My name is Zula, the name my father gave me an hour before I was born. On that day as I journeyed into the world, Pa saw the light of the evening star in the sky. The planet Venus was turning to play with Jupiter, and struck by her brilliance, Pa stood and stared. He’s a healer, a shaman with an intuition so mighty, he navigates pathways between this realm and another glazed with stardust and spirit.
Entranced, goose-bumps pimpling his arms, Pa decided I would be called Zula. Along with my name came an awakening confirmed by Venus’ smile that night. From the beginning, Pa believed that my sisters and I were destined to shape the world. I would be one of three, a pride of sisters. Born in different hemispheres – in forest, desert and by water – together, we would dance with creation and replenish it.
The first time he told me the story of my birth, Pa described the scene as if he could still see it. The sun, setting over snow-capped peaks, burned the Altai Mountains gold. The foothills beneath glowed; so much so, that a flat stretch of scrubland in front of it shone.
‘Even the air seemed to sparkle,’ Pa said. ‘Without a horse’s breath of wind, the world stood still and glimmered like kindling: grasses, bushes, trees, all of it, from the faraway mountains to our homestead.’
‘That summer, we were camped beside a lake, Zula. At the water’s edge our horses and camels were grazing. In wolf-light, water that flickers blue in the day, takes on a haunted, purple hue. Dogs feel the heat of fangs in their teeth and cows, butting like bulls, recall the maul of horns on their heads. That’s when you burst into our lives, my daughter.’
I was born after the big winter thaw, at the start of the grazing season. Mongolia, my home is a land of mountains, lakes and sky – an ocean of sky. We’re nomads, often on the move, in search of pasture for our animals. It was into this world that I emerged blue-eyed, a silver curl on my head.
After I took my first breath, Pa claimed that instead of crying, I sang a desert song – a piercing note that I held for so long that my grandmother, fearing I was a spirit child and my first breath would be my last, slapped me.
‘You know your grandmother,’ Pa said.
I nodded. Grandma, Pa’s mother, the leader of Pa’s circle, is not the easiest of women to be around. At times her tongue can be as sharp as the bite of a sabre-toothed tiger and yet she guides me nonetheless.
Within six weeks, though the coil on my head remained silver, the colour of my eyes shifted from blue to grey – pale grey like the fur of a wolf in winter. ‘My winter wolf,’ Grandma called me. More convinced than ever that my time on earth would be precious, she swaddled me and kept me close, while Ma went back to her chores.
Grandma petted me, fed me bone broth to build me up and anchor me to Mother Earth. She rubbed herbs on my scalp to encourage my hair to grow. She smeared ointments and lotions, whispered magic words on my crown. And when, at last, my hair emerged, it dazzled like lightning in snow.
As I grew older, capable of placing one foot in front of the other, Grandma taught me language and told me tales of the Great Khan who forged our nation and launched the Mongol Empire. Tales of the mighty swords he wielded: scimitars, sabres, Mongolian ilds; swords as powerful as Grandma’s spirit. To bind me to her craft, she held me transfixed with fables of night and day creatures that dwell on the steppes. Then, a twinkle in her eyes, she spoke of their companions, women warriors, archers on horseback, nomads like us.
Between them, Grandma and Pa saw the framework of a picture my mother was unable to see. They saw and heard. And what they understood, they passed on to me. Of the three of us sisters, I, the firstborn, was the leader. The heartwood that would bind us was that each of us would have a teacher and mentor to help us excel in our craft, and each of us a special place to take care of.
In my case, we were on our annual journey from our summer grazing grounds to the outskirts of the town where we winter when I saw mine – a range of mountains shaped like a giant in hibernation. I froze, for there he was stretched on the horizon, his body carved in the peaks and craters ahead of us.
‘Pa, can you see what I see?’ I asked.
Aged seven, I was on horseback with my father. Perched in front, I sheltered in his arms.
‘What do you see, my daughter?’
‘There’s a giant fast asleep in those rocks over there.’ I pointed. ‘There’s his head and his arms. One day I’m going to wake him up, Pa!’
My father laughed. ‘Clever girl! I didn’t register him until I was twice your age. I couldn’t see the giant even when your grandmother told me to look out for it. My brother, Batu, saw him first.’
‘How could you not see him, Pa?’ With a finger I traced the turban on the giant’s head, and on his feet boots a thousand times bigger than those worn by the Great Khan. ‘You see now, don’t you?’
Pa reined in his horse, a white stallion he called Takhi. ‘Indeed, I do,’ he replied.
He dropped me to the ground, jumped down, and taking my hand, said as we strolled towards the mountains: ‘Now that you’ve seen him, Zula, if I were to ask you, would you be willing to watch over him?’
I gazed at my father’s face, a face flushed by wind and sun.
‘Well, Zula?’
I hesitated, looked at the sleeping giant and then back at my father. His head, covered in a fur hat, tilted as his eyes posed the question a second time.
I am a shaman’s daughter, attuned to the spinning of cobwebs and the secrets of murmuring hearts. I am my father’s treasure, even though Grandma’s constant refrain is: ‘Tread carefully on the course we’ve set you on, Zula! A shaman’s journey is dangerous. Some of us lose our way in the realm of spirits and fail to find a place in this one, like my son Batu. He fled to the city instead.’
I shushed Grandma’s whisper. This wasn’t like being told to look after my brothers, or milk our animals and gut fish with my mother. This was special.
I looked, nodded and felt the stirring of an emotion I was able to taste but didn’t understand. Drops of honey laced with horse’s milk drizzled in my mouth. My heart tingled.
‘It’ll take commitment,’ said Pa.
‘Will it be for ever?’
‘Would you like that?’
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘The big man up there needs someone to look after him, same as you do, Pa.’
‘Well said, my daughter. But are you willing to spend hours alone with him to assure him he’s remembered? Are you prepared to be an apprentice and learn our craft?’
I nodded a second time.
‘Very well,’ said Pa, ‘from now until your services are no longer needed, you will be the guardian of the Sleeping Giant of the Mountains.’
The following spring, on our way to our summer grazing grounds, the rest of the family went on ahead while Pa took me for a closer inspection of the colossus in the rocks.
After the long freeze of winter, snow was melting, making the terrain slippery. Tufts of scrub sprouted around boulders, and yet up we climbed, deep into the mountains until we turned towards a crater, which from a distance formed the Giant’s mouth. Clumps of wildwood brushed against us, but as the gaping fracture loomed above, any hint of trees was left behind.
We rode in silence; the only sound the thud of Takhi’s hooves as he picked his way. The further we rode, the more I bristled as pinpricks of tension settled around my neck. The air stirred. I heard a swoosh of wings, a scuffle, the frantic bleating of a mountain goat, a yelp.
Nostrils flaring, Takhi whinnied. I stroked his mane to reassure him, and in so doing, comforted myself. ‘There’s no need to be frightened,’ I murmured, ‘there’s no need to worry. We’re safe ’cause we’re with Pa.’
I tried to remain calm even as I imagined Ma shaking her head as she bellowed: ‘Husband, what are you doing? Our daughter is eight years old! She knows her left from her right, but she is still a child, I tell you! A child!’
I trembled as every once in a while I touched Pa’s hand to remind myself that I was not alone. The higher we climbed, the more desolate and harsh the landscape, the more lonely I became. If it hadn’t been for the warmth of Takhi beneath us, I could have believed that Pa and I were the only creatures alive. I shivered.
‘Is the mountain speaking to you, Zula, my girl?’
‘Is this how it talks?’ I replied. ‘By making me feel small? Smaller even than the tiniest of Ma’s needles!’
Pa laughed, a laugh that echoing over ravines ricocheted back. ‘These mountains speak by demanding our respect. They were here long before the first of our ancestors was born.’
‘Even before the Great Khan?’
‘Even before him, Zula. We’re entering star time now, where to be human is to gaze at the heavens and understand that we too are made of stardust. Star time is where we seek wisdom, discover our true purpose and live in awe of this.’ Pa waved his hand in a gesture that encircled every crag and cranny. The circle complete, his fingers touched his chest where his heart lay beating.
‘In awe,’ I repeated. So that was what I was feeling: as wary as a wagtail, an eagle towering above it. And yet behind my twitchiness were new emotions that tipped me into wonder, feeding a hunger I didn’t know I had.
A few kilometres later, the ground beneath us changed again. There was no earth to speak of, simply smatterings of soil that yielded sprigs of needle grass. We trekked upwards, ever upwards, along a trail that led through a pass on to a ledge. There we dismounted.
Pa removed a saddlebag from his horse, belted it around his waist, and tied Takhi to a wooden spike. I wondered if perhaps Grandma had brought Pa to this place.
‘We’ll be back in the morning, old boy,’ Pa said, stroking Takhi’s forehead. The horse settled in the shelter of a rock while Pa and I clambered up the trail.
The sun’s rays were beginning to fade and a north wind moaned, chilling my hands and feet.
‘We’re almost there, Zula,’ said Pa sensing my unease.
He lifted me onto a ridge and heaved himself up beside me, a steep canyon on one side, a glowering granite promontory on the other.
Condensation made the surface of these rocks even more perilous than those below. I slipped and would have tumbled, if Pa hadn’t grabbed my hand and steadied me.
‘Careful,’ he said. ‘Not much further now.’
We staggered on, inching our way forwards.
What looked like the Giant’s mouth from a distance was, in fact, a rocky indentation, a nesting ground for eagles. At the sound of our footfall, our slip and slide on slabs, eagles took to the air and circled. Heart hammering, I counted seven of them. One flew close, so close that as it banked, I gasped at the size of its talons.
‘They think we’re going to steal their eaglets,’ Pa explained. ‘They’re trying to distract us. This way, Zula.’
We walked carefully along a ridge, then down a sweep of fir trees. Pa directed me beyond them, to the entrance of a cave overlooking the Giant’s mouth.
It was late afternoon by now, about half an hour before dusk. The sun, gliding behind the mountain, dappled the valley gold. Shafts of light illuminated the sky, streaking it turquoise above, while elsewhere it glowed indigo blue.
On this, my first expedition alone with my father, my empty stomach growled reminding me of home. Ma would be cooking by now. If I was with her, I would soon be fed and warm. Instead, I was perched at the entrance of a cave, the wind stinging my cheeks as my fingers froze.
From the pouch at his waist, Pa removed his small shaman’s drum. Then to my surprise, he covered my shoulders with a shawl and handed me a wedge of dried sheep’s meat.
‘Eat what you can,’ he said. ‘It’ll keep you warm.’
Ravenous, I began to chew while Pa started tapping his drum and murmuring. I’ve seen my father enter the realm of spirits many times. That’s what a shaman does: speaks to beings others can’t see to maintain a balance between us humans, Mother Earth and Father Sky. Balance and harmony, Pa says, give us good health and food to eat.
In as much as a child was able to, I understood what my father did. This time, I reckoned, was going to be no different. Or so I thought, until Pa took out his special shaman’s smock, which he wears at New Year festivals and pulled it on. A swathe of heavy silk cotton, white in colour, encrusted with silver mirrors to reflect the beauty of our surroundings, it shimmered and flowed as Pa began to dance.
I savoured the taste of meat on my tongue. My blood quickened and as warmth trickled through my fingers once again, I trembled, listening. A moment later I heard it: tingling tension accompanied by a faint hum that resonated from Pa’s drum. Pa may have been beating the same old rhythm and swaying to his usual song, but this time the effect was electric.
Wind tunnelled through the fir trees below and with its hiss came the sharp-pitched snarl of a wildcat, the bark of a solitary wolf, the faint snuffling of bear cubs. The pulse of my father’s drum, mingled with the flapping of eagle wings, vibrated in my ears. My heart began to race as a curious sensation convulsed my body, reminding me of times when I turned round and the world spun about me.
The earth rippled, and in that instant, my father appeared to merge into the landscape. I did as well. I soared with him as he transported us to a secret place that existed in front of our eyes.
In wolf-light my skin sparkled. And when I gazed at my father amazed, I was struck by the reflection of my eyes in his, and how the grey in them and the silver curl on my forehead glittered diamond bright.
Weightless, I danced with my father, twisting and turning to the beat of his drum, whirling around the mirrors of his shaman’s smock. I danced, and between one step and the next, others appeared alongside us: my sisters and their teachers.
My heart leaped, for I felt I’d always known them. Adoma, an Ashanti: dark-eyed, skin the purple-black of a juniper berry, hair cropped short, tinged russet-red like an apple. In her shadow, I glimpsed a faint feline form, lithe and poised, and looming above her the lanky frame of her grandfather.
Linet, hair the colour of night, tawny of eye, rosy-cheeked; a Celt from Cornwall. On her shoulder, a glint of a black-feathered bird, red-beaked with matching red feet. Behind her, an old woman with a shiny, round face. In a blink of an eye, my grandmother appeared.
It was then I felt a creature curl around my ankle nibbling my toes. I saw a flicker of white – a wolf cub’s tail. One moment it was there, then the cub vanished. And of our teachers, only Pa remained.
Yet somehow, though I couldn’t quite see them, those shadowy creatures that adorned us existed as our pride of three stared at each other, revelling in the mystery we were a part of. We stared, then guided by instinct formed a circle around Pa.
As soon as our fingers touched, we remembered. Fragments, then smouldering tales of the past flamed. Memories, long suppressed, flowed through our veins reminding us of vows taken before we were born and all that had happened since we drew breath. Our thoughts flew from one to the other replaying our early steps, our favourite games, sharing the faces of those we loved best. We untangled knotted secrets, until Pa, having sung a song to creation from the back of his throat, gave us our mission.
‘We live in dangerous times,’ he said, ‘when the balance between our worlds has broken. Mother Earth is on fire, Father Sky weeps tears of blood. We live at a time when money is more powerful than human life and skin-walkers stalk the earth trampling all in their path: trees, rivers, mountains, forests – even the mightiest of oceans and everything within them – are their prey these days. But with our craft, my daughters, we can defeat those who live for money alone without thought of the future; those who destroy whatever they touch because they live without heart.’
Eyes ablaze, Pa fixed his gaze on us. ‘This is what I ask of you: that you outwit and sabotage skin-walkers everywhere to protect our sacred sites from their scourge.’
In a heartbeat my sisters and I agreed.
‘Very good,’ Pa replied: ‘Now you must choose a word; a word with the power to transport you into star time the moment you say it.’
Adoma turned to me; Linet did too as I recalled a sound, the cry of a huntress to her eagle.
‘Let us use the hunter’s call,’ I suggested. ‘At any hint of danger, or if we want to talk, we’ll use it as a signal.’
Pa nodded.
‘Hukaa!’ I hollered. ‘Hukaa!’ My voice rang over the Giant’s mouth, and my sisters echoed me.
At last, when dark fingers of night had all but smothered wolf-light, Pa pressed his thumb on the inside of my wrist. Pain darted down my fingers. I flexed them. The throbbing eased and while Pa did the same to my sisters, I examined the patch of skin over my pulse. Bit by bit a tattoo of an eight-pronged star set in deepest blue emerged: a star with a hole in the middle.
Adoma looked at an identical mark on her wrist. ‘My grandfather’s shown me this sign before,’ she said. ‘It’s adinkra, from Ghana.’
‘Yes,’ Pa replied. ‘Nsoromma, a symbol of guardianship. You three are now children of the sky and guardians of the earth. Connected by stardust, you will hear the earth’s call and become attuned to her pain and joy. All you have to do is say the word you’ve chosen when you touch your tattoo, and you’ll be able to talk to each other in star time and in shadow. Better still, align yourselves with nsoromma and your gifts will grow.’
Moonlight flickered on our faces. We murmured, ‘Nsoromma,’ and a word new to my tongue settled on it with the ease of an old friend.
I touched Pa’s hand. His smile gathered me in.
‘Zula, my daughter,’ he said. ‘I named you for your radiance. In time your gift of sight will help you dazzle our foes with a blink of your eyes.’
I rubbed the star and sensed the shine in me deepen as the world about me glowed.
‘You, Adoma,’ Pa continued, ‘are named for your grace and strength of spirit. As your spirit grows so too will your mastery of what is unseen to the human eye. Should skin-walkers venture within seven paces of you, use what is hidden to assail them.’
‘And you, Little Linet,’ said Pa to my sister who was not little at all, but a full head taller than Adoma and I. ‘You are a truth-teller named after your element, water. Your gift, mocked in your country as a scold’s tongue, is one that probes to uncover what is hidden. Before long you’ll see that the lake of tears within you, the lake that moistens your tongue and fingertips, is a blessing to Mother Earth.’
Pa closed his eyes, and smoothing his right hand over our wrists said, ‘Unless you choose otherwise, these tattoos bind you, and by entwining your thoughts make them as clear as water to each of you. No one else can see them but members of our craft.’
‘We don’t have much time,’ he added. ‘From what I’ve glimpsed, the odds are against us. Learn what you have to quickly and be brave, for your teachers and I won’t always be with you.’
Pa paused.
‘May you pursue a righteous path.
May the earth always nourish you.
May your gifts grow with your years.
May no skin-walker escape your grasp.
And may nsoromma keep you safe
As you sing your heart’s song.’
Pa tapped our wrists with his shaman’s drum. One tap, two; on the third, my sisters disappeared.