The Warrior's Path

  Death comes to us in the first moment of desire. I wanted to protest, to speak into the darkness, to say I would refuse to yield, to tell the world that I would not give up my place, until I remembered that I was standing in the place of someone who had already died, of someone who had yielded her place to me.

  Sparrow took me into her arms and kissed my brow. I embraced her. We stood there for a long time, until both the dead and the unborn had fled our measured breath and beating hearts. That night we were real, and they were not. We were alive.

  Sparrow let go of me. Where her touch had been, the night air chilled me. She took my hand and led me away from the river's edge, to a little knoll where the air was warmer. We sat down in the long grass.

  Sparrow leaned toward me. I thought she was going to kiss me, but she only touched me with her eyes. Instead of the ironic half-smile I knew so well, it was a sweet smile she gave me that night. Her eyes had lost the hint of doubt I so often saw in them. Even my own face felt strange to me, as if for that one night I had become someone else, not someone entirely unknown to me, but someone whom I might someday recognize. And the woman who opened herself to me that night was a stranger too. She was beautiful.

  She drew so near to me that my eyes lost sight of her. Then I felt her mouth touch mine. Her breath smelled of lemon grass. Did I breathe or did she breathe for me? I had no need to draw life into my body from the air around me. I drew life from her, as she drew life from me.

  She drew back, and the night air rushed into my lungs. She lay down, opening her arms to me, and I fell into them. The earth was warm from the day's heat. Her body was warm with life. My body pressed itself against her.

  I slipped my hand under her shirt, to feel the naked skin of her back and shoulders. The places where I touched her were warm and alive, moving with her blood and breath. I pulled her shirt up, so that I could feel her skin against me, and she shrugged out of it. Then she helped me out of mine.

  When she touched me, I was unprepared for what I felt. Warmth and pleasure flowed from her hands as they stroked my arms and back. Not only the places she touched, but my whole body, felt her caress. I was comforted, as I had been comforted as a child at my mother's breast. I lay unmoving in her arms, and all the while her hands were never still.

  She turned and pushed against me, until I lay on my back and she lay over me. The fragrance of springtime rose up all around us -- the warm earth, the tender grass crushed by our bodies, the cool scent of water from the river. A gentle breeze whispered in the grass. Insects sang us their night songs.

  She slipped her hand into the waistband of my trousers and let it rest there. Her lips brushed my face. I turned toward her until my mouth found hers. When I put my arms around her, she pulled away from me and sat up. I felt cold without her body close to me, and I reached out to stop her. With a smile she eluded me. She knelt at my feet and tugged my boots off. She undid my belt and helped me to slip out of my trousers.

  She paused then to look at me. As if she had never before seen a woman's body, her eyes explored my body with both curiosity and desire. I looked down at myself and saw how much I had changed in the year I'd been in Merin's house. My breasts were still small, but they had a pleasing roundness that was new. What had been just a tuft of curls now covered the secret places of my body. My hips had lost their boyish slimness. While I was stronger than I had ever been, my strength now hid beneath a woman's softness.

  When did I change? When had my own body become so strange to me? The body that in childhood had belonged entirely to me was no longer mine alone. It belonged now to life, and it would yield to desire, whether I would or no.

  Sparrow's body mirrored mine. Her breasts were more full than mine. When she slipped her trousers off, I saw that the curls between her legs were darker. She was too thin, and the joints of her shoulders and her collarbones were plain to see. Her pale skin glowed with moonlight.

  I found it difficult to breathe. The night air had not enough life in it to sustain my life. She lay down beside me. My body yearned toward hers, and I wondered why desire drew us together when no child could come of it, but when our bodies touched, I had no need to understand. I couldn't tell if the heartbeat pounding in my ears was mine or hers. I breathed in the fragrance of her skin and her sweet breath. I breathed her into me. She was life.

  If she had turned away from me then, my body would certainly have lived, but I believe that something in my spirit would have died. I never thought that night that something in her spirit might have died if I had not been there to meet it. I knew only that she had kept something alive in me, or perhaps she had brought something new to life. I needed her that night as my body needed food and drink and air and warmth and light. My spirit needed her, to keep my heart alive.

  Her arms enfolded me. We wore the night air as a cloak, warming it with our desire. Our bodies clung together, now joined in a tight embrace, now moving in a soft caress. We touched each other with gestures of love forgotten since infancy. My mouth found her breast and gave her pleasure while I found comfort there. I remember lying for a time upon her body, as I used to lie upon the body of my mother when I was small. She stroked my back as my mother had done to soothe me into sleep, but Sparrow's touch both soothed and awakened me.

  For a while I was content to lose myself in the sweetness of her touch. Her sweet kiss lingered on my lips. Sweet sensation flowed over the surface of my skin, pooled around my heart and deep within my belly. Then between my legs I felt a longing. I moved against her, and she made a soft sound beside my ear that sounded like yes.

  She put her arms around me and held me for a moment. Then she turned over with me in her arms, until I lay on my back beneath her. I could do nothing but wait for her. Whatever she would do, I would meet. I knew she wouldn't leave me. I knew she would fill the empty place that she had opened within me like an abyss.

  The earth had life in it. Against my back I felt a heartbeat, a trembling. She held me tight as the ground spiraled out from underneath me. She steadied me against it, as the world changed.

  She touched me. She opened me and caressed me. She held me trembling on the edge of the abyss. She kept me there.

  She entered my body. I wanted to pull her into me, to feel her heart beat against my own heart. I wanted her to reach deep inside me, to find the life that had chosen my body as its hiding place and reveal it to me.

  I fell. Deep into the earth, into her deepest heart, I fell.

  How long did I lie against the beating heart of life? Perhaps only for a moment, perhaps for longer than a lifetime. Beyond both pain and pleasure, alone in a lover's arms, I laid my face against my Mother's breast.

  But it was Sparrow's breast that pillowed my head and her arms that made the world assume its familiar shape again. Her heartbeat beside my ear brought me back. Her need called me out of the dark.

  I touched her then, as she had touched me. I carried her where she had carried me. I held her, steadied her, shielded her, and offered her to the beating heart of life.

  26. Lost

  When I opened my eyes, the morning star was peeking over the horizon. We lay together on the hillside. Pieces of our clothing pillowed my head. Sparrow's head lay upon my breast. Our only covering was a shirt pulled over our shoulders, but I wasn't cold. Sparrow's body warmed me, and the still air of early morning lay warm against my skin.

  In just a little while the sounds of morning would begin -- the music of birdsong and the sigh of a spring breeze. Now I heard only the soft murmur of the river and the whisper of Sparrow's breath. I would have held back the dawn, so that I could stay suspended in that perfect moment, but the demands of the body intruded. When I got up to relieve myself, I tried not to disturb Sparrow. She woke up anyway and rubbed her eyes.

  "It's still dark," she said. She sounded grumpy.

  "Not for long."

  I went a short distance away and squatted down in the grass. She sat up and watched me for a moment. Then she got up and joined
me. The picture of the two of us squatting side by side there on the hillside struck me as so ridiculous that I had to laugh. Sparrow looked at me, puzzled. Then she too began to laugh.

  "We must be a sight," she said.

  "With any luck, no one will notice."

  "There isn't that much luck in the world. Almost everyone we know is lying somewhere in sight of this hillside."

  "And they're probably doing the same thing we are."

  "I suppose they are," she said.

  Sparrow took me by the hand and led me down to the river. Hand in hand we leaped into the water. The shock of the cold water took my breath away, but before long I was used to it, and when at last we climbed out onto the riverbank, the air felt warm and welcoming.

  I lay down on my back in the grass and looked up at the lightening sky with its scattering of fading stars. Sparrow sat down beside me. She took my hand, turned it over in her hands, examined it. She ran her fingertip along the lines of my palm and played with my fingers. I watched her face. She looked thoughtful, and a bit sad.

  "Are you sorry?" she said. She kept her eyes on my hand in hers.

  "Sorry? What for?"

  She didn't answer me.

  "Are you?" I asked her.

  She looked at me, surprised. "No, of course not."

  "Then why should I be sorry?"

  She shrugged. "We haven't had much time for each other. I wondered if you still cared for me a little."

  "Of course I care for you." I leaned up on one elbow and touched her face. "You're my friend. I've never had a better one."

  She gave me half a smile. "Neither have I."

  A teasing look came into her eyes. Before she could say something that would push me away, I sat up and embraced her. I kissed her cheek and gently stroked her back, and her body relaxed against me. I held her for a moment longer. Then I let her go.

  "Let's go home," I said.

  We found our clothing and dressed ourselves. When we started back up the hill to Merin's house, I took Sparrow's hand. I remembered walking up that hill hand in hand with her at the harvest festival, when she had been unhappy because Eramet was with someone else. Now Eramet was gone, and no doubt Sparrow would give a great deal to have that day back again. I took a lesson from it. I resolved to keep my heart open to those I loved, no matter what they did, even if they hurt me.

  Other couples were straggling home. I was surprised to see Fet and Fodla among them. They too walked hand in hand. Fet was as serene as usual, but Fodla's smiling face glowed with joy and a peacefulness that was quite unlike her. Her restless eyes that seemed always to be darting here and there, trying to take in everything happening around her, now gazed steadily off into the distance. If she saw anything at all, it was something no one else could see.

  The household gathered in the great hall. No one spoke. The couples who had spent the night together seemed reluctant to separate. I too wanted to keep Sparrow close to me. Cael and Alpin sat side by side. Taia sat shoulder to shoulder with a young girl who had only just arrived in Merin's house. Then I wondered where Laris was.

  Servants brought us steaming bowls of tea and hot barley cakes, along with meat and eggs left over from the day before. I was hungry, and I gave all my attention to my breakfast. By the time I had taken the first edge off my hunger, people were talking and laughing as they did every morning. The benches had begun to fill with warriors. I hadn't seen many of the warriors at the bonfire. Where had they been all night?

  "Why don't the warriors join in the spring festival?" I asked Sparrow.

  "Some do," she replied.

  "But not many. Where were they?"

  "I imagine the elders had their own work to do. As for the rest, why not ask your warrior?"

  For some reason I was reluctant to do that. I wasn't sure I wanted her asking me where I had been or what I'd been doing.

  "Is there some reason not to?" Sparrow asked.

  I shrugged. "It's no business of mine what she did, just as it's no business of hers what I did."

  "I see." Sparrow looked at me out of the corner of her eye. She started to say something else, then changed her mind.

  "Last year," I said, "did you and Eramet -- "

  "Yes."

  Suddenly I felt awkward. I opened my mouth, to tell her I was sorry for intruding on a private grief, but she spoke first.

  "That's why I'm glad you were with me last night," she said. "I don't think I could have borne it, to spend the night alone."

  I reached for her hand under the table and squeezed it.

  "Of course, there are a few other reasons too," she said, and winked at me.

  The rest of the day was uneventful. Since most of the young people had been awake almost all night, no one felt up to doing much, and for us it was still a holiday. Sparrow and I spent the day together. In the morning we found a sunny place outdoors to sit. In the afternoon we napped in the cool shade by the river. We talked a bit about nothing important. Most of the time we simply shared a comfortable silence.

  More than once I found myself watching for my warrior. Many of the warriors were outdoors enjoying the day. I didn't see her among them. Neither had I seen her in the great hall at breakfast time nor at the midday meal. I asked a few of the apprentices. None of them had seen her either.

  I tried not to feel uneasy. In spite of the fact that she had made some friends in Merin's house, I knew she wouldn't be among the groups of warriors I'd seen in the great hall entertaining themselves by drinking too much ale and boasting to one another of their victories. More likely she had found one or two who preferred to spend a quiet day, or perhaps she had kept to herself.

  At last the day was over. As the sun was setting, we made our way home. We had our supper in the great hall. Maara never came downstairs.

  Sparrow saw me looking for her.

  "Why are you so worried about her?" she asked me. "Can't she look after herself for a day or two?"

  "Of course she can," I said. "I'm not worried."

  But my words convinced neither Sparrow nor myself.

  Sparrow sighed. "Why don't you take her some supper? Maybe she feels left out of things. She's still a stranger here, after all."

  Sparrow had said aloud what I'd been thinking. As much as I wanted to protest that Maara was no longer a stranger in Merin's house, I wondered how much she understood of what was happening around her. I regretted that I hadn't thought to talk to her about it.

  After supper I took some food upstairs. Maara wasn't in her room. I sat down on her bed to wait for her. As I watched the twilight fade, I grew more and more uneasy. I tried to tell myself that I was being foolish, that I should go on to bed and that in the morning I would find her there, safe and sound.

  When it was quite dark outside and I could no longer believe that she would be home that night, my uneasiness turned to dread. I went out to the bower and found Sparrow sleeping there. I almost lay down beside her. I wanted the comfort of her arms around me, but I knew I wouldn't sleep, so I turned away and walked down the hill.

  I sat for a while by the river. The night before, people had been everywhere out on the hillside. This night no one but me kept vigil. I felt more peaceful out under the stars. A little of the enchantment of the night before lingered in the air around me. The loneliness that had hurt me so much that springtime was gone. Before last night, I had felt abandoned by love. Now love surrounded me.

  Then I thought of Maara. For the first time it occurred to me to wonder if she had been lonely too.

  On my way back up the hill I stopped by the oak grove. I had no gift to bring, not even a scrap of cloth to tie around a branch, but the Mother would surely know what was in my heart. I sat down in the darkness under the trees. Here and there a moonbeam reached down through the branches and cast a lacy pattern on the ground. I brought into my mind the image of my warrior and asked the Mother to take Maara to her heart, as she had taken me.

  I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck. Someone was
behind me. Although I had heard nothing, I knew someone was there as surely as if she had tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to see Maara sitting not far away, her back against the immense trunk of an ancient tree. Her face was in shadow, but I could feel her eyes on me.

  I got up and approached her. I almost asked if I was disturbing her. Then I thought better of it. I didn't want to give her a chance to send me away. I knelt down beside her and said, "Are you all right?"

  She nodded.

  "I was worried."

  She said nothing. She simply looked at me. Her look reminded me of the way my mother used to look at me when I had done something mischievous and she didn't know whether she wanted to hug me or scold me.

  "Why are you here?" I asked her.

  "Why are you?" she said. "Why aren't you with your friends?"

  I tried to listen, not to her words, but to her tone of voice. Her words made no sense. I had been with my friends because of the holiday, and now the time had come for me to return to her. Surely she understood that.

  "Because I'm bound to you," I replied.

  "Bound to you," she echoed.

  The wind stirred the branches overhead. Moonlight flickered across her face. Her eyes were empty.

  I tried to set my fear aside. "Have you eaten?"

  She shook her head.

  "Are you keeping a fast?"

  She didn't understand me.

  "Sometimes people will fast to open themselves to the Mother," I said.

  "She's not my mother."

  The bitterness in her voice shocked me as much as her words.

  "She is," I said. "She is everyone's mother. You can't disown her, any more than you can disown the woman who gave you birth."