I put my gathering-bag on the hearth, and she looked up, startled.
“Avala! You should not be in here! Outside! Quick!” Laughing, she jumped to her feet and tried to usher me outside. “You know the custom!” she said. “We’re preparing gifts in here, and your new dress! And what are you doing, out gathering? You should be resting, enjoying yourself, thinking on the great thing that we celebrate, tonight.”
“I have something to tell—” I began, but she pushed me along the riverbank, toward a place where my friends were sitting, talking.
“My love, this is a rare day!” she said. “Your birth, above all others, is celebrated. Enjoy the day. Spend it with your friends.”
“I saw soldiers today,” I said, and she stopped, the laughter fading from her face.
“I saw soldiers, Mother. And one of them saw me.”
The color drained from her cheeks. “Tell me,” she said.
So I told of the day’s happenings, and all the time I felt her fear rise. When I had finished she said, “Yeshi must be told this straightaway. Oh, Avala! What a thing to happen on this day!”
“I feel that we’re in no danger, Mother,” I said, but she called to the boys in the river.
“Tell the chieftain we have a thing he needs to know!” she called. “Tell him to come quickly!” Then she turned to me, and there were tears in her eyes. “I had been so glad, this day,” she said. “But now I’m thinking we’ll have to gather all our belongings together and leave, tonight, lest the soldiers come back. Your feast may have to be another time. Come, we’ll meet with Yeshi on the grasslands. It’s better that only he knows, at first, and after he can decide whether to call a meeting of us all.”
She took my hand and we walked together toward the hunters. Always I had seen my mother’s hand steady and strong, but now her fingers trembled, and she was cold in spite of the summer heat.
2
I have no wish to see what Jaganath will do to this Empire I have loved; neither can I bear to think of its future collapse. However, I believe that when the eagle returns in full strength, it will bring not destruction, but a cleansing, and the restoration of what was best. I also believe you are the voice, the cry, that calls the eagle and begins the reformation. Your last words to me were that the weed had entangled us both; I prefer to think that you and I are in the wind that blows across the field of wheat; that we fly freely above the storm and, in spite of the chaos, play out our destined parts in the fulfillment of a great and splendid prophecy.
—Excerpt of a letter from the Empress Petra to Gabriel, during the Shinali internment in Taroth Fort
“I’m thinking we don’t have to worry, Mother,” I said as we walked toward our chieftain. “The soldier, he was not full of hate. I’m not afraid of what happened. We’re all still safe.”
“I trust your words, Avala, but this is for Yeshi to decide,” she said.
Already the boys were nearing the hunters. We saw them speak to Yeshi. Then they ran back to the river, and the chieftain hurried on to us, ahead of the hunters.
Yeshi was not a tall man, nor imposing as people said his brother Tarkwan had been, but he was strong and unafraid, and he held our people’s welfare above all else in his heart. Like all Shinali men, he wore his hair long, decorated with leaves and beads of bone. About his neck was the sacred bone torne, sign that he was chieftain. It had been worn by Tarkwan before him, and by their father before that, and by all the chieftains in time gone.
He reached us, and my mother said, “Avala has a thing to tell you, Yeshi. It is a high lot important.”
Again I gave an account of the day. When I had finished speaking, Yeshi asked, “Are you certain you were not followed home, Avala?”
“I am very sure,” I said. “I’m thinking there’s no reason to be alarmed. The soldier I saw had no hate in him. They all went on their way, far east to the Igaal lands, to capture slaves. We are in no danger. I have it in my knowing.”
“How could you tell that the soldier had no hate?” he asked. “Could you see into his heart?”
I said, hesitantly, “This is a hard thing for me to explain, Yeshi. The soldier who saw me, he looked surprised, but he smiled, and it was as if he knew me. His soul-colors, they were blue and green, and those are colors of peace. There was only goodness in him. He would not betray me. Or any of us.”
A long time Yeshi looked at me, weighing my words. I had not talked openly before of this gift of special knowing that I had. My mother was aware of it, and my grandmother, but no one else.
“Ashila, what is your word on this matter?” Yeshi asked. “Did you know your daughter could see soul-colors?”
“Avala has had this gift of Seeing since she was small,” my mother replied. “Gabriel had the gift, and so do I, in a smaller way. In our daughter the gift is strong.”
Again Yeshi was thoughtful for a long time. At last he said to me, “I’m thinking that what you say is true, Avala, and not only because you have the gift of Sight. I believe you because I have it in my own knowing that all soldiers are not against us. When we were prisoners in Taroth Fort, some of the Navoran soldiers were kind to us, for they were not at ease having to keep us in that place. One man, especially, was kind. He became a good friend to Gabriel. His name was Embry. Perhaps there are still soldiers who think of us with favor.”
At the soldier’s name, my heart leaped. “Embry?” I said. “That was the name of the soldier I saw! Embry! Two times they said his name.”
My mother touched my arm. “This soldier’s face,” she said to me, “what was it like?”
“Halfway to being old,” I told her. “He had no beard. His eyes were green like willow leaves. His hair, it was pale like the desert sand. He had—”
“A scar on his chin, here?” said my mother, smiling, tracing a zigzag mark across her own skin.
“Yes!”
She bent her face in her hands, and I knew that she walked in the old days, kept and treasured in her knowing. At last she said, wiping her eyes, “Surely the All-father’s hand is covering this day! Embry, of all men, will not betray us. He and Gabriel, they both did things to win our freedom—things that were a high lot brave.”
“I remember those things,” said Yeshi. “It is true, Embry will not betray us. I’m thinking we will stay here, so long as we see no more soldiers. Thank you, Avala. I will speak with the elders of this, and with our priest. Meanwhile, we will hold the feast in honor of your borning-day, and welcome you as a new woman to our tribe, and we shall not worry about this day’s happenings.” He smiled and placed his hand on my head, as he often had when I was a child.
There was comfort in his touch, as well as strength, for I loved Yeshi a high lot. As he looked at me, I remembered childhood days when he had taken all of us children out onto a plain, and given us little bows and arrows he had himself made, and taught us to shoot. At other times he had told us stories of our past, of the land and the life we had lost. It was Yeshi who told us of the eagle, symbol of our people; and how one day we would, like the eagle, rise up in power and be a great nation again. Always, he had cared for the warrior-spirit in us.
“You’re a special daughter to us, Avala,” he said.
He drew me to him and embraced me, and I felt the hard shape of the bone torne, the amulet he wore. I remembered Yeshi showing me the torne when I was a child, telling me that the carving on the bone was the face of the man who would do a great thing for our people, and start us on the journey to being a great nation again. I still remembered his words. “It’s the face of your father, Avala,” he had said. “Before we even saw his face, we knew him, for he was in our prophecies. Yet we did not realize, when he was among us, who he was; we only knew it later, when we found out what he had done for us, for our freedom. Now his life is legend, and we keep him in our knowing, as hero and brother and friend.”
As Yeshi drew away now, I glimpsed the carving again, the profile of the man’s face, strong and fierce and far-seeing, his
br />
long hair blended with the wings of an eagle in flight.
As night fell all the people gathered about the chieftain’s tent, and the ceremonies for me began.
My mother and some of the women elders came and took me down to the river. There in the darkness I stripped off my clothes and bathed while the women chanted Shinali prayers. The washing was sacred, signifying the setting aside of childhood. When I came out of the water my body was dried and anointed with oils from wildflowers, and my mother put the new dress on me. Beautiful that dress was, made of fine strips of white leather, and in the bright moonlight I saw that it was painted with eagles and stars and the curving, interweaving symbol that was our sign for dreams. New shoes were put upon my feet, and they, too, were made of white leather and painted with stars.
As the new clothes were put on me, my mother said, “Beloved daughter, we put on you the garment of womanhood. May your ways be peace, may you nurture and guard those weaker than yourself, love those who are kin and those who are strangers, and live in gratitude for all things.”
Then my long hair was combed, and thin portions plaited down the sides and decorated with carved bone beads. A hard time they had, plaiting my hair, for it was unruly and curling, as my mother said my father’s had been. I thought of him many times that night, and wished he were there. Then I would see my mother’s face, shining and full of love and pride, but still with that sadness in her eyes, and I knew that she also was thinking of him.
When they had finished dressing me, we all turned and faced the tribe, waiting in the firelight by the tents. Two people came to us across the dark grass. My grandmother came bearing a small lamp, symbol of wisdom’s light, and with her was our priest, Zalidas. I had always been a little afraid of him; I felt that he expected me to do great things for my people, as my father had done, and his unspoken hopes were a heaviness on me. Yet with all the tribe, I honored him, for he had held my people together through sixty long summers, through battles and betrayals, sicknesses and near destruction, through captivity and escape; and his songs kept our dreams alive.
He was here now to paint my face with holy symbols, and he held a little tray bearing the things he needed. He stopped in front of me, and my grandmother held the lamp high, saying, “May wisdom light all your words, Avala, and all your ways.” She smiled, and I felt a great love from her.
Then she moved the lamp close, so the priest could see to paint my face. Before he began he prayed to the All-father to guide his hand. While he prayed the night wind tore at the little flame, and made strange lights dance across the priest’s bone necklaces, and on the sacred paintings on his robes. Then he began to paint my face with a piece of antler dipped in colored clays mixed with fish oil. My heart beat fast as he painted the images, and all the women behind me chanted quiet prayers, for what he painted was meaningful, like a prophecy for my life.
It was strange to be so close to Zalidas, and I could hear him breathing as he painted, and see yellow flecks in his heavy-lidded eyes. He was shaking a little, for he was very old and frail, and often in pain. Red he used, on one side of my face, and blue on the other. On my brow he painted something in black, then in white. When he had finished he said a traditional blessing-prayer over me, and gave me a flat piece of polished silver, a little bigger than my palm, so I could see what he had done.
On one cheek pranced a red horse, and on the other a blue eagle flew. On my brow, painted in black, was a sword crossed with an arrow, and about the weapons was a circle in white. Signs of war. Strange signs for a healer, I thought, and looked at the rest of my face. Between the gleaming marks of paint, like two pieces of summer sky, were my blue Navoran eyes. Always they startled me, when I saw them, for they were a high lot strange against my brown skin, though my skin was light for a Shinali. I saw my straight eyebrows, almost meeting above the high bridge of my nose. My nose, too, was from my father, strong and beaklike. My image looked mysterious, fierce with the painted signs of war. I was not sure I liked my face, and I certainly did not like what Zalidas had done.
As he took the mirror from me, he said, “The horse is the sign of the Navoran Empire, Avala, for Navoran blood runs in your veins; the eagle is sign of the Shinali blood in you; and the Navoran sword crossed with the Shinali arrow are signs of the day when you will fight for our lost lands. But outside the arrow and the sword is a circle, sign of unity and the fullness of time, for in you, in your mixed blood, the arrow and the sword are also met in peace.”
He blessed me, then my grandmother took my left hand, and my mother took my right hand, and they led me over to the people. Yeshi was waiting for me at the entrance to his tent. One side of it had been raised on poles, and mats were put outside on the grass. The feasting-fires were not far off, and the fragrant smoke drifted across us, and the flame light glimmered on the people on the edges of the gathering. Though so many people were crowded there, the silence was complete. Over their heads, beyond the mountains, a round moon rose.
Yeshi held out both his hands, and mine were placed in his. To my surprise, my chieftain was near tears, and he did not speak the usual words of welcome for a new woman.
“This is a high night for me, Avala—for all my tribe. It has been a gift for us, great beyond telling, to have had among us the child of Gabriel. And it is a new gift, to have a woman among us, now, who has his blood in her veins.”
He kissed my brow, and the bone torne swung between us, golden in the lamplight, its shadow black across his robe. My heart thumped painfully, and I thought how it was always like this—the image of my father golden, shining, almost holy, and myself lost somewhere in the shadow of him. I loved my father dearly, and I loved Yeshi, but I wished that tonight I would be seen for myself, just as Avala, new Shinali woman.
He smiled and began the formal greeting. “I welcome you, Avala, to your old home, to the tent you have always shared with us. You walked out of here a child. You walk in here a woman. I welcome you with honor and with love.”
Then my grandmother gave me the lamp, and I took off my shoes and went into the tent. The feasting-mats had been laid out, and the lamps upon them shone on clay bowls of leaf salads and boiled fish, and hollowed gourds of water. The meat would be brought in later, but before we ate there was to be the giving of the gifts. I sat at the far end of the mat, and people came in. My mother was the first.
She sat in front of me and placed into my arms a rolled sheepskin garment. It was very old and worn. I shook it out and saw that the smooth side of the sheepskin, the outside of the tunic, was painted with canoes in a river.
“Long years I have kept it for you,” my mother said, and her eyes were moist. “It was made on our own land before the days of the Wandering, when we had sheep. The paintings, they’re not good. The artist was in a hurry. He had been canoe racing in the river with Tarkwan, and their canoe had won. After, the children and young people wanted him to paint canoes on their clothes, for he was their hero. He was hurrying to finish, so he could walk on the Shinali lands with me. It was the first day I saw his face.”
The words fell softly on my heart, as beautiful as first snow, and I asked, “My father, he did the paintings?”
My mother nodded. Taking the garment, she turned it over and touched some strange signs I did not understand. “The first letters of his names,” she said. “Gabriel Eshban Vala.”
For a while I could not speak, for tears. At last I said, “I thank you, with sharleema, for giving me what my father’s hand has touched.”
My grandmother waited behind her, at the head of the whole tribe in a line, so my mother moved aside. My grandmother’s gift was a set of healing-knives, with bone needles for sewing up wounds. I recognized the knives my mother had been honing that afternoon. “My hands are not steady anymore, for using these,” Grandmother said. “But with them I taught your mother to heal, and she is teaching you. Look after them well, for they mean healing and life.”
Many gifts there were, some of them treasures
people had saved all the years of the Wandering. I felt overwhelmed, marveling that they thought so much of me. The final gift was from Yeshi, and always it was the same, in these rituals: he told of the history of our people.
He was sitting on the edge of his sleeping place, the most important place in our tent, and everyone was sitting before him. Behind him, fixed to a screen of flax woven over wood, hung our tribe’s most valued possessions: the war drums and spears of the old warriors; and suspended above them, steel bright and shining like gold in the firelight, was a fine Navoran sword. A great treasure it was, for it had been left to us by my father. And under the sword, wrapped in leather for safekeeping, was a precious Navoran letter.
Smiling, Yeshi called me to sit beside him. Everyone became very quiet, even the children, and Yeshi began his story. As if to me alone he told it, though I had heard the story more times than I could count, and all the tribe knew every word, for the story was always exactly the same, so we all would hold it in our knowing. And this is what he told.
“In the beginning, when the first winds blew across the earth, and the leaves unfurled on the first trees, and the father of all deer grazed the plains, and the first eagles flew, the All-father made us for this land. We increased, walked strong upon the earth, and were at peace with all things. A mighty nation we became. Our lands spread from the sea in the west to the sea in the south, and, in the east, to the great range of the Napangardi Mountains. In the north our lands were bordered by lakes and the long river that runs from the mountains to the sea. We called ourselves the Shinali, and wished only to live on the land, fishing and hunting and keeping sheep. But in the far north and east were deserts and marshes, territories of the Igaal and the Hena, and they fought us many times for our pleasant lands.