Disclaimer: If you believe that I am Tamora Pierce, could I also persuade you to give me your credit card and social security number as well as your full name and home address? It's all for non-criminal purposes, I swear…
Author's Note: This is written for the April-May challenge over at the wonderful Tamora Pierce Experiment forum which everyone should check out after reading (and hopefully reviewing) this fic. Since I am a college student, I don't happen to have my copy of the Woman Who Rides Like a Man with me to describe in detail all the Bazhir customs, so I had to rely on my memory and Tamora Pierce Wikipedia for my information, meaning that if you spot anything that I did wrong, feel free to point it out. Most of the things that I made up pertaining to the Bazhir are based on early Muslim customs, so I more appropriated than made up most things, to be honest.
Childishness
"Zahir, wake up!" An impatient hiss penetrated the sleepy fog that clouded Zahir's mind, and reluctantly, he pulled himself out of a very pleasant dream he had been having about Nasira Bint Mahmud, the daughter of the chief of a neighboring tribe.
Reflexively, Zahir sat up, thinking that he was at the Royal Palace, had overslept, and was frantically being awoken by one of his friends—probably Joren, because neither Garvey or Vinson really seemed to possess the intelligence necessary to tell time—so that he could throw on some clothes and run down to breakfast before Lord Wyldon could notice his absence. As his brain caught up to his racing heart, he realized that he was lying on a mat and blankets on the floor of a tent and wasn't sleeping on a high mattress in the Royal Palace.
Well, of course he wasn't, he thought, snorting at his own idiocy, as he collapsed back onto his sheets. He had been home for two days now and had been planning on taking advantage of the fact that he was allowed to sleep in over the summer, as he wasn't permitted to do as a page. Unfortunately, that had been beyond the comprehension of his little sister, Aisha Bint Alhaz.
"Go back to sleep, Aisha," he grunted, rolling over to block out the streams of sunlight now filtering into the tent. "It's too early for all this fussing."
"Don't be silly," whispered Aisha, shaking him. "It's too late to go back to sleep. The sun is rising, and the morning is wasting. I can't lie in bed knowing that every moment I spend there is a moment that I could have spent elsewhere, doing something more fun. Life is too short to waste time sleeping through mornings."
"You go off, do what you want, and let me do what I want," Zahir muttered, observing inwardly that his younger sister was one of those people who were by nature obnoxiously cheery in the morning. As far as Zahir was concerned, nobody had any business smiling before noon, and no one had any right to expect him to do any more than get up, get dressed, and eat before that time, especially during the summer. "If you can't sleep, at least have the courtesy to let me do the same."
"I want to go for a ride on Tayma," Aisha whispered back, speaking of her mare.
"I'm not stopping you." Zahir buried his head in his pillow and wished that his sister would go away already. Right now, he felt like he had one very frayed nerve left, and she was rubbing at it.
"I want to go for a ride with you," explained Aisha, curling up beside him on his blankets. "I miss you when you go off to training for so much of the year, and we used to go riding every morning together."
"That was when we were both young." Zahir shook his head. "That was when I didn't mind getting up at the break of day. Now that I'm older, I do mind."
"We're still young." Aisha rested her dark head on his shoulder. "We can still go riding together in the mornings."
"We're not young," hissed Zahir, pulling his shoulder away from her. "I'm thirteen now, and you're eleven. That makes us adults by the standards of this tribe. You're a woman now, whether or not you want to see it. You aren't even supposed to be on this side of tent, and especially not at this hour." Glaring into his sister's wide, surprised eyes, he added, "You should be wearing a veil, too. You look like a whore roaming around without your veil. Honestly, Aisha, don't you know what an unveiled woman makes a man want to do?"
"Probably the same thing you want to do to Nasira Bint Mahmud," commented Aisha slyly.
"What makes you think that I want to do anything with her?" demanded Zahir, trying desperately to keep from blushing.
"Don't lie to me," Aisha chided. "I could hear you moaning about her in your sleep before I woke you up."
"Smart women tend to get beaten by their husbands, Aisha," he glowered at her.
"You should be ashamed to say such things to your little sister." Aisha's eyes burned like coals as she glared at him.
"And you should be ashamed to be on this side of the tent at this hour, and you should be ashamed to be seen by anyone without your veil," he countered. "It seems we're both without shame."
"Then what's to stop us from going for a morning ride together?" she pressed, her eyes softening to amber as she pleaded with him.
"Fine." Sighing, Zahir concluded that he would never be able to convince Aisha to go away, which meant that he would never be able to go back to sleep, and that he might as well join her in her insanity if only to get her to stop pestering him. "I'll go for a ride, but you make sure that you wear your veil and that you ride sideways so that your dress doesn't rise up on you, or I'll never ride with you again."
"Oh, I knew that you'd agree in the end." Her face shining, Aisha wrapped her arms around him, and then released him before he could extricate himself from his clutches. Then, beaming, she shoved herself to her feet, and, rubbing her hands together excitedly, added, "I'll pack us some juice and pasties, too. We'll have ourselves a picnic by the oasis just like when we were little."
Smiling at the thought of cold liquid pouring down his throat after a hard ride through the desert sand to the oasis, Zahir shooed her away, so that he could change.
Once he had changed and Aisha had donned her veil and packed the refreshments she had promised, they left their family's tent . A few minutes later, the two of them were racing on horseback away from the tent village that their tribe had set up for a few weeks before moving on to the next oasis. As soon as they were away from the tents, Aisha burst out laughing, and Zahir couldn't help but joining her.
The wind smacking against his face always made him feel alive and free. No matter how old he got, he would always think that there was something magical about riding a horse. Horses were children of the wind, and their greatest gift to humans wasn't speed—it was the feeling that a person had when he was riding a horse. When someone was riding on a horse, they felt like all their troubles were flying away behind them, and that any obstacles that they might face ahead were insignificant. If you were riding a horse, running against the wind no longer seemed like a bad, draining thing, but rather a glorious, invigorating rite. Anyone who could never connect with a horse as deeply as he had connected to his Sufia or as Aisha had connected to her Tayma hadn't truly lived and had Zahir's deepest sympathies.
Suddenly, as he charged across the desert, feeling like he had become one with his mount, he was indescribably grateful that his little sister had awakened him to go for a ride with her. She had been right to wake him up. After all, going for a ride like this was exhilarating at any time of day, but it was best around dawn when the sun hadn't become blazing yet and the sand wasn't scorching yet. The wind never felt crisper than it did around dawn when the coolness of the night still clung to everything.
"I'd forgotten how amazing this was!" he shouted to Aisha, grinning wildly at her, and not caring that the red sand that his horse's hooves kicked up would stick to his teeth. If you were a Bazhir, you had to get used to sand attaching itself to every part of your body, after all.
"That's why I had to remind you," she screamed back, as they neared the oasis, and both of them reluctantly slowed their horses. "Remember, my name means 'life.'"
"How could I forget when you are so full of it?" chuckled Zahir, as they both halted their horses by the oasis and dismounted.
"I think that we should keep the life strong within us by eating that breakfast I packed for us, but first we should let our horses drink from the oasis to keep the life in them strong," said Aisha, leading her horse over to the water, as Zahir did the same.
"I was going to say that," Zahir told her, watching as the two horses gulped down the water.
"Doesn't matter." Aisha shook her head, dismissing this, while the horses' gulps turned into slower, more dignified laps. "I said it first."
"I guess us older siblings should let the last borns be first sometimes, so they aren't consumed entirely by jealousy," stated Zahir with mock-judiciousness.
"You aren't the first born," Aisha retorted as the horses turned away from the water, and she bent down to wash her hands in the oasis before taking out their food and juice. "Laila is."
"Laila is a female," Zahir scoffed, watching hungrily as his sister laid out their breakfast. "Women don't inherit unless their father has no sons, and, even then, it's their husbands who end up inheriting. Everyone wants sons, and it is the firstborn son that is most important, for he is the one who inherits a vast majority of his father's estate, if not all of it."
"I guess that, as a woman, Nasira Bint Mahmud is worthless to you," Aisha remarked, biting into a fruit pasty.
"Nasira will be good at providing a man with sons one day, and at cooking and cleaning for her husband as she cooks and cleans for her father." Zahir tried to keep his face and tone blank as he shrugged. Feeling that his cheeks were burning, he sipped at his cup of juice, hoping that its coolness would take the heat from his face, and praying that if it didn't, Aisha would assume that the crimsonness was from riding, not from embarrassment. "Proper women are useful, Aisha. It is only those who refuse to be proper like you that are worthless."
"I'm not worthless." As she finished her first pasty, Aisha reached for another. "Father has already received better offers for my hand than he did for Laila—Mother told me. A girl is only as valuable to her father as the husband she gets."
"Father only got better offers for you because you are prettier than Laila," Zahir explained between bites of pasty.
"So beauty is more important in a woman than propriety," reasoned Aisha. "Laila has propriety, and I have beauty."
"Beauty tempts a man, but propriety keeps him," Zahir said through gritted teeth. "Beauty is fleeting, but virtue lasts forever. Women who are temptresses are ultimately regarded with contempt by everyone."
"Temptresses may incite contempt, but at least they don't go practically unnoticed like Mother and Laila do." Aisha shrugged.
"Proper women are supposed to blend into the background." Zahir rolled his eyes. "Do you ever listen w to Mother when she tells you what you are supposed to do in order to be a proper woman?"
"I listen, but I don't obey." Throwing back her head, Aisha laughed in a manner that Zahir knew would make the blood roar in the bodies of at least a dozen suitors.
"Proper women are supposed to obedient," Zahir reminded her.
"Proper women are supposed to have no fun." Aisha's face clouded for half a moment, and then she smiled again. "I intend to have fun every day of my life. There's no point in being alive if you don't enjoy life at all. No matter what happens, I intend to stay forever young, forever beautiful, and forever laughing."
"You're so childish." Zahir shot her a withering look.
"You weren't complaining about that when we were riding together," pointed out Aisha, folding her arms across her chest.
"That was a stolen moment of fun," Zahir countered. "It wasn't meant to last forever. Adults are allowed to have moments of pleasure, but then they are expected to go back to doing their duty without complaint."
"We aren't adults, Zahir," Aisha protested.
"We're more adults than we are children, Aisha, and it's time you accepted that." Zahir shook his head. "Refusing to believe that you are getting older won't make you stop aging. Not accepting the duties that become yours as you grow older just makes you irresponsible."
"Better irresponsible than a misery guts." Aisha waved this aside. "There will be time enough for growing up later."
Before Zahir could reply, the sound of hooves thundering across the desert reached their ears. Looking up, they both saw a cloud of sand approaching them. As the sand cloud raced toward them, a horse and then a man became visible in it.
"You're wanted back home, Zahir," the man, Javier ibn Kaliq, shouted, as he neared them. "Your father went to collect the tax that your uncle refused to pay for trading outside the tribe, and your uncle knifed him."
Stunned, Zahir could do nothing more than gape at Javier. He knew that tension had always bubbled between his father and his father's younger brother, Kamal, but he had never imagined that Kamal would attack his father. Attacking a chief wasn't just a violation of tribal laws, it was breaking the very customs set down by the gods.
"Hurry back," Javier panted, as he dismounted and led his horse over to the oasis. "Your father wants to see you at once."
Unfreezing himself, Zahir burst into action now that Javier's words had been absorbed into his brain enough for him to realize that his father—the chief of their tribe—was injured, and Zahir had been summoned to his side. In one smooth motion, he leapt onto his horse and took off toward his family's tent, thinking that the pounding of his horse's hooves sounded terribly like the blood beating through his veins. As he rushed toward his father's side, Zahir could only think bitterly that Aisha, whose horse was charging along beside him, knew nothing, and that there was no time to be young if you were the son of a chief.