Jo Clayton - Moongather

Raiki sighed. “Even half a chance, I’d send her home for good. I’ve tried with her, meto. I can’t make myself like her. Can’t.” She sipped at her cha. “She’ll be my death, damn her. Saw it when I went through the gates.” Her eyes, more brown than green now with brooding, moved over the camp. “Them too, meto. She’s going to kill a lot of them. There’s a dark hand reaching for her, the dark hand that loosed you to me, you know what I’m talking of. But she’s the only one with the talent, the only damned one.”

Serroi stirred restlessly, feeling the pressure of the janja’s desire. She looked up, stared, as five figures left their fires and came over to them.

Four of the men stood back, willing to support, unwilling to speak. Yod vo Rehsan stepped forward, scowling at the janja, ignoring Serroi. “There is an outsider, janja.”

Raiki sat without moving for a long moment, then she rose with slow massive force and stared back at him, her lined face expressionless. “I see no outsider, Yod. There is a guest. My guest.”

Yod glanced swiftly at Serroi who sat beside the fire, her arms wrapped around her legs. His dark sunken eyes were shiny with dislike. He was a man of quick and violent temper but he had a cunning tongue and was the mouscar’s leader, if that loosely organized collection of families could be said to have a leader. The group lived too close to the edge of subsistence for wide differences in the status of its adult males. Cooperation was essential to their continuance as a group. Yod had an abrasive persistence that wore down opposition. The other men were here now because he’d kept at them until it was easier to go along with him than to keep arguing. While mildly disturbed by Serroi’s presence, they’d come to accept her as the janja’s pet, but Yod was Yehail’s father. When Raiki’s eyes swept over them, they plucked at sleeve fringes and kicked at the sand,

“Guests stink after three days. We got no place for strangers.” Serroi could see his face darkening even in the dim light from the clouded stars. “I speak for the mouscar, we don’t want her here.”

Raiki chuckled dryly. “You speak for yourself Yod. And that daughter of yours.” She, moved her stern gaze from one face to the other, leaving each man distinctly more uneasy than before. “You going to let an adder-tongued girl tell you what to do?” She snorted. “Yod, you keep pushing this, you push your janja out too. Understand me, man. I won’t let you stick your nose into my household. So you might’s well trot yourself back to your fire, teach your girl to mind her manners and her business.”

One of the other men laid a hand on Yod’s arm. “Let it go,” he muttered.

Raiki sank down on her heels and poured another cupful of cha,, her shoulder turned on the men. She smiled at Serroi, tilted the pot, offering her a refill.

Serroi held out her cup, watching out of the corner of her eye as the men walked back to their fires. She bent her head over the rising twist of steam. “I said there’d be trouble.”

Raiki snorted. “Pay them no mind, meto. They need me too much to make trouble.”

“Would you really leave because of me?”

“Yah, meto.” Raiki chuckled, then drained her cup. “Wouldn’t stay away, couldn’t, you know. But I’d shake them up a bit. Won’t happen.” She sighed, “I wish you’d let me teach you, but you’re right, even if it is for the wrong reasons. I doubt if they’d ever accept you, not with Yehail backbiting.”

The mouscar stayed at the Northwell for three passages then began to trek south, the long leisurely trek from well to well as the grass grew greener and the days warmer-and Yehail grew more jealous, more dangerous. She spied on Serroi continually, and when she wasn’t spying, prodded at her, trying to force her into a hair-pulling fight. Serroi managed to swallow her anger, unwilling to hurt Raiki or further damage her standing with her people. By a combination of luck and close observation, the janja often caught Yehail before she went too far, sending her rolling with one of her backhand swats or cowing the girl into temporary submission with a vigorous tongue-lashing.

For Serroi this was a time of drifting. She clung close to Raiki as the only certainty left to her. Even her body began changing. She grew several inches taller, her breasts budded and she woke one morning with blood on her thighs. The herdboys took to coming by the janja’s tent, laughing and shoving, until one of them found the nerve to call out to her, then they’d all mill about laughing and joking for a few minutes before they ran off to join their family groups. As the mouscar moved slowly from well to well, working its way south, she grew restless, gradually becoming aware that she didn’t want to continue living the meager life of the Pehiiri. She hungered for the small luxuries she’d had in the Noris’s tower, though she couldn’t endure thinking of him. Clean clothing, daily baths, good well-cooked food, books, beautiful things around her. Above all, quiet and privacy. Raiki was mother and sister and friend; the warmth that had sprung between them from the beginning had grown quietly. Each time she thought of leaving, the nightmares came back. She’d dream of the Noris, wake up sweating, crying in Raiki’s arms.

When the winter mooncycles had passed and the year was turning to Spring, the mouscar reached Southwell, the most elaborate of the wells, small fields enclosed within stone walls and covered water pipes leading from the well to the carefully mulched land. As soon as the tents were up, Raiki was intensely busy with fertility rites for the land and planting ceremonies. Serroi was left to herself. She wandered out away from the well, sat looking down the long slope to the lusher valley far below.

Raiki found her still sitting there late that night, watching the sprinkle of lights in the valley, yellow-gold fires in clusters like a paler starfield on the darkness.

“You didn’t come to supper.” Raiki settled beside her with a series of grunts as she made her unwieldy body as comfortable as she could on the coarse earth.

“I wasn’t hungry.”

“Ah.” Raiki sat silent a long time, then she raised a large arm, bangles clanking like lonely bells, and pointed at the nearest group of lights. “Set-ma-Carth.” She sighed, the chains around her neck clashing softly. “The Shessel fair will begin in a few days. The men will be going down.” Her hand dropped into her lap.

Serroi glanced from the moon cluster to the lights of the city. “It’s time.”

“Yehail?”

“In truth, Raiki my friend, she’s only one of many reasons.” Serroi leaned against the old woman, slid her hand between arm and body, hugged Raiki’s arm against her.

“What’re you going to do?”

“I don’t know. Work my way across to the Biserica probably. I’m old enough finally.”

“Watch out for them, those lowlanders.” In the silence that followed her words, the rising wind picked up grains of sand and sent them skipping around between patches of brush. Over the plain below clouds were gathering. The lights began going out. “They’re not to be trusted, meto. Cheat you, kill you, rape you.” A big hand patted Serroi’s thigh. Serroi could feel her trembling. With an agitated clinking of chains and coins, the old woman moved away. Serroi heard heavy breathing, more rattling of coins. She turned to see Raiki working three of her coin-chains over her bead. The old woman thrust them at her. “Take these,” she urged. “You’ll need money down there.”

Serroi jumped to her feet, pushed the chains away. “I can’t take that. Raiki, your dowry!”

“Dowry!” Raiki’s mouth stretched into a broad smile. “More like burying money. Got plenty for that, meto. Who’d I leave the rest to? Yehail?” She snorted. “Not likely. It’s mine, got honest, mine to give where I choose.” She fell silent. The moons floated quiet and silver overhead, dipping one by one into the cloud layer over the valley. “I give where my heart goes, meto.”