly doubled over with the next pain.

“Are the pains coming often?”

I straightened. “This one is passing.”

“You must go inside before the next one comes.”

I clutched at her cloak. She led me to our hut and fed the fire while I knelt on my mat. “I’ll stay with you now,” she said. “The others will come soon.”

Cress helped me prop my back against the wall. All my fears were suddenly amplified. The child might be born with a defect; I might be unable to deliver it at all. I might have it and be unable to nurse. Then the pain took me again, and I could think of nothing else.

Between the pains, Cress forced me to my feet, supporting me with her arm as we walked around the hearth. The pains were soon sharper, the contractions closer together. I moaned as Cress settled me on the mat. “I can’t…” I started to say.

“You are strong enough, Birana. You mustn’t fear.”

Dimly, I could hear the voices of the men as they returned to the camp. “Cress,” I gasped, “fetch Arvil.”

“I cannot. This is not for him to see.”

I clenched my teeth. “Please! I want him with me.”

She shook her head but got up and left the hut. Another pain shot through me; I forced myself not to scream. When it had passed, Arvil was at my side.

“Birana, is it painful for you?”

“I’ll be all right. Stay with me.”

“I shall. I must make something for you.” He went to the fire and crouched as he took out a pouch of herbs. Cress and Hyacinth entered; I closed my eyes.

“Birana.” Cress was handing me Arvil’s cup. “You should drink this. It will dull your pain and won’t harm the child.” She glanced at Arvil. “We also know of this herb.” She held the cup to my lips as I drank.

Hyacinth said, “The man must leave us.”

Arvil rose. “I will not have Birana face this without me.”

“You cannot…”

“It was I who brought her to this,” he said firmly. “I’ll stay.”

“If the child is cursed,” Hyacinth muttered, “it will be on your head.”

“Stop it!” I cried, frightened. “I won’t hear of curses now! I want him to stay.”

Cress murmured to me, reminding me of how to breathe. I took in air and exhaled, panting. Cress handed me a soft piece of leather as more pain seized me; I put it into my mouth and bit down. Hands pulled off my clothes, then laid a hide over me. Willow was near, massaging my thighs as the other two women washed their hands in hot water. My fingers dug into Arvil’s arm. His face was pale; each time I moaned, he winced. I expected him to flee, to hide from this with the other men.

Throughout that night, I was in labor. The pain forced everything else from my mind; my body was fighting itself, trying to force what I carried from me, and yet it seemed the child would never be born. I promised myself I would not scream in Arvil’s presence and broke that promise many times. I didn’t care about the child; I only wanted the pain to end.

I screamed and gasped for air, throwing the hide from myself. My body’s struggle and the heat of the fire were making me feverish. Hands kneaded my belly and thighs and then forced my legs apart.

“I see the head,” Willow said. Cress leaned over me. “It is coming now.”