"Where are we going?" Lexa said, practically jumping with excitement. Now that Anya was actually taking her somewhere, Lexa could barely breathe she was so excited. She hadn't slept a wink the night before, instead getting up two hours early and trying to meditate to clear her mind. It hadn't worked.
Anya said nothing, walking two or three paces ahead of Lexa. True to her word, she had met Lexa on the north side of the village. Somehow, despite Lexa getting up two hours before dawn, Anya had been there first, sitting quietly in the early grey light. And Anya was taking her somewhere in the woods, deep in the woods. The sounds of the village had faded quickly, and been replaced by the sounds of the forrest. The chirping of birds calling to the sun, the early breeze rustling the trees, snaps and creaks of the trees moving with the wind, and the presence of the forest, sitting there, quietly.
"Anya," Lexa said, bounding forward to walk alongside her mentor. "Anya, where are we going?"
Again, Anya remained silent. Lexa looked up at her. Lexa barely came up to Anya's shoulder. The older woman was tall, powerfully built, her brown hair tied back, her eyes gazing ahead. She hadn't put on war paint this morning, there had been no need to. But Anya had a look about her that said that she didn't need war paint to look powerful. Anya did that on her own.
Lexa could barely keep up with her first, having to take almost two steps for every one of hers. She was nearly out of breath and they hadn't even begun doing things. Lexa fell behind Anya, looking at her back as she strode forward.
And then like the morning fog, Anya wasn't there. Where her back had been before was simply greyish green in the morning light. Lexa stopped, suddenly, her body tense, pulled as tight as a bowstring. The noise of the woods faded as Lexa's ears focused only on her, her heartbeat quickening, the blood pounding in her ears. Lexa shook her head, and spun around, trying to watch for Anya and at the same time keep her guard up.
Suddenly Anya was falling from the sky. She landed in front of Lexa, looking down at her as her knees bent to the ground to give way to the fall. "Nowe gona dun." Anya said. "Do you think the other clans will just disappear?"
"No," Lexa said, trembling.
"They are constantly on edge. One moment, we may be allied with them. The next, that alliance breaks because the heda wants what is best for her people. You must always be ready," Anya said.
Lexa stood there silently. "Come, little one," Anya said, her face softening. "Some lessons will be harder than others. These first lessons are very hard. And then the later lessons you will laugh at me because you do not believe me when I tell you to do something. You ask me to challenge you more. That is when you will be ready. When the lessons are hard, that is when you are still learning."
Anya took Lexa's hand and led her through the trees to a clearing. The morning light was filtering through the trees, the fog clearing, the grey fading to green. The sun felt warm on Lexa's shoulders. Inside the clearing was a small shelter, a lean-to against a tree, covered in leaves. Little more than a one-night emergency shelter.
"Pro," Anya said. "Yumi na kamp disha. This is my camp, you might call it a secret. I come here sometimes to train and meditate. Yumi will be coming here, sometimes every day, sometimes not often, to train."
"Sha," Lexa said. She remained silent.
"I want you to built a fire," Anya said. "Fire is a friend, it's a weapon, it's a tool, it's a shelter, and sometimes it's a foe. But not that last one today. Today we need a hearth. If this is to be our home, make it so. Built a fire. Without help."
She reached up, seemingly into thin air, grabbed a branch, hoisted herself into the sky and once again, disappeared. Lexa knew she was close, though. So she did as she was told. She walked around the clearing and the auxiliary woods, gathering tiny twigs, no thinner than her hair, keeping them warm and dry in her sleeve. Larger sticks, still twigs, and then real sticks, bigger sticks, log size. She travelled back and forth around, gathering the wood and placing it in piles.
Lexa looked around at the trees. This was something that the grounders almost instinctively knew, but was still drilled into their heads from day one. The trees that were soft, easy to burn. The trees that were hard and took more effort to light, but once they burned they burned long and hot. Lexa needed a piece that was soft, and two pieces that were harder. There was a tree with needles. Lexa took a piece of dry wood and split it down the middle with her knife. And a tree with leaves, sharp and spiky. She split another piece of that, and then carved the second piece into a crude, blunt stake. Pulling out a piece of rope from her many pockets, Lexa assembled a makeshift bow drill for a fire. It was all automatic. It was almost like she was watching her own hands as they wound the rope around the spindle, tied it to the bow, began to spin, watched as the smoke began to rise and the heat begin to eat away at the softwood below, watch as the brown powder formed, smelling as warm and earthy as a fire. Watched as the powder hardened, turning black, then a dull red, forming a tiny coal. Watched as her hands scooped the coal, gentle, gentle, into the bed of the twigs no thicker than her hair and watched as she wrapped the coal, tucking it into bed and blowing on it, gentle, gentle. Watched as a tiny fire appeared in the bundle, watched as she placed it into the bed of kindling she had assembled, gentle, gentle, now blow harder on it, harder so the fire rises. Watched as the fire rose, hungry, devouring the sticks and the wood. Watched as her hands fed the fire more, more, slowly, slowly as the fire rose higher and higher, hungry for more. Watched as the fire grew until it was big enough that she didn't have to feed it it was eating those hardwood logs and satisfied for now.
Lexa sat back, small beads of sweat on her forehead from the effort. She glanced around her. The clearing was even brighter, the sun higher in the sky, puffy white clouds drifting by between the gaps of the trees. Anya lept down from the trees, landing lightly on her toes.
"Now we have a home, Lexa," she said, sitting down gently and crossing her feet beneath her, tucking in her toes until all Lexa could see was knee and leg. Silence hung in the air. Lexa at first didn't touch it, but it began to grow and her young, wiggly body couldn't resist. She was, after all, only ten.
"So," Lexa said. "Now what?"
"Hm?" Anya said. Her eyes flew open. Lexa hadn't noticed they had half-closed.
"Now...what?" Lexa asked again.
"What do you mean?" Anya asked. Lexa was confused. Her first was the one that was supposed to know everything, when to do anything, how to do it.
"Well, now that we've built the fire...what do you want me to do next?" Lexa asked. "We are training, aren't we?"
Anya sighed, looked down. Lexa could see that she was gathering herself. And then she smiled. "Goufa," Anya laughed. "You spent the morning and look at what you have accomplished! A home, already. Don't you see that that is enough? Celebrate all that you have done. We do not need to be doing something every moment of our day."
Lexa nodded. And then sat back and closed her eyes. And then opened them again and saw Anya sitting with her legs tucked behind her knees again. And then she closed her eyes again. And jiggled her leg. And tapped her fingers on the ground. And then opened them. And saw Anya was looking back at her. And she laughed. Lexa frowned, confused. "But of course you are only ten. Come, we will do something now." Lexa leapt up as Anya got to her feet.
"The other seconds, they have not learned the self direction that you have. Patience you will learn with age. And I believe most of them have weapons," Anya said.
"I have a weapon," Lexa said, pulling out her knife. Anya took it, examined it, and then tucked it into her belt.
"I see no weapon," Anya said. Lexa pouted, and Anya smiled. "That will change."
"What do you need me to do?" Lexa asked in a rush, excited once again. She felt the determination stirring in her gut.
"Go out into the woods," Anya said. "And I want you to find a tree that speaks to you. A hard tree, not a soft tree."
"What will I be making?" Lexa asked.
"You are trigedakru," Anua said. "The Woods Clan. The tree will tell you if it is the right tree. Go."
"Anya," Lexa asked. "Will you teach me to disappear into the trees like you do?"
"One day," Anya said. "You will learn." Lexa nodded and turned into the woods. She left the clearing, and as if it were magic, it disappeared. The forest was monotonous again.
"Find a tree that speaks to me," Lexa murmured to herself. Her bare feet stepped lightly on the hard dirt, feeling the earth beneath the pads of her toes. Her fingers traced along the trees. She looked up towards the sky, at the huge trees reaching up to the sky, taller than anything she could imagine, the green stretching endlessly to her ten-year-old body.
She looked back down at the ground, where the trees reached down into the earth to hold themselves there. She was tregedakru. She could speak to the trees. Touching the pines. It was the wrong tree. She touched one of the trees with lobed leaves. It wasn't right...too earthy. And yet the trees with spiky leaves were too joyous. They almost felt like they weren't connected to the earth at all. And the trees with white bark that was so good fire, it was too soft. It gave to her fingers.
She wandered deeper into the forest, always keeping the sun over her right shoulder so she could find her way back to the clearing. Each tree felt wrong, one of the kinds that wasn't right. Too earthy. Too untethered. Too soft. Too piney. Too hard. Too giving. Until...
Her fingers lingered on a tree. This one had smoother bark, less of a wrinkle. The leaves were little leaflets on the branches, in bunches rather than one leaf. The tree grew straight and tall. It was a young tree, like she was - not thick at all. If she touched her two middle fingers together and her two thumbs, she could almost reach around the trunk. "This one," she whispered to herself. The tree was perfect - straight, tall green, as if the thing Anya was asking her for was a -
She spun around, the sun on her left side now, and rushed back to the camp. "Anya, Anya!" Lexa crowed.
Anya looked up from her crafting. "You found a tree."
"Yes, yes, Anya, it's perfect!" Lexa called, grabbing Anya's hand. "Come on!" Anya lept up and the two of them dashed through the forest. For once, Lexa was keeping up with Anya easily. Geda and sekon together.
"Here," Lexa said, at last arriving at the tree. She hadn't realized how far it was from camp. "This one."
"It speaks to me too," Anya said, running her hands over the bark. "It is a good tree. Ready for what we need to do. Look, Lexa." Anya pointed around the tree. "What do you see?"
"Other trees growing nearby," Lexa said. "It's a forest."
"Not just. Some trees in a forest will find their niche, be able to grow tall and mighty with others around them. Like we do in our gedakru. Some trees, however, find a place to grow that isn't good. And the forest kills them. Slowly, it takes a long time, but eventually that tree cannot get sun, cannot get water, cannot get food. It's being edged out by the others around it. What do you see now?"
Lexa looked at her tree. Suddenly she realized. If this tree grew any taller, it would be in shade. The other trees around it were too close, blocking out the sunlight. "It will be edged out."
"When we look for resources to make our tools, Lexa, remember to use the things nature intended us to use. She doesn't want us to use the tall, thick trees that are healthy. She wants us to use the trees she never intended to be that way. Come," Anya said, bending down and drawing out a long knife. It was serrated along the side. "Cut."
Lexa took the serrated knife and began to draw it across the tree near the base. She repeated the motion over and over, watched as the cut became deeper and the tree began to tilt. The effort exhausted her arms but she kept it up, back and forth, long, deep cuts with the saw. Finally the tree tipped, and Anya caught it. They did the same thing on the other side, to get rid of the leafy branches. Anya collected these, tied them and slung them across her back for other use.
"You know what we're making now, don't you," Anya said as they walked back to camp.
"We're going to make a bow."