The Shore of Women (2 page)
“I understand,” Mother said.
“I’m sure you do.” Eilaan rose. “I trust that you’ll do the right thing.”
When Eilaan was gone, Mother sent Button to his room while she reviewed my lessons with me. She had always believed that a mother should take an intense interest in her daughter’s studies, but I also sensed that she wanted to take my mind off her conversation with Eilaan.
“Have you decided what you’d like to do?” she asked me when we had finished.
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, you’ve had a long enough time to think of it. You celebrate your womanhood tonight, and your tests are coming up. Are you still thinking of mathematics?”
I stretched out on the couch and rested my head in her lap, wishing that I were already old and at the same time wishing that I hadn’t grown up quite so soon. “I don’t know if I have the skill for mathematics—I have more trouble with it now.” Birana, I recalled, had shown a talent for mathematics. I pushed the thought of her aside quickly; thinking of her only reminded me of threats, of possible punishments.
I considered my choices. Mother had studied medicine, but I wasn’t interested in that. I was beginning to see that I didn’t know what I wanted to do.
My body had betrayed me. I had waited impatiently for this day, with my maturing and sometimes troubled mind trapped inside my narrow-hipped, flat-chested body. I had thought that the onset of womanhood would change everything for me, would be the outward sign of all that I was becoming inside. Then the bleeding had come, and the pain; my body was not yet a woman’s, but only an awkward, gawky shell that refused to obey the mind it still imprisoned.
“Maybe I’ll try engineering,” I said at last, without much enthusiasm, although the thought of pursuing a study with few ambiguities held some appeal.
“You need math for that, Laissa.”
“I know, but not the same sort of math, just practical problems. You know, Button’s good at arithmetic—he’s been playing with the calculator. He seems to figure it out all by himself.”
Mother was silent.
“But he’s limited.”
“Of course.” She had not said a word about her discussion with Eilaan, and that was making me uneasy.
“It seems hard to believe that when I see him with the calculator,” I said.
“His limitations don’t show at his age.” Her voice was toneless, but her hand trembled as she rested it on my head. “Oh, Laissa—I’ve grown to have feelings for Button I shouldn’t have. Sometimes I even believe that if he could grow up here, he would become like us. It wasn’t this way with your twin. When I sent him out, I still had you. I think that was why I didn’t feel the same way about him. It’s why I chose to have you both, so that it would be easier.”
I had not thought about my twin in a long time. He was only a dim memory, a little boy with my blond hair and gray eyes. I had rarely played with him, perhaps because Mother had not wanted us to grow too close. I could not even recall his departure. Mother had sent me to one of the dormitories for girls my age, and the boy had been gone when I returned.
I thought of Eilaan’s threat, and my throat tightened. “Did Eilaan mean it when she said you might be expelled?”
“No, dear. She only said that to show the seriousness of the matter. You know that expulsions rarely take place.” Mother’s words did not console me; I was thinking again of Birana and her mother.
But Mother’s case was different from Yvara’s; Eilaan had only been trying to frighten her. Others had said for years that Yvara was bound to commit some dreadful deed, while Mother had always respected custom. Yet I thought of Birana, and it occurred to me that, if I aided Mother in her disobedience, or ignored it, I might also share her punishment.
We were among those who were the Mothers of the City. We looked out for our city, and watched over its people, and gave birth to the boys who would be given to the men outside; in return, we had honor and respect. There were times when I envied the more carefree ways of those who could live their lives, do their work, and raise their daughters without our responsibilities, but I did not want to become one of them. Eilaan might send Mother to live among them if she failed in her duty, and I might have to go with her if I were not careful.
Others would take our place, and we would be disgraced. I did not care that we might then be relieved of painful or difficult decisions, but thought only of the shame.
“I’ve been wrong in putting this off,” Mother said. “I knew all along that Button couldn’t stay. You’d better get up, Laissa. I must summon his father to take him away.”
She got up and went into her study. I trailed after her and stood in the doorway as she went to her mindspeaker, put the circlet on her head, stared into the lenses on the wall, and spoke her message aloud, as if afraid that the mindspeaker might otherwise transmit her unspoken thoughts.
I had learned how to use a mindspeaker in the dormitories. We had begun by sending images and messages to one another, learning how to focus our minds and how to keep our surface thoughts unmuddied. I had found it hard at first to keep stray, conscious thoughts from intruding. Then we had been shown, those of us who were to be the mothers of both men and women, how to send recorded tapes to the shrines outside. The innocuous ones, those of women who would soothe men and ease their fears, did not disturb us, but the erotic ones were more embarrassing to contemplate.
I knew that these tapes were centuries old, the women who had made them long dead, and that they had created them only out of a strong sense of duty. Images of women, naked and seductive, would appear to men in shrines when the men were wearing mindspeaker circlets, and the men would experience the sensation of lying with these women. My teachers at the time had told me little more than that, but I shuddered to think of how the men dealt with those images.
The tapes had been both a source of amusement and disgust to us all; some of my friends shrieked or laughed nervously as we prepared such transmissions. I often refused to view the tapes; although I knew that they were needed in order to condition men, I had always found them distasteful. It was said that, very rarely, a woman might feel perverted longings if she thought too much about such tapes; I was never able to believe that, to think that a woman might imagine a man with her. Once, women had lived with men; the thought was appalling.
Mother removed her circlet when she was finished. “What did he say?” I asked.
“I didn’t speak to him. The message is there for him, though—if he goes to a shrine, he’ll receive it. It hardly matters if I speak to him directly since his responses are so ritualized. He goes to a shrine quite often.” She waved a hand at the console in which past transmissions were stored. “There are his prayers. An erotic tape is sent once in a while, just to keep him happy.”
“What’s he like?” He was my progenitor, too, and I was curious.
“Big, strong, hale and hearty. His hair is like yours, and his eyes. He’s a man—that’s all you have to know. He’s a man, and Button will be a man, too. I must keep thinking of that. It’ll make it easier to let him go.”
ARVIL
Tal had been called to the enclave before. I had never been called but prayed for it. I had grown tall, and my voice had changed, was like that of a man. I would rub my face and long for the down to become the bristles of a beard. Soon, I hoped, I would be called.
Tal had brought me out of the enclave, so I had been there before, but I could not remember anything about it. Sometimes, I would have a dream: I was in a room with a soft covering under my feet, a covering softer than grass, but white instead of green. Someone was with me, and I would feel arms around me and smell flowers and rest my cheek against a shirt as soft as fur while a high voice sang to me. Sometimes, I was in a different place, and other times I was surrounded by darkness, but the voice was always singing. The voice was high and light, like a boy’s. The Lady had never sung to me when I was blessed in a shrine, so I might have been dreaming about my time inside the enclave. But I could not be sure, so I always told Tal I did not remember anything about that time.
Tal thought that was good. “You should not remember,” he would say. “Young ones who remember too much don’t last. They don’t learn fast enough. They keep hoping to get called back, but they never are called because they don’t live long enough to become men. You cried when you came out, and I had to beat your tears out of you, but you learned. Be glad you forgot.”
I accepted that during the first eleven winters I was with Tal, but in my twelfth winter, I began to question him more.
“Did you ever see a young one who remembered?” I asked him while we sheltered under an outcropping of rock, waiting for the snow to stop so that we could follow fresh animal tracks to game. We were alone, so I could ask him. The rest of our band was back at our winter camp.
“I did see one,” Tal answered. His eyes were as gray as the winter sky, and others had told me I had the same eyes. “It was before I brought you out, boy. This young one came out with Hasin. He had to carry the child back to our camp trussed and gagged because the lad wouldn’t stop crying. Hasin spoke gently, and when that didn’t work, he beat the boy. The child would cry at night when he thought we were asleep, but Hasin was sure that would pass.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“One night, the boy slipped away. We did not want to go after him, but Hasin said we must. I knew we would find him dead, if we found him at all, and I was right.”
I said, “An animal got him.”
Tal laughed. “An animal—yes. Somehow, the boy made his way toward the enclave. He should have known he could not go inside without being called—we had told him that often enough.” He paused. “Another band found him and killed him. We came upon them while they were stripping the body. We struck down two men, but before we drove them off, they had taken Arvil’s life as well.”
He had named me after Arvil, the man who had taken Tal out of the enclave when Tal was a boy. He had never told me before how Arvil had died. “So you were even. Two lives for two.”
“Yes, we were even. I wish we had killed their whole band. I saw the signs on those creatures—the shreds of cloth, the bits of metal they scavenged from the grounds near the enclave. Those signs showed that the band never ventured far from the wall. They lived on what they could find and on what they could steal from those coming out or those being called back. They were animals, not men.” Tal rubbed his hide-covered hands together, then folded his arms. “Such bands do not last long, and catch little game. Those who stay near the enclave are never called, and so no new young ones come out with them. But there are always other bands to take their place.”
I had heard about such scavengers often; Tal was one who said the same things many times. “Why do they stay there, then?”
Tal shrugged. “Because they are cowards. Because they grow weak, perhaps, and cannot leave.”
“When will I be called?”
Tal glanced at me, scowling under his blond beard. “I cannot say. When you are older. I had been with old Arvil for nearly sixteen summers before I was called.”
“I might be called sooner.”
Tal cuffed me on the side of my head. My eyes stung and my head throbbed a bit, but it was a gentle blow, meant to teach me my place and not to punish me. “Sooner! You think too much of yourself, Arvil. Do you think you’ll go before I did? Sixteen summers before I was called—you won’t be called before that. You will be lucky to be called then.”
Tal had been called three times—once before I knew him, again when he brought me out, and another time after that. Only Geab, our Headman, had been called as many times, and he was an old man with gray in his black beard.
Geab had not gone to an enclave in a long time. One day, I was sure, Tal would be called again, and then, when he returned, he would be the Headman and Geab would become an Elder. Geab would hunt his last meal, take his last hide, and make his last cloak, the one in which he would die and which the next Headman would take from his body. I believed that Tal would be called again, and hoped for it. If he were not, he would have to wait for Geab to die.
The snow had stopped. We picked up our spears and left the outcropping, searching for fresh tracks.
We found only two rabbits on our way toward our camp. The sky was already darkening when Tal stopped, took my shoulder, and steered me east.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“To the shrine.”
“But then we won’t get back before…”
Tal hit me, knocking me into the snow. “You listen. When you are near a shrine, you pay your respects, even if it means going out of your way.” He dragged me up and brushed the snow from my back.
I knew that he was right, but I wanted to get back to camp, to a fire and a meal. The shrine would be warm. That thought startled me. I should not have been thinking of a holy place as a spot for my comfort.
“You wonder why I have been called three times,” Tal went on as we stumbled through the snow. “It’s because I never miss a chance to pray, and the Lady knows it. Don’t ever forget to pray.”
“I pray every night.” Almost every night, I told myself silently, promising Her I would try to do better.
We came to the top of a hill. The shrine was below us. On top of its curved, metallic walls sat a golden dome with a white cap. The snow around the entrance to the shrine was unmarked. No one else was near; and although no man would attack another on holy ground, I preferred to pray alone.
We waded toward the shrine as I tried to banish unholy thoughts. I had prayed at shrines many times. When I was a young boy, my soul was sometimes called to the Lady, and an aspect wearing Her form would come to me and hold me gently. When I grew older, other aspects had shown me Her true blessings. At the thought of those blessings, I felt a powerful longing for Her. Suddenly I wondered if She would ever hear my prayers again, if She would withhold Her blessing from me, if She would turn from me, and trembled.
Tal’s big hand clutched my shoulder. “Easy, boy.”
I swallowed. I was thinking unholy thoughts on the shrine’s threshhold and prayed that I would not be punished. The door in front of us slid open, and we entered.
The shrine was warm and the air bore a musky scent; the dome overhead glowed as the small room grew lighter. We knelt, cupped our groins, and pressed our foreheads to the floor, then rose.
Twenty couches, covered with red cloth, stood in a row near one wall. Circlets of gold rested on each couch, and, above each, a round piece of glass set in the wall caught the light, winking. We walked past the couches and knelt again in front of the altar.
An image of the Lady smiled down at us. I lifted my eyes to the statue and was at peace. This shrine was to Mary, the aspect of the Lady I had always loved the most. I had seen Her in other guises, in other shrines—as the Warrior, with black hair, slanted eyes, and a spear, or as the Wise One, with slender glass tubes and strange tools, or as Venus the Lover of Men, with bright red hair and bare breasts—and I had heard that there were other aspects in more distant shrines. But it was Mary, the Mother, the most familiar aspect to me, to Whom I prayed most often.
We prayed for a few moments in the holy speech, the tongue I had known before I learned the words of men. Then Tal got up, went to a couch, and stretched out upon it. I took the couch next to his, put the circlet on my head, and waited. Tal, eyes closed, was still, his blond beard and hair as golden as the circlet on his brow. His lips moved, and I wondered if the Lady was speaking to him.
He twitched and began to moan. His arms slapped the couch as his body arched. He kicked with his long legs and moaned again and shook so much that I thought he would fall to the floor. At first, I believed only that the Lady had decided to bless him, and then he smiled. I had seen Tal smile like that only once before, in another shrine, when he had last been called.
I closed my eyes. Perhaps the Lady would call me, too. No joy I had known had been greater than Her blessing, and I burned with longing, but She did not speak, did not appear to me.
Tal would leave me once again for the enclave. I tried to give thanks for him, but could think only of myself; I had not been called. I pushed that thought from my mind. Tal would be our Headman when he returned. I knew I should not be thinking of that, either, but only of the Lady.
Tal was removing his circlet. I took mine off and said, “You were called.”
He sat up slowly and rubbed his arms. “Yes.”
“Your fourth time.”
“I must go to the enclave.”
“Take me with you.” The words were out before I could hold them back. I glanced toward the altar, afraid.
“Arvil, were you called?”
I shook my head.
“I thought not. You cannot deceive the Lady. If you haven’t been called, you cannot enter the wall. I shall have to leave you behind.”
“You’re going to make the Stalker my guardian again.”
“He did well enough last time.”
“He’ll try to beat me.”
“If he does, then you will deserve it, although I think he would find it harder to beat you now.”
“And Cor will beat me when the Stalker is out of sight.”
Tal sighed. “Stop whining. If you cannot get along with that boy, then fight him. You ought to be able to beat him by now—you have grown taller than Cor.”
“He’ll summon the Stalker then, and I cannot raise my hand to my guardian. Leave me with someone else.”
“If you don’t stop this talk, Arvil, I’ll beat you myself. You are in a shrine. You are the height of a man, but you’re still a boy, and the Lady doesn’t take kindly to boys who disobey their guardians.” Tal stretched out again. “Now, I want you to take the rabbits outside, skin them, and cook our supper. We’ll eat what is left tomorrow.”
“Aren’t we going back to the camp?”
“We’ll go in the morning. The Lady has favored me. The Mother will not mind if we sleep here. Now go outside and gather some wood before it grows darker.”
As we neared our camp, I worried again about what Geab might do when he learned about Tal’s fourth call. He might go to the shrine in the hope that the Lady would call him, too, but men his age were rarely called. He would have to hope that Tal did not return safely from the enclave. Perhaps Geab would even move our camp to make it harder for Tal to find us again.
I had seen a Headman become an Elder once before, two winters after Tal had become my guardian. The Wolf had led us then. He had broken his leg badly in a fall and knew that it would not heal. He had declared himself an Elder, knowing it was for the good of the band; caring for an old and crippled man would have made life harder for all of us.
The Wolf had gone on his last hunt, although others had to help him take his last hide. He had sewn his cloak and eaten his final meal, then given away his things. Geab, the new leader, had been given the Wolf’s precious knife, made with a sharp metal blade taken from a scavenger.
Geab struck the first blow with that knife, cutting the Wolf’s throat. By the time the rest of us pricked the Wolf with our spears, he was already dead.
The Wolf had met death willingly. Geab would not.
I had dreamed of the white room during our night in the shrine, but the Lady did not speak to me. Tal, however, had communicated with Her again, mumbling as he slept. Like all men, I had a stain on my soul, yet prayed for purification and the Lady’s blessing. Tal was a good man and had been called, but it was the fate of all men forever to fall away from grace and be forced from the enclaves. Again, I wondered: Could a man become so holy that he could dwell within an enclave’s wall and never come out?
As we came toward the hill leading to our camp, Tal suddenly grabbed me, startling me out of my daydreaming, and pointed at the ground. He had already loosed his spear from his back. The tracks of horses marked the snow and led up the hill toward our camp. I pulled at Tal’s arm, wanting to flee.
At that moment, a horse carrying two riders came around the hill and trotted toward us. Tal lifted his spear.
“Hold!” a familiar voice shouted. I recognized Cor’s furs and hides. He was sitting behind a stranger on the horse’s back; his legs dangled, and his arms were tight around the other man’s waist. I was too startled by the sight of Cor on a horse to be afraid then.
Cor released the other rider, slid awkwardly off the horse, sprawled in the snow, then stumbled to his feet. Tal saluted him with his spear. “Who is this man?” he asked as he waved his weapon at the stranger.
The horse whinnied, but the stranger was silent. Cor smiled, showing white teeth under his thin red mustache. “Another band is in our camp. We’re having a parley.”
Tal frowned as he glanced at me.
“You should have been back last night,” Cor went on. “This stranger here is helping me guard the hill. The rest are above.”
Tal adjusted his hood. “I shall go up.”
“Geab is busy with the parley.”
“So you told me.” Tal’s voice was angry.
We climbed the hill. Our winter camp was near the top, so that we could watch the land around it; but when the winds blew strong, we often had to take shelter in the hollow space we had dug below ground, where we stored the dried meat and plant food we had gathered for the cold season. In winter, we did not wander far from the land we knew. We knew about winter, and what we had to do to live through it. We did not know what dangers we might face if we left for lands where strange bands roamed.