Star Trek and all its intellectual property is owned by Paramount/CBS. No infringement intended, no profit made.
This story has been beta-read by VesperRegina, to whom I owe thanks as always for her insight and invaluable advice.
This story is AU. Warning: It is a deathfic. Anyone who is offended by these should consider this before reading it.
A storm is coming to the Plains.
This is nothing unexpected; the season for them is almost upon us, and the Tribe is well accustomed to them. All the preparations have been made. The tents are strong and stoutly lashed down; the horses in their lines are already hooded, to stop them trying to break their tethers in a panic when the thunder comes and injuring themselves by their efforts. Shonn is already out with the herd, and Tirai the herd stallion knows and trusts him. They will work together to safeguard the mares and foals until the storm passes.
We have seen many storms. But still, there is some quality about the Plains this evening that is unlike any I can remember. The sun is sinking in angry cloud, but it seems almost as if the very air is luminous. Gusts of hot air push at the grass and die into nothing almost at once, like the panting breaths of a gigantic wolf, and the weight of expectation is so great that even the children walk timidly, frightened to break the silence.
I am walking between the tents at the edge of the village when a tug at my robe breaks into my reverie. "Apth'Efat!"
I look down, startled, into a small, pretty face. A fragile-looking girl, with long curling locks of black hair and eyes the colour of a dawn sky in winter framed startlingly by thick black lashes, but she is stronger than she looks. Nevertheless the whole village cossets her, and not wholly for the sake of Tyanna her mother who waited so long and prayed so hard to be granted a child. It had been universally accepted long since that Tyanna would never carry a babe to term, so that Aleen's arrival eight years ago was looked on as a minor miracle, and the wonder has never entirely faded.
"What is it, child?" I prompt her gently. She does not seem afraid, only puzzled. She is always such an earnest youngster, but unless I am much mistaken she is enormously intelligent.
"What is wrong with fei'Jessa?" she asks plaintively. "She does not get out of bed any more. Is she tired?"
I sigh inwardly. Usually we deal straightforwardly with such things, but it had been as much due to Jessa's skills as a healer as to the benevolence of the Gods that Tyanna had finally achieved motherhood; and the two women had cared for the tiny child through its first perilous months of life with a ferocity that dared the Old One Herself to snatch it away again. All the children of the tribe have many fathers, but truly Aleen has two mothers. And now she is about to lose one of them.
"Very tired, Aleen," I answer kindly. I could answer, Tired of waiting, but that is true in only one sense, and would be unworthy of her.
Almost without will my right hand moves to my left shoulder. In winter the scar still aches, and as the years advance it grows worse, but I still have most of the use of my arm, and above all my life, because of Jessa's skills. Few of the warriors in the village owe nothing to her care, and a generation of babes have come into the world under her supervision. It will be a different place, and a strange one, in which she no longer lives and breathes.
Aleen considers this. "Could not fei'Romi give her medicine?" she asks.
"The Healers have medicines to cure many things, Small One, but not tiredness like fei'Jessa's. There is only one cure for that."
I watch her think the thing through. I have said that she is an intelligent child. Nevertheless she is too proud to let me see the moment when she realises the truth; instead she turns her head and looks out across the Plain, into the far distance mottled with storm-cloud shadows and the sun's angry red light.
"A rider is coming," she says.
The hair shifts on the back of my neck as I follow her gaze. She has the sight of a falcon, and she is right: there is a man, only a shape as yet, riding easily out of the turmoil in the west.
He is much too far away for me to perceive any detail of his face. At first I think, with a shudder of awed apprehension, that he is riding a horse of fire, but after a moment I realise that it is only that the white horse he rides is reflecting the storm light.
It has been a long time. I would not have said that I could know him again merely by the set of his shoulders, not at this distance, but they wake a memory in my mind that goes back twenty-five years. That horse, however, was grey and white, and the ugliest brute ever foaled, in the estimation of many. I know that when this rider comes up close I will see a grey cloak with white tribe-patterns spilling across the moving white haunches.
It is the custom among the People for a child to be delivered from its mother's belly on to the hide of the last King Horse. This man was birthed on to a hide that was patched grey and white, and he continued to sleep on it until he left. Since then, it has been on his mother's bed, and doubtless it is there now, worn and shabby and infinitely precious.
He has been away for almost three years. He wanted to see the Great Battlefield, and said that afterwards he might go to see the ocean of which so many Tales tell, so that he might give it life over the winter fireside. And his mother let him go with her blessing.
I know that Romi among others had much to say on that subject; Jessa was starting to grow frail even then. But Malih only ever heeded the words of two people, and neither of them said him nay. (I thought Atreh at least would have had the sense to speak, but no, he would but say that one does not keep a wolf in a cage and expect him to love captivity.) I myself pointed out the unwisdom of his going; Malih heard me out with what I can only describe as polite forbearance, and then went ahead and did exactly what he had intended to do all along.
He was always an obedient child, right up till the moment he decided not to be. Vhé! I can imagine where he got that from.
It would have served him right if his mother had crossed the Bridge before his return. Nevertheless it was not a thing any of us truly wished on him, however wilful and undutiful we thought him when he left, so I make the gesture of gratitude to the God that he is to escape the due punishment for his intransigence, ignoring the stab of vexation at my own softness and folly.
"Is it – is it apth'Malih?" Aleen's question breaks into my thoughts. She is still gazing westward, her hand shading her eyes. She was only five when he left, and for three days she would take neither food nor water, despite his promises that he would return. For months after she spent hours each day gazing in the direction in which he had gone, and the fading of her expectation after that was painful to see. Over the years since then she has matured into acceptance, but still one has known that hope was still there, a steady flame abiding in his word that he would come back to her.
I am growing old and foolish before my time. Maybe the smoke from one of the cooking-fires has got into my eyes, that they sting suddenly.
"Yes, Aleen. It is apth'Malih. I am sure he would be pleased to have you the first to greet him."
She needs no other bidding. Her legs that not so long ago were chubby and unsteady are growing long, like the other bones of her body as she fines down into the budding beauty she will become. They carry her over the turf in a headlong flight to joy.
He puts his heels to his horse to come to her. If it were almost any other horse I would draw in breath for fear of the pounding legs, but on Malih's fifteenth naming-day riders from Rakhor's village rode into the camp leading a mare nursing a spindly-legged smoke-grey colt foal. When they left again, a few weeks later, they took only the mare. The foal was haltered alongside Jessa's tent, and on any night thereafter when it did not rain Malih slept in the straw alongside it.
Many expected Shonn to have much to say on the topic, he being the Horsemaster (even though any man with eyes could see the promise in the youngster – Rakhor's own Horsemaster must have seen it go with more than a pang). But whatever he thought, he kept his counsel. Even when Malih refused to have the growing colt gelded, there was no comment from that quarter, though doubtless Tirai will have much to say on the subject when he scents a strange stallion in the camp.
Shai, they called the foal, which means 'Spear', and within two years he was the colour of lightning and near as fast. But for all his strength and speed, he is careful with small things. So I am not surprised when almost at the last moment he jinks without breaking stride, and the rider bends from his back to catch at two small arms yearningly uplifted.
"Foolishness," I mutter, but more from habit than anything else. Aleen is safely held, and winds herself to clasp at a strong body that holds her close.
It is only a few more moments before Shai is drawn up to a trampling halt beside me; no man would gallop his horse through the village, endangering the young and old taken unawares.
"Efat! It is good to see you again!"
His voice is deeper. He has finished growing into his manhood, which sits confidently on him.
"You also, Malih," I return, putting up a hand to catch at Shai's bridle before his rider can urge him forward; the great white head tosses briefly but then submits to my touch. I had forgotten how beautiful he is, like the white waves that the Teller of Tales speaks of that rush in from the ocean when the wind is high. "I am glad you are returned safely. It is time and past time."
The sparkle of homecoming dies out of his face, and his eyes narrow. Over the last few years I have forgotten, a little, how piercing they can be. They are the colour of the clouds piling in the west, and once again a small shiver of apprehension walks down my spine. Too many tales, even now, cling about the man whose spirit surely visited Jessa's body and gave life to the babe within, and every year they multiply.
"My mother?"
For no reason at all I look out towards the west again. The sun has dropped a little lower, and now only angled rays of light find rents in the clouds here and there. Perhaps it is only my imagination that supplies the first and softest mutter of thunder, passing through the ground underfoot rather than the air.
"Waiting." It is not what I had meant to say, but I realise that it is the truth nevertheless. The strange thing is that I am not even sure what I mean by it.
He lets Aleen slide safely to the ground, though she holds on to his leg as though fearing that if she looses him he will turn around and ride away again for another three years. Mindful of her nearness, he follows her down, alighting lightly on the turf so that we are now eye to eye, and I can see him more clearly.
He was done growing by the time he left, and he is still short in height for one of the People, but his shoulders have filled out. Doubtless to honour his homecoming, he is wearing his gold: the worn leather wristband with the inset panel that was his soul-sire's, and – this is new – a slender fillet of finely worked gold nestling among his dark curls. It seems that he has walked in strange paths since he left us, for the open collar of his shirt shows swirls of black tattooing on his body, and across the qeh on one high cheekbone the old, familiar mark stands out: /\_/\.
It is not his Tribe Mark. He was Marked for the Falcon, the small, swift killer of the skies. I am not at all sure what Mahoob will have to say about a man taking to himself a Mark that is not his own, but then I am completely sure that whatever it is, Malih will not care.
"I have kept her waiting long enough," he says shortly, and we begin the walk to Jessa's tent. The camp is always laid out in the same pattern, wherever it is set up, so he needs no direction. Shai follows behind, unbidden, his rein thrown carelessly over his neck; Aleen trots alongside, still holding on to a fold of the runaway's shirt to prevent him escaping.
There are always people coming and going about the village, and several encounter us and greet him with pleasure, but always he puts them off with quiet words, saying his tale will be fitter for the acha-we and the ears of all. As we pass Tyanna's tent, however, she emerges from it without warning, and he pauses. Across a suddenly charged space of air messages pass, and I remember the surprise it caused when Tyanna invited him into her tent when he was hardly into manhood; there were maids of his own age with whom his first experience would have been more usual. Nevertheless, what passes between a man and a woman in her own tent is no business of any but themselves, unless they choose to make it otherwise. Motherhood has brought her fulfilment, and her worn thinness has softened into contented curves, defying her age; men whom she invites these days think themselves fortunate.
Her eyes rest briefly on Aleen, holding on to his shirt, and a faint, soft smile touches her mouth, but without words she walks on about whatever business hailed her forth, and we too walk on.
"Has much changed?" he asks at last.
"We have all grown older," I answer with a little dry humour. Then I give him the news, as best I can, of all that has befallen since he left: mostly births (the Goddess has been generous this year, and the Old One only took one babe, that was born misshapen), and two deaths, both expected and peaceful. The Turn Year took place the summer before he left, and the young women who came to live among us have settled in very well and are happy and contented. Those who left send loving messages by the traders, so we are assured of their well-being. The years pass in their accustomed cycle, and the Tribe follows the King Horse and the grazing, and the sun rises and sets ... naught changes down the years, across the Plains.
I have often wondered if, being who he was, he found it a little dull.
But almost before I am done speaking, we are at Jessa's tent. I see his gaze go to the mark newly painted on the door-flap facing the setting sun, and I am very sure I know who set it there. With what pain, I can only imagine.
"Aleen, apth'Malih wishes to greet his family, and you are old enough now to know the rules. Unless you are asked, you do not enter."
She looks up at him, plainly hoping for an invitation. But he is staring at the mark, and I see him swallow.
"Go to your mother, Aleen," I add more gently. "There will be time enough later."
Time enough for what, I do not say, but she is a biddable child in the main. Not without many a backward look, she goes in search of Tyanna. Doubtless there will be much talk in that tent this eve, though I have my doubts that her mother will be called upon to contribute much to it beyond the required nods; Aleen has had three years of waiting, and at a guess will find enough of wonder merely to see him come home.
Being of the priest-kind, I am entitled to enter unbidden. But there are times when entitlement is not enough.
I turn away. There are preparations I have to make.
The waiting is almost over.
If you've enjoyed reading this, please leave a review! It makes it all worthwhile!