Eleanor Arnason - A Woman of the Iron People

“It’s too complicated for me,” said Tanajin. “I need a shamaness. Maybe I ought to go and find one.”

They pulled the raft out of the water and left it there, crossing the island on foot. Noisy birds filled the trees. The ground was covered with droppings: red and purple and white.

On the far side of the island was another raft. They used it to cross another channel.

The same thing happened. They pulled the raft onto the shore. They crossed the island. They found another raft.

“How much of this is there going to be?” asked Nia.

Tanajin made the gesture of ending or completion. “This is the last channel. There is no good way around the islands and if I try to cross the river all at once, the raft drifts too far down. I know. I have tried it.”

Nia said, “The hairless people have a boat that moves by itself as if it had legs or fins.”

“Is it magic?”

“No. It is driven by fire, though I don’t understand how.”

Tanajin made the gesture of amazement. But she didn’t look amazed. Instead she looked tired.

They crossed the last channel. By this time the sun was gone, but the sky was still full of light. The air was almost motionless. It smelled of the river and of the bowhorn, which had dropped a heap of dung on the logs near Tanajin.

“Mind your animal,” the woman said.

“I’m doing my best.”

They reached the shore and pulled up the raft. The sky darkened. They walked north along the river till they came to Tanajin’s house.

Nia took White Spot around back. She unsaddled the gelding and tied it, using a leather rope. The other two bowhorns were there, grazing on the short vegetation. She went around front. Tanajin had built a fire.

They ate without speaking. When they were done Tanajin went into her tent. She brought out a blanket. “I don’t want you in my house, Nia. I am angry at the news you’ve brought. Why is Ulzai the only person who hasn’t reappeared?”

Nia made the gesture of uncertainty.

Tanajin went inside.

Nia lay down. Bugs hummed around her. They bit her in the places where her fur was thin: at the edges of her hands, on the tops of her ears. She pulled the blanket up till it covered all of her and dreamed of being trapped in a dark place: a cave or a forest. There were people around her, moving and speaking. She couldn’t see them and their language was not one she knew.

She woke at dawn. Tanajin came out and rebuilt the fire. They ate porridge.

Tanajin said, “I dreamed about Ulzai. His clothes were soaked. Water dripped off his fur. He spoke to me. I could not understand his words.”

“I dreamed also,” said Nia.

“About what?”

“Darkness. Being trapped. And people. I don’t know which people. They spoke. I could not understand them.”

“These are bad dreams. We need a ceremony of aversion.” Tanajin frowned. “There are times I think this is no way to live. I have no female relatives. I have no shamaness. Now even Ulzai is gone.”

Nia made the gesture of polite agreement. “You said you have tools. I am going to begin setting up a place to work.”

Tanajin made the gesture of acknowledgment.

She built a forge downriver from the tent. It took nine days of hard work. The weather stayed the same. There were bugs every night. Tanajin gathered living wood and put it on the fire. The smoke drove away most of the bugs. Nia was too exhausted to mind the ones that remained.

Every morning she was stiff, but the stiffness wore off. The real problem was her hands. Blisters formed on the palms where the calluses had gotten thin. The blisters broke. The flesh beneath was red and tender. She wrapped pieces of fabric between her fingers and over the palms. Aiya! How clumsy that made her! She kept working.

“You don’t have to hurry,” said Tanajin.

“I like it. I understand what I am doing. It has been a long time since I’ve been able to say that.” She paused, trying to think of a way to explain. “This is the thing I do. This is my gift.”

Tanajin made the gesture of dubious comprehension.

The day that the forge was completed, something odd happened. A cloud appeared. No. A trail of smoke. It rose out of the south, going diagonally west, forming with amazing rapidity. Not like any smoke that Nia had ever seen. Up and up it went. Nia shaded her eyes. Was there something at the tip of the cloud? Something leaving the trail of smoke? That was hardly likely.

She listened. There was no sound of thunder and nothing in the sky except the trail, which had risen so high that she could no longer see the end of it.

“Huh!” She went back to work.

In the evening she went back to the house of Tanajin. The woman sat by her fire, cooking fish stew in a pot that hung from a tripod.

“What was that about?” she asked Nia.

“The cloud? I’m not certain. But the hairless people are south of here.” Nia scratched her nose. “I wonder how many islands there are in the lake. I wish I had a talking box. I’d ask the oracle or Li-sa.”

Tanajin made the gesture of inquiry.

Nia told her about the islands that fell out of the sky. “They come down with noise. Maybe they go up with smoke.”

Tanajin made the gesture of doubt. “Many things fall out of the sky. Rain of different colors, snow, hail, pieces of iron and stone. I’ve never heard of anything going back up again. Only smoke rises.”

Nia made the gesture that meant “you aren’t thinking about what you are saying.” “When the fire demons are active, the mountains throw up stones, and they can travel long distances. Ash rises at the same time, and fire.”

“You think these people are a kind of demon?”

“No. I think they have tools that are nothing like our tools, and strange things happen around them.”

Tanajin made the gesture of courteous doubt. “I am willing to believe that mountains cough up stones, though I have never seen one do it. I am not willing to believe that a lake can spit islands into the sky.”

The next day Nia began to repair the tools that belonged to Tanajin. Travelers came from the east: eight women who belonged to the People of Fur and Tin.

Tanajin ferried them across the river. It took her two days. When she got back, she said, “They have come from visiting the Amber People. A bad visit! Everyone there is quarreling. A ceremony has been ruined. They have been accusing one another.”

Nia shivered and made the gesture to avert bad consequences.

Tanajin went on. “They saw the cloud in the south. I told them about the hairless people. I said I knew the people existed. I had seen them. But I hadn’t seen any islands fall out of the sky. That news came from Nia the Smith, I told them.”

“You told them my name?”

Tanajin made the gesture that meant “don’t worry.” “I said you came from the east. They do not realize you are the woman who loved a man.”

“That’s good,” said Nia.

She continued to work on Tanajin’s belongings. The weather continued bright and hot. Late summer weather. The ground was dry, even close to the river. On the plain everything would be covered with dust. The village—traveling—would send up great dark clouds.

At night many arrows flashed out of the pattern of stars called the Great Wagon. That was ordinary. Those arrows came at the end of every summer. The Little Boys Who Never Grow Up were riding in their mother’s wagon, shooting their bows. Aiya! When she caught them!

Nia finished with Tanajin’s pots and began on her own gear: bridle bits, the rings on saddles, knives that needed sharpening, awls that would not punch through anything. Tanajin had a coil of iron wire. Nia made needles.

Now and then she saw clouds of the new kind: long and narrow. Usually they were in the south or southwest. They formed rapidly like the first cloud, and they were the same shape, but they didn’t rise to the peak of the sky. Instead they were horizontal. It was easiest to see them in the evening. The sun lit them from below. They shone like colored banners: red, yellow, purple, orange, pink. Sometimes Nia thought she could make out the glint of metal. The thing that glinted was always at the front end of the cloud, at the place where the cloud began.