13 – When she was twenty-nine, I’d be ash on the wind

One day after I’d turned twelve, when Artira and I got into a fight, she screamed at me, “You should be exiled without safe conduct!”

We don’t punish people by death in Yeola-e; under our law, exile without safe conduct is the severest punishment. It means you are no longer Yeoli and must leave the country forever, but you have no protection on your way to the border, so that it’s not a crime for a Yeoli to harm or even kill you.

For a moment I couldn’t breathe. Telling myself she was too young to know the full meaning of the words, I asked her why. Her delicate face under her shock of brilliant curls, Tennunga’s curls, was wrinkled up ugly in rage. “I hate you and want you gone!” When I asked her why, she said, “Everyone loves you, and no one loves me! You always do everything so well and everyone’s always talking about you and it’s always Chevenga this and Chevenga that and it makes me sick!”

“That is not true, that no one loves you,” I said, keeping the tone of reason as best I could. “The parents love all of us. All our brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts love you… I love you, Ardi.” Better to reason with her comfortingly than yell for a grown-up and be made to do chiravesa, or call her out to do it myself; I had started to avoid it when I could after seven, as there was always something missing when others imagined themselves me: that which I kept to myself. In time her tears dried, and we made peace with a hug and went our ways.

But I still felt like an anthill stirred with a stick. I couldn’t deny the Chevenga-this-and-Chevenga-that part, or that I did do everything well; like every child of the training-ground, I knew precisely where I stood in strength, quickness, aim, agility, courage, hot hands, fivestones, finger-wrestling, running, unsword, kill-sparring or any other measure that Yeoli war-students have ever contrived to compete in, and my tutors also let me know where I stood intellectually. Esora-e had made no secret of his ambition for me, and no one ridiculed it. I was even good-looking, I was told. She envies me understandably, I thought; I’m not in my rights to be angry at it. So what is it I feel?

Shame, I decided; in ignorance of the nature of the shadow I cast on others, I’d caused harm. So I made the rounds of my family and friends and the Assembly Palace staff, asking them to swear truth on my father’s wisdom-tooth, and asked what they thought of me and whether it hurt them. If you’ve heard that story, yes, it’s true.

Mostly they said things like, “You’re a fine lad, you’ll make a fine semanakraseye and warrior, of course that doesn’t hurt me, now run along. I swear it is true also that I’m busy.” Finally my mother called me to her hearth.

In my survey I’d skipped my parents and my grandmother, since they furnished such knowledge unasked, and I thought she might be wondering why. It turned out she just wanted to know why I was asking. “I’m trying to understand how my shadow falls on people,” I said.

“Ah.” She took my hands in hers. She had a long scar on one forearm that she’d got from treachery in a parley, when an Enchian had tried to strike our envoy with a hidden knife, and she’d had nothing to parry the blow with but her arm. The scar’s end moved under the fringe of her marya as she gestured. “Well, that’s something a semanakraseye must know; how to forget about his shadow.

“Chevenga, how it falls on others is as much their choice as your own. Same as in the night sky, there is only one guide-star that stays steady throughout: what you are to yourself. Don’t think of what the shadow is; think of who you are being. If you want people to think you are something, be that. Then the shadow will be the best you can make it.”

I’d been taught that before, by various adults. It’s just Artira, full of stupid envy, I thought; no one else said my shadow hurt them. On my bed, alone, I sat twisting my leather bracelet with my fingers, my heart smoldering. The world burned because of wrongful anger, I thought. Why shouldn’t Artira envy me? People do talk about me more than her, do think more of me than her; I am favoured with rare gifts, gifts that will always give me advantages, gifts of a value beyond pricing in ankaryel, gifts that I cannot lose as long as I live.

There was my answer. When she was twenty-eight I’d be twenty-nine; when she was twenty-nine I’d be ash on the wind.

I’ve always been told I’m blessed with a mind that is good at looking ahead, especially with calculating time. There’s a reason. The lintels had seemed to stop shrinking as I grew, while time flew by faster each year; I’d wake up in the death-hour thinking ‘I’ll never be man-sized if I don’t start growing faster’ and lie sweating. It had never occurred to me before that other people didn’t suffer this. Now suddenly it did.

Envy calls out envy. First it was only people older than thirty. For the number of snowballs I threw and led others to throw at them in the cold of winter, I could have been combed until the bones showed, if I’d been caught. I sneered behind my tutors’ backs at their wrinkles or paunches or sagging breasts. Not that I could do this with my grandmother; instead, when I found out by asking how old she was, I avoided her for several days, until she asked why I was angry at her, and I had to answer “There’s no reason,” and apologize. All I could think of, as I looked on her cracked ancient face was: all those years.

A few days after that Sachara played his own fatherhood, making us all roll on the ground laughing to see him moan and groan and grow pretend gray hairs at all the scrapes and escapades his kids got into, which were all the same as ours, of course. At the death-hour that night I woke up sweating. I calculated: to see a child my age I’d have to be married at seventeen. I would never see my firstborn become semanakraseye—it was already too late. Warrior, yes—but only if I married within the year.

I could not sleep until I had planned action, a habit that has stayed with me. Nyera would do this for me, I thought, if she knew. I cannot tell her why, but seeing the fervency of my courting, she’ll understand without knowing. I imagined her hazel eyes softening, her slender hand closing around mine, “Ch’eng’, you need me,” and the warm embers of friendship sparking into passion, whatever that was.

Then I thought, am I mad? I’m a boy… or boy-sized, at least. (I hadn’t really felt like a boy since seven.) My friends and I had been noticing how people a little older than us all went through the same sudden dark and baffling turn, that made them give up fivestones and House, preen their hair every spare moment, stop seeing sense about certain things and become obsessed for some incomprehensible reason with forming into pairs. Watching those we knew succumb to it one by one, without exception, we all knew this would be our fate too.

Now that I had reason that was not at all incomprehensible, I fingered between my legs, as if groping could make it big for good, and grow more black hairs than the seventeen I’d counted. She would laugh. That made me want to stay under the covers; but I was still sweating from the thought of my child. It’s a dare, I thought, as I thought frequently, that must be done.

It was Nyera I thought of because she was my closest female friend. Also, the change had happened to her; sometime when none of us had been looking she’d sprouted breasts and a thatch of red-blond curls between her legs. Crucial for my cause, her month-bleeding had started half a year before. Though formally it is for the woman to ask, everyone knows that marriages are made by two at the very least; every man knows how to place the right word or look. She was a good war-student from a good family, so Assembly had no reason not to approve her; we’d make a two now, I planned, and become a four as soon as Mana, who had already sworn to join with me, found his choice of wife. That settled, I slept.

Next day I combed my hair out much more carefully than I’d ever been known to do, and tucked the comb into my belt so it showed. Looking in my mother’s Arkan mirror, I felt I cut a very fine figure, at least if I sucked in my cheeks, held their insides between my teeth and turned my head to get the shadow from the window-light at just the right angle, so I had my father’s cheekbones, sort of. There was a man named Iri-kai in the School who wore a necklace of bright, smooth-polished stones, set in just enough metal to be daring. I needed something like that.

As anaraseye I was permitted to have money, though I never got an allowance as other kids did. But once Mana had taken pity on me and slipped me a copper bit. I bet Sachara he couldn’t beat me at naughts and crosses in ten tries, even if he went first every try; I had found an old book that showed how you can always tie if you make no mistakes. Since he’d given me bad odds, I tripled my fortune this way. After doing the same with several other of the younger citizenry of Vae Arahi, I ran down to the market square in Terera and found the jeweler who had made Irikai’s necklace. I chose one similar whose stones were mostly of reddish colours, put it on and ran back up. I was ready for when Nyera came out of training.

She was at least four fingerwidths taller than me, now, with a woman’s face to match her body, lengthened, the brows maturely thickened, the nose grown into adult elegance. As I greeted her she took off her tunic and wiped between her breasts. She sweated and smelled like an adult, too. No matter, I thought, kicking myself out of the spell—maybe I was coming into a touch of the change myself—she’s still just Nyera. Or else if age has made her into something greater than she used to be, it has done the same with me.

“That’s a handsome necklace,” she said. “You’re brave to wear it.” I had done right; I decided to wear it all the time, like a crystal.

She felt the stones, and I touched her arm. My heart was banging in my throat and temples, but I said it anyway. “It’s a brave man a brave woman wants.”

“Nothing less, Ch’eng,’” she said lightly. “No cowards for me. I bet you catch crap from your shadow-father for this.”

She hadn’t got it; I had to say more. “No cowards for me either. Nor weaklings. It’s only the strong I’d ever marry.” I looked as significantly as I could at her smooth-muscled arms.

Now she got it. Those mature brows shot up under her fringe of fore-curls, and she burst out laughing. “Why laugh?” I asked. “We are people of more sincerity, aren’t we?”

“You’re… serious… are you?”

I cast my eyes downward, as an unmarried man should know how to do, and said, “It is not for me to say more.”

“Well! I…! Ch’eng’!” She burst out laughing again. “You turkey-brain, we can’t get married!” And she said, not ‘we are children,’ no, though she was twelve too, but “You’re a child!”

I proved my maturity, I guess, by what I did next. “Oh, and you’re a grown up?” I shouted. “Let’s see about that!” She usually gave me a good fight finger-wrestling, but I had her down in an instant and as her concession demanded she swear never again call me a child. She did not, however, pop the question. Thus my first attempt to marry ended in sweat and dust.

Again I lay awake in the darkness of the death-hour. There are many fish in the sea, as the saying goes, but one cannot send one’s second hook out so soon without insulting the prospective biters both first and next. I decided to wait a month and then go after Checherao, who was a year older than me, but a boarding student, from Tinga-e. Since she’d never seen me as a drooling toddler in diapers, I reasoned, but only a student of the School of the Sword, she would be less likely to see me as a child than women from around here.

Events caught me up before the month ended. The harvest love-festival came, and as usual people came from Terera and further up the valley. After the feast and the dancing, when the bonfires were lowering and the grown-ups going off into the bushes in pairs, my friends sent to bed by their parents and mine looking for me, I found myself closely surrounded by five girls I didn’t know.

In the moonlight their skin shone pale, the curves of their hips like the moon’s itself, glowing ivory. Their breasts were high and young and pointed, except for those of the one who leaned closest; they were as round as my mother’s, the nipples big around as a thumb is long. (Perhaps you are not familiar with Yeoli customs: on the night of a love-festival, everyone goes naked.) The end of a red ringlet bobbed above them, a tuft of the same red between her thighs; in firelight it was the colour of paprika, which meant that in daylight it must be the colour of fire. She was not a day under sixteen.

I didn't need much persuasion to go with them into the woods. “You’ve never done it,” she whispered to me. “I can tell.” Her arm was already around my shoulder; now she brushed her lips against my brow. “I’ll be very gentle.” The others all slipped away laughing, saying they were called away by All-Spirit to pick flowers.

Healer is a giggling warmth, like a hug; an adventure, shyly and carefully and slowly tried, and everyone a novice, a tickling in the loins that brings a smile. She made me feel that again, but then did more, that grew it into a streak of fire in me as I had not imagined was possible. I understood then the truth of which Healer is only a pale reflection. Each moment I thought it could not possibly become better, but then it would; as well I knew I wanted, and therefore there must be, more.

At the final rise before the peak, my skin, wherever she touched it, sent colours in streams and flowerets into my inward eyes. It seemed we were running and swimming and soaring all at once, and at that highest moment my head reached the sky and my body spread out to touch the bounds of the Earthsphere; I was in All-Spirit and All-Spirit in me. I had learned long ago how a blade touches the deepest inside to bring death; now I had learned the stroke that touches the deepest inside to bring life. No wonder adults so cherished this; no wonder, the change.

On the heels of joy chased fear, even as she traced lines of ecstasy along the skin of my back and whispered, “My salamander… you belong in fire, so much fire is in you.” I was afraid I’d never feel this again, for surely such pleasure could only be had once in a lifetime; afraid I would never find anyone so beautiful again, even though now I knew all men and women had this in them. I clung harder, wanting to bury myself in her warmth and the scent of her musk that mixed with the cool tang of pine. She read my thoughts; “Don’t worry, sweetling,” she whispered. “It’s always like this, or better. Imagine it with someone you love.” It was sex between friends she’d been offering, only; her comrades were back and waiting for their turns with me.

“But I love you!” I wanted to say. “Marry me!” I didn’t; for one thing, it would sound odd to say, “I love you, em… I never got your name.” Somehow we’d forgotten formalities. I wanted to know anyway, so I asked, and will always remember: Kagratora-e Shae-Itana, of Chegra.

When I told them my name, they all froze for a moment, then one of them shrieked, “Oh my All-Spirit! Kagra, you’ve initiated the anaraseye!”

I had forgotten they were from up-valley, born and raised in a circle of farmfasts, not used to politicians and officials and people with numbered names wandering around the place brushing shoulders with real people. The other four fled with a mix of screeching and laughter, and she cursed them for babies and cowards. “Well,” I said. “We grown-ups seem to have been left alone.”

The alarm in her eyes softened into a smile, a point of moonlight shining in one eye. “So we have, anaraseye.”

“You can’t call me that, after…” I trailed off, words failing me. “It’s Chevenga.”

“Chevenga. Well… when you’re all grown up and come to Chegra to speak, I’ll call ‘Psst! Chevenga!’ from the edge of the dais, and wink at you, and with any luck you’ll blush.” We both stopped speaking then, at least with words. I will always be grateful to her, and never forget her.

After that, I renewed my marriage quest with much greater confidence. Soon I had my lines well-set. I’d drop the marriage hint first, and if she was uninterested, I’d ask her if she’d like to go up onto the mountain with me anyway, as friends.

Checharao said I was too young, but I found out later she had her eye on someone else in the same class as her who was a head taller than I (though I knew from sparring him that I could take him, as I could almost everyone up to eighteen or nineteen). She taught me many new sexual tricks, being older. My half-cousin Avorcha said “Are you crazy? We’re too little to have babies!” and on the mountain it was I who taught her, to my amazement. Terini of Checherao’s class said, “My father told me never to marry a politician,” and was delicate as a moth’s wing in lovemaking for all she was one of the best fighters in her class.

In the shrine among the standing stones, I hinted to Komona, who had lived down the corridor from us in the Hearthstone but now was apprenticed to the senaheral. She had black hair and eyes like my mother. “I can’t marry you,” she said. “My egg’s just falling, this time of the month; it wouldn’t be safe.”

My heart sank, blackness seeping into my mind. Of course this would happen. Who takes the marriage-hint of a twelve-year-old seriously? I’d hidden from myself that I’d never known anyone to marry under sixteen, least of all an anaraseye. I’d never see my children get their wristlets, die cast, gates fast and all go home. That night I cried my pillow soaking. In daytime, the feeling hardened to bitterness.

I envied the young, now, as well. They might yet die early, but they might not; they did not have the wall of certainty set before them, to cut short their dreams.

Mana, Krero, Sachara and Nyera laughed about the families they’d have. I made the dares harder, and anyone who would not follow me, I’d shame. I got us all stung by wasps, and Krero’s arm broken falling off a cliff. They chilled on me; I called them all cowards and fair-weather friends. I remember Mana asking, with his hand on my shoulder, “What’s wrong with you?” which I answered only with “Nothing, eat kyash!” which ended our talking to each other.