Disclaimer: I own no part of LOTR.
Many years before my mother was sent to the West and returned and bore me, our village had been very prosperous indeed. It still was even when I was growing up, for it was an important trading port and market, and it had the most beautiful temple that could have been dreamed of in all the land about the Sea of Rhún. It had been carved into the largest of the hills, the entrance facing the West and small windows carved into the other side of the hill, so that the temple would see the Sun rise in the East and set at the end of the day, and its light would shine upon the mirror the priests set and reset to catch it and the mirror would grow warm with the blessing of the one who helped us to grow our crops and grass to feed our animals.
And the statues! Every one made out of a different kind of wonderful stone - polished smooth many long years before by loving hands - some of dark and some of light, some inlaid with precious wood and a few with silver and two with gold, the Queen of Heaven and the Lord of the Storms, and all adorned with some jewels in various places, small as they were; three diamonds on Renna's cheek and about fifteen or twenty spangled in the Queen's unbound and curling hair, five large emeralds for the green shoots that sprouted from Ishtara's very fingers on her outstretched hand and ten smaller ones for her sister Ishti's feet, many pearls to line the robes of the Water-king Hee-Un, some rubies for Aulor's strongly carved arms and Tarak's armour and some strange, dark stones for the Keeper of the Dead and the Great Weaver, stones which held stars within them, star stones; a moonstone for each of the hands of the Mistress of Healing and the Master of Dreams, Ediri and Loren; five lion's eyes for Ouran and a belt of turquoise and beads in her stone hair for Naani, and sapphires to sit on the neck and brow of Salim.
A less true believer would have forgotten their prayers and would have stared all day at such wealth, but we knew better. Do not think that we prized the statues of the gods more greatly than those they showed! We looked upon the faces of the ancient idols and saw not stone but through to the true one who had inspired the statue's creation. When we laid flowers before them or poured out wine or oil, we did it not in adoration of the image, but for the one who was brought to us through stone and wood. We did it not out of duty, but from love.
There was always the smell of stinging incense and of flowers that overpowered the scent of the braziers. There were as many smells here as there were in the market place, sweeter and crisper, soothing your nose or making you start. There was special oil the priests used to anoint the brows of the gods, and perfumed oil the priestesses used for the goddesses. There was the smell of sacred wine and sweet wine, oh, so many sweet things! My mouth would water when we went to the market, but in the temple my eyes would be damp from the beauty and goodness of it all.
And then there were the smaller figurines which held my love as well. On either side of the entrance was a smaller statue of one of the Blue Spirits, and whenever I went in I would run to one and then the other to greet them, and in the summer I would bring them each a flower, as others brought them little cakes or money in hope of receiving good luck and happiness. They were both clean shaven and looked rather like a cross between man and woman, like Ishara, and they smiled with great good humour. Near the statue on the left was the form of another spirit, the Grey Wanderer who lived in the mists of the mountains in the West. This spirit was stern but kind and very wise, and he guarded faltering people against the illusions that the world offers to deceive Men. The people saw him as the greatest foe of the White Demon, a creature whose spotless robes were never stained even as darkness clung to his inner being, whose image was not present in the temple. The two would battle with wits and words, one seeking to deceive and destroy while the other sought to mend and enlighten.
There were the two mirrors, one for the Sun and one for the Moon, set on stands of wood and covered in gold or silver, the Sun mirror cared for by the priests and the Moon mirror by the priestesses. I never went near the Sun mirror, for fear the priests would warn me off with blows, but on the few nights when my mother took me to the temple she would lift me up to look into the Moon mirror and I would stare into the surface, my head made out of shadow and my face cast in darkness for once, surrounded by the Hunter's light. It was always cold to the touch, and touching it was like placing my fingers upon smooth, polished ice as I whispered the secret name of the Pale Hunter.
There were little alcoves to buy incense from, which the younger acolytes of the temple replaced every day, and braziers which my mother would not let me go near until I was older. The floor was always cool, but never cold, the lights were always comforting and warm. It was safe from the rain and the heat, from storms and winds and dust-tempests. It seemed that the temple was safe from anything.
The business of the town was decided by the elders, but it was in the temple that our own lives were ordered. In our household we lived as the gods wished us to live, and we did not let the elders nor even the high priest tell us what to do. Other women wore veils, but we did not; other women did not speak to men outside of their families, but we did. And I did not know why this was, nor did I ever think to ask why. Things were good for us in the village, as good as they would ever be. No one challenged the right of my mothers to do as they wished, and no one told them what to do. They whispered things, but they never followed through on them. And because none in the tribe dared touch them, none in the tribe dared touch me.
The first man to put his hands on me in anger was not one of the tribe.
They came in the late summer, the soldiers from the east of Rhûn, darker skinned than those of our village and proud of it. They served no gods or goddesses, they pledged their word only to the One of the South, and they brought the hot heat into our village and set the flames to make anger and shame cook and bubble. It was a few days before the festival of the harvest and the children of the village were sent to gather flowers to decorate the temple, and I went with my cousins to bring colour from the hills. The first I saw of those men was a flash of deep red in the crowd at the foot of the temple steps, blocking our way to the cool of the sanctum. Dinah and Daron were reluctant, but with my arms full of wildflowers I threaded my way through the gaps between the men and the fewer women, until by some chance I came to the edge of the circle that had been made around the men and the servants who held their fine-blooded horses as they stood and glared at the high priest. I knew at once that they were warriors, not only from their clothes and the long curved swords at theirs sides and the dressing of their mounts but from their proud and haughty faces and their cold manner, the manner my uncle had when he killed goats for us, detached and harsh. Their skin was as dark as the very darkest of clay and their eyes were hard like black stones, and their voices were thick with a dialect that twisted their words. They argued with the high priest, and they grew more and more coldly angry as he argued back.
"You cannot or you will not do as we say?" was the first question of the tallest of them that I heard as I broke through to the front of the people. His face was handsome with the beauty of a finely crafted sword, all fine cheek bones and sharp planes of the face and narrow eyes; even his beard was combed and cut to a point. His skin gleamed like oil on water, and as I looked at him I could believe that if he touched me, I could wash and wash and wash and never be clean again. And his eyes were filled with storms, not those of the Lord of the Sky but of the dark line that was always on the horizon, the promise of darkness to come.
"We wish only for peace," were the words that came back to him, from the eldest and wisest of the priests. "We have no desire to quarrel with those of the East or…of the South." Those last words caused whispers to run about the circle like scattered herbs blowing in the wind. Many of the women grabbed their sons, near to manhood or only children, and held them close if they would pull them back from the brink of a great pit. All remembered the last time that the South had made demands of the tribe, for of all the youths and the girls who had gone into the West only four women, scarred and burned and withered and one with child, had ever returned. The South was a place of horror and dread command, a darkness inescapable, like the shadows beyond the light of the lamps where some children were still left out to die.
"You are here only because the One allows it!" the dark man said, pointing at the great temple as his lip curled and his finger stabbed the air. "And yet you worship foreign gods, you pay homage to those other than the One! This must not be allowed to go on!"
At this the crowd muttered louder, in anger or worry I did not know. The high priest, a stubborn but good man, did not hesitate to reply. "We send tribute to the One. Our young men were taken from us for the armies. What more is wished of us?"
"Tribute is not enough. You cannot serve more than one Master. You must choose which that will be, or you shall all be branded as traitors." The dark men smiled as those about me murmured or cried out in dismay, as the leader went on: "You must pull down the statues, the pillars, the temple itself!"
There were cries of outrage now, and one of them came from Daron, who had wormed his way to my side by this time. My cousin was a sweet faced boy, but Bilhah would whip him for his temper and his outbursts; now he yelled an insult at the leader who had spoken such words. "The White demon should befoul you with his dung, you and your men and the horses you rode in on!" I kicked him to make him be quiet, for I was scared that the soldiers would turn on him and pull out their swords and cut off his ears, his nose, his hands, his head; but the leader had heard him and was already turning his head to look in our direction. Daron hissed and darted backwards, but it was not his arm that was seized by a rank, foul touch to drag him forward again. It was mine.
I dropped the wildflowers and they were crushed under my feet as I was pulled forward into the centre of the circle, and I stumbled and crashed into the man's hot, spice-smelling body, and stared at the terrible red image upon his armour that could have been a red eye, glaring at me. At once I was pushed away and held tightly at arm's length by my wrist, and another hand at my chin forced me to look up into the face of the man and he looked down at me and he saw my skin, browned by the sun but still too light to show anything but mixed blood, and then he bared his teeth as he looked away from me to speak to the high priest again. "So, now you even harbour filthy spies from the West, a white skin in this very village? I would expect nothing less of such lowlife."
I looked too at the high priest, a man who had blessed me along with the other children in the festivals, one who had never spoken ill of my mother or my aunts, a man who I knew was good and honourable. But he looked at me as if he could not see me at all, as if I were as thin as the air itself. Beside him I saw the faces of men and the hard eyes of women. Some looked at me as if I were a goat being made ready for slaughter, and some looked as if they were sorry or afraid for that goat, but were too afraid to stop the culling. No one seemed ready to make a reply.
In all my life I had never been so frightened as then, not even when horses had broken free and stampeded through the market, and I would have been trampled if my mother had not caught me up in her arms and run as if the One of the South himself were behind her. I felt sweat start at my sides and on my forehead and my skin grew hot and all the spit dried in my mouth, and I thought that he might draw his sword and cut off my head and no one would raise a word of protest. In my heart I yelled for my mother and my aunts, but they were not there. For the first time I was alone, facing danger, perhaps even death. I wanted to scream for help to somebody, anybody that would hear me and would not let this man kill me.
Instead I remembered what Rookheeya had told me – that I should never lose my tranquillity or my temper – and so I forced some spit back into my mouth and I told him that I was not a spy or a white skin; that I was a daughter of the tribe, a child of the blue sky, and that he had no right to treat me in such a way. He looked at me with those eyes of black storm and I could see myself in them, but with the pallor of one dead.
"You claim this? You claim that you are one of our people? Then who will speak for you?" he asked, with a horrid smile on his face. I looked about the circle and I saw no one. Daron was gone, Dinah was gone, my mother and my aunts were not there, I was alone. I was alone, biting my tongue to stop myself from screaming at his touch and from my fear. The red symbol on his chest mocked me, as red as my own blood. There was pain in my head and I could taste sharpness in my mouth that burned.
But there was anger in my fear as well, anger that this man had no right to hold me or hurt me, and anger at dying. I did not want to die. I did not want to be robbed of my body and cast out to wander formless, faceless, a wisp of a ghost. I did not want to die, when there was so much for me to live for and to do.
And he no longer looked at me but over me, and desperately I turned to see if what he looked at would save me. And then my fear was gone, sighing from my mouth as I breathed once more.
My mother had come. She stood tall and proud, her arms bare and beautiful and showing her old scars as she walked through the people, her tawny eyes narrowed and her lips pressed firmly together. Never did my mother look more lovely than when she was angered, and never was she more angered than when someone spoke out against her child. And now she walked to stand in front of the man who held my wrist, her robes sweeping in the sand and the dust, and she opened her lips and spoke with words as calm as still water and as cold as ice. "Let go of my daughter."
He looked at her, and he could not have ignored the plaits on either side of her face, peeking out from under her head scarf, which showed that she was not married. He must have seen the haughty set of her mouth and the slope of her neck as she held her head high. He surely must have seen the marks upon her arms, marks of shame that she had turned into triumph. He looked at her, and he did not smile as he spoke: "You claim her as your child?"
"Look at her face, and then look at me." Rookheeya thrust out her chin, turning her head to one side and then the other so that he could see all of her wonderful face and the colour of her skin, lighter than that of the people but not as light as my own. "How could such a beautiful girl be of any blood but mine?"
"And who got her upon you?" His words were sneering. It seemed that no one around us even dared to breathe as they watched this sight before them, the sight of my mother defending me against one who came from a place where women were stoned to death for adultery and disgusting behaviour.
"That I do not know. You are free to go into the West and seek him out, but I doubt that you will find him. It does not matter who he was. She is my daughter, and that is more than enough. Let go of her."
"And why were you in the West?" the man demanded. His fingers were now so tight upon my wrist that I could not feel my hand, except in pain. I wanted to struggle and bite, perhaps even gnaw through my flesh to get away from him, as an animal chews off its own leg to get out of a trap, for I knew that the longer he kept hold of me the more it would be possible that he would never release me. I looked to my mother, and I saw then that my bond-aunts, my other mothers, Ishara and Benti and Werru, had stepped out from the crowd around the three of us, and Dinah and Daron stood behind them, both panting from having run to fetch them, as they must have. That Werru and Benti had left our house at all was marvellous, but the fiercely glaring Ishara had purposefully unlaced her right sleeve and was showing off her withered arm as if it were a trophy, and gentle, quiet Werru scowled with the remains of her teeth at the one who held me, and Benti stared at him coolly out of her one eye and the ruin of her face. And before them stood my mother Rookheeya, and she folded her arms and looked at him as if she might spit in his eye or dismiss him as if he were merely a slave.
"Sold I was and sold we were to the West, by those who had called themselves our people, to please men like you. I gave use of my body for there was nothing I could do but bring comfort to youths sent to die; the comfort that can only be found in a woman's spread legs. Beaten we all were and mistreated, and when the soldiers lost and the dark fortress in the dark forest was taken we were turned loose, I with life in my belly. And we returned to where we had lived before we died and came back to a different life in the pit. As an isha, a reborn, I raised my daughter here, teaching her that she is worth more than any who scorn or abuse her, and I will not suffer any to harm her or hurt her; and so you will let her go or I will make you bleed for it."
"You are a filthy whore." There was no honey to the words, no hidden meaning. He called my mother that, in front of the priests and the priestesses and the people. He spat those words at her, and yet she merely looked calmly at him, as if she would ask if that was all he could say. But that was not what she said next.
"And you are one who would lie with his own mother, for not even a whore would want you." There could not have been more venom in a snake bite than in Rookheeya's voice as her words were followed by echoes of shock, horror and even a few sounds of amusement, very quickly muffled. Now I see that it could have been the most stupid thing for her to say, with my arm held by the very man that she insulted. But my mother was very much a wise woman, and even as he gaped at her, perhaps hardly able to countenance that she had spoken to him in such a manner, she moved forward as quickly as a snake bites and seized his fingers, forcing his hand away with her own and tearing his very skin with her nails – I wonder that she could bear to have that man's blood upon her! - and pulling me to her with the other. Her arms came about me and she turned partly away from the one who had held me as I buried my face in her warm dress. I know now as I did not then that this was to protect me as well as to comfort me, for if he drew his sword and brought it down it would be her that the weapon struck first. If I felt her skin tremble, it was only for a heartbeat; only a very brave person or a fool is not afraid of death, and while my mother was brave she was not a fool.
"And if we are filthy whores, what of it?" Ishara's voice cracked through the silence that now filled the air. "What of the ones who sold us into whoredom, or the ones who made us so filthy as they drove into us again and again…and again?"
"And what of the diseases that were spread to us?" Werru spoke now, and I could see her fists so tight that the knuckles were pale. "What of the pain, and the blood, and the losses, and of the overlooking of our despair, so long as the ones who used us were satisfied? What of them?"
There was a sigh, and Benti opened her mouth, and for the first time since she had returned from the dark land she spoke in front of the people, dispelling forever what ideas they might have had about the state of her tongue. "We are more than we once were. Rage all you like, but we are beyond your reach, and if you harm any of us, or our child, then you are cursed by every divine one that there is."
I hardly knew which of us five the man wanted to kill more, his face was so filled with rage and hate, but he managed to spit that he did not believe in such weak illusions, and they would not save us.
"Is that so?" Benti's good eye shone as if she were a statue of a goddess herself. "That is your own worry, then; but look you, for if you strike us down then all the land about us will come in time to know that you have turned your blade against the ishan – and will this land stand at all with you then?"
And before he could say another word my mother straightened her shoulders and spoke once more, with more poison and coldness than ever; "If any ever makes attempt to harm my daughter again, then I curse them. Be they man or woman or child, if they touch Adahni, daughter of Rookheeya, with ill intent then I call down upon them the fury of every god and the wrath of every goddess, the rage of every spirit and the vengeance of every demon, and I curse them in living, and I curse them in dying. Touch my daughter, o you who would see the traces of your shame swept away, or who would take delight in causing her pain for your own sick pleasure, and you will be unclean and you will be damned."
Many times had I heard curses, but never from my mother's lips, and never a curse such as this, spoken with such power and such might. I cowered at the centre of the storm that was my mother as she let thunder and lightening fall from her lips, and when at last she ceased there was salt water upon my cheeks, for I had made it rain with tears. But I wiped my face against my mother's breast, and none knew that I had wept, not even she as she led me from the circle, ignoring the dark man as he spat on the ground behind her and poured scorn and threats of retribution upon her head in his turn.
But he did not come after us, and we walked with Daron and Dinah back to our house with no more words, as my cousins clung to me as if I might still be lost and as we trailed broken flowers in our wake that mixed with sand and dust. When my mother made me lie upon my blanket my fear and the cost it had demanded of my body took away my wakefulness, and I knew no more until the evening when I woke to the sound of voices that whispered and yet could be heard.
"They will not turn against her," said the deep voice of Ishara. "We managed to make them feel ashamed and put the fear of the gods into them too. And that wretch does not have the stomach to come after us."
Werru spoke in turn, agreeing with her: "Anyone who harms her will face the wrath of the tribe as well as our own. They are all too superstitious to take such chances."
"But that is not good enough!" I heard the pad of my mother's feet and rustle of her skirts as she trod the floor, her ice coldness now melted into disarray. "She is safe for now, but what will happen when we are gone? Who will defend my daughter when our protection is faded and the curse dies with us, to be forgotten?"
"If she were a priestess…?"
Werru's timid question was questioned itself. "What if the temple refused her? The high priest himself was there, and he did nothing, nothing to stop that…that… oh!" My mother groaned as if she were in pain."Gods and goddesses forgive me these words, but their human servants are frail and marred. I respect those in the temple, but I do not trust them to save and protect my Adahni."
"What then?" Ishara demanded. "Even if we all wished it, no one will take her as a wife. We do not have nearly enough for a dowry for any decent man, if there is such a thing, and I would rather die than let her be made into a concubine."
"Kala." At first I did not know what it was that Benti said, so quiet was her voice once more, but when Werru repeated it thoughtfully I was certain.
"Kala."
"Truly, that would work. They could not touch her then. The life of a midwife is sacred."
"Do you think that Kala would agree to teach her? She has not had an apprentice in all the years she has been here."
"We can only try." And because Rookheeya was a good and observant mother, she called over to where I lay to return to sleep, and she came to sit by my side and stroke my hair and hold my hand in hers until I forgot my fear once more and did so.
Ishara took me to the market the next morning with her arm once more covered and only her withered hand visible as it grasped her stick. I walked beside her with my bag upon my shoulder, and as she had told me to do I stared straight ahead and did not look around at the whispers that followed us. I thought of them as dry grasses blown by the wind and not as human mouths with staring eyes.
Never had we bought such food as we did that day, save for celebrations in the household. My eyes widened as Ishara chose pomegranate syrup for sauce and for dipping bread, figs and plums, pieces of dripping honey comb and a jar of the very best sweet wine that was to be had in the market, dried leaves of exotic spices and a bag of rock salt for flavouring, salted fish and the flesh of roasted birds, and fresh mint to make mint tea; and most wonderful of all there was sweet kakaw paste, mixed with vanilla and honey, brown and creamy and soft and delicious, a treat I would be lucky to taste more than once or twice a year. I was laden down like a pack mule with all of these good things, and Ishara gave me some of the paste smeared on a piece of hard bread and I licked it greedily all the way home, trying to make it last.
All the later part of the day my mother and Werru slaved over the cooking stones, covering a leg of goat in the syrup and making sauce and bread and barley water, while Ishara swept the floor and Benti made certain that everything was just so in the house while I sat in the corner and crushed almonds to make paste for biscuits, for our guest had a great love of sweet things. Soon we turned to clean each other, washing our faces and scrubbing our hands, my mother mourning that we had not had time to wash my hair and Ishara saying that Kala would not care about the state that my plaits were in so long as I did not look like a scabby little child, even as she pushed bangles onto her wrists.
Kala came at my mother's invitation with the lengthening of the shadows, a hollow faced woman who dressed only in yellow trimmed with faded red and who, like my mother and my bond-aunts, did not wear a veil across her face, taller even than Ishara. How old she was I do not know, but she had lived long enough to deliver my mother and perhaps her mother before her, and other mothers of children now grown. I shrank away from her as she entered, for even if she had helped me into the world she had the power of life and death in her hands; she knew how to save a woman's skin from tearing as her baby came and how to deliver it if it came feet first, how to suck the death from the little one's nostrils with reeds if it came out blue and breathless, and if the woman died – for even as good a midwife as Kala was, some of them did die – she knew how to cut the child free from its mother's body so that it would not die with her. She looked over at me coolly, and as I quickly bowed my head I heard her chuckle and say something about my having grown much since last she saw me close.
First Rookheeya made certain that she was seated well, as we all were. We offered her barley water flavoured with syrup and the sweet wine and the almond and honey biscuits that I had made, and the women spoke of many things within the tribe and outside it, for Kala had travelled for some years before she had settled in the village, and took great interest in what lay beyond its borders. My mother and my bond-aunts were respectful to her but not subservient, and they could tell that she liked this. They spoke as equals speak when one is far older than the others. And then they spoke, however calmly, of the circle outside the temple, and Kala frowned at it. "They are near to shadowed ones, those men from further East. They will want to bring their darkness here if they could. It's swallowed them up, so that all that is left is ambition and hatred. They will bite us, like the blood-drinker, the vampire, and will make us like them, hollow like empty shells."
We ate all of the wonderful meal that Rookheeya had worked so hard to make in silence, and I thought that as soon as the food was finished I would be sent from the table while the women talked, but when the platters were cleared my mother quickly began to speak once more; not of events but of us and of me, and of what she feared might happen once she could no longer protect me. And Ishara and Werru bargained with her too, while Benti sat beside me and held my hand in her cool dry one.
Kala leaned her head on one hand and sat through their words with apparent boredom, as if she had heard such requests many, many times before, but her eyes kept looking to me. "What do you think of all this?" she asked me suddenly, cutting off Ishara as she began to speak again to persuade her, lifting her eyebrows. "Do you truly wish to become a midwife? Or do you simply wish to escape those who might harm you by taking on this role?"
I was not as unprepared as I might have been, for Rookheeya had told me as she kneaded bread that I must have my own reasons for wishing to learn the ancient craft, and left me to think on it. And I had my answer, poor as it was. I looked into Kala's eyes, and I told her that I knew what it was like to be afraid to die. I did not want ever to feel that fear again, and I wanted to stop others from dying when they should be living.
"And what of your own life?" she asked, sitting upright now, looking not at my troubled mother but at I alone. "What of the husband and children you might not have, if you choose to take up this way?"
"Then I'll have no husband, nor children. But I don't want a husband, and I'll find other children in the babies I help birth."
My mother took Kala outside after that while Werru made me at least pretend to sleep now that the day was over. I lay upon my mat and could not find rest, for I longed to know what Kala would decide. I did not wish to be a midwife with a passion, but I wished to be safe and to learn to prevent death from coming for others at it had come for me. I hoped that Kala might like me, and choose me where she had chosen no other.
The last I remember is Kala's words. "When she becomes a woman, then. When her moon blood comes, then I will return and see if she is worthy." And once more I longed to be a woman, and yet still wished to be a child, and I could be the one or the other, but not both. Not both.
Note: Kakaw is an Aztec term for the cacao bean. Yup, they've struck chocolate.
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