Disclaimer: I do not own LOTR. Or The Red Tent.
Watch out for the inevitable hints of puberty.
As if to make the last years of our childhood all the more bitter-sweet for the eldest of us to bear, the days were better than we had even known them to be before. After the harvest more rains came than were expected and sooner in the year and the houses and tents were flooded and some who lived by the shore had to camp in the temple until the time came that they could return to their homes. But it was glorious to stand out of doors and feel the cool drops upon the skin, and we laughed and ran screaming with delight, splashing in deep puddles and having mud fights, coming home somewhere between filthy and drenched clean.
And when the spring came, what a difference the floods made to the crops, and to the hillsides! There had always been greenery around the streams and on the slopes, but the plants had always been poor wispy things and only the flowers brought any colour to the land. But now the ground was so covered with blossoms you could not see the earth between them, and they were hardy enough that you could lie full upon them and would do them no harm. The belief was that Ishti of the Eternal Renewal had walked in the wake of Hee-Un's gift, and so in thanks each of the tribe picked one flower – just one, instead of the usual armfuls at the end of the harvest – to place upon her altar. Even the flocks seemed to know that this bounty was not to be devoured at once but treasured, and so they nibbled only sparingly and the hills were not without colour even when the dog days of the year came. And when at last the flowers were gathered their scent did not die with them, for they gave their essence to perfume, incense and sacred oil for many years after that blessed year.
The rains had spread further East and South to groves and pastures which drank them up, and at the middle-year markets there was wheat for flour and thus more bread, and whole stalls heaped with figs and quinces, star fruit and different kinds of olives, and plums. I carried a load back for Ishara and we all spent an afternoon and an early evening pitting the tart fruits for drying until our fingers were dyed by the juice of their skins, and we feasted on the fresh ones that we had left. There were pomegranates as well, and early one morning Ishara and I spent all the day's money on honey and a bounty of oranges both bitter and sweet, crowing in triumph as we brought them back to make into preserves to smear on our bread and to devour the rare sweet ones that are rightly called sun-fruit, so large and bright and wonderful. There were few things as good in all my life as those oranges, those sun-fruits, eaten with my mother and bond-aunts and some of my cousins who had tumbled upon our bounty in their turn on a hot day. I remember peeling them for myself and for the small hands of the children and for Ishara – for her withered hand could make little work of the skins – and cramming the pieces of flesh into my mouth, letting none of the juice escape from between my lips. Essan, the youngest but one, covered his face with juice as he ate and then Talim by some chance managed to knock him over so that he landed in the dust and it stuck to his face, and he howled most awfully until we cleaned him off and washed the dust from his eyes, and then he would have eaten oranges again until he burst but that we said enough had been eaten and we should save some.
It was a year of bounty, a year of plenty, a year of sweet days and sweet games, and it was also a year of farewells to their kin for those who were set apart.
It was in that glorious spring, the year after I was promised to Kala if she would have me, when Alamon came of age at fifteen years to the day since his birth. For a son to reach adulthood is a triumph for his parents in a land where children may die so easily when young, and while Bilhah and Rodren had been far more fortunate than most there had been losses; more than two years between Alamon and my twin cousins where a second born son had died in infancy and a miscarriage had made Kala advise my blood-aunt to leave off bearing for a while, and there had been two more cradle deaths as I was growing up. To see her first son live to grow into the handsome and proud youth that he had become was both a joy and a sadness for her, a duty fulfilled and a duty ended, as Alamon became a man of the tribe and would in time take a wife and have children of his own. She knew that he would now be his father's son and that while a good man believed the stars lay beneath his mother's feet, Alamon was not the sort who would remember that too well. My eldest cousin lived in the present, a burning light that thought not of where it came from, nor much of where it would go.
Because Alamon's ceremony was the first that I witnessed, it is the one that I remember the best, and all those that came after were mere copies of that day. As close blood-kin Rookheeya and I were of course welcome at the ceremony, and we came in our newest robes and brought fine presents, a full length tunic dyed in rare and costly green and trimmed with fine embroidery to be worn at celebrations that my mother had commissioned from one of the best weavers in the tribe, and a belt of finely worked and intricately designed leather. We sat upon cushions by Bilhah's side and ate sweetmeats and pieces of cooked meat, fruits and pieces of honey comb and quince preserve, and dipped biscuits into a pot of kakaw. The men drank tiny cups of water of life and we all watched as Alamon was presented with his gifts from his mother and his father, his father's brothers and his mother's isha sister, full of pleasure and pride at each new offering as his siblings looked in envy at the growing heap around him and his father and uncles sang deep, throaty songs in his honour, and the women clapped their hands to the beat of the music. He kept turning his head this way and that, showing off – as if we had not seen them before then! – the new rings in his ears and the second ring on the left lobe set in the hole that Rodren had bored only that morning with a heated needle, the sign and right of a grown first born son and an aid to see more clearly and guide his family well.
When I think of him now, I remember how darkly handsome he looked upon that day, the fine curls of his hair peeping out from under his new head scarf wound about his head, seated like a young prince in his confidence and role as the centre of the celebration, only disdaining to speak because of the soreness of the stud that had been pushed through his lower lip. I looked closely to see if he had changed at all now that he was a man, if he had received some special gift that had changed him from boy to adult. I looked and looked, but his face was the same as when last I saw him the day before, and he seemed as conceited and proud as ever with none of the wisdom that adulthood brought. I hoped that the earrings would do their work quickly and make him prudent and foresighted, or he would never be a good leader of the family.
But as his youngest sister, mere weeks away from having her hair plaited for the first time, wrestled with her brother upon the floor and tumbled into my aunt's lap, and as she scolded them for interrupting their brother's special day and to show more respect as she straightened Ruti's smock and tweaked Essan's nose, I watched Alamon watching them, his eyebrows lowered and his high cheek bones thickening as he frowned at the children. I thought that he was angry at them for taking the attention from him, but as Ruti laughed and ran to me and sat in my lap and as I bounced her on my knee my eyes met his, and he frowned at me in turn, though I had done nothing but sit quietly.
I thought then that he did not scowl at us but at the thought of what he had lost; his role as the leader of the children, the architect of stories and games. Now another would take his place – perhaps I, or Dinah or Daron; most likely Daron, for Dinah and I would soon be women – and he would merely be an ordinary man, for all that he was a first born son. It was both funny and tragic, a fitting way to curb the arrogance of a boy who had been worshipped by those who were younger than him but would now have everything demanded of him from those who were his elders.
When the shadows began to creep into the house and the Sun was veiling her fierce glow the celebration was finished, and the guests left the house and returned to their own homes. But Bilhah and my cousins also left the house and stood watching the Sun as she set, leaving Alamon alone in the house with his father and his uncles. They would not go back in until they were called by the men.
At the time, I did not understand why this was. There were some things that my mother did not tell me, or did not know. To me, the world of men was still such a mysterious place.
With Alamon gone from our number as he began to learn in full the business of being a merchant, there were fewer games. I felt sorry for the younger ones for not being born in the time when our little tribe was at its height; they came to us during the last years when the bright leaders were being weaned from childhood. I see now just how our passing showed the end of an empire. Remove the figureheads, the idols, and you remove the power and the resolve. We three did our best, but we did not have the confidence that Alamon possessed. Our time in power was marked not by the stirring up of passion for fights both mock and real, but of stories. When our time was free we would sit and tell them the tales that our mothers had taught us, and would watch as they acted them out. We were set apart from them even if we had not departed from their ranks yet.
On other days Dinah and I would be sent out to tend the flocks together, as if our mothers recognised the need for our time alone, and we would sit on the hills and talk, breathing in the scent of the flowers all about us. We shared the secrets of what we knew of men and laughed at the way that they were slaves to their lust, how some of them could think of nothing but sharing a bed, sometimes with more than one bed mate, thinking with the tender baggage between their legs. Dinah, my knowing cousin with so many brothers, whispered of how she had been woken in the night by the moans of her parents during their lovemaking or the sighs and movements of Alamon in his sleep, and how in the morning there would be a stained blanket or two to wash. She laughed at how aghast I was, and cheerfully assured me that she had long since grown used to it. She only prayed that Daron would not in time do the same as Alamon.
I also learned that she, like me, did not want to marry; but neither did she want to have children. She had heard her mother scream every time she brought another brother or sister into the world, and had wept with her over an infant girl who had died before she was named. "I do not want that pain," she said, "or that sorrow, not ever." Bilhah and Rodren had agreed with the high priest and the high priestess that she would go to the temple as soon as she came of age, and Daron would follow her, and she would be a priestess of the Lady of the Dance and he would be a priest of the Lord of the Hunt, a sister and brother serving a sister and brother as was fitting. "I have agreed to it, and so has Daron. He likes it in the temple, and he will grow to have importance. He has lived in Alamon's shadow for too long."
And then our talk turned to what I would do when I was grown, and I swore her to secrecy before I told her of what my mother and my bond-aunts wished and hoped for me. She wondered and we agreed that it would be a splendid and wonderful thing if Kala accepted me as she had done no other, even if Dinah baited me by saying that I would always have rough work to do and stay around women screaming insults while she dressed in silks and let her hands grow soft. I baited her in turn by saying that at least I would not stay cloistered up in the temple with no one remembering what I looked like and wearing my feet out with dancing, and then we began a mock battle by pinching each other and laughing as we rolled and wrestled and the heady pollen of the flowers rose about us.
We ended that one afternoon by lying on our backs and looking up at the blue sky, and then we looked at our budding breasts and wondered who would win the great race, who would be the first to leave her childhood behind, who would be the first to become a woman. I ran my hands across my face, over the growing mounds of flesh upon my body to rest upon my flat stomach and lower down. I wanted to be first, not because I had any desire to win a race but because I wanted it to be over, I did not want to wait and wait in this half life where I was not child or woman but some strange mix of both. We two were awkward in our bodies as we changed from one thing to another, growing the curves to carry and feed the ones that we would never bear. In some way I mourned those infants that would never be mine, as if I had betrayed them by refusing to give them life, but that childish part of me that had once dreamed of their numbers and how I would raise them had faded. I was not my mother, not an isha, and I could not have children without a man by my side. And while my body was making me ready for one, I did not want a man.
I won that race on a summer afternoon late into the dog days, when the itch that had started between my legs in the morning turned into a dull pain in my gut and when I searched for the reason in private my fingers came away wet with something of a deep brown and smelling of metal. I could hardly believe what I saw. Was this it, a dark stain upon my thighs and an ache in my stomach? Was this what I had waited for so impatiently? Was this what changed me from child to maiden? It seemed almost a joke, a trick played by the Earth-Mother, something as commonplace as this.
But it was proof, and so I ran to Rookheeya holding out my hand so that she would see, and she did see, and my mother embraced me and held me close to her as the others crowded to see what had happened. They cried with joy as they learned the truth and hugged me in turn, but I kept being drawn back into my mother's arms with my head drawn into her shoulder. I was tall by then, and I would be as tall as her, taller. She whispered my name again and again as her hands touched my face and my head. She had nothing more to say.
It was Ishara who took charge of it all, telling Werru and Benti to bring out the things that would be needed and to be quick about it, and shaking Rookheeya's shoulder and advising her that if she wanted the ceremony to happen this night, she should prepare my hair. She took it upon herself to hobble out of our home as fast as she could, her staff ringing against the stones under the sand as she went to fetch something, or someone. Rookheeya led me to sit at her feet as she unpicked the plaits in my hair and combed it until it hung about my head in a heavy weight; she ran her fingers through it over and over, curling strands about them and tugging gently. I was content to let her do so, not knowing when she might do so again. She said it was a terrible thing that I should have to cover such beautiful hair from now on, and I joked that I could leave it uncovered like Ishara did and let it swing about my head like a warm headscarf itself.
"That would be a fine thing to see," Rookheeya agreed. But she did not say that I could do such a thing. She went on with her work as Werru stoked up the fire and set out some tools by it and Benti pulled out all the rugs and blankets that we owned to lay them upon the floor. We did not speak until Ishara came back, bringing Bilhah with Ruti upon her hip and Dinah leading her sisters behind her to all crowd about me, and behind them came Kala, her hands clasped together as she took in the sight of me, my hair about my face and my mother beside me to show how much I had grown since last we were close to each other. She nodded and did not ask for proof of what Ishara had told her, for she could see for herself.
The ones who had been summoned sat upon the blankets and wine for the women and barley water for the children was passed around, and then Rookheeya made me sit before her again and began to braid my hair once more. Her hands tugged at my head and pulled the plaits thinner and tighter than they had ever been before, but I was not a whining child now and I did not whimper, as my mother whispered into my ear, whispered the story of the tresses of the Fruitful One. It was a story that I had never hear before, and I sat through my discomfort as I grew calmer and quiet in my mind and listened to the story of how, when the gods came to the land, Ishtara let her hair flow out upon the wind and it made the land that her sister Ishti walked upon grow green and lush, and there grew trees and long grass and shrub land, and fruit groves and wheat and barley so that men would be provided for. She walked through the lands after her sister, and whichever way she turned her head the wind blew through it and fertility would come from it.
"But the Destroyer was jealous of the gift that Ishtara had given the land," my mother went on, "and he decided that he would shame her by stealing her hair. So, when there was no light in the sky and the Earth-mother rested beside her spouse, the Master Smith, what do you think he did? Why, he crept up and cut off her hair with a knife, cut off every last strand, and made off with it, and he did it with such care and silence that his theft was only discovered when Ishtara woke with a shorn head. She was distraught and wounded deeply by the loss, a wound so deep that it could not be healed; and she wrapped herself up in veils to cover her bare head and her face so that she might not be known, and she hid herself away from the sight of all in a cave under the hills so deep that even her lord might not reach her. And though Ishti walked through the world and the gods searched for the one who had stolen the Fruitful One's hair they did not find him, for the Destroyer had burned Ishtara's hair in a great fire and delighted as he saw the land wither.
"But Renna the Sorrowful was filled with pity for Ishtara, and by some chance she found her way to where Ishtara had hidden herself and wept for her loss and for the loss of the land. Then Renna sat beside Ishtara and they mourned together, and Renna put her arms about her sister goddess and let her tears fall upon the Earth-mother's poor bald head. And then, what joy! For her tears caused Ishtara's hair to grow once more, and it was as long as it had even been, and as beautiful, and it glowed with her holy power, and the wound within her body and heart was healed. Then they walked out of the cave she had hidden away in and Ishtara looked once more upon the earth, and her hair streamed out over the wasted ground and made it green once more.
"And ever after that time Ishtara keeps her hair braided and covered to save it from theft once more, and at the beginning of the year after Ishti walks across the land she lets it loose to bring greenery to the earth anew, and after every harvest is done she covers it once more and retreats to her cave to wait until her time comes again. And so do we, Adahni, coming to our husbands with our hair loose when we are at our most fertile, retreating from the company of men when our fertility wanes, in a circle that is forever renewed within us."
At last my mother finished her work and all of those about us clapped to see as I moved my head and my hair moved about me as it had never done before, like a curtain of beads. It felt so strange, so cool and so light and it moved through my hands as if it was a batch of snakes that grew from my scalp. I laughed at the sheer pleasure of it, as my mother pulled me back against her, but I ceased to laugh when she took hold of my arms and rested her chin upon my shoulder to keep me against her body, Bilhah seized my right hand, Ishara took my left and Werru and Benti stood over us holding a tray and a lamp. I saw now that Kala was holding a sharp needle, a needle that I had seen Werru holding in the fire when Rookheeya unbound my hair. The midwife smiled at the sight of what must have been upon my face as I shifted in my mother's grip, licking my dry lips.
"Do not quiver so! It is not as if you are being marked as a servant, after all!" And as she pushed the needle slowly and steadily through my right eyebrow and Werru shed light upon her work, Bilhah in turn told me the story of Roshni, a princess of an age ago who saw her father and brothers die in battle and was forced into servitude by their killers, and had her head shaved and a metal bolt thrust through her brow as the mark of a slave. Tarak looked favourably upon her, however, and she found the strength to escape and gather the remnants of her people and lead them against the men who had tried to wipe out her bloodline. She and her army were victorious and defeated their enemies and Roshni became not a princess once more but a queen of Men, and she wore until her dying day the piercing in her brow that she changed from a mark of shame to one of triumph, a mark that was remembered long after she had gone to the life beyond this. I, as a first born daughter and in addition the daughter of an isha, should be proud that I had the right to wear such a mark of renown, to show that I would walk for all of my life with dignity and resolve. She slid the ring through the hole in my flesh as she finished the tale, and praised me for keeping so still and quiet as she had worked. My brow swelled with pain but Rookheeya clasped my hands in hers and gave me wine to drink to soothe me, and soon the pain dulled to an ache that I could disregard for the time.
Bilhah comforted me further as the wine did its work by telling me of how she had fared when it had been her turn to receive the right of a first born daughter. "I had to be held down to stop me from struggling when it began, I was so afraid of the pain," she said with great cheer as she wiped the sweat away from my face. "Kala made Rookheeya sit on my legs for fear that I would kick her. She said I sounded like a goat being gutted."
She made sounds through her teeth that made the little ones laugh. Kala said that she remembered all too well, but there had been others who screamed like terrified horses even before she had put the needle in. "Brave girl, in your way. Takes resolve to let someone wield a needle near your eye without flinching."
One that was done, then there came the songs: not the throaty warblings of the men but high, sweet words that sang of the beauty of the earth and the glory of the stars, of the blessings of the Queen of Heaven and the Fruitful One and the Eternal Renewal and the Dancer. Werru brought out star fruit and the sweet cakes that had been made for that day, for it had been the time of the moon for her and Rookheeya and Bilhah, and I tasted them for the first time and I smiled with the rightness of it all, that I should eat such things on such a day. My mother pulled me up to stand in the middle of the circle and we danced together, all the dances that I had ever learned or played and a new one that I was taught as the evening wore on and into night.
It was a strange dance, that one, as we did not lift our feet far from the ground with any step, simply raising and setting them down as we stepped backwards or forwards. We moved our arms in sinuous motions, curling and uncurling like snakes, like strands of loose hair upon the wind. Our hands were graceful as the fingers bent back like a bird's wing in flight and as we bowed and twisted, as we pushed at the air and then shied away. It was not solemn but still slow and joyous as my blood-aunt, pregnant in her early months, and my bond-aunts and even withered Kala joined me - leaving only Benti to clap the beat and keen the music - welcoming me into the sisterhood of women, the ones who had been given the great mystery, the secret of life and the power of the goddesses within us. As I moved past Dinah I saw such longing upon her face that it clawed at my heart, as I stood above her and learned the great dance that Naani surely must have danced to draw Tarak to her in the verdant gardens she ran through so long ago.
And then the Moon began to rise and all the stars began to come alight, and together we all walked out into the darkness. He was full that night and his gleam covered the ground with silver and my shadow stretched out upon the ground behind me. The children sat by the rock wall of our house with the discarded head scarves of my mother and my aunts and Kala in their laps and we began the dance again as the Moon and the stars painted our skin more pale than it had ever been, and glowed upon Kala's grey braids as if they were a precious metal. We danced in a circle, even Benti now with her scars free to the night air. We made no sound and said no word as we moved, never making a wrong step for there could be no mistakes in this dance, only clapping in time and breathing softly and setting our feet down together.
We went on until the Moon had risen higher and the stars were bright and then our bodies ceased to move and the story of the Dancer was finished, told not in words but in movements and grace. Many of the girls had fallen asleep, but Dinah was still awake and had her lower lip between her teeth and her arms wrapped about her knees. The dance was finished but still she longed to join us, her face set as if she were in a trance of desire. Kala soon broke that trance as she bent down and pulled her headscarf from my cousin's grasp, saying as she did so, "Let all who are not women depart from this place, now." I saw outrage on Dinah's face even as she stood up, but Kala had turned to me and was pulling me back into the house. I heard her argue and be silenced by a sharp retort from Bilhah, but I thought more on how the midwife was making me lie down upon the blankets that Benti had now heaped up, and Werru was building up the fire once more. I thought that they might want to pierce some other part of me. I could only nod as Bilhah ran in and kissed me on both cheeks and whispered a blessing from the Blue Spirits for me, and then left to take her daughters home again.
But now there were no sharp thing being held in the fire, only light that Kala might see what she was doing, as she poured some type of resin onto a small dish, and then set light to it so that it smoked and fumed softly. She turned and held the dish out towards me and she spoke over my coughs: "Your last tale for this night, Adahni, is this."
And then she spoke of when the first men and women awoke in the land that would be Rhûn by the will of the gods and how they walked across the earth and found glory in all that they saw, for the land was fertile and visited by rains, and the ones who had awakened had everything that they could wish for and more. But the hearts of Men, Kala said, were filled with questions and desire for newness, and so it did not please them to stay in one place for too long. Many of them left the land in which they had first drawn breath and some of them journeyed to the West and settled there, and their skin grew white, and in later ages they met the long lived ones and served them in their wars and spoke their tongue, and some of them ruled mighty kingdoms, but all of their greatness was in the end destroyed or came to nothing but an empire of dust and decay. Some went to the South, and they found rich hot woodland with strange stars in the heavens and great beasts as tall as hills with large horns that they tamed and harnessed to work, and they divided into many tribes and lived well off the land, but they were forever under the sway of first the Men of the West and then the One of the South, fighting wars and dying for reasons not of their own making. And some went to the North and came to the darkness and the cold, and what they found and what they did came into no stories of the good people who lived beside the Sea of Rhûn.
But some men and women chose to stay where they were, and they lived on the green hills and herded goats and sheep, all unknowing of the gods who had made them and called them into being. And long after they had awakened, but still many ages ago, a youth and a maiden – husband and wife, brother and sister, it is not known – walked out one day and came to a field of poppies, bright red under the blue sky, and they were tired and lay and rested and slept, and presently they dreamed, for poppies were a gift of both the Master of Dreams and the Mistress of Healing. The youth dreamed of things that he might touch and shape, of the things that could be changed and made to benefit Men. He dreamed of his hands as they planned how water might be displaced and brought up from the ground and how great houses might be built, how mountains might be climbed and paths made. He dreamed that his body took the form of a horse and ran across the earth as it shaped around him. And he smiled at his dreams as they grew ever more beautiful and strange.
The maiden dreamed of other things, of things unseen and unknown but still true. She dreamed of her lao, her spirit, as it flew from her body in the shape of a butterfly and over the earth, dancing upon the winds and wondering at the path of the Sun and the stars, seeing the lives of creatures and Men and long lived ones below her and the differences between their spirits. She saw life and she saw death and she saw that which made them what they were, and at last she flew beyond this world and came to Loren's garden. There she alighted upon the hands of the Master of Dreams and twin keeper of souls, and Loren kissed her softly and told her that she had seen the truth and found what she was, and that she was his.
He sent her back to her body, Kala told me, as the smoke curled about me and made me drowsy, and she woke at the same time as the youth, and they went back to their people, knowing that they were changed. The youth began to teach other men what he had learned in craft and skill, but the maiden told the other women of what she had seen when she slept and left her body, and she gathered the poppies and took the resin from the flowers and burned it so that they might breathe the smoke and see visions of the nature of the world. Many of them did so, and they saw snatches of what they would later know as the marks of the gods, symbols and strange pictures. And some were like the maiden; for as they breathed the smoke they fell asleep and their spirits left their bodies and travelled the blue sky.
"And since then," the midwife finished, "whenever a girl reaches womanhood, she must breathe in the smoke of the poppy and learn of the one who has claimed her as their own. Each of us is born under the sign of a god, but that god is not always our own and we are not always theirs. To learn the name of your secret divine one, whose name you shall acknowledge only on your deathbed, you must look into the smoke. Adahni, born from the womb of Rookheeya, your time has come with the blood of the moon. Breathe now the gift of Loren, and know who you truly are." And with that she placed the dish by my side where I now lay, and drew back to stand with my mother.
The smoke was thick by now, and to me it smelled more terrible than incense. If it had been my choice I would not have lain there and breathed it in, but it was as much a part of my new womanhood as my changed hair and my eyebrow ring and the dance that I had learned. I kept myself there on the blankets, and I do not remember when I surrendered to the fumes, or what followed in the wake of the smoke.
I only remember waking again, slowly and heavily with the light of the afternoon, pulling my body out of the blankets that had been heaped over me as I listened to the hurry of footsteps as more than one person left our house. There was an awful taste in my mouth and my skin and eyes were clammy and the itch had returned between my legs, and I still felt the smoke inside my head as I felt bony fingers that could only belong to Kala take hold of my chin and lift up my head.
"What did you dream?" she asked me, her face close to mine and her breath hot upon my cheek. But I could not answer her, for the sunlight had pierced my head and dispersed the last fragments of the smoke, and with them the memories of what I had seen while I slept, clutch at them though I might. Like the dust of the deserts it had blown away with Kala's voice and I was left to sit up onto my heels, to open and close my mouth with nothing to say, save to ask where Rookheeya and my bond-aunts were.
"I sent them away as you were waking. I alone must hear your words. Tell me what you dreamt," she told me. "Few remember their visions, but always they recall one thing, one part that was brightest and most clear – and after two days of sleep, you surely saw something."
I hardly heard her last words, for as she spoke of something bright and clear one thread of the smoke curled and writhed back into my thoughts, and I spoke of what it had shown me. I told her of a great gate, greater than the temple, greater than the hills, greater than the sky, greater than the world it seemed; and I told her of how somewhere deep in the dream I had stood from afar and looked upon the gate where others would feel fear and horror, and I felt only awe and wonder. Kala listened to me solemnly, and when I was finished she let go of my chin and sat back on her own heels.
"Laban." Her voice was softer than it had ever been. "To see the gate to is see the symbol of Laban. You are claimed by the Lord of Souls." She smiled to see my face, as I thought of the hopes of my mother and my aunts dashed, for how could I be a midwife if I was, as she said, a chosen servant of the god of Death? Could Ishtara not have chosen me, or Ishti, or even Naani, so that I might have some chance at this my only chance? "Do not look so misery-ridden! He chooses far more servants than you might think, they just do not admit to it. And surely you do not think your Ishara vile for paying service to him? He is justice and rightness as well as the keeper of the courts, the bridge between life and beyond it, and those whom he claims have that understanding as well.
"What is a good midwife if she does not see or understand the role that we have? We too are bridges between life and death, we know what price a woman can and would pay to birth a child, and we know what it takes to draw them back from darkness or to save their infant. We know the perils that a mother faces, perishing in a river of black blood, withering in the days after the birth, dying with a scream upon their lips, and we know what the reward is: a baby's laugh, a daughter to teach, a son to grow into a fine man. And we know that there are times when we must choose between saving a woman and saving the one within her, and we know that we must decide at those times. That is our triumph, and that is our sorrow. And you, Adahni, you have it in you to understand this full well, in time."
The blunt words at the end of her speech confused me, and I asked her outright if she truly meant to take me on as an apprentice. She placed her hand upon my shoulder and told me that yes, she would, she would take me in and teach me what I must know in order to become a midwife. She said too that I would go with her to her house this very day. She called out to those who waited outside and said that she would take me, and they fairly crowed with triumph as they came in again, Rookheeya and Werru asking me brightly, without expecting answer, which god must have chosen me to make Kala want to have me as her pupil, and Benti and Ishara staying back from their questions but still smiling for me.
How quickly then they wrapped the scarf about my head once I had changed my child's tunic for a longer robe and had rinsed my skin with water, showing me how it was held in place and making certain that the two braids were visible. And how much I did cling to them all when the time had arrived that I should go to Kala's home that I might learn from her the craft that she had deemed would be mine! I was still between childhood and womanhood, and I could not countenance the thought of living beyond my mother's gaze, living in a house where she and my aunts were not. I no longer saw them as truly perfect, now that I was more grown and saw their faults as well as their virtues, but they were all that I had known, my guides and my teachers and so very dear to me, and now I had to leave them behind for another. And for all that Kala told me that she would let me come back every sixth day to see them, and my teaching would be over in time, I could not help but cry when I looked back as I walked away with her and watched my mother's face as she stood with her bond-sisters at the doorway. Unlike Werru she did not weep to see me leave her, but her smile was over bright as if it was all that stood between her and a deluge.
She waved to me until I could see her no longer, and remembrance of her words of love when we parted were enough to keep me weeping until Kala had brought me into her home.
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