So deep and pleasant was her sleep that Dindi resisted waking even after she heard the howl.
Then something rustled, which sounded like feathers. The cozy warmth disappeared. Instead, freezing wind rushed over her. She squealed and sat up.
Though she had gone to sleep outside, Dindi found herself inside her hut. The beggar woman was there too, but already she had risen to her feet. She wore some kind of feather cape, which swept behind her as she left the hut.
The warrior who had slept in the loft dropped to the ground and hurried after the old woman. Dindi followed him. As soon as she stepped outside, she wished she hadn’t. Pubescent dawn was completely blocked out by the storm. Everything was undifferentiated white. Snow pounded her, and bitter cold. Her teeth started to chatter.
“What’s going on?” she asked. Her words puffed clouds.
He spared her a glance full of worry and pity. “An attack, I fear. Ready what weapons you have, and rouse your kin to the danger.”
He jogged off, and the swirls of snow swallowed him.
Dindi floundered for a heart stop. She knew war, but it was something that happened in someone else’s tribe, far away. It couldn’t happen here, at home. Not in her home.
A dark winged shape descended out of the sky, glowering and grey, like a living storm cloud.
Dindi yelled, “Attack! Attack! Outtribers!”
She ran toward the hearth house, at the center of Lost Swan clanhold. Their tiny hold, with only a dozen or so houses and an equal number of animal sheds, had no defensive wall, not even a row of sharp sticks. Not that it would have helped, she saw. The attack came from…unbelievably…
…above.
Warriors on giant predator birds, huge hawks and eagles, swept over the houses. They shot down flaming arrows, which alighted on the pointed thatched roofs and exploded into flame. Fire hissed in the snowy wind.
Dindi’s kinfolk rushed out of the huts. The storm muffled their screams and yells, but one of them blew on the conch shell. The trumpet pierced the howls of fire, wind and human dismay. It sounded loud over the hills. The clarion warned of danger and begged aide. If their allies heard it, they would reply with conch cries of their own.
No answer came.
Shadow blotted out the sun. One of the riders flew over Dindi. He aimed a long wooden lance at her. She threw herself into the snow to avoid the weapon, but he expected that. The bird snatched her up off the ground.
Vertigo twisted her. Her heart flipped upside down. Her stomach leaped to her throat. Her breath rushed out her ears. Sky and earth cavorted, topsy-turvy. The talons that held her scratched her flesh like tree-trunks. She fought, futilely.
She caught sight of Finnadro through a flurry of snow. He leaned back into the wind, aiming his bow high. Arrow after arrow he launched at the attacking raptors. His speed and strength amazed her. He never hesitated between shots, his flexing arms never wavered in their rhythm, and he never missed. More than one huge bird shrieked and fell from the sky with his arrow in its eye.
But he was one man. Dindi’s own kin were farmers and goat keepers. They tossed spears more like fishermen seeking trout than like warriors, and netted little.
The bird riders concentrated on Finnadro. Several of the riders whose birds had fallen rushed him at the same time. They knocked the bow from his hands. He kicked in the face of one man, and punched another, but two more landed blows on him.
Just as their numbers would have overwhelmed him, dark shapes growled out of the ground and leaped up on his attackers.
Wolves!
The beasts tore the attackers off Finnadro. The raptor riders struggled to fight off these new opponents, which gave Finnadro time to draw his club and bash heads. Fallen foes bloodied the snow around him. His wolves yapped and bayed.
His courage gave her hope. She renewed her own fight. The enemy raptor circled above her clanhold. Its talons pinched the breath from her lungs, but her arms were free. Hitting the talons only bruised her fists, however. She needed a better plan.
She found her chance when the raptor flew low over a burning roof. She grabbed a handful of burning straw and thrust the burning faggot into the tender spot between the bird’s foot and feathers. An inhuman keen rewarded her. The talons flexed open and spilled Dindi into the open air.
Her stomach and heart switched places during the terrifying free fall.
Then she landed on the thatch of the house. Smoke billowed all around her. Fire spit onto her clothes, but she rolled down the slanted roof, landed, rolled again and snuffed the fire in slush. Her clothes were tattered and sodden when she rose, but she stood on her own two feet, unharmed and still free.
Everywhere else, the bird men triumphed. They herded Lost Swan clanfolk into the center of the clanhold at lance point. Other raptors had captured those who tried to flee in their talons and dropped them, mostly women clutching babes, in the center with the other captives.
Then at last, an answering conch trumpeted. A moment later, from another direction, another conch answered. Lost Swan’s allies had heard her plea, and answered with their pledge. Gratitude flared inside Dindi’s breast. Full Basket and Broken Basket had sent warriors to their aide, but would they be in time to save her kin—or only to avenge them?
Over the hills, warriors poured. Dindi recognized Tamio on his horse in the lead of the Broken Basket warriors. On the Full Basket side, Kemla had come too, with her face and taunt bare belly painted red and white, and with red streamers tied to the tip of her bow. The pride of the Corn Hills had come to defend their own. They shouted bold war cries. However, when they saw the outtriber warriors mounted on giant raptors, the Corn Hills warriors faltered. Dindi tasted their pungent dismay even at a distance. They had no idea how to fight such foes.
To their credit, they kept coming. Their war cries were not as confident as before.
A beam of dawn light split the clouds. The ray illuminated the old woman. Dindi had forgotten her. She lifted her arms and spread her feather cape.
No…not her cape.
Her wings.
She danced into the air. Her two white wings became six, shooting rays of the rainbow all around her. Dindi could no longer be sure if the sunlight illuminated her, or if she illuminated the sun. Her long white hair fluttered behind her as a pennant, and her face shone with a beauty stronger than time.
Dindi had never seen her save in Visions, but she knew that beauty by heart. How had she not recognized the woman before? How had a few wrinkles, a bent back, hidden that glory, even for a moment?
“It is the White Lady!”
Dindi thought she had cried it aloud, but the words had not come from her. The warriors on the raptors shouted it to one another. They gaped and pointed.
“Cease this fighting!” The White Lady’s voice carried over the whole battlefield without effort, more like a song than a shout. Warriors on both sides lowered their weapons. Dindi could not tell if magic compelled them, or merely awe.
The White Lady angled her floating body toward the Raptor Riders.
“If it is me you have come for, then take me. Leave these clansfolk alone.”
“No, my Lady!” objected Finnadro. He and his wolves formed a circle around the area where she hovered, though he could no more reach her than her foes.
“Let us treat and truce,” called back the leader of the Raptor Riders. The voice was rough and cruel, but higher pitched than Dindi expected. The rider in the feathered helm and padded leather armor was a woman. “No one else needs to die. We only want to talk.”
The White Lady inclined her head. “Agreed.”
Kemla had missed the battle. That was bad enough. Her male cousins jogged close to her, those useless fools, clucking their tongues like hens. They hadn’t wanted her to come with them, because they didn’t want her exposed to bloodshed. Fa! Who had been through a war? She or they? Just because she had hips didn’t mean she couldn’t spear a man in the spleen.
Besides, all their clucking had been for naught, because the moment the warriors from Full Basket arrived, the cowardly attackers yielded to a truce. Kemla could not believe that the war leaders of Full Basket and Broken Basket agreed to let them off so easily. But flags of truce were waved on top of lances and spears, and each separate group of warriors withdrew to its own side. Most of the clansfolk of Lost Swan were held prisoner by the crazy bird-riding outtribers in the center of the burnt out clanhold, which the outtribers made their camp.
A few Lost Swan clanfolk had escaped capture, and these joined the rest of the Corn Hills warriors on one side of the clanhold. One of them, to Kemla’s sour surprise, was Dindi. She popped up out of nowhere and trotted to the Corn Hill encampment. Dindi’s cousin Hadi had also evaded the attackers. Apparently, he and some younger boys had been driving goats to pasture at the time of the attack. They herded their gaggle of goats yet. Tamio and Yodigo clapped Hadi on the back and welcomed him with yelps. He looked dazed and unhappy. The smaller boys looked excited. The goats nuzzled each new body they met, hoping to find food. Those goats would be lucky if they didn’t end up as food themselves, if the truce devolved back into a siege.
The Corn Hills war leaders, a mix of old men and young men, did not seem to know what to do once the combatants had withdrawn to their respective sides. An old woman and a rover strode toward them. Mangy dogs surrounded them. Kemla recognized the beggars she had turned away in the woods. What were they doing here?
The dogs glowed green and shifted, turning into shaggy, bearded men, bare chested despite the chill, above fur legwals.
The Corn Hills warriors gasped and took a collective step back.
The young nephews of the clans, among them Tamio and Yodigo, bristled like so many porcupines with their spears. The seven strange men, in contrast, were not armed, except the center one, who wore dark green leather. He was the only one of his band who had no beard, just the bristled shadow of a day old shave. He carefully kept his hands away from the bow slung over his back. Kemla sensed he could have that bow ready soon enough if he’d an itch for it.
The bunch had an untamed air.
The bowman of the wolves stepped forward. The graybeards restrained the youths from any rash reaction. The outtribesman clapped his hand to his chest and bowed his head.
“We trespass without malice upon your hospitality,” he said. “By your leave.”
The clansfolk deferred to Abiono, as leader of the Tavaedis, to speak for them.
“Without malice you say you came, but malice has come in your wake. Was it you and this auntie who brought battle to our holds? For we have not known any quarrel with those bird riders until now, when we find them here, and you, uninvited among us.”
“Uncle, we were not uninvited,” said the rangy outtriber.
Dindi stepped forward, right between the negotiators. She had no business being there, but Dindi seemed to like best to be where she did not belong.
“Forgive me, Uncle, but they had my invitation to stay at our clanhold.”
A very pained look passed over Abiono’s face. He muttered something under his breath before he told Dindi, “I will deal with you later.”
Then he turned back to the outtriber. “Strange warrior, your mother’s name is not known to us, nor does your clan meet with us.”
“Uncle, if you allow, I will remedy that. These men and I hail from the Green Woods Tribe, in the Hidden Forest. I am Finnadro the Wolf Hunter, son of Obran and Finna…”
“Are they men, these men?” inquired Abiono, with an arched brow.
Finnadro continued in tones that hinted of challenge, “I am the Henchman of the Green Lady, and at present, in the service of the White Lady.”
He stepped back and bowed to the old woman with him.
Heads bobbed and shook among the Corn Hills folk. The whisper ran up and down the crowd, The White Lady!
“That old coot!” Kemla said out loud. “Impossible!”
Several heads whipped in her direction, but she glared them down.
Then the lady slowly spread wings behind her, gossamer, shimmery things that refracted a thousand colors. Age fell away from her. Kemla saw the memory of youth in the ancient face, impossible beauty, a glimpse of eternity. Kemla felt a chill that had nothing to do with the snow. Tears of shame stung her eyes. As if driven by an unseen force, she sank to her knees.
All around her, the other Corn Hills tribesfolk fell to their knees as well, ripples down the rows, until everyone prostrated to the White Lady. She glittered and gleamed, too bright for them to bear. Then she withdrew into herself, shut her wings, withered and waned and folded back into a dim old lady, looking a tad tired, a bit doddering.
Kemla shook off whatever madness had come over her. She struck the tears from her face. But she could not forget her shame, that she had turned away the White Lady from her home. This horrid fact burned inside her. She hoped no one knew. She felt she would kill anyone who knew, and if the White Lady were to point to her, and proclaim this fact aloud for all to hear, Kemla would take her own life rather than live with their horror and scorn.
But the White Lady did not point to her or even seem to notice her. Instead, the White Lady inclined her head toward Dindi and said softly (yet, somehow her voice carried to all in the crowd), “My thanks to this child for giving us shelter.”
Dindi turned pink. Abiono cleared his throat.
“Just so,” he said. “My Lady, you are most honored by all Rainbow Labyrinth tribesfolk, but we still do not understand what brings war to our humble holds.”
More talk, more chatter. Kemla hardly heard. She stared hard instead at Dindi, seething inside. The little schemer. How had Dindi known who the old woman was, how?
To Dindi’s relief, the elders pushed past the whole matter of her offering hospitality without permission from her clan aunties, because more pressing matters had to be discussed. The Corn Hills folk had no choice but to ally themselves with Finnadro and his strange coterie of wolf-turned-men, for the only other option would be to turn the White Lady over to the Raptor Riders, which was no alternative at all.
The morning turned to afternoon before negotiations opened with the Raptor Riders. A place had to be chosen, and representatives, and food, for no truce could be discussed without food, and messengers had to go back and forth between the two sides to discuss all this before the official discussion between the two sides could take place. Peace negotiations, Dindi remembered from her trip to the Blue Waters tribehold, took more effort than war, and even then there was no guarantee it wouldn’t end in fighting anyway. Dindi hoped this truce would proceed more satisfactorily than the last she had witnessed.
The Raptor Riders sent seven leaders and their seven slaves and the Corn Hills sent seven leaders and seven servers (having no slaves) to set up a feast mat, bowls and corn meal, fires and torches, and a tent overhead to keep out the snow and wind as much as possible. Dindi asked if she might serve the White Lady. Abiono wanted to refuse, but the White Lady nodded. He grimaced a smile at Dindi, but as soon as the White Lady wasn’t looking, he grabbed Dindi by the shoulders and hissed in her ear:
“For the love of mercy, don’t do anything crazy! You could start a war!”
She could have reminded him that her own kinfolk remained hostages, but she just nodded and promised to behave.
The White Lady, Finnadro and Abiono made three, plus an elder warrior of Full Basket and an elder warrior of Broken basket—five—and there were no elders of Lost Swan, since all had been captured, so a younger man, Tamio, was allowed to go, given that he was a Tavaedi and a blooded warrior. Then the White Lady suggested that a warrior woman be chosen also, which led to Kemla stepping forward. She looked surprised and almost guilty but she adapted quickly to the honor. She even snapped a few commands at Dindi. For once, Dindi did not mind.
The White Lady led the procession from their side to the tent where the feast had been set. An old man led the procession from the other side. This surprised Dindi, since she had been sure it was a woman in a feathered helm that led the Raptor Riders. Indeed, except for the old man, all the Riders were female. They wore tough leather and war paint like warriors. Yet they were not tall or heavily muscled, as with some women who fought as warriors and even took female wives as men did. These Riders were all petite, almost elfin. A few were quite lovely, though not their leader, who wore the most elaborate feathered helm.
The woman in the feathered helm stood at the old man’s side, as Finnadro stood beside the White Lady. Despite his white hair and leathered face, the man still looked rather dashing, but the younger woman had a terrifying face like the sharp end of an ax or the dull end of a goat. He beamed at his enemies. She scowled at them all.
The old man looked eerily familiar. Dindi recognized him just before he introduced himself.
“Vessia knows me already, of course, but for you others, I am Vumo the One-Horned Aurochs,” he said jovially. “Green Zavaedi of the Rainbow Labyrinth. This is my daughter, Amdra the Toad Woman.”
Zumo’s father and sister, Dindi realized. Kavio’s uncle and cousin. They were chasing the White Lady?
Zavaedi Abiono shared her confusion.
“I do not understand,” he said stiffly. “If you are both from our tribe, why do you fly giant birds, as outtribers from the Orange Canyon do? Why do you pursue our Lady, and why do you attack us, your own tribesfolk?”
Vumo dismissed that with a wave. “A misunderstanding, nothing more.”
Finnadro said angrily, “Men have died from your ‘misunderstanding.’”
“That’s usually the result,” agreed Vumo. “Shall we drink to peace and clarity?”
“Shouldn’t we discuss terms before we drink ourselves silly?” Amdra asked her father acidly.
“Nonsense,” he said. “Inebriation before negotiation, always.”
He poured beer into his own bowl and passed the jug. Dindi poured for the White Lady, and other servers who sat behind the leaders at the mat did the same. The seven slaves on the other side did not pour; they did not serve their mistresses at all. All were male, powerfully built, with muscles emphasized by crisscrossed leather harnesses and feathered epaulets. And all were leashed and blindfolded.
Their mistresses did not drink.
Vumo did not care. He downed his bowl and a second one.
“Let the prisoners go,” said the White Lady. “And pay these people for their losses.”
“They slew half a dozen of our Raptors,” said Amdra. “Those birds were worth more than seven worthless holds like this. Let them pay us, in an equal number of slaves.”
The Corn Hills warriors bristled.
Vumo patted Amdra’s hand. “Fa, dear, don’t agitate them. We can still work this out. Vessia, we came to rescue you from this Green Woods bandit who abducted you.”
He jerked his thumb at Finnadro.
“I am not in need of rescue. Thanks to Finnadro,” the White Lady said.
“Prove it. Come home with us quietly, and we will release the farmers and pay for their lost sheep.”
“Go back to the Labyrinth to be Zumo’s prisoner again?” scoffed the White Lady. “You must be mad. Do you want to fight me, Vumo? I will not surrender. I will not submit. I am no man’s slave, and no man’s captive. I am not one of your blinded birds. I am no tamed hawk. I fly free, now and forever. Kill me if you dare, but I warn you: Take me on at your own peril. Old I may be, but I have fire in me yet. I will burn you and yours to ashes if you corner me. I took down the Bone Whistler and I can take down you.”
She filled up with light, as she had during the battle, as when she had revealed her true identity to the warriors of the Corn Hills. In her fury and pride, none could look her full in the face. Amdra winced and even Vumo cringed.
“Vessia, Vessia, you speak as if we are at war, as if we were enemies,” Vumo complained.
“You dare demand my submission and then claim you are not my enemy?”
“We don’t demand your submission,” Vumo said. “Not at all.”
Amdra scowled.
Vumo swigged another bowl of beer. He swiped sweat from his forehead. “We want only what you want. To find the Vaedi. My son and yours made a pact before witnesses to hold a Vooma for the Vaedi and let the winner choose between them. That’s all we want.”
“Then our path is easy.” Vessia smiled with no joy. “I am heading to the Green Woods tribehold, to recruit young maidens from all the tribes to dance for me. Those whose magic is strong, I will send back to the Labyrinth, to dance in the Vaedi-Vooma. You and your allies from the Orange Canyon are also invited.”
“Since when are the Raptors of Orange Canyon allowed to fly in the forbidden forests of the wolf people?” demanded Amdra. “They are ancient enemies of ours.”
“Of yours, Amdra?” the White Lady asked. “Is Orange Canyon your tribe?”
“They are kin of mine, and I claim them, since I went through Initiation there,” Amdra retorted. “Why hold your contest in such a remote tribehold? Why not in the Labyrinth, or in Cliffedge, our tribehold?”
“Because I seek maidens with six Chromas,” said Vessia. “And your Orange Canyon kin have spent the last several generations destroying every Imorvae they could lay talons on. In the Green Woods, however, many Imorvae run free.”
“Run wild, more like,” said Amdra. She sneered at the wolf-man who stood silently behind Finnadro. “Beasts and bitches.”
The man behind Finnadro yowled and shifted into a wolf, leaping across the mat toward Amdra. The wolf would have torn out her throat, but Finnadro caught it by the scruff of the neck and hauled it back, barking a command. The wolf, with obvious effort, shifted back into a man, still panting with rage.
“You should keep yours on a leash, as we do,” said Amdra, with a cruel laugh.
“I need more beer,” said Vumo, to no one in particular.
“We do not need leashes,” said Finnadro. “Our pledged word is good. We will let you trespass on our lands if you come in peace for the White Lady’s contest. If any man or woman, human or wolfling, born of my tribe, does any of yours ill, I will give you the transgressor’s head and heart in a bowl. And you do us likewise.”
Amdra bored into Finnadro with her gaze, as if her eyes were two drills and she would mine him.
Vessia said with a touch of amusement, “You cannot eat his thoughts, Amdra. He is too wrapped in Green love for his Faery Lady. You must trust his word.”
“She is a thought-eater?” Finnadro asked. “Like her mother?”
“Even stronger than her mother,” said Vessia. “Amdra? Have we a pact?”
“Very well,” said Amdra, looking sour. “I hold you as a man to that promise, Wolf Hunter. Betray me, and I will seek your head and heart myself.”
“And as goodwill gesture,” added Vumo, “We will free the captives. We have both suffered loses. Let us call it even and neither side seek further retribution.”
“Agreed,” said the White Lady.
All the leaders at the feasting mat added their voices to hail the agreement. Dindi and the other servers poured more beer. This time even Amdra and the grim women Riders drank to the pact.
With their clanhold destroyed and their winter stores burned, the matriarchs of the Lost Swan clan decreed that it would be best for those of their clan who could to journey with the White Lady to the Green Woods tribehold for the winter. The elders and families with small children, who could not travel so far, would spend the winter with their allies, Full or Broken Basket. In the spring, the clan would return to rebuild.
Fewer members of Full Basket and Broken basket elected to go, but still a substantial number of the younger members wanted to make the journey. Finnadro assured them they would be welcome. All of the Tavaedies would go of course. Whether that included Dindi was fortunately a moot point. She was just as glad to leave it ambiguous. People liked to forbid things, if given a chance, so she preferred not to give them the opportunity.
However, when it came down to putting one foot in front of the other, Dindi realized that some folks would inevitably travel faster than others. The Tavaedi troop was likely to arrive half a moon sooner than the slower aunties and uncles, and whichever young folk had to carry their packs for them. Jensi had just succeeded in drafting Dindi to help her and Tibi pull an overloaded toboggan, when rescue appeared from an unexpected source.
Dindi had already shouldered toboggan pull-cord when she heard the clippy-clop of a horse. Tamio appeared, riding his mare.
“Dindi, there you are.” He waved. “Uncle Abiono sent me to find you. He wondered why you weren’t with the Tavaedi troop.”
Jensi pushed herself in front of Dindi. “Tell him to get someone else to carry his bags. We need her services more.”
“Jensi, I wouldn’t dream of leaving you with no one to help you with your goods,” Tamio said. “My horse can pull your toboggan.”
He hitched pull cords to the blanket straps on his horse. Then he reached down and lifted Dindi up behind him. He kicked his mare and they galloped away before Jensi could do more than sputter.
Tamio showed no signs of wanting her to dismount, even after he passed by Abiono and Kemla and the rest of the Tavaedi troop. Riding horseback put them at the front of the caravan, as close to the White Lady as Finnadro and his wolfpack guardians would allow. Although riding all day left Dindi with a unique set of aches, it still bettered walking. In the evening, everyone stopped to make camp by the lake at the foot of the Corn Hills.
She thanked Tamio for the ride, but left him to find her own sleeping spot. He had done enough for her, and she was sure he did not want to extend their time together longer than necessary. She did not rejoin the rest of her clan in making camp either. Solitude suited her best.
She filled her skins in the clear lake water. Ice crisped the edges. In the distance, she could see the waterfall below the cave where the troop practiced, and where the Aelfae had once lived. In their swan form, they had glided across this lake, twinned by their own sparkling reflections. She had seen them in Visions.
Today the lake surface did not ripple. No swans emerged from the silver mists beneath the falls. Never again would their kind grace the Corn Hills.
On the other side of the lake, however, she saw movement by the water’s edge. The Raptor Riders travelled separately but parallel to the White Lady’s party. They camped across the lake. Dindi could see the female Riders lead their giant birds to the water to drink and bathe. The leashed birds splashed their wings in the water as sparrows in a puddle.
Orange light gleamed about them and the birds changed shape. Dindi gaped. The birds had become naked men, standing waist deep in the water. They had glorious bodies and feathery hair. Leashes led from collars clasped around their necks. They finished bathing, then returned to the shore, where they put on loincloths and knelt before their mistresses. The women blindfolded them and led them back behind the tree line, to their unseen camp.
Dindi swallowed a bad taste. The Raptors were not beasts at all, but Imorvae. Like Gremo, she thought, they were men who had inherited the ability to shift shape from Aelfae ancestors. The Orange Canyon tribesfolk kept them like animals.
She took out the corncob doll and set it on a rock. She knelt across from the doll, and rubbed her hands against her cold legs.
“Aelfae, whichever of you hexed my family, I need your help,” she told the doll. “I know you probably had a good reason to hate whichever of my ancestors you cursed. I know we humans were not very fair to you Aelfae. But I’m not the one who hurt you. I’m not your enemy. I want to help your people. I want to help her. The White Lady. She’s the last of your kind, isn’t she? And she’s dying. She should be immortal, but she’s dying because of a hex from one of our kind.”
Dindi took a deep breath. “Fa, I’m not making the best case for myself, am I? But, look. If it was a human who cursed the Aelfae, maybe it will take a human to undo the hex. I want to try. I want to at least try. If you undo the hex on me, maybe I can undo the hex on her. If I were Vaedi…”
As soon as the word was out, Dindi clapped her hand over her mouth. Something hot stung her eyes, but she blinked it back.
“No, forget I said that,” she told the doll roughly. “I know that’s never going to happen. If I were the kind of girl who could become Vaedi, Kavio could have loved me. But I’m not that girl.”
Each breath billowed up into a frosted cloud. “Aelfae, I just want to dance for her. Please give me that chance. That’s all I ask. Please.”
She stood up and danced herself into a Vision.
The human children didn’t like Mayara. Savvier than the adults, the children sniffed the outtriber in her blood. Once, when a gang of children caught Mayara alone, they called her names, and, hitting her with sticks, drove her into the piss pit behind the huts. Umka came running, chased them away and pulled Mayara out. Mayara stank of muck and offal.
“Don’t think too much of yourself, it antagonizes them,” Umka advised as she scrubbed Mayara in the river. “Don’t wear your hair loose, either—braid it, as the other girls do. Don’t show off. Don’t try to do your own thing all the time.”
The other danger to Mayara, more deadly than the children, was the human Tavaedie troop. Ordinary humans were blind to her magic. The human warrior dancers, however, would have been able to see six Chromas shinning like six suns in her aura, brighter than any of their own. She hid from them when they passed by Umka’s hut. Her shyness pleased Umka, so this wasn’t hard. More painfully, Mayara gave up dancing, even alone, in play, because she knew she would leave traces of her Aelfae magic the Tavaedies would be able to detect.
Years passed. Mayara avoided trouble by staying close to Umka’s side. As she approached the age of Initiation, however, even the adults began to grumble about her. Though they didn’t realize she was born of their foes, the humans knew she was no real kin of theirs. They argued she shouldn’t be allowed to be Initiated into the clan. Umka always defended her, unaware Mayara dreaded the Initiation ceremony. She would have no way to hide her Chromas from the Tavaedi troop during Initiation.
The humans had their own problems. Their clan, several hundreds strong, had grown too large. They were a victim of their own success and insatiable urge to breed. However, since they had eliminated their main rivals in the Corn Hills, the Aelfae, there was now more room for the humans to expand. The clan elders decided to split the clan in two, and form an alliance, or klatch. The Tavaedi troop would serve both clans of the clan-klatch.
Each family had to declare for the old clan, Full Basket, or the new clan, Broken Basket. Bobbo and Umka’s older children, now married with their own families, split about evenly, so the elderly couple wasn’t sure which clan to join.
Either clan would have taken Bobbo and Umka. Neither clan wanted to take Mayara. When Mayara heard the rumors, she told Umka, “Go without me, go with one of your real daughters. I will live on my own.”
“Don’t be silly, you are one of my real daughters,” said Umka. “Don’t think we’ll just abandon you.”
To Mayara’s dismay, Umka kept her word, even when it meant catastrophe. Mayara’s human parents were driven out of their home, now Full Basket clan lands. When they tried to go to the new settlement being built by Broken Basket, the warriors threw spears to warn them off their land too. The only place they could go unmolested was an area near the cave where the Aelfae had been slaughtered. The humans still feared it. Tangled memories of the massacre, strands of magic left by the dying Aelfae, could capture unwary trespassers. So potent and evil were the memories, three humans had died reliving them.
This would have been the perfect time for Mayara to unbury her wings, and finally begin her search for the last remaining clan of Aelfae, on the far side of the world, but how could she abandon Bobbo and Umka when they had refused to abandon her? Instead, Mayara helped her elderly parents clear trees and built a decent homestead. The majority of the work fell to her, for no matter how they tried to help, they couldn’t handle the heavy labor of cutting trees, tilling unplowed soil hard with rocks and roots, shaping and baking bricks. The year other young people her age passed their Initiation, Mayara proved her adulthood by the sweat of her brow. With no one to help her, she rose before sunrise and slept long after moonrise, and there were days she wanted to sob with exhaustion.
She forced herself to stop planning for the day she would fly away to freedom and her own people. Don’t daydream, she warned herself. Wishes, like memories, hurt too much. Don’t dilly-dally. Don’t slow down. Don’t think about what might have been. Don’t forget to tan the badger hide before it stiffens.
Just when she dared to think their tiny clan of three might survive—she had cleared enough land for a garden and a plot of maize, a small but doughty hut covered their heads, she had a enough fish and rabbits and deer meat smoked and laid away for winter—her father died. Not only did she grieve the loss of the taciturn man who had loved her like a daughter, she and her mother now had no hunter to bring in meat, and no warrior to stand in their defense. Mayara took up his spear. Her stubborn mother still would not leave her, so as best as she could, Mayara became a huntress in addition to a farmer, gardener, builder, cook and caretaker.
She tried to hunt with the spear, but the clumsy weapon frustrated her. Alone in the woods, where Umka could not see, Mayara whittled a sapling and strung it with gut string. She cut and fletched arrows. She had played with a bow as a child, but it had been years, and she had to callous her fingers anew as she re-taught herself the way of it. The effort was well worth the practice, for with bow and arrow she could take down prey a single woman would never have been able to take down with a spear.
A pack of humans surrounded her one day when she hunted alone in the forest. They were led by Goryo, Bobbo and Umka’s oldest son, who had always hated her. She notched an arrow and aimed it.
“Stay back,” she warned. Unfortunately, it was a bluff. She could never break Umka’s heart by killing her beastly son. Umka doted on him, as Umka doted on all her children.
“Look at the freak,” he called to his companions. “She’s using an Aelfae weapon!”
The other warriors began to growl and circle her. They snapped at her heels with ugly taunts, angry at her because of her superior weapon, angry at her because she was different and strange.
“If you were dead, my mother would come home, where she belongs,” snarled Goryo.
“Kill her! Kill the freak!” barked the men.
Mayara shot an arrow into the leg of one and the arms of the others, deliberately aiming to maim, not kill. That only served to enflame them without stopping them. They rushed her from all sides, closing in close enough her bow gave her no advantage. They had stone clubs and spears. As the first blow from a stone-headed mace smashed her to the ground, Mayara thought, This is it. I will never know if there are really other Aelfae left in the world. Maybe there aren’t. Maybe they’ve all been exterminated too. Maybe I’m the last Aelfae in Faearth, and now I’m going to die too, alone. And the Aelfae will be no more.
Dindi jerked out of the Vision. She had been trapped once before in a death during a Vision, and it had nearly killed her. She didn’t want to be trapped again. She had seen Mayara for a third time, more than she had seen any other Aelfae. Had the humans killed Mayara that day? Had she returned to life? Faeries did—unless they were hexed. Mayara had seemed convinced of her mortality. Dindi remembered that all Mayara’s relatives had died and not returned to life.
They had already been cursed then. Mayara too.
Dindi rubbed her face. Her cheeks and nose felt like cold, dry bread.
“Is that the secret, then?” she asked the corncob doll. “Mayara, you are the one who hexed my kin? With your last breath? Because some of mine killed you and yours? Those warriors who attacked you….They were my ancestors, weren’t they? And now I must pay the price for their cruelty.”
She built a tiny fire, unrolled her mat and stretched out, but could not squeeze sleep from the night. The stars fluttered in the lake, as if they had fallen there and, unable to fly back home, slowly drowned.
Tamio travelled light. He brushed Clipclop, his mare, and joked with her fae, a little bearded purple vassily, one-hand tall, who rode clinging to her mane. He tied on the riding blankets and set the hoop around her neck, mounted, and nibbled cheese as he rode. Finnadro’s marks were easy to follow, green-dyed leather strips tied to branches along the dusty trail.
He scanned the other travelers for Dindi. How easy it would be to further his plan on a journey, he congratulated himself, as proud as if the whole contest in the Green Woods had been his own idea.
She was walking by herself. Perfect.
“Ride with me?” He held out a hand to her.
She blinked up at him in surprise. She had big eyes, quite pretty, now that he thought about it, with dark lashes, like a doe.
“Why?” she asked. “Surely Abiono did not ask this of you.”
“Must I do only what is asked of me?”
He didn’t wait for an answer, and simply lifted her onto his lap.
“Tamio!” she objected. “I can’t ride like this.”
“Why not? Clipclop won’t mind. You weigh no more than a pixie.”
She wiggled around until she sat astride. He found her efforts extremely invigorating, and looked forward to the culmination of his campaign against her. He liked the feel of her small waist under his clasped hands. At first, she sat up stiffly, but as the day wore on, and wind whistled through the snow-laden forest, she let him snuggle them both under a big blanket. She rested against his chest and he wrapped his arms more tightly around her. Once he brushed his hands across her breasts, but she made such a fuss, even threatening to get off and walk, that he had to convince her it had been an accident.
Kavio left her skittish, he realized. He would have to rethink his approach, take it slow. Fortunately, he had long, long days to spring his slow-motion attack.
Long days and long nights.
“Why are you riding with Tamio?” Hadi asked. He confronted her at the break for evening camp several days into the journey, around a large bonfire where many of their kin gathered.
Dindi had wondered the same thing, but having to explain herself to her nosy clan brother irked her. “He offered me a ride, that’s all.”
“To you?”
“I’m not a skunk, after all. You needn’t act so surprised.”
“I’m not surprised in the least,” Hadi said darkly. “Don’t ride with him any more.”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“He’s dangerous.”
“Tamio?” Dindi laughed. “I hardly think so. Not to me.”
“Why not to you? You’re not a skunk, after all.”
Dindi pushed past him to put a stick of rabbit meat into the fire pit. “I refuse to have this silly discussion with you, Hadi. I’m a Tavaedi now. I can take care of myself.”
“You’re not, and you can’t. And you know it. You’re just a serving maid, and anyone can do anything to you, and you won’t be able to do anything about it.”
That hurt. Even her closest cousins felt nothing but contempt for her. Dindi pressed her lips together and refused to speak further to him.
The next morning, when Tamio trotted up to her on Clipclop, Dindi was aware of Hadi’s glower from across the burnt down fire pit, but she accepted Tamio’s hand and climbed up behind him onto the horse.
She enjoyed riding, and even Tamio’s company. He had a wicked sense of humor and used it to skewer their mutual acquaintances. He sharpened his wit frequently on Kemla. Because they could not too much outpace those on foot, they had ample time to hunt, and Dindi found that with practice, she could hit a rabbit or dove from her seat on the back of the horse. Her family appreciated the meat at the evening camps.
She always camped alone but near her kin, but one evening, Tamio came to her and asked her to ride with him. They never rode at night, but he promised her something special, so she went with him.
They rode to the top of a rise, thick with aspen and pine. He pointed to a valley of sparkling lakes surrounded by forest.
“We’ve reached the borderlands of the Green Woods tribe,” Tamio said. “Our path won’t take us up this ridge—we will go by a lower pass—so we’ll never have as good a view of it as now. I thought you would be interested to see it.”
“Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Dindi,” he murmured, “Can I question you about a hidden thing?”
“A hidden thing?”
“Kavio.”
She stiffened.
“I am the only one who knows,” Tamio said softly. “About what he promised you and how he betrayed you. I just wanted to say how sorry I am. He was a fool.”
“He promised me nothing,” Dindi said stonily.
“Maybe not with words,” Tamio said. He caressed her arm. “But a man who takes a woman’s body gives her a wordless promise, does he not?”
Dindi stared at him. Her voice dropped to the temperature of the icy woods. “I think you know less than you imagine about Kavio’s relationship with me. He was not my lover, as you tastelessly hint. He was my teacher. I thought that was evident by the trial he underwent and the sentence of death passed on me.”
“Yes, I know that.” Tamio felt off balance and he did not like it. “But didn’t he also…”
“No.” She said it so flatly that he did not doubt her.
“My mistake,” he said. Muck it all, now what? His whole set-up had been ruined.
“I am returning to camp.” Dindi stood up. He knew if she left now, like this, he would lose his chance forever.
Just when Tamio was certain all was lost, a wonderful thing happened.
A wolf attacked.
The beast raced out of the trees without warning. The thing launched itself straight at them. By instinct, Tamio shoved Dindi out of the way and lifted his dagger to meet the mountain of muscle and fang that fell on him. He managed to plunge his blade into the wolf, but it also sank its teeth into his shoulder. They rolled over each other like wrestlers, but Tamio got the worst of it. The beast nearly snapped his head off.
Dindi screamed prettily. She skipped around almost as if she were dancing. Tamio wished she would do something more helpful, like put an arrow in the wolf.
The beast had grey fur, but suddenly, it began to glow emerald green. The wolf’s body pulsed and contorted and shifted into something else. Tamio found himself wrestling a man instead of a wolf.
The man wore no clothes. He had a thick beard and pepper hair down his barrel chest. His eyes glowed green-gold, with no whites, like an animal’s. He snarled and tried to bite Tamio.
But against this suddenly-human opponent, Tamio took the upper hand. He plunged his dagger into the man’s chest, right into the heart. The hairy attacker slumped into Tamio’s arms. Tamio dropped him to the dirt. He bent to slit the man’s throat, just to be on the safe side, before he finished with a kick to the corpse to express his contempt.
“Must be one of the big bad wolflings Finnadro warned us about,” Tamio said. He felt heroic now that it was over, and was glad after all that Dindi had not diluted his manliness by helping him defeat the monster. “They swarm all over the Green Woods, it’s said.”
“You’re hurt.” From under her fur overwrap, Dindi took off her blouse, rinsed it in snow, and used it to dab at the wound on Tamio’s shoulder.
“Just a scratch.” He winced at the slight pressure. “Really.”
“Let me clean the blood at least,” she said.
He let her fuss over him. She had a gentle touch, and cleaned the wound deftly. He remembered that although she had no magic, she had illicitly studied the Healer’s art in Yellow Bear. He could almost fancy he felt healing magic ease the injury, though that was impossible.
“Thank you,” he said. He kissed the palm of her hand.
“Tamio,” she chided. “Don’t.”
“Why not? Why shouldn’t we, Dindi? We are both Tavaedies, aren’t we? We are both the kind who throw taboos to the wind. Why shouldn’t we live for the moment, take our pleasure where we find it? I thought Kavio was a fool because he walked away from you after touching you. Well, I say he was a double fool if he walked away from you without ever touching you.”
He bent and kissed her. She tasted sweet and warm and wild, like a secret summer.
Summer ended too soon. Dindi pushed him away.
“Do you really think,” she asked, “that I would ever be with you like, like that, after what you did to Gwenika?”
“Gwenika?” Tamio threw up his arms. “What does Gwenika have to do with anything?”
Dindi all but spat at him. “You know exactly what I mean.”
“Fa, I really have not a fish in my net on this one.”
“You really don’t know, do you?” The tucks of contempt around her mouth deepened. “Then I pity you, Tamio. I really do. You are a sorry excuse for a man.”
She stomped away through the heavy snow. Over her shoulder, she called, “Oh, and don’t bother offering me a ride tomorrow! The rest of the way to the Green Woods tribehold, I will walk!”
“Damn you!” shouted Tamio. “I killed a wolf for you!”
He could not believe she had just walked away from him.
Dindi had scorned him.
Gwenika? Who cared about Gwenika? What did a former quail have to do with anything? Surely Dindi wasn’t jealous of her? His fling with Gwenika had lasted only days and been over for many moons.
Dindi had scorned him.
Dindi, that nothing, had scorned him.
He paced the bloody clearing on the ridge, his anger rising. He imagined Kemla’s laughter when he had to admit defeat. He did not have to tell her, but what if she found out directly from Dindi? What if Dindi told everyone that Tamio had tried to seduce her and failed?
Darkling fae gathered in the shadows of the woods. The blood from the slain wolf-man drew them. They slavered for it, and only Tamio’s presence held them back.
“Damn you, Dindi,” he swore aloud. “You will not walk away from me. You will not laugh at me. I promised to make you mine, and mine you will be. So I swear by the life I have taken tonight!”
He swept his hand to point at the dark Green and Red fae lurking. “You are all my witnesses! I call on your aide! Make her love me, absolutely, desperately, helplessly!”
He had lived on the edge all his life, but he had never made up his own dance before. He danced now from his rage, from his lust, from his manly pride and his beastly need, and the fae joined him in wild abandon. He ate the heart of the wolf-man as he danced, and let the blood slide down his chest, to mingle with his own bleeding wound. He danced under the full moon. He howled. And he felt his hex harden and rise and spill out into the night.