A Journey of the Heart

  Birds were feeding on the grain that had fallen from the sheaves, and I wondered if Maara intended them to be our quarry. I saw several quail, but they would provide no more than a mouthful, and the other birds weren't big enough to be worth the plucking of them.

  When we approached, they scurried away from us. As if they knew the reach of our arrows, they stayed just out of bowshot. Maara kept to the edge of the field. I thought she was using the hedgerow for cover, but it didn't seem to be an effective tactic. Every bird feeding in that field knew we were there.

  Suddenly, with a desperate flapping of wings, from right under our noses a large, brown bird flew up out of the tall grass that grew along the hedgerow. It startled me. Before I could take a breath or say a word, I heard the singing of Maara's bowstring. The bird stopped in mid-flight and dropped to earth a dozen feet in front of us, where it struggled to free itself from the arrow that had pierced its wing. Maara walked over to it, picked it up, and wrung its neck.

  I stood staring at her. I hadn't seen her nock the arrow or let it fly. I hadn't seen her move at all. She withdrew her arrow from the bird's wing and slipped the bird into her game bag.

  Within the hour she brought down half a dozen birds. I tried to watch her, to see how she did it, but always the bird flying up startled me and drew my eye. Then she signaled me to take the lead and do as she had done.

  Time after time, a bird flew up out of the grass and took wing before I could do more than watch. I couldn't react quickly enough to nock an arrow, much less let it fly. After several failures I kept an arrow nocked and ready. At last I loosed it more or less in the direction of the next bird to fly out of the grass. I missed the bird by yards.

  It was midmorning, and by now every bird on Merin's land had filled its belly and was attending to other business. The day had grown quite warm. Maara took me to the river, where we bathed and cooled ourselves.

  "If you'll make the fire," she said, "I'll share my game with you."

  It had never occurred to me that she wouldn't share whatever food she had. We had brought nothing with us, and we'd had no breakfast. I was ravenous.

  "The next time we hunt," she said, "you must feed yourself or go without."

  I nodded. I knew why.

  We shared one of the birds between us. All the rest but one Maara gave to a boy who was herding geese out to the fields where we had hunted that morning. The last bird she gave to me.

  "For Gnith," she said.

  That evening I cooked the bird for Gnith. She hadn't many teeth left, so I stewed it until it fell off the bones and gave her the broth with the meat in it.

  "My warrior sent you this," I told her.

  "It's good," she said.

  When she finished, she set the bowl aside.

  "You should have let me bless your bow."

  I was only a little surprised that she knew about my failure as a hunter.

  "Next time I will," I said.

  The next morning I rose before dawn and took my bow down to the kitchen. Gnith was waiting for me.

  "Let's see this strange bow of yours," she said.

  Gnith closed her eyes and ran her fingers up and down its length.

  "Strong," she said.

  She opened her eyes and looked at me. I thought she was going to ask me where the bow had come from. Instead she said, "Not one of ours."

  "No," I admitted.

  "Not your stranger's either."

  "No."

  Gnith closed her eyes again and sat still and silent for so long that I thought she might have dozed off. Just as I was about to touch her, to see if she was sleeping, she looked up at me and gave me back the bow.

  "The bird your warrior sent me did me good," she said. "Bring me another."

  I had an arrow nocked and ready, but three birds flew up before I got over being startled. The fourth didn't surprise me quite as much. The next few times, I sent an arrow in the general direction the bird had flown, but I never came close to hitting one.

  I sat down under the hedgerow and tried to understand what I was doing wrong. A little voice in the back of my head was grumbling about the impossible task my warrior had set for me. My grandmother had taught me not to listen to that little voice. I thought instead about taking a bird home for Gnith.

  A bird flew up. Almost of itself the bow followed it. I loosed the arrow. It missed, but I saw that it had flown just behind the bird, so the next time I let the bow anticipate its flight, and the bird fell to earth. I picked it up still living. The arrow had only torn a few feathers from its wing.

  The bird's frantic heart beat against the palms of my hands. I hesitated, undecided. Should I take this bird to Gnith or should I try again? I was making progress, and I didn't want to stop until I had shot a bird properly. On the other hand, it was getting late, and soon the birds would have finished feeding.

  I set the bird down. It didn't move. When I reached for it again, it leapt into the air and flew away.

  For another hour I walked the hedgerow. The birds were gone.

  I was angry with myself. I wondered if I had let the bird go for lack of courage. I hadn't liked the idea of killing it when it was whole and uninjured. If I had wounded it, I would have felt differently, but there had been so much life in it that I hadn't the heart to end it.

  "I'm sorry, Mother," I said.

  Gnith looked disappointed. "I feel a fever coming on."

  "I can bring you some beef broth."

  "Don't want it." She pouted like a child.

  "Shall I fix you some tea?"

  She shook her head.

  "You need to eat something, if you're feeling ill."

  "I want a bird."

  "I'll bring you one tomorrow, Mother."

  "Might be dead by tomorrow."

  "Surely not," I said.

  But she turned away and wouldn't say another word.

  The next day it took me several hours, but at last I shot a bird. The arrow went through its body, and I took it to the river and cleaned it right away before the ruptured organs could contaminate the meat. I brought it back to Gnith and made her some soup out of it.

  "About time," she said. She reached eagerly for the bowl and took a long drink of the broth. Then she looked up and grinned at me.

  "Am I forgiven?" I asked her.

  "What for?"

  "For letting you go hungry yesterday."

  "Didn't."

  "I thought you did," I said. "You wouldn't let me bring you something else."

  "You're not the only one who brings me good things to eat."

  With her fingers she picked a chunk of meat out of the bowl and put it into her mouth. "It gets easier," she said.

  "What gets easier, Mother?"

  "Killing things."

  "I've killed animals before." My defiant words slipped out before I could bite them back. Of course we had butchered animals at home, and Maara and I had spent the winter snaring rabbits for both their meat and their fur. That kind of killing hadn't bothered me since I was a small child, but I was still a little angry with myself for failing to kill the bird I caught the day before, and it puzzled me that I should suddenly be so squeamish.

  Then Gnith caught hold of my hand. I felt in her fingertips the echo of her heartbeat and remembered how the living bird had felt in my hands.

  Every morning I rose before dawn to hunt. When the birds had gleaned the last bit of grain from the fields that had been harvested, I had to work harder at finding their new feeding places. Every day I managed to shoot at least one bird. Some days I brought back two or three. There were days when I had to walk so far afield that I would have given up but for Gnith, who continued to insist that my soup was doing her a world of good.

  One evening, as I handed Gnith her bowl of soup, Namet came into the kitchen. "That smells wonderful," she said. She came over to the hearth and sat down on a low, three-legged stool. "Is there enough for me?"

  I was about to get up, to bring another bowl so that she could s
hare Gnith's soup, when Gnith handed her bowl to Namet.

  "Have it all," she said. "I'm sick of it."

  I stared at her, astonished.

  "You might have told me," I said. "I would have eaten it myself."

  Gnith took my hand. "Would you find it so easy to kill a little bird? Just to make yourself a bit of soup? You have lots of other things to eat." She made a tut-tut sound. "Such a tender-hearted child." I tried to withdraw my hand from hers, but she held on to it with surprising strength. "To bring an old woman a little treat is not the same as using living things for target practice."

  Gnith's words chilled me. She gently stroked my hand, then let it go and settled herself on her pallet for a nap. In a few minutes she was snoring.

  "What did she mean?" I whispered to Namet.

  "It's her gift to see these things," Namet replied. "She saw your reluctance to take the innocent lives of birds."

  The next morning when I went out to hunt I found Maara waiting for me just outside the earthworks. She was carrying her bow.

  "May I come with you?" she asked me.

  "Of course," I said.

  I waited for her to lead the way. Instead she gestured to me to go ahead. It felt strange to have her following me. I kept wanting to turn to her, to ask her if I should go this way or that, but I understood that she wanted to see what I would do.

  I couldn't make up my mind where I might have the best luck. I tried several places along the hedgerows where I had found birds before. That day there were none.

  Then I remembered that a few days before I had noticed a field of barley that was almost ready for harvest. When we approached it, I saw that more than half the grain had now been cut. The sheaves were still standing in the field, bound and ready for the cart.

  As soon as I started out along the hedgerow a bird flew up. I took a hasty shot at it and missed. I missed the next three birds too. That didn't bother me. For every bird I hit, I usually missed at least a dozen, but after many more failed attempts, I knew something was wrong.

  Another bird flew up. Before I could react, Maara's arrow brought it down. We went to the river, and while she built a fire, I cleaned the bird.

  "Did it make you nervous to have me watching you?" she asked me, as we sat by the fire waiting for the bird to cook.

  I shook my head. She never made me nervous. One of the things I loved about her was her infinite patience with me.

  "Do you know what you were doing wrong?"

  "What?" I asked her.

  "I have no idea. I wondered if you did."

  "No," I said.

  Maara took the bird from the fire. She broke it in two and handed half to me. I hesitated, remembering what she told me the last time she shared her game with me.

  She smiled. "Don't be silly."

  Hunger won out easily over pride. While we ate, I thought about what had happened that morning. I wasn't troubled by my failure. I was hardly surprised by it. I knew the answer lay close at hand, and I waited patiently for it to show itself.

  "The innocent lives of birds," I said aloud.

  Maara looked at me with curiosity.

  "That's what Namet said," I told her. "She said I was reluctant to take the innocent lives of birds."

  "What do you think she meant?"

  I thought the meaning was obvious. "I suppose she meant that I don't like to kill things."

  "No one likes to kill things."

  "But we do it anyway," I whispered.

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "To live," she said.

  Neither of us was thinking about the killing of innocent birds.

  When I woke the next morning, Sparrow's arms tightened around me.

  "Do you have to get up so early today?" she whispered.

  I was lying on my side with my back to her. She blew gently on the back of my neck just above the hairline, knowing how my body would respond. A shiver of pleasure ran down my spine, tempting me to stay where I was, but that day I needed to prove something to myself. Reluctantly I slipped out of Sparrow's arms. When I got up, Sparrow got up too.

  "If you won't stay with me," she said, "I suppose I'll have to come along with you. I'll never get to see you otherwise."

  We took our clothes down to the kitchen. Gnith was snoring on the hearth. I took my time getting dressed, hoping she would wake. She didn't stir. I took up my bow and quiver, and Sparrow and I slipped out the back door and walked together down the hill.

  I first thought of going back to the field where Maara and I had seen so many birds the day before. Then I saw that a mist lay heavy on the river and long tendrils had drifted up onto the shore. There would be birds feeding there. Hidden by the mist, they would be scratching for insects in the grass along the riverbank.

  With Sparrow following a few paces behind me, I nocked an arrow and held the bow ready. Step by cautious step I walked into the mist. A bird flew up. It startled me. I raised my bow, but the bird had vanished.

  I stopped and collected myself. Today, for the first time, I was hunting with full awareness of what I was doing. I felt the power in the bow, and at last I understood what Maara had been trying to teach me. As the hunt was teaching me mastery of the bow, it was also teaching me to bear responsibility for wielding the power of life and death, not only over the lives of birds, but over the lives of others like myself, the lives of women and men, the lives of warriors.

  A bird flew up, and the bow followed it, moving in an arc, anticipating the bird's flight. As the bird vanished into the mist, I let the arrow fly. I heard a fluttering of wings and found the dying bird by the sounds of its struggle. I picked it up and wrung its neck.

  When I turned around, Sparrow was right behind me, on her face an expression of wonder and delight.

  "How did you do that?" she whispered.

  I shrugged. I didn't really know myself. I felt both satisfaction and regret.

  "Are you hungry?" I asked her.

  "Now that you mention it, I am."

  We walked a short way uphill, until we were clear of the mist. While I built a fire, Sparrow cleaned the bird. The early morning air was cool, and we were both chilled from being in the damp. We huddled close to the fire as we waited for the bird to cook.

  "I've never seen anyone do that before," said Sparrow.

  "I don't usually bring down a bird on the first try."

  "Maybe I brought you luck."

  "You should come with me every morning."

  She shook her head. "You get up too early for me. Besides, there are other things I'd rather be doing that early in the morning."

  I blushed.

  "Sleeping for one."

  "Oh."

  She laughed at me. "And other things." She reached across the fire and let her fingers drift down my thigh.

  For once I didn't know how to respond to her teasing. I looked away.

  "Have you changed your mind?"

  I looked up at her and saw that I'd hurt her feelings.

  "I thought we were something more than friends," she said, "but I'll be your friend and nothing more, if that's what you want."

  "I've been happy as we are," I said.

  And then I wondered what I meant.

  "As we are," she said. "You have no time for me as we are. You're up too early in the morning, and by the time I've finished my work and come to bed, you're asleep and snoring."

  There was justice in her complaint.

  "I didn't realize. We need to find time to be together."

  "We're together now," she said.

  She took the bird from the fire and tested it to see if it was done. Then she handed me a piece of it.

  As we ate, I was aware of how close she was, sitting only an arm's length from me across the fire. My skin tingled where she had touched me, and I wanted her to touch me like that again. I remembered the day I had made love to her under the willow tree.

  Is this what love is like? My body was restless with wanting her, but where was my heart in
this? I thought about Gnith's blessing. Was this the love she thought I'd asked her for? I cared for Sparrow. I cared for her very much, but I had expected something else of love. Something more. The bitter taste of disappointment filled my mouth. I set my food aside.

  "What's wrong?" said Sparrow.

  "When I was little," I said, "I used to ask my mother what love is like. I never understood her answer. She said that love always brings with it the unexpected."

  "That's true," she said.

  A shadow crossed Sparrow's face, and a look came into her eyes that told me her heart was far away from me. She was thinking of someone else. In her face I saw her love for Eramet, and I knew she would never love me, nor would I love her, with that kind of love. I felt at the same time both a pang of jealousy and a flicker of hope, hope that such a love might someday come to me.

  "Tell me what it's like," I whispered.

  "I always loved her," Sparrow said. "I loved her first as I would have loved an older sister. When I was small, she teased me and played with me and protected me, just as a sister would, but I never expected to feel for her as I do now."

  Now.

  "I certainly never expected her to love me back," she said. "When she took me as her lover, I thought she wanted me as Arnet wanted me, as Arnet's son had wanted me."

  "Did you want her too?"

  "I was willing. I cared for her. What harm to give her a little pleasure? And perhaps to receive something back. I missed her so much when she was gone, and I wanted to be close to her. I thought that was all I wanted."

  Sparrow smiled. "She was the first to touch me. No one else had ever touched me like that, to give me pleasure. In the beginning I thought that was why being with her was so different from being with anyone else."

  I thought about Sparrow's tenderness with me and saw what a gift it was.

  "When I began to understand what I was feeling," she said, "I was afraid to reveal myself. I was afraid that if she knew, she would make fun of me, or, even worse, turn away. I hid my feelings so well that she complained I didn't love her anymore." Sparrow chuckled. "I had dreams when I was younger. Just like every other girl, I thought about what it would be like to love someone. But your mother was right. Nothing ever happens the way you expect."