Although it was her tribe's custom to wait three years before naming any child, Yaset felt she had a good handle on her son's personality already. Her friend, Gianna, the midwife for the tribe, had remarked on it with ferocious amusement—the labor hard been easy and quick, the baby loud and zealous to live, as it should be. But, to the wondering eyes of all present, the baby had come out, almost immediately, smiling.
Yaset herself was a happy, unwavering woman, and this pleased her. Sacaen men were of a predisposition for silent meditation and slow speech, but perhaps her smiling baby would be different. Already, when she took him alone for riding on the plains or nursed him in her ger, she privately called him Rief which meant "smiling." Yaset spoke rapidly to him in the dialect of her tribe. Her husband would have struck her, not out of malice, but fear—Yaset was five, six years younger than him, with a heart full of love and a mind full of logic. To her, her revered husband was living in the past. Spirits existed, there was no point in doubting it, but they couldn't possibly care about Rief, so small and happy.
So she took pride in her son—what mother wouldn't? In a time where the water made babies turn out like devils, Rief was strong and healthy, and Yaset felt confidence that her womb would be fertile again in eight years, when he could care for himself. Of course, Yaset's mother helped—what mother wouldn't help her daughter raise a child? Lalissa, Yaset's mother, had born a son who had died, but such tragedies occurred and Yaset did not remember her ill-fated brother well.
Lalissa made her daughter a pouch for Rief, although she called him Gita, a common name for infants. The pouch fitted over Yaset's supple back like a pack and bears, rabbits and horses danced across it, between zigzag fields of grass. Rief adored the pouch more than Yaset, because it meant that he would soon go riding. Yaset's child loved to ride on his mother's back as she rode on the back of Pala, her horse. Sacaen children were not literally born in the saddle, but first thing after Gianna had washed him, Yaset's husband, stoic like the plains, snatched the baby and carried into the saddle. The point was to initiate the child to the wind—to Father Sky. Yaset's husband was no equal to Yaset in love for his child, but he surpassed her in pride.
The baby was not only a favorite of his family—many people found excuses to come and play with little Rief. They called him "Cho" which meant laughing, not far from what Yaset had secretly named her baby. Yaset's mother and husband worried the child would grow up spoiled, but after explaining it to her guests, they never gave the child anything save for their attention. That flowed freely. He had already a friend, a young baby named, as his mother confided into Yaset who in turn confided in her, Paolo. Paolo was closer to the make of normal Sacaen men, but he was sleepy all the time, and Rief was more interested in the hoas.
That was his word for the horse. It was his first word, naught but seven or eight moons from his birth, and Yaset's husband was the one to hear it. He had stopped by his wife's ger, for men and women rarely live in the same one, to retrieve a bow that she had mended, and forgotten in her ger when she and Gianna and the other young mother went to the Isaar River to wash clothes.
At first, Yaset's husband thought it was a spirit. Yaset had left the baby asleep, with the promise that young Ashre, a twelve year old girl, would check on him and learn something of mothering besides. She too had fallen asleep beside the child, hand on his decorated pouch. Yaset's husband concerned himself not with Ashre; his wife's mother was close friends with her mother, as was the case. He was a man, but not so far removed from women that he knew nothing of their circles.
"Hoas!" the baby cried again. He had spotted his father, an image synonymous with riding and horses. "Hoas!"
Yaset's husband leaned in and listened again. No doubt—"horse." Yaset's husband shook Ashre awake, and then carried his child away with him. Since his child seemed fixated on the horse, so be it. His son would learn to ride before he had a fixed name—not this "Rief" nonsense his beloved Yaset was throwing around. He was not deaf and he hoped for a more serious nature than his mother's. Yaset's husband would never admit that it was her cheeriness that initially drew him and kept him. Yaset had several virtues, though, besides her smiles and laughs. She rode well, shot true and no one could cook as well or carve an arrowhead faster than she. Inheriting those would suffice, in his opinion.
Rief, at a year old, could say many words besides the now refined "horse." He could say "bow." And "gazelle" and "buffalo." How often all three came together. Yaset's husband soon wanted to name him Uhae, which meant "hunter." Yaset frowned when he suggested this in the firepit as she smoked buffalo meat, but she knew that her husband's will was ironclad. She tried calling him Uhae, but it didn't fit on her tongue. Yaset continued to call her baby Rief as she had always done.
Yaset's husband took him more and more often, now, introducing him properly to the other men of the tribe. They called him "Nao" which meant "son." His father recognized his own son, Yaset's husband, in the eyes of Rief. (Yaset's husband found that once he started thinking about the baby as "Rief" he couldn't stop—nothing else fit. Rief was now one full year, but had not stopped smiling. He would acquiesce to his wife, but he hoped that she'd put up a fight to make it believable.) Yaset's husband was pleased with the reaction his son gave to hunting and riding, though—a name and a nature contrary to normalcy did not strike him as a horrifying fate. Yaset's husband began to favor what Yaset herself had always wanted.
At a year and a half, the halfway mark before becoming a member of the tribe—were Rief to be taken from here, and raised apart, he would not truly be of the tribe, which was how the logic went—Rief could already shoot and ride. Not well, but it was far better than his contemporary, Paolo, who followed his mother still everywhere. Yaset made a tiny practice bow for him, and watched as her son, who rode but could not yet master walking fully, shot at a target maybe twenty feet away. She clapped and sang whenever he actually hit the dummy.
On the night six moons after his first birthday, in the deep winter, the shaman of the tribe, cut a lock of hair and burned it with the vertebrae of a rabbit, buffalo and a young fawn. The ceremony was done in accordance to the oral traditions—it was to give clues to his nature as a grown man, and to give him a suitable name.
The shaman did her work in silence, watching impassably as the bones cracked in the fire. They four huddled around her fire pit in her sparse ger, watching intently. Even Yaset felt as though spirits were hovering down her back. The shaman, a woman of a little more than thirty years with straight green hair and beads strung through it, held the snippet of hair over the fire, and inquired the spirit of his affinity to come forth and reveal his destiny.
The instant the hair touched the flame, it turned black. Yaset choked a scream. Even the shaman looked startled. The shaman was a true seer, a "degje" blessed with accurate foretelling powers—she read the bones and found her will waning.
When she spoke, it sounded as though the spirit of darkness behind her didn't want to speak the truth either—a spirit is as regretful as any other creature. "He does not laugh."
Yaset looked from between her child and the shaman in horror.
"He speaks little."
The child's father's brows fold in.
"He journeys far from here."
Yaset had closed her eyes, like the gazelle that knows the final blow is coming.
"I am sorry."
The shaman's voice alone. Yaset wilts against her husband's arm, sobbing suddenly. Yaset's husband tries to console her. He repeats that the omens may not be disastrous—he may be sent as a messenger to a far off land, no need to fear—many Sacaen men, himself included, laugh and speak so little that they might be dead. Rief is crying aloud, now, frightened by the black flame and his mother's unresponsiveness. In the end, Rief toddles back to his mother's ger as his father carries immobile Yaset.
Yaset could not explain her change.
The shaman had said no one disastrous thing—everything vague and distant. But she had had her mind set on her son's outcome and now it was not to be? Something in the shaman's voice, something that not even her husband knew that she felt, had struck a chord in her—death. She dared not to reveal it to her husband or Gianna or Lalissa. If she walked about listlessly, dragging poor Rief whose name no longer fit, she would not answer. Yaset ate, of course, and slept at night. But she felt anxious.
Yaset did not know how to explain it. She knew that death was coming for her son, but she did not know how to stop it. Soon, she resolved that the spirits were punishing her and that the epitome of pointlessness would be to try and stop it. Yaset's husband noticed a change in his wife quicker than anyone imagined him to, but he did not know why. His ideas were vague, and hit the mark closer than others—perhaps she was distraught that her son would not be like her.
Yaset did not give up on her son, right away. She tried setting an example by smiling, laughing—but the change, unnatural to poor Rief, scared him. Rief, at two, regarded his mother with an unconscious wariness. Yaset watched her son distance himself from her—watched him totter away in the direction of her husband. She began to pray to the spirits.
Take him quickly.
She did not want her son to suffer. How? Would he be trampled under a horse? Yaset had seen many children suffer the fate. If so, she prayed that the horse would stomp his head or neck and extinguish him quickly. Or maybe he would be eaten by a wolf. She prayed the spirits to give the wolf in question discerning, strong jaws. Yaset prayed not for her son's death. To her that was inevitable. She prayed for his quick death.
Before long, she began to set her son—from her own womb—into danger. She suggested mad things when he practiced the bow—to shoot a knot on an acacia tree while galloping. To test his nerves and ride close to a deep box canyon's ridge. To taunt a snake.
Yaset had almost lost him to the snake. That had been her closest, almost-success. She had had her opportunity almost like magic, no planning, no scheming. She took the silent diamondback snake, slithering around the grassy knoll Rief used as a playground and practice area, as a sign from the spirits. Yaset, without hesitation, suggested that he dismount and step back a few more feet than usual. An archer had to be good away from his horse's back too, she argued. Rief did not often argue with his mother and obeyed.
Yaset's husband had been idly speaking with another tribesman, although his eyes often wandered to his son. Curiously, the boy had tumbled down from his pony and had bid it to walk aside. Yaset pointed away off and the child began walking backwards, awkwardly swaying from side to side as children do. His sharp eyes, honed from years at the bow, saw a shape in the grass raise its head—Yaset's husband could see the bugs on the acacia his son was practicing on. It was for him, easy to recognize the ominous pattern on the snake's head. Without thinking, Yaset's husband drew his bow and nocked it—the arrow flew straight and hit the snake in its neck, killing it and startling poor Rief.
Rief began to cry then, but Yaset made no move to comfort him—it was her husband who distracted her, coming roaring up the hillside. His thankfulness turned sour as he realized the angle his wife had been sitting at. Although he said nothing, lifting the boy and putting him on his shoulders, Yaset could not have missed the diamondback. Her eyes were like her husband's. Yaset's husband was silent, but he concluded rightly that his wife had inexplicably tried to send his son to his death.
That was the pike driven between Yaset and her husband, who despite their differences, had been close as hard-packed earth. As the year wore on, Yaset's husband found reasons to steal his son away from his wife. Yaset lived her life as normal. Lalissa frowned, disturbed by her own daughter's lack of interest in her baby, which had been strong and steady.
Yaset's premonitory feelings did not change as her husband began separating her from her child. He said nothing about her attempt with the snake. Other tribesmen assumed Yaset had been dizzy from an illness passing through or perhaps blinded by the sun. The shaman became the confidant of Rief's father, although it was she who understood Yaset's preoccupation with her son's death.
It was the shaman who had seen, on Rief's second and one half year, the stars as they were on that windy night. The second half of her vision completed itself, and she told Yaset and her husband that the child must be sent away for the good of the tribe. Yaset's husband closed his eyes in grief—Yaset began to weep tears of joy, although she carefully hid her smile. Rief was a child, without means to survive. He barely understood the shaman's decree. He was allowed six further moons to cement himself to the tribe and to be named properly.
Yaset's husband thought of all the names he had seen Rief be called—for surely Rief did not suit him now. Yaset no longer called him that, when he listened in on her conversations with the child. She called him Gita, which could not remain. Uhae implied a tangible connection to the tribe—such was language.
Yaset's husband, on the day before his son's third birthday, took his child to the plains, away from the smoke of the great fire pit and the tribe gers.
"Spirits, name my child," he murmured, a solemn figure atop a horse, his small son sitting silently between him and the horse's head.
The wind struck up. It blasted the stalks of grass, as high as a man's waist and bent back the acacia trees. It plastered Dayan's clothes, for that was the name of Yaset's older husband, to his body and the blanket of his horse to its belly. He could hear the wind speaking, for that is what the Kutolah thought of the whistling as.
Dayan turned his face into the wind and immediately it died down. His son, not Rief, not Uhae, not Gita or Cho—looked into his eyes, craning his head on its thin neck. Already, his eyes showed signs of narrowing like Dayan's father's. For now they were wide and his features soft.
The wind had been a long revered deity amongst the Sacaens. With great reluctance, Dayan named his child Rath, the older word for the wind.
Dayan told this to Yaset, and expected her to rail against him. Instead, she called her son's new name and his head turned to her. Rath smiled hopefully, but Yaset only smiled back and turned away. Dayan dismounted and pulled his son, too short to slip from a full grown Sacaen horse, down and dangled him over the ground until Rath could get his balance. Yaset opened the ger and offered her son to come inside. He obeyed and Dayan wandered off to smoke a pipe with his fellow tribesmen, as dusk drew near. Yaset insisted that they continue life as normal until Rath's exile.
That night, Yaset called his name several times, feeling it on her tongue. She didn't like it. She didn't like her son. She had loved the happy child named Rief, and now that stolid Rath had unwittingly replaced him, she felt cheated and bitter. The sooner that Rath left, she reasoned, the sooner she could have a second child. Her blood, as was with all women, flowed regularly and even. Yaset was no barren shrew.
She sang to him, as she was accustomed. Yaset felt she was only practicing, practicing for her real child.
In the morning, all the tribe rubbed their faces in ash and sacrificed a horse on the firepit. They packed their gers, with the quickness attributed to nomads. They tied poor Rath, who knew not what was going on, to a stake and drugged him. When most of the tribe had made a good headstart away, a rider came back and cut the binds and left the boy a pony and a bow—everything else would be of his own invention, were he to survive.
Yaset, the rider, as the tribe elected her to leave her son the tools to survive, momentarily thought of breaking the bow or perhaps leaving him untouched, to starve. But she was only desperate, not heartless. Out of pity, not mother's love, she kissed his brow before riding to catch up with her fellows.
It was not many moons longer when Yaset's stomach began to cramp irregularly. Gianna used her herbs and the shaman prayed, but that moon, Yaset bled hard and endlessly for twelve days, almost sapping her. Lalissa held her daughter and wailed as Dayan stood outside his wife's ger and said nothing. Yaset was young, though, only seventeen, and had always been of good health until now. She recovered and within two moons was back on her feet. Yaset and Dayan made love again for the first time since Rath's birth, in the early autumn so that the baby would be born in the beginning of summer. Yaset felt uneasy. No child was born that summer, or the next. They tried again each successive year, but only three told them what Yaset had brought upon herself—it was a secret they kept to themselves, not speaking of it even to each other. Yaset had made herself barren. Rath had been her only child and she had tried her best to kill him.