Sister Emily's Lightship (7 page)

Below her in the woods a cat coughed in answer. Selna reached for her knife and, holding it in two hands, waited a long time for the dawn.

Here in the Museum of the Lower Dales is the only Daleite mirror archeologists have recovered, though mirrors play such an important part in Hame histories and legends. The ornate wood frame has been reliably dated at two thousand years, of a laburnum that has not been found in those parts for centuries. It was found in the dig at Arundale, wrapped separately and buried some hundred meters distant from the buildings.

Many scholars have ventured informed guesses about the mirror. They include Cowan's thesis that the mirror was the property of the Hame's ruling priestess and that only she was allowed to own such a priceless treasure; Temple's more conventional opinion that the Hame, being a place of women, would naturally be filled with mirrors; and Magon's bizarre and discredited idea that the mirror was part of a ritual in which the young girls called up their twin or dark sisters from some unnamed and unknown alternate universe.

Note that all the carvings on the mirror frame are mirror images of one another, a symmetry that has been much commented upon. We do not
really
know what they stand for.

—FROM
AT HAME IN THE DALES,
MUSEUM BOOKLET PRODUCED BY MUSEUM OF THE LOWER DALES, INC.

Dawn came before the cat. Or instead of it. Selna had finally napped a bit, just enough to take the edge off her exhaustion. The imprint of the knife handle seemed etched into her palms. Her hands ached, and her back and legs. As she climbed down the tree, her stomach rumbled as well. Spending all night in a tree was never comfortable, but as her teacher always reminded them,
Better the cat at your heel than at your throat.
And there
had
been a cat.

She shoved the knife back into the belt and went to find something to eat. There would be berries down near the river. She had long since learned which mushrooms could be safely eaten, which could not. A good hunter never went hungry in the woods. She could always fish. When she and Marda went fishing …

And there it was again, the ache when she thought of Marda. It was as if she had been halved with a great sword, cleaved in two. Everything she had done before had been done
with
Marda. And now nothing ever again would be. Always and always Marda's dark sister, Callo, would be between them, whether or not there was moon or candle flame to call her out.

The ache was so real, she clutched her stomach with it, turned off the path, and thought she would vomit. Only nothing came up. Nothing.

“I am a warrior,” she reminded herself. “I am a hunter.” It did not stop the tears. It did not stop the pain.

She fished anyway. Wanting to die and dying, she found, were two separate things. The pain in her heart could not be fixed. The pain in her gut could. She caught a splendid silvery trout with a rainbow of scales. The act of fishing made her forget Marda for a while. The act of gutting it did, too. But as the fish cooked on the fire, the ache came back again, worse than before. It was so bad, she thought she might bring the fish back up again as well. But her body was stronger than that. It had taken her a day and a night and another whole day to understand that.

The body has its own logic,
her mother often told her.
The heart has none.

She buried the fish bones, scattered the remains of the fire. She had been taught well.

When she went into the woods to relieve herself, she found her pants spattered with blood and for the first time understood. The ache in her belly, the pain that spread like fire from her heart, had nothing to do with Marda after all. She was come into womanhood for the first time, here in the wood, here in her deserted state.

The body has its own logic.
She laughed and said it aloud. “The body has its own logic.” She covered the hole carefully with dirt, packed it down. She would have to go back to the Hame. A menstruating woman did not belong alone in a place of big cats. Especially with night coming on. She would wash in the river, and then she would go back to the Hame.

As in all warrior societies, the Amazonian women of the Dales did not concern themselves about gender. Homosexual couplings were common in the all-female society within the Hames. But in order for that society to continue, there
had
to be children. They were got in two ways. Either the women who were not exclusively female-to-female oriented went outside the community and mated with males, bringing any female offspring back to the Hame with them, or they took care of cast-off female children belonging to the outside world.

Such outside mating when done within the armies was known as Blanket Companions. A woman of the Hames who went into the nearby towns for the express purpose of conceiving a child was known as a Year Wife. One who stayed longer, but eventually returned to the Hame with her girl children, was called a Green Widow. We do not know why.

The river was cold, especially with night closing in around her, so Selna built a fire as close to the water as she could. Then she stripped off her leathers and, without giving herself time to think, plunged into the pool.

The water scrubbed at her and she shivered at first, but soon the act of bathing made her almost warm. She looked up at the sky. The moon—full and round—was creeping over the tops of the trees.

Selna stood still and the pool waters stopped rippling. The surface was like glass. When she looked down into the water, the moon was reflected back, as clear as in Mother Alta's mirror. Selna was reflected too, as if there were two of her. Selna—and her other. Marda.

The body has its own logic,
she thought, slowly raising her hands and speaking the words of the Night of Sisterhood.

She meant the words to call Marda back. If they had power—and she knew they did, everyone in the Hame knew it—then maybe here in the woods, where she and Marda had sealed their love in blood, she would come. Marda would come.

She turned her palms toward her breast and made a slow, beckoning motion, reciting the chant over and over.

It got dark, except for the moon overhead, except for the fire crackling on the shore. A slight mist rose from the pool's mirror surface, a mist that at first Selna could see through. And then she could not.

Her hands kept up the beckoning.
The body has its own logic.
Her mouth kept up the chant. The girls had trained so long with Mother Alta in that chant that once started, Selna could not stop. Her body was cold, almost immobilized by the cold. But the chant kept rolling from her mouth, and the mist kept rising, as if carrying away the last of her body's heat with it.

And then the mist seemed to turn and shape itself, head and hair and long neck and broad shoulders and arms that beckoned back to her and a face that was as familiar as Marda's and yet not familiar at all. And the mouth echoing her own:

“Alta's hairs! It's cold. Do we have to stand here till dawn?”

“We?” Selna wondered if she were dreaming.

“You, Selna. Me, Marjo. Your dark sister. You
did
call me out, you know. Blood to blood. Dark to light. Only it's hideously cold. And I can't move out of this stream until you do.”

“Do?” Selna echoed. And then in an instant it came clear to her. Out here, in the woods, not in the cozy warmth of Mother Alta's chambers before the mirror with the other mothers there for support, here she had called her dark sister. Marjo, not Marda. “I don't want you,” she said.

“Doesn't matter,” Marjo answered. “You've got me. At least for the night. Now can we go get dry. And warm?”

“Dry,” Selna echoed. “Warm.”

“Right,” Marjo said.

It seemed so sensible, and she suddenly was shivering so uncontrollably, that Selna turned, plowed through the pool on stiffened legs, and stumbled up the embankment to the fire, which was all but out. She fed logs into it and more sticks and leaves, Marjo exactly following her movements. With two working, the fire was quickly renewed, though it took much longer for the warmth to seep through and make them both stop shaking.

Near the town of Selsberry is a small pond, fed by an underground stream. It is called Sisters' Pond or Sels Pond. It is said that once a year, at the Spring Solstice, when the moon is at its highest point overhead, the mist rising up looks just like a beautiful young woman. The mist woman will call you with her mist arms beckoning. “Come to me, come to me,” she calls over and over. But you'd better not go. If you do, she'll drown you, just as she was, herself, drowned some hundreds of years ago when that underground stream was a great, roaring river. At least that's what the folks in Selsberry say.

Selna got dressed quickly and Marjo matched her, leather pants, linen shirt, leather jerkin, mocs. It was like a dance, really, the way they kept time to one another. Selna had known what to expect, of course. She had been around other women's dark sisters all her life. But expecting and
knowing,
it seems, were two very different things.

In the end Selna strapped on the belt and knife and grabbed up her bow. Marjo did the same.

“Are you really very like me?” Selna asked at last. She thought Marjo looked older, guanter. It might have been the black hair, the darker features. It might have been the moonlight.

“Very like,” Marjo said. “And not like at all.”

Selna put out the fire with her moc. Together they buried the coals. There was still enough moon to keep Marjo quick and eager.

“I need to get out of the woods. I'm—”

“
We
need to get out of the woods. One moon time is bad enough. Two is an open invitation,” Marjo said.

Selna hadn't thought of that. “What if a cat gets me?”

“It gets me, too.” Marjo laughed, though her face hardly changed with the humor. “I guess it is true as the Book says:
Sisters can be blind.”

“I…am…not…blind to this,” Selna said. She found no humor in the situation.

“You do not know how to laugh. In this way we are different. And in other ways. I am you, and I am also what you will not let yourself be.”

Selna turned away. “I have no wish to be what you are.”

“If your mouth turns into a knife, it will cut off your lips,
or so it is said where I come from.” Marjo had turned away, too, and her voice got very quiet. “You may not wish to be what I am, but we are together. Forever.”

“Forever?” Selna turned back.

“At least as long as you live.”

Selna was thinking so hard about that, she did not hear the sound. The first she knew there was a cat nearby was when he had launched himself, hitting her square in the back. Without hesitating, even as she was falling, she drew her knife.

The Ballad:

As Selna turned, knife in her hand, she thrust upward. The cat thew back his head at the same time as if trying to fight something behind him. Then he screamed—an awful sound—and collapsed on top of Selna.

She pushed him off and stood up shakily. “What…?” she began. Then she saw the knife in the cat's back and Marjo looking at her oddly.

“Lucky you drew your knife so I could draw mine,” Marjo said.

“I don't know what to say.”

“That's a good start,” Marjo said. “Let's skin this cat down quickly and go. It's spring. There might be a mate.”

“There's sure to be one,” Selna said. “But she's probably laired up with kits.”

That was the last they spoke, working side by side as easily and as silently as old friends. Or new enemies.

When they were finished, another night was all but gone. They started on the path together, but the moon could find them only intermittently. Each time it disappeared, so did Marjo.

When they reached the road at last, the moon was slowly setting behind the hills. It was long gone by the time Selna got to the gates of her Hame alone.