Woman Who Loved the Moon (8 page)

Akys said, quietly, “Why don’t you stay the night?”

Jael shook her head.

During the days she became a human woman. She learned, or relearned, for surely she had known these skills before, to chop wood, to skin, clean, and cook animals, to fish, with coarse strings of hemp she had twisted herself, and a willow pole. She got cold and wet, went hungry when Akys did, and climbed to her cave tired and footsore. But she always went back at night. Fidelity had made her set the lumenings to Record, and she turned them on each evening, awaiting—what? Sometimes she told herself she was waiting for her recall. Touching her machines, she was once more the Goddess. But in the morning, when she went back down the slope to Akys, the reality of Reorth receded in her mind, and all its designs became bits of a dream, known only at night, and she did not think of recall.

Akys never asked questions. The brief tale told at their first meeting remained unembroidered, and Jael had half-forgotten it. She felt no need to have a past. Sometimes Akys looked at her with a stir of inquiry in her gray eyes. But if questions roiled her mind, they never reached her tongue.

Spring broke through winter like water breaking through a dam. They measured time by the rise and fall of the river. In spring the fish came leaping upstream, and if you held out a net—ah, if you just held out your hands—they would leap to the trap, bellies iridescent in the sunshine. In the white rapids they looked like pieces cut from rainbow.

“I want to bathe in the river!” cried Jael.

“It’s too cold now,” said practical Akys. “You’ll freeze.”

“Then I want summer to come.” Jael pouted. “Why does the year move so slowly?” she demanded, flinging her arms wide.

Yet in the cavern at night, she saw the year moving swiftly, and wished that her power extended to the movement of the planet in its course around its sun.

The spyeyes set to Rys told her that armies and ships were gathering. They will be coming in the fall, she thought. They will be ready then. Spykos, king of Rys, was drawing men from all his cities and from the cities of nearby Dechlas. He cemented his alliance with Hechlos by marrying his daughter to Hechlos’ king’s son, and the goddess within Jael-the-woman raged, that these men could see women as so many cattle, bought and bred to found a dynasty. Spykos raided the harbor towns of Nysineria and Kovos—in winter!—distracting them, frightening them, keeping them busy and off guard. Jael watched the raids with a drawn face. It hurt, to see the villages burn.

What will you do?

This was the question she did not allow herself to hear. If she heard it, she would have to answer it. It kept her wakeful at night, walking through her caverns, staring at the dark, unspeaking lumenings.

Akys scolded her. “What’s wrong with you? Your eyes have pits under them. Are you sleeping?”

“Not very well.”

“I can give you a drink to help you sleep.”

“No.”

“Won’t you stay here? It tires you, going home at night.”

Jael shook her head.

Summer came to the mountain with a rush of heat. The children herded the beasts up to the high pastures again. The crags echoed to their whistles and calls and to the barking of the dogs. The heavy scents of summer filled meadows and forests: honeysuckle, clover, roses, wet grass steamy after a rainstorm.

Akys said, “You could bathe in the river now.”

They went to the river, now strong and swift in its bed. Jael flung off her clothes. Her body was slim, hard and flat, golden-white except where weather had turned it brown. She dipped a toe in the rushing stream. “Ah, it’s cold!” She grinned at Akys. “I’m going to dive right off this rock!”

Akys sat on the bank, watching her, as she ducked beneath the flowing, foamy water, playing, pretending to be a duck, a salmon, an otter, a beaver, an eel. Finally the cold turned her blue. She jumped out. Akys flung a quilt around her. She wrapped up in it, and rolled to dry. The long grass, sweet with the fragrance of summer, tickled her neck. She sat up.

“Hold still,” said Akys. “You’ve got grass all over your hair.” She picked it out with light, steady fingers.

Jael butted her gently. “Why don’t you go in?”

“Too cold for me,” said Akys. “Besides, I’d scare the fish.” She looked at Jael. “I’m clumsy.”

Jael said, “That’s not true. You move like a mountain goat; I’ve watched you climbing on the rocks. And you’re never clumsy with your hands. You didn’t pull my hair, once.”

Akys said. “Yes, but—you look like a merwoman in the water. I’d look like an old brown log.”

Jael said, “I’m younger than you. I haven’t had to work as hard.”

“How old are you?” Akys asked.

Jael struggled to see her face through timebound eyes. “Twenty,” she lied.

“I’m thirty-two,” said Akys. “If I had had children, my body would be old by now, and I would be worrying about their future, and not my own.”

Jael let the ominous remark pass. “Are you sorry that you have no children?” she said.

“No. A promise is a promise. For the beauty I lack—a little.”

“Don’t be silly.” Jael bent forward and caught Akys’ hands between her own. The quilt slid from her shoulders. “You
are
beautiful. You cannot see yourself, but I can see you, and I know. Do you think you need a man’s eyes to find your beauty? Never say such nonsense to me again! You are strong, graceful, and wise.”

She felt Akys’ fingers tighten on her own. “I—I thank you.”

“I don’t want your thanks,” said Jael.

That night, Jael lay in Akys’ arms on the narrow, hard, straw-stuffed pallet, listening to rain against the roof slats, pat, pit-pat. The hiss of fire on wet wood made a little song in the cabin.

“Why are you awake still,” murmured Akys into her hair. “Go to sleep.”

Jael let her body relax. After a while Akys’ breathing slowed and deepened. But Jael lay wakeful, staring at the dark roof, watching the patterns thrust against the ceiling by the guttering flames.

* * *

Autumn followed summer like a devouring fire. The leaves and grasses turned gold, red, brown, and withered; the leaves fell. Days shortened. The harvest moon burned over a blue- black sky. The villagers held Harvest Festival. Like great copper-colored snakes the lines with torches danced through the stripped fields, women and children first, and then the men.

Smoke from the flaring torches floated up the mountainside to the cabin. Akys played her flute. It made Jael lonely again to hear it. It seemed to mock the laughter and singing of the dancers, and, as if the chill of winter had come too soon, she shivered.

Akys pulled the winter furs from her chest, and hung them up to air out the musty smell. She set a second quilt at the foot of the pallet.

“We don’t need that yet,” said Jael.

“You were shivering,” said the witchwoman. “Besides, we will.”

One night they took the quilt out and lay in the warm dry grass to watch the stars blossom, silver, amber, red, and blue. A trail of light shot across the sky. “A falling star!” cried Akys. “Wish.”

Jael smiled grimly, watching the meteor plunge through the atmosphere. She imagined that it hit the sea, hissing and boiling, humping up a huge wave, a wall of water thundering through the harbors, tossing the Rysian ships like wood chips on the surface of a puddle, smashing them to splinters against the rocks. I wish I could wish for that, she thought.

“What are you thinking...?” said Akys.

“About Rys.”

“The rumors...”

“Suppose,” said Jael carefully, “suppose they’re true.”

Akys lifted on an elbow. “Do you think they are?”

“I don’t know. They frighten me.”

“We’re inland, a little ways anyways, and this village is so close to Her mountain. They wouldn’t dare come here.”

Jael shivered.

“You dream about it, don’t you?” said Akys. “Sometimes you cry out, in your sleep.”

Later she said, “Jael, could you go back home?”

“What?”

“To that place you came from, in the west, I forget its name.”

“Cythera.”

“Yes. Could you go back there? You’d be safer there, if the men of Rys do come.”

“No,” said Jael, “I can’t go back. Besides, I know you won’t leave this place, and I won’t leave you.”

“That makes me happy and sad at the same time,” said Akys.

“I don’t want to make you sad.”

“Come close, then, and make me happy.”

They made love, and then slept, and woke when the stars were paling. The quilt was wet beneath them. They ran through the dewy grass to the cabin, and pulled the dry quilt around them.

Jael went back to the cave the next night.

This is madness, she told herself on the way. You cannot be two people like this; you cannot be both the Goddess and Akys’ lover. But around her the dark forest gave no answer back, except the swoop of owls and the cry of mice, and the hunting howl of a mountain cat.

She went first to the lumenings, but they were dark. In all the months she had stayed away, no messages had come. Next she checked the spyeyes. Ships spread their sails across the water like wings, catching the wind, hurrying, hurrying, their sails dark against the moonlit sea. She calculated their speed. They would reach the coast of Mykneresta in, perhaps, four days. She contemplated sending a great fog over the ocean. Let them go blundering about on reefs and rocks. If not a fog, then a gale, a western wind to blow them back to Rys, an eastern wind to rip their sails and snap their masts, a northern wind to ice their decks... She clenched her teeth against her deadly dreaming.

She waited out a day and a night in the cave, and then went back to Akys.

The witchwoman was sitting at her table with a whetstone, sharpening her knives.

“You have some news,” said Jael. “What have you heard?”

Akys tried to smile. Her lips trembled. “The runner came yesterday, while you were gone. They have sighted ships, a fleet. The villages are arming.” Her face had aged overnight, but her hands were steady. “I walked down to the forge and asked the smith for a sharpening-stone. I have never killed a man, but I know it helps to have your knife sharp.”

“Maybe they will not come here,” said Jael.

“Maybe.” Akys laid down one knife, and picked up another. “I went to the Lady’s pool yesterday, after I heard the news.”

“And?”

“There was nothing, no sign. The Lady does not often speak, but this time I thought She might... I was wrong.”

“Maybe She is busy with the fleet.”

Akys said. “We cannot live on maybes.”

“Have you had anything to eat today?” said Jael.

Akys stayed her work. “I can’t remember.”

“Idiot. I’ll check the snares. You make a fire under the pot.”

“I don’t think I set the snares.”

Jael kissed her. “You were thinking of other things. Don’t worry, there’ll be something. Get up now.” She waited until Akys rose before leaving the little hut.

She checked the snares; they had not been set. I should never have stayed away, she thought. She stood beside a thicket, listening for bird sounds, keening her senses. When she heard the flutter of a grouse through grass she called it to her. Trusting, it came into her outstretched hands, and with a quick twist she wrung its neck.

She brought the bird to the table and rolled up her sleeves. Akys was poking up the fire. “I chased a fox from a grouse,” Jael said. “Throw some herbs into the water.”

In bed, under two quilts, they talked. “Why do men go to war?” said Akys.

“For wealth, or power, or lands,” said Jael.

“Why should anyone want those things?”

“Why are you thinking about it? Try to sleep.”

“Do you think She is angry with us, Jael, for something we have done, or not done?”

“I do not know,” Jael answered. She was glad of the darkness, glad that Akys could not see her face.

“They have a god who lives in fire, these men of Rys.”

“How do you know?”

“The smith told me. He must like blood, their god.”

“Hush,” said Jael.

Finally Akys wept herself into an exhausted sleep. Jael held her tightly, fiercely, keeping the nightmares away. So Akys had held her, through earlier nights.

In the morning they heard the children shrilling and calling to the herds. “What are they doing?” wondered Akys.

“Taking the cattle to the summer pasture.”

“But why, when it is so late—ah. They’ll be safer higher up. Will the children stay with them?”

Jael didn’t know.

That night, when she wrapped her cloak around her, Akys stood up as if to bar the door. “No, Jael, you can’t go back tonight. What if they come, and find you alone?”

Jael said, “They won’t find me.”

“You are young, and beautiful. I am old, and a witch, and under Her protection. Stay with me.”

Under her cloak Jael’s hands clenched together. “I must go,” she said. “I’ll come back in the morning. They won’t come at night, Akys, when they can’t see, not in strange country. They’ll come in daylight, if they come at all. I’ll come back in the morning.”