A Journey of the Heart

  "These are called the council stones," Namet told me, "because there are thirteen of them, as if they were placed here for the members of some council to sit on while they made their deliberations."

  "Is that what they were used for?" I asked her.

  "What do you think?"

  "Why would anyone hold a council meeting out here?"

  "I suspect no one would," said Namet.

  "What were they for then?"

  "That secret died with the people who set them here, but the stones most certainly have their uses. I've found a number of excellent uses for them."

  "Like what?"

  I expected her to tell me they were magical in some way. Instead she said, "It's a wonderful place for a picnic."

  Namet found a smooth, sun-warmed stone to sit beside and unpacked our lunch. While we satisfied our hunger, no one spoke. Afterwards, we were too full to talk. Namet leaned back against the stone. Maara and I lay in the soft grass.

  It was a perfect day. I closed my eyes. The sun warmed my body, and the cool breeze ruffled my hair. Comfortable and content with the two of them beside me, I felt we all belonged together in some special way. I was certain we would have found one another though worlds had separated us.

  I might have dozed a little. I heard the murmur of voices. The three of us were talking about a journey we had made together. When I opened my eyes, Namet was talking about something else.

  "I was living in my sister's house," said Namet. "I had just given birth to Eramet."

  Maara saw that I was awake.

  "Namet is telling us about the war," she said, and I sat up to listen.

  "It started that same year," Namet said. "At first we didn't notice that anything was different, though the spring raids went on a bit longer than usual, and there were skirmishes in which people were badly wounded and sometimes killed. We killed their warriors too, but they sent more. No one understood how things were for them."

  "Did their harvest fail?" I asked her.

  "No," she said. "The year before everyone had had a wonderful harvest. Our granaries had never been so full. That's why it was so difficult to understand. It almost seemed they took pleasure in the fighting for its own sake. It wasn't until two years later that we learned about the painted people, the strangers from across the sea."

  A delicious shiver of fear went through me as I remembered the stories I'd heard about the painted people when I was small. Huddled on my mother's lap, safe in her arms, I had listened fascinated to the tales of people with painted bodies and animal faces who crept out of the forest when the moon was dark to do dreadful things. The painted people had gone back to where they came from and were no longer a threat to us, so they didn't really frighten me, but everything about them seemed dark and mysterious and strangely exciting.

  All I said was, "I remember the stories."

  Namet suddenly leaned forward so that her face was close to mine. "What do you remember?"

  "Not much," I said. "I'd nearly forgotten about the painted people until you reminded me. My mother didn't like those stories. She hated the painted people for the suffering they caused. When I was older, she wouldn't let me listen to the stories anymore. Whenever someone would start to tell one, she would send me off to bed. That only made me more curious, and I slipped out of bed and hid in the shadows to listen."

  "What did you hear?"

  "In one of the stories the strangers came across the sea riding on the backs of fishes. In another they were shape-shifters. They turned themselves into fishes and swam across the sea."

  "Have you ever seen the sea?"

  I shook my head.

  "I have."

  She paused for a moment, remembering. Then she said, "What else?"

  "They said that when our warriors found the remains of the strangers' camps, in the fire pits, along with the charred bones of animals, there were also human bones."

  "I remember those things," Namet said. "But we're getting ahead of the story." She settled back against the stone. "It was some time before those of us in Arnet's house understood what was happening. We were protected by Merin's mother in the north and by our allies in the east. We never feared the fighting would reach us. Of course Arnet sent warriors here, as was her obligation, and they brought us back reports of the fighting.

  "At first no one paid much attention. I paid even less. I cared little about fighting that was happening so far away. I had a husband I loved and our little child. I was too caught up in my own concerns to let the bad news trouble me, but the next year things grew worse. The raids went on all summer. Merin's mother asked for as many warriors as we could spare."

  "Were they fighting the painted people?" I asked.

  "Not then," she said. "I don't believe the painted people ever came close to Merin's house, but they had harried many of the northerners out of their own homes. The displaced tribes had no choice but to live as best they could in the wilderness. What they couldn't hunt or grow they stole from one another or from us. The strangest thing was that they were more careless of life, both ours and their own, than they had ever been before, possibly because of what they suffered at the hands of the painted people, but we knew nothing of the painted people then."

  She paused for a moment, and a troubled look came into her eyes. "At the end of that summer, my husband came here to see for himself if things were as bad as we'd been told. He didn't return before the snow fell, and because of my young child, I couldn't try to join him here. The following spring, as soon as it was possible to travel, I left Eramet with my sister and came to find my husband."

  As Namet spoke it seemed to me that her white hair had turned the honey gold it must once have been, the lines in her face had softened, and her plump figure had become that of a young matron. In her eyes I saw her grief for a man who must be long dead. I felt too the longing of the child Eramet for the mother who had left her behind.

  "When I arrived here," Namet said, "I was told my husband was dead. When I demanded his body, they admitted he'd been taken by the northerners. While the warriors who were with him believed he had been killed, no one saw him die, so I made up my mind to find him. I swore to myself I would either bring him back or die with him."

  Namet paused, to see what I thought about what she had said.

  "I was wrong to do that," she went on. "I had a child who needed me. She was barely two years old when I left her and nearly four when I returned. I don't think she ever forgave me, but I was young and headstrong, and I refused to believe that the Mother would take my husband from me. It seemed too cruel."

  My heart grew heavy. The brightness of the day began to dim. I thought I knew what she was going tell us, and I didn't want to hear it. Maara moved restlessly beside me. I didn't think she wanted to hear the next part of Namet's story either.

  "That spring when the raids began," Namet said, "I went out with a war party. I don't know what I was thinking. I had no idea where I might find my husband. I may have trusted that the Mother would lead me to him. In any case, as soon as I could get away, I left the others and went north alone."

  "What happened?" I asked.

  "I was captured, of course."

  "By the painted people?"

  "No, by the northerners. They took me into their homeland. There I saw the painted people and their handiwork." She frowned. "I was appalled by what I saw. It was clear to me that the painted people were a savage people who had no compassion in them."

  "What did you see?"

  "I hardly remember it anymore. For years I remembered everything about that summer. I couldn't get the images of the things I'd seen out of my head. I had to undergo a difficult healing, and then the memories began to fade. Now when I look back, it's like searching for a dream I dreamed years ago."

  "You don't remember anything?"

  "I remember odd things. I remember the northerners cooking their meat with strange-smelling herbs. I've never tasted anything like it since. I remember the sound of their strange ta
lk. Their speech had a sharp sound and a choppy cadence to it. I never understood it very well, but I did grow to like the sound of it. And I remember the day I saw the sea."

  "What was it like?"

  "It was vast," she said. "Nothing but grey-green water everywhere, constantly in motion. Watching it made me dizzy. It curled up onto the land as if it would devour the earth from under our feet, and the sound as it beat against the shore was deafening."

  "Why did the northerners keep you?" Maara asked.

  "I have no idea. They may have thought I would be useful as a hostage. In any case, I went with them willingly. If my husband was alive, I hoped I might find him a captive among their tribes."

  "Did they mistreat you?"

  "No," said Namet. "They thought I was a witless fool. I certainly acted like one. Going alone into their territory was a foolish thing to do, but grief can make us do very foolish things."

  "Why were you grieving?" I asked her. "I thought you believed your husband was alive."

  "I hoped," she replied, "but I don't think I believed. A kind of madness had come over me. I had been so happy, and like all young people, I thought I had a right to my happiness. I told the Mother that I would refuse to live if my husband were no longer living. It seemed such a small thing then, to throw my life away."

  Namet's talk of the sea and the northerners and the painted people had distracted me. Now I knew that soon we would hear the story of her loss. She must have loved her husband very much to leave her child to go in search of him. What must it be like to lose someone so beloved? My heart ached for the young woman she had been.

  Namet leaned toward me and brushed a tear from my cheek. "Why are you crying?"

  "For your grief, Mother."

  "And last night?"

  "Last night?"

  "Whose grief caused your tears last night? Was it the Lady's?"

  By then I was convinced that Namet must know everything that happened under the sun. I nodded.

  "You brought her into Maara's room with you last night," she said. "I felt her there as if she'd followed you and was standing by the door. Did you know she was still with you?"

  "Yes," I said. "No. I don't know."

  "What did Merin say to you that hurt you so much?"

  "Nothing." Then I remembered. "She said the night was full of ghosts."

  Namet thought that over for a while. "Is that all?"

  "Yes."

  "What do you know of the Lady's grief?"

  "Nothing, Mother, unless you're speaking of the grief that comes to everyone in time of war."

  "Surely that's grief enough," said Namet.

  She reached for me and lightly touched my cheek. "You have a gift. You have compassion for others because you have the gift of understanding how life feels to them. If the world were filled with more joy and less pain, I would envy you." She smoothed the hair away from my face and smiled. "I'm teasing you a little, but yours is a gift you must learn to master or the pain may overwhelm you."

  "Will you teach me, Mother?"

  "My dear," said Namet, "you already have a teacher."

  I looked at Maara. Her eyes went from Namet's face to mine.

  "How can I teach her?" Maara said. "I know nothing about this gift of hers."

  "You know enough to let it be," Namet told her. "And you're the one she chose, so you will teach her well enough, whether or not you understand what that teaching is." She turned to me. "All I can tell you is this. Some hearts break from grief and some from joy. Some even break from love. But hearts break because they are too small to contain the gifts life gives us. Your task will be to let your heart grow large enough not to break."

  Namet leaned back against the stone. She folded her hands in her lap and waited, watching me, as if she expected me to ask a question. Although her words had filled me with questions, I couldn't find a way to ask any of them.

  "My husband died," said Namet gently. "He didn't die that summer. He died of a fever five years later, and I still grieve for him, as I grieve for Eramet."

  I didn't know whether that made me feel better or not. I was glad for Namet's sake that nothing terrible had happened to him at the hands of the northerners or of the painted people. I had feared that one of the memories Namet had been unable to forget was the memory of watching him die a cruel death.

  While a part of my mind was still thinking about the task she had set for me, I listened to the rest of Namet's story. I learned that there was much more to the war than anyone had told me. It had begun long before anyone was aware, and by the time it overtook our people, there was no stopping it.

  Our people and the northern tribes had been enemies for as long as anyone could remember, but we were enemies who were respectful of each other. The painted people respected nothing. They would drive a tribe from its land, then plunder everything of value they could carry. The most terrifying thing about them was that they laid waste to everything they left behind. They slaughtered every animal they couldn't take. They burned homes and fields and stores of grain. When the northerners raided us, they had the sense to leave us enough to go on with, so that when they returned there would be more to plunder. The painted people left a wasteland behind them.

  "My husband had spent the winter with one of the northern tribes," said Namet. "He was a gifted healer. He nursed the hurts and fevers of the people who had captured him. Because he was useful to them, both as a healer and a hostage, they let him live. When he learned of the painted people, he saw a way to save his own life and many other lives as well. He thought that if our people could make common cause with the northern tribes, together we could drive the painted people from our lands once and forever.

  "My husband had learned a great deal about the northerners, and he hoped that an alliance with them might also put an end to the raids and skirmishes that every year brought grief to both sides. After he had lived with them a while, when he had begun to understand their language, he spoke to their elders of the possibility of an alliance.

  "All summer their councils met and debated, but they could come to no decision. They feared the idea of an alliance was a trick, that my husband had proposed it as a ruse so that they would allow him to go home. They didn't want to lose a hostage who might someday prove valuable and be left with nothing to show for their misplaced trust. Then my husband heard that a woman of his people was held captive by a neighboring tribe."

  Namet smiled, remembering one happy day from that unhappy time. "One morning he walked into the village where I was. I thought he was a ghost. I was sure of it when he spoke to the village elders in their own tongue. They talked for a long time. Then my husband came to me and took my hand. When I felt his warm hand in mine, I knew he was no ghost, but even if he had been, I would have followed him.

  "We had only a little time together before he persuaded the northerners to send me home, to speak with our elders while they kept him as a hostage against treachery. With one of us to send and one to keep, they were willing. At first I refused to go. I told him I hadn't traveled all that way to find him only to leave him again, but he persuaded me that both our lives and many more might depend on this alliance. So I came home.

  "I arrived here just as the first snow of winter began to fall. With my husband's life at stake, I used all my powers of persuasion to convince Abicel and the elders to join with the northerners against the painted people. I told them the dreadful things I'd seen, to make them fear the painted people more than they distrusted the northern tribes.

  "All winter it seemed that no one spoke of anything else. Many said we should leave the northerners to their fate, that if the Mother favored us, we might never have to deal with the painted people at all. Others feared that when the northerners' strength was gone, the painted people might overwhelm us too. Others had grievances against the northerners they would not forgive, and they refused to lend warriors to the alliance. When the decision was made to send our warriors to join the northern tribes, those people were greatly
criticized, but in the end, it was they who saved us.

  "In the spring, I returned north, to tell the northerners that our people had accepted their offer. The northern tribes gathered their strength together. Warriors from Abicel's house and from many of her allies joined them. Together we went out to make war on the painted people, but when we searched out their winter camps, we found only the dead. A plague had visited them all. The dead lay in their beds as if asleep, and the few survivors we found hiding in the woods weren't fit to fight. They asked no mercy. The northerners, remembering their own dead, put them all to the sword. A few may have found their way to their boats and gone back to where they came from, but the painted people never again returned to trouble us."

  The unexpected ending of Namet's tale confused me. Where were the battles outside the walls of Merin's house that my mother had told me of? When did her sisters die? Namet saw the questions in my eyes.

  "Yes," she said. "There's more."

  She closed her eyes and leaned back against the stone. She was silent for a long time, until I began to wonder if she would tell us the rest. At last she opened her eyes.

  "Our people rejoiced at their easy victory," she said. "They believed the painted people had brought their misfortune upon themselves, that their disrespect for life had angered the one whose labor gave birth to the world. They said it was she who took the painted people back into the dark.

  "While we were in their country, our warriors saw how much the northerners had suffered. We felt pity for them. In gratitude that we had been spared their suffering, we thought it only right to offer them our friendship and our help. They had been our comrades in arms. We felt we knew them, and we could no longer regard them as our enemies. Some thought, as my husband did, that we should build on this alliance. When we came home, we brought with us many warriors of the northern tribes.

  "Those who might have spoken out against this plan had stayed at home. It was the young, the adventurous, the inexperienced, who had gone to fight. It was they who brought a northern army to our door.