Little Sister Rabbit

Disclaimer + Note: I do not own Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken. It is property of Intelligent Systems and I just like to make up stories about it. I like the story of Madelyn and Hassar, but I hardly imagine that the Lorca welcomed Madelyn with open arms. So this is not the story of how they meet, and fall in love—but the after part.

It was a while back

said the wisewoman

her name was Kone.

She liked to smile and everyone liked to circle her

to listen to her stories.

There was only Father Sky

and Mother Earth.

They were very lonely.

They were the only things in the world.

"And then Father Sky discovered the marriage mat!" said Jod rather loudly, usually, and everyone laughed. Jod was a rather candid woman for a Sacaean. The shaman shushed her with a wave. The chuckles died down.

Reverently, Kone began again, always.

. . . and then Father Sky

discovered the marriage mat.

Even Hassar laughed at that one. Madelyn struggled to keep up. Learning the dialect of Kute that the Lorca spoke was difficult work, but she was getting a grasp on it. Hassar refused to speak to her in anything other than it, so she could learn.

It was he that had the advantage; his handle on her language was near perfect, as opposed to her shoddy one. To prove that point, she said so once, to Jod, in Kute, who misheard her poor speech. In her humble opinion (it had grown quite humble this past year) the Kute words were too close sounding, especially all the nasty ones. Madelyn didn't quite see the wisdom in that particular linguistic development. Jod didn't stop laughing until she had cried big fat tears of amusement, and even then broke out into fresh peals when Hassar happened by. She congratulated him on keeping his wife so happy, offered to teach Madelyn some of her own special tricks that had pleased his father and left Hassar to translate for poor Madelyn.

She was horribly mortified, but in the end Hassar assured her that either way she meant it, it reflected well on him, and meant nothing about her. The societal rules of Caelin did not stand here, he said rather slowly. In fact, he continued, most women gathered around their looms and fire pits and compared husbands without a second thought. In fact, if she didn't make that kind of comment on occasion, everyone would think that he wasn't doing his job as husband right.

He tried to make her laugh with that one, but it was all too strange. Madelyn lay up all night reflecting on a culture that told dirty jokes as daily custom.

Okay.

Hassar went to Caelin

which I guess is the cityman's talk for "far away."

He went away, right

for some kind a goodwill shit

but when he came back, he had a woman with him

this Lycian woman.

I don't know what's special about her.

Hassar seems to like her

wouldn't hear Danvar's protests

married the girl anyway

and she only knows how to stuff her mouth with dried meat.

Dammit!

I would have made the Chief a better wife.

What's so great about that Lycian cunt?

All the women knew how to speak the common language, but when she came around they preferred not to. Madelyn's inarticulateness made them think she couldn't hear them or understand their gossip. They picked up speed to confuse her. Madelyn didn't have many friends other than Hassar's hunting team and his female relatives, too closely related to marry him. Jod told her that the reason, mainly, that she was hated was because she had stolen the Chief's hand and they'd treat any girl so.

Jod admitted that she was foreign put some sting on it. She added that her blonde hair didn't help. Jod told her a lot of the things Hassar didn't like to mention: that since her hair was short, and her breasts were smallish, she looked like a boy and that reflected on the Chief—that since she was foreign and noble, she didn't know how to flay a skin or cure meat or put up or take down a ger, that reflected on him too—that since she didn't speak the language, that since she didn't know the stories, she was an outsider by definition and even if she learned them she'd probably stay an outsider for the rest of her life and that meant that the Chief was half on the outside too.

Madelyn did have a good memory, though. She picked up words and asked Hassar to tell her the meanings. Usually, he only said these short definitions in her first language, and described them further in Kute, but when she told him one word she picked up from the firepit, he snapped to attention, and nearly ruined the arrowhead he was carving. There was hot blood on the ground from his slipped-up knife and hand.

"Who called you that?" he asked, sounding angry. He spoke like he had in Caelin, the voice that won her over.

"I don't know," she lied in Kute.

"Madelyn, tell me," he said in his language. "They shouldn't be calling you that. You're the Chief's wife. That's a position of respect and authority—tell me. Whoever it is, I'll speak with her husband and there'll be no more of that talk about you."

"You're going too fast, Hassar," Madelyn said, stumbling to speak.

"Madelyn, you are my wife," he said in the language of her birth. "I won't tolerate my people speaking about you like that. Tell me who said that."

"Hassar, I don't know. I had my back turned. I only heard them."

"Whose voice was it then?"

"I don't know."

All Kute voices sounded the same to her, except for maybe Hassar's. Hassar retreated into a Sacaen silence. Madelyn opened a chest and found a rag and a bit of precious vulnerary. Carefully, she dabbed a bit on the rag, until a spot was soaked pale green. She took Hassar's hand and tied the rag around it. When she was done, Hassar closed his fist around her hand. He leaned forward so that their foreheads touched.

Affection was open in the Lorca tribe—nearly casual—but knowing her preference, Hassar kept displays limited to the privacy of his own ger. Madelyn hated sleeping in the women's communal ger, not only because she was an outsider, but also because at least one woman was either in and out visiting her husband or her husband was visiting her and keeping her up all night. All the other women seemed used to it. Even during the day!

Hassar had been thoughtful enough to ask her if she wanted him to do the same—initially her reply had been a vehement "No!" but now she thought it might be nice to keep her two personal enemies, Juka and Mareah, up all night too. Furthermore, then she'd get to say "oh, Hassar left his bandanna with me again by accident" every once in a while to tell them who was who.

Father Sky and Mother Earth

spent a long time

making all the animals

gazelles, rabbits, buffaloes, deer and pheasants

hawks and mice

fishes and flies.

It took them twice as long to make

all the grasses

flowers

trees

every plant ever

this is probably why there are more blades of grass

than there are animals, by the way.

But what they really tried hard on

was Brother Wind.

Kone read Madelyn carefully.

The Lorca tribe maintained a powerful superstition, and Kone looked at most every part of Madelyn's body while Hassar watched. He was there to assure Madelyn that this was how it was supposed to go, and to translate tougher words. She mostly talked about Madelyn's fertility.

"Four or five?" Madelyn said uneasily.

Hassar laughed. "One or two is more likely. And my mother will help you anyway when the girl is born, so don't make that face."

Madelyn asked him why he said "girl" so he took off his boots and showed her his uneven second toes, one longer than the biggest, and one shorter—which guaranteed his first child would be a girl so quick she could snatch the threads off of Brother Wind's shirt. He said he was already planning to teach her archery and to ride a horse before she could walk like they all could. He showed her a little bow, no longer than Madelyn's forearm, that he intended to give to his daughter when she was a year and a half.

The bow had been carved with his own hands, and Madelyn had seen him carving others—one of the Chief's tasks, it seemed, was to provide for the children. Later Madelyn realized he was assuring her that their daughter would not be ostracized because of inferiority or inability like she was. She would be a real Sacaen woman. Madelyn found herself wishing for that too. She wouldn't ever tell her daughter a thing about Caelin. Kone went on to say that her next child would be a boy, and he would be the next chief.

Huh.

I wonder if she's weak.

Maybe

she'll die on him

when she drops her half-breed kid.

Nights were ordeals. One night, Madelyn laid awake, listening to the quiet sound of their thoughts. She had to fold the grass pillow over her ears to block out the furious buzzing to sleep.

Little Sister Rabbit

never thought she did anything right.

That's why

when Little Sister saved Brother Wind

she didn't believe him at first.

Kone called Madelyn into her ger one morning. Kone was shriveled, now, and Madelyn was already three months pregnant with Hassar's baby girl. With her old, weakened hands, Kone deftly showed Madelyn how to weave her baby's sleeping pouch. She explained the symbols that Madelyn would choose; how they would affect the baby.

Madelyn listened with a furrowed brow. A hawk, for foresight, a boar, for protectiveness. Some things did not go together—such as a river, for fluid thought, and a ger, for stolidity. Madelyn would have to make her choices. Immediately, she expressed her interest in a wind symbol—something native to Sacae, something to implant her daughter firmly in the embrace of the Sacaen people.

Kone's milky eyes turned upward. Madelyn thought she might reject this; but no. Kone nodded, and drew the symbol for wind on a strip of leather for her to copy. In slow, wise words, she began to tell Madelyn a story as she prepared the string loom, and wound it around Madelyn's back, like a Sacaean mother would for her child, as if Madelyn were only seven years old, the traditional age.

See,

on the mountain

the one that would be called Dead Witch Mountain

Brother Wind was showing off.

He liked to be loud.

He'd go up there and make a racket

there because Mother Earth hated the noise

of him howling like an idiot

and she wouldn't let him

put his feet down

if she was angry at him.

He had to make her a gift

every time

every single time

she got mad

of beads and grass baskets

filled with precious taba

just to set foot on land

after raising a storm.

(and sometimes we have to help;

lazy man!)

One day

Brother Wind went up there to make a racket

and a woman

ran out of a cave on the side of the mountain

and threw her fine bone comb

at his pretty face!

Mareah was assigned to lead the women on a scavenge. Such scavenges were common, and the word for them was "linn." By chance, the word for without was "mat-te" and it was said that if any woman had Madelyn for a partner, she wouldn't even find one leaf's worth of taba, a bush that was harvested and ground into a sauce that flavored and preserved meat. Taba was mostly what women searched for, but it was not unknown to catch a rabbit or to scoop mushrooms and make a day-stew for it. Madelyn always had to search on her own, unless Jod was in the group—even Hassar's cousins avoided her, and he had no sisters.

Hassar didn't know a thing about this particular mistreatment. It was women's work, the sort that didn't need the chief's hand in it. Jod had almost gone to tell him, but Madelyn was well-versed in Kute by the time they let her go on a scavenge and pleaded with her not to. Her status amongst the Lorca was a huge concern of his, and Madelyn hated to burden him with it. At least they were together. Madelyn could suffer any amount of ridicule so long as she had her husband, and besides that, she was too proud to admit any malcontent.

Madelyn, during a scavenge, mostly wandered. She had a rudimentary knowledge of what to look for. Taba encouraged moss to grow beneath it, and so mossy ground was a good sign. There was also a distinct smell that the wind carried. Madelyn was not as fruitless as her nickname—Made-Taba—made it out to be. She found as much taba as any other woman, and even shot a gopher once. They ignored these things.

The only consolation about scavenges was that she was left to herself. Madelyn was not very solitary by her own nature, but scorn does strange things and now she enjoyed being without the others and volunteered as often as she could. Anyway, Kone was teaching her things she'd never dreamed—at first, Madelyn felt silly talking to the wind and the sky and the ground, but she grew accustomed to it as she was to praying to St. Elimine. The scriptures she had been taught in Caelin began to look like jumbled together arguments, ruined and salvaged over time.

St. Elimine's blond face had been replaced by a dark green woman, dressed in furs in Madelyn's mind. As her beliefs crumbled, Madelyn at least felt a sense of peace. With the peace came the singing. Madelyn didn't tell anyone, not Jod, not Kone, not even Hassar.

That woman on the mountain

wasn't a woman

she was a witch

and an evil one

too.

There are all kind of witches

some are good

and this one wasn't even close.

She got Brother Wind right in the eye

obviously,

being Brother Wind

it would grow back eventually.

The witch didn't risk it.

She knew exactly who this troublemaker was

and she was keen

to be rid of him

and his noise.

Witches like her drank out of human skulls

instead of clay cups

or even gazelle skulls, like the chiefs do sometimes

she still had the glaze

for the cracks

of her newest dish on her hands

and did it ever stink.

Madelyn recognized the story from Kone's teachings, but it was being sung this time. The first time she heard it, she had been scared out of her wits. She pushed aside the tall grass that grew here, taller than any man, even the colossal Wallace. Moss dotted the ground now, and the grass grew short and sparse. Here was an acakia tree.

Beneath it was a woman of about Jod's age, old enough to see her son be a man, but young enough to be yet beautiful and useful. She was a very classic Sacaean beauty, too. Her hair was green-black and past her waist, and her furred coat and dress were hemmed with broad zig-zags with tiny circles. Her boots were resplendent with beads, red, green and turquoise. She was tapping a drum decorated with the same design and singing. The ground around her was spread with a mat, like a ger without a roof, and again the zig-zags and circles marked its edges. Madelyn would later learn that these were the marks of the dead tribe, the Rathet, the legendary first tribe, from long before Hanon and the Scouring.

The history of Sacae is older than that of Lycia. Madelyn stepped closer, shielding her pregnant belly with her basket of valuable taba and some root foods she'd also found. She swallowed hard and set the basket at the woman's feet.

"For you," she said in staggering Kute, and held out her palms in obeisance.

Mother Earth smiled. "Sit," she said. "I'll teach you my songs."

Everyone noticed right away
that Brother Wind'd been kidnapped and started looking
for him just about everywhere.
Father Sky asked Little Brother Hawk
to scour the land with his sharp, keen eyes.
Little Brother found him
on the witch's mountain. But
they couldn't get to him.
The witch
had used his magic to cast herself
a powerful spell of protection
that not even Mother Earth
could break.
"No creature in this land,"
she said
"will ever set foot on this mountain.
No hawk will fly above it.
No gazelle will dance across it."
The witch listed all the animals
one by one
so that the spell was extra strong.

Madelyn talked freely to Mother Earth, who to her was Mother herself—she knew that Mother Earth's name was Attaminyet, in Kute, but sometimes she prayed to her and called her "Lyndis" after her own mother, who had not died, but had been absorbed into Mother Earth, as Madelyn hoped she would be—to guide her own daughter, when she was a woman, alone and needing her mother.

Mother Earth was forgiving of Madelyn's poor grammar and small vocabulary and helped her learn the words as much as she could. Madelyn could hear other spirits, too, if she tried. Because she was foreign, Madelyn very much doubted her ability to become a shaman—but she would want it for her daughter.

Lyn was born during a scavenge, which was only part of how she got her name—it fit so perfectly that Madelyn insisted on giving her a foreign name when the naming ceremony came. Hassar had been planning to call her Sukanna, which meant "spirit girl." He was not blind or dumb, and he knew his wife had begun studying under Kone and had thought the name would appeal to her. It had the makings of a fierce argument, until Madelyn reluctantly confessed her meeting with Mother Earth and her conviction that her mother was one and the same with the great spirit of the earth.

Hassar's words dried up, since he had no intention of spurning Mother Earth or his wife. He called his daughter Lyn like everyone else, and only they knew the other connotation of Lyn's name; everyone simply assumed she was named after the scavenge and that she'd be lucky at finding taba for the rest of her life.

Lyn's face was shaped like her mother's, and she had the coloring and sturdy constitution of her father. Madelyn let Jod look after her, as was tradition. Jod loved Lyn desperately—she had only had sons and loved her little granddaughter, who rode everywhere with her in a little pouch when her mother wasn't there. Hassar made good on his word and taught her archery, and before she was five years old, Lyn could shoot down a bird, so long as it was within the range of her little bows. That was expected of children.

Madelyn had had dolls as a young girl—Lyn had a bow and a dulled dagger, neither of which she could have on her own. Her father was always there to help her with those tools. Madelyn was also learning to shoot and ride at the same time. Her horse was a mare named Aljua, for her dappled hide, which they had bought in Bulgar. Before then, she had ridden with her husband—who found many excuses to put his arms around her, especially now that the daughter was finally born and grown to a reasonable size.

From this grew the first true argument. He asked her one day, to come to his ger later that night, to bring her mat—and she didn't. She went to sleep with Jod and Lyn beside her in the women's ger, and listened to other husbands make love to their wives.

She forgot that

Little Sister Rabbit

had only recently come up

from the southern land.

Madelyn looked up and interrupted the song.

"I don't remember that part," she said, from Kone's songs. Mother Earth shrugged.

"It's true, though," she said placidly. "Stories change when they grow old, like people. This is the story as it was young."

"Mother?" Madelyn asked. She nodded, looked upon Madelyn attentively with her dark brown eyes. "Mother, I fought with my husband yesterday and I don't know . . ."

She stopped because she didn't know how to continue. Mother Earth's lips thinned into a frown and she set down her drum.

Madelyn told the great earth spirit about her trouble with Hassar and with Lyn. Lyn was bright, she was as pretty as could be expected, and she was no worse with a horse or a bow than any other child, even if it was apparent she had no spectacular talent as some do. She told Mother Earth about her secret fears—about the scorn the other children had inherited from their mothers—about the ever-present gossip, the dark looks, the disdain she bore patiently, and how it wore on her and made her tired and angry.

The Lorca had a phrase, "blame is the basket from which all hands take." The women were at fault, because they were spiteful jackals that gored at her and preyed on her daughter. She was to blame, she knew, for agreeing to come here in the first place and submitting herself to this repulsion and scorn, when she had been as good as a princess in Lycia, in Caelin—and Hassar was to blame for taking her here, when he knew that they would hate her here, with the blind hate they had for Lycians, for the foreigners who called them savages and barbarians.

By then Madelyn was tearful. Her tears were laden with poison and it hurt to shed them—when she had finished weeping into the ground, which was Mother Earth's lap, she felt as though the poison had been alleviated, but not purged. For that, she did not know what to do.

The Lorca live further south

than any other tribe.

Because of that,

we must fight for our territory.

We call them "erruah"

"jackals"

"scourge"

but they call themselves

"the Taliver"

and we have always

dealt with them.

The Taliver preyed on the Sacaeans when they could. They were bandits and deserters, orphans and half-breeds that were hated by the world. When they could, Hassar had warned her, they attacked the Lorca—and the Lorca attacked them. Bandits were no strangers to Madelyn, who had grown up as a marquess' daughter and had heard stories of cruelties waged upon ill-defended villages.

The first attack was brief. Madelyn was not allowed to scavenge on her own, and the women could only leave the encampment with a guard of six of the horsemen, each carrying a quiver with their own weight in arrows and a pair of scimitar. Each woman was assigned her own weapon, as well. Madelyn searched for taba with a bow slung over her shoulder.

Hassar was uneasy, slept little and held council with his warriors, and their marital quarrels had been dispensed for now. Madelyn was too proud to go to him at night, now, since a few nights made a habit of it. This year Lyn was five, and she went to sleep with the other children. Madelyn didn't like it, but it was the way of things. She couldn't protect her forever.

Madelyn awoke during the second attack, when Jod kicked her. She blinked awake quickly. Jod held up a long knife and dropped into her lap.

"Quick!" Jod snapped. Madelyn unsheathed the knife and followed her out the doorflap. There were already war cries and horse sounds, but Madelyn could make out nothing that made sense in the smoke—a ger, set on fire?—until she heard very small screams.

"Lyn!" she shrieked and ran.

Little Sister

she was small and light brown.

She shrunk down to nothing

she was the color of rocks

sand and mountain brush.

The witch

too caught up in stringing up

Brother Wind's viscera

in scaring him to death.

Little Sister didn't know what she could do

she put her paw

in the witch's drink.

There was nothing to do—the Taliver had those who had not escaped hostage. Madelyn wanted to stay, but Hassar had taken her, dragged her, pulled her onto his horse so roughly that if not for his smell she would've thought she was being abducted too. The brevity of the first attack made sense now. Madelyn coughed and turned the other way. She tumbled down when Hassar's grip lessened—he was letting her dismount on her own, but it didn't happen. She vomited on the ground.

"Go find her," Hassar shouted quickly. "Ask her to bring them back."

Madelyn looked up at her husband and realized he was asking her to speak to the great earth spirit. The others who could hear him, the other warriors, some of the angry women that had escaped with their children, stared—Jod was yet counting heads.

"Another women is gone—Mareah was taken with her son, Jiar!" Jod said. Her voice was hollow as bird bones. "Another woman is gone—Salea, and her two daughters! A man, Ben, he's dead of a head wound!"

Madelyn swallowed hard on the taste of her retching. "I need a gift."

Hassar dismounted—he gave her the reins to his own horse, and his bow. "Take these. Hurry, my wife." He kissed her for luck. She only stopped for two of the women—Juka and Hannah—who had thrown the red and blue bead necklaces they'd saved into a basket and taken it with them. Madelyn took it under her arm and went to plead with Mother Earth for the safety of her children.

Mother Earth

Mother

Maman—

Please

appear before me

tell me that all is not lost.

Mother Earth seemed to move slowly, but Madelyn understood that time did not affect spirits the same way. She examined the horse, the bow, the jewelry and set it all aside.

"Alright," she said. "I can help you this time."

She raised her hands up and showed Madelyn what was in them. It was a spray of leaves, dark green, almost blue. She took it and it pricked her. Madelyn held fast—Mother Earth closed her hands around it.

"It's the end of the story," Mother Earth said, and Madelyn only half understood.

"Little Sister Rabbit," Madelyn said quietly, and looked at the paw-plant in her hand.

"Yes, but it's only the end of this story," Mother Earth said, lifting up Madelyn's face. "Not the end of the whole story. Stories repeat themselves. They get worse and better. Maybe this one will too. You never know. When you go to the encampment, stay unseen. I will help you. Then you know the end of the story."

Madelyn nodded. She lifted up one hand with the palm up and then broke into a run.

The witch didn't see Little Sister's paw

but she saw Little Sister.

"What are you doing here?"

she asked.

"Oh," said Little Sister Rabbit.

"That crazy man over there

he was teasing me.

He dragged me over the mountain

up and down. So,

I came to thank you."

"Don't hurt me!" she shrieked in proper language, not the form of Lorca Kute.

There were two, that caught her sneaking around the backs of gers. Her hands were bloody. She was not Sacaean. She was closer to Etruscan in her looks, with blond hair and blue eyes—beautiful in a way that the Sacaeans could never hope to be. The taller one was a Bernman, and she made him think she might have been captured by the Sacaeans and been made one of them.. Dirt and blood were smeared on her face, and he lifted her by the arm.

"Who're you hiding from?" he asked, bruising and shaking her slender arm. She was as tanned as an Sacaean, but under it, he could see, her classical complexion, her willow form.

"No, no one—everyone!" she said with another squeeze.

"It's not another fucking green girl," said the second, who had been quiet. He had the look of a half-Sacaean around his eyes, but he was colored like a Bernman. "Put her with the rest of them and you'll have a fight."

"I found her," the first snapped.

"Boss doesn't care," replied the second, shrugging and looking nervous. "If you don't want a fight—maybe you oughta just have her and kill her here."

She was in tears, now. "I just want to go home! My name is Madelyn, I'm Marquess Caelin's daughter! He'll reward you—"

The one who had her arm struck her silent. Madelyn coughed out a tooth, to her horror.

"Wait, wait, Tinne. Caelin did lose a daughter, remember? She ran off and there was this reward—"

"I was kidnapped!" Madelyn shrieked. "Elimine's sake, ransom me for as much as you like, you'll get it!"

"Shut up!" ordered the Bernman, Tinne.

"Take her to the boss," the half-Sacaean said. He was fidgeting now with his daggers and clicking his tongue. "Maybe he'll know what to do."

"Fuck—you're a coward," Tinne snarled. He tugged Madelyn in front, brutally.

They had taken over the encampment, and made the firepit their firepit and so on. Madelyn prayed for the bodies of dead warriors that she saw. Her path was bloodied—one man's caved in skull lay across the path and she knew him to be Hassar's cousin, Paolo. She stepped over him carefully, and prayed as best she could.

The next man who lay in their path was sleeping, and he was a guard of the Taliver instead. The half-Sacaean bent over to look—

"He's not dead," he said. "What on earth . . ."

The witch nodded

and sat down on a mat at her leisure

to watch Brother Wind

writhe in agony before her.

Little Sister Rabbit swallowed

hard, as the witch

took a drink from her skull-cup

and gradually became sleepy

until it hurt to keep her eyes open

until she had to set down her head

and fall into a deep sleep.

In that time

her spell was broken.

Little Sister Rabbit went for help

and Father Sky came and blasted off the top of the mountain

looking for his child.

Hassar and the warriors and women who had survived by fleeing returned vengefully with rocks and arrows and swords. The Taliver who had not been poisoned fled themselves, only a handful of orphaned men. Hassar himself cut the throat of the boss, who would in time be replaced.

Jod shot an arrow through the head of the Bernman that held Madelyn and the half-Sacaean bolted, too quickly for her old arms.

"Jod—the children," she gasped, and her mother-in-law nodded.

"Lyn!" Jod shouted above the war-cries. "Children!"

Two had been killed—out of spite, or example. Two of the infants. Madelyn found Lyn, the same moment that the last fleeing Taliver had been shot. She sang to her in Kute to stop her little tears, a lullaby that was common.

You're my daughter,

I'm going to be the earth when I die.

When you walk on the plains of Sacae

you walk into my embrace.

The tribe burned the dead, burying the ashes of the women and tossing the men into the wind. It was a hard blow, to lose so many in the small tribe, but there wasn't anything they could lose to grief now. They went to Bulgar and Hassar found a new horse—until then he shared Aljua with his wife.

The Sacaeans in Bulgar laughed at her yellow hair and her foreign face. She cursed at them in Kute—sent them running so that Jod was left, laughing and clapping and jeering at their backs.

It's not the end,

not quite.

Madelyn becomes a shaman,

she dies.

You know how she dies.

Your mother told you

as she tells you the story

even now

but this is as good a place as any

to stop for now.

It was a long time later.

"Sukanna," her father called in his rough voice, from over the tops of the long grass, where she could see the smoke of his fire and smell him and his horse. He rarely spoke anything to her or her mother other than their own names, but she knew it was just his way.

"Coming," she called back, and she swept the dark green hair out of her Sacaean face.

Mother Earth smiled and put away her drum. "Go on, Sue. Your father is waiting."

"I'll see you again?" she asked.

"Like your mother did, and her mother," said Mother Earth. "Yes."