COUNTING RIBS
On the edge of the crater, where mage-enraged winds ripped anything with corners to shreds, fleeing people crouched around tents. The camp seemed weighted down solely by four large tents at the quarters' edges.
They hunched beside a perfectly circular, blasted, sunken circle, the remnants of a huge war between mages. One of the large tents was set where the winds rampaged over the last of the tracks the People had left, and whistling over the bare earth, the gusts were sucked into the vast hole that was once the People's home. There was nothing there that would sustain the Clans; there was no place for them elsewhere.
The tent was skilfully crafted of carefully tanned skins, and barely hummed in the wind. It was sparse inside; de rigeur carpets were strewn carefully over the floor, the sole inhabitant's belongings piled carefully into a far corner. He sat at the edge of the circle they made, the children grouped around him blinking up into his face as he told a Teaching-Story. He also hoped to learn something from it in the telling.
"This is the story as it was told me." The Shaman's posture drew up, in the lines of the traditional opening of any teaching tale, and the children relaxed into the student's poses. "Once there was a man, and his luck went bad. He had brought little or nothing home for many moons. Looking into another day of no meat to bring home to his family, counting his ribs, he went to his Shaman, and to the Goddess. She answered him, and heard his plea for Her help. The Star-Eyed looked the hunter up and down and said, "You aren't dead yet."
Shaman Ra'kesh relaxed his spine and shoulders, rocking off the points of his knees, as the children slowly absorbed the story, rustling like little leaves. "Now, children, go eat!" They scrambled from the Gathering Tent to their own, all long forearms and knees. Ra'kesh unfolded from his pillows and watched them go, thinking of the looks on their parent's faces. He had found nothing new in the Teaching-Story. Then he welcomed the other three Shamans.
* * *
There were many pots of black bitter kel tea. The tent, littered with bright pillows and floor coverings, became also littered with cups and dishes and bare desperation. These were cleared as fasts to find answers came, then came arguments, then silences. Prayers to Her from the Shamans had gone unanswered.
The winds were low-voiced and seeking at night, keening during the day and stinging with dust. Every time the tent flap lifted, more dust covered the carpets, and it smelled a little of horses, a little of people, and of fire and flame and ash. It was grayish tan, and it soon lay deep enough in seams that the Shamans could no longer ignore its insistant presence. After two and a half days there was still no answer for the People but the one all of the Shamans had carried in with them like the last pot to wash after a feast. The Shaman's faces as they walked back through to their respective camps needed no questions, nor explanations.
Three of the camp's four quarters packed their tents on horseback. Two of them had only to go a quarter of the trek around the crater, but Ra'kesh's Clan had to reach the far side. None wanted to travel down into the hole, and it would be a full moon and a half before Ra'kesh could be in place. Even on the horses that gave his Clan so much pride, for they were surely the fastest and sleekest racers and the sturdiest pack horses and the most dangerous war mares of all the Clans, even on such beasts it would take so long to reach the far side.
* * *
"Full circle, Mother. You gave this to me when I dedicated myself to the Star-Eyed. Hold it in safe keeping for my younger sibling. For when she decides to also serve the Crone as a Shaman." The amber stones, beautiful on silver chasing and a braid of black hair from all the family to four generations back, was pressed into Maman's palm. Her cheeks and eyes were dry, but somber.
"Are you so sure, then, Ra'kesh, that Telnan will join the Face of Her that you hold to? The flight has made her so hard...perhaps it will be that she dons black and is consecrated to the Face of the Warrior." What she did not say was that what Ra'kesh must willingly do to save the Clans would turn young Telnan from serving as Shaman.
Ra'kesh did not answer her true meaning. "The People don't need another fighter, Maman. The Shamans will make it safe to raise children and horses. The mages are dead, we have come from the fighting with all the Clans, and we will again have more horses and herders than warriors." His determination to make the world of the next generation as he had never seen it made his shoulders rigid and his eyes darker. "Keep this for her, Maman, for when she can wear it when she takes her duties as an adult of the Clan. When we are at peace."
"My son. My first child." He did not see them, but he felt her tears on his shoulder.
In the large tent, Ra'kesh again went slowly over the last of the words of a spell, showing his best apprentice the correct tones and pacing. One cup of kel later, he was satisfied with her progress and announced, in the same words his mentor had told it to him, that she would take over all the Shamans' duties for the Clan.
He passed her as she was bringing her sleeping blankets into the Gathering Tent, he leaving with his. She stood back to let him pass first, then dropped her blankets on the step-mat outside the flap and hugged him tight. Ra'kesh kissed her forehead and held her much as his teacher had kissed and held him. But he had been much, much older.
He woke with determination and pride, sorrow and love. The first thing Ra'kesh saw were light brown eyes -- his sister had slipped into the tent to be alone with him. She brushed back her big brother's hair, kissed his temple, and left. He ate a little of the food she had come with, meditating until he heard the signal of the bright-toned horns over the wind's hooming. The camp was silent.
Bathing and dressing, his mind was clear. He could see perfectly...the faces of all the people he loved. When he walked out, they, and all of his Clan, were arrayed at the flap. Each of them touched him, received Her blessing from him, and he gave out the last of the things that were his. His parents smiled to see him give his four horses to his youngest nephew and niece, now of the right age. His blankets went to his apprentices : he knew the floor could get cold when you slept alone. The only thing he would carry with him was the strip of leather embroidered with their names Telnan had given him.
No need to look up. The moon had just risen in the blue afternoon sky, strangely crisp through the yellowing dust. It gritted in his slitted eyes as he walked to the edge, the wind coming up the face of the cliff, slamming into his toes, his thighs, his chest, chin and nose. He looked down and down into the hole, past where the deepest well his father had drunk out of had been sunk, and saw nothing but crazed glass and devastation.
Now, standing at the North, he held out his 'hands' to the West and East. Ra'kesh found them clasped firmly by those closest two Shamans and, through them, he felt the Southern Shaman. As one, they stepped from the cliff.
Gathered in the Star-Eyed's arms,
I stare through eyes as spangled as hers
She walks across the blasted ground
Flowers and grain spread from her footprints
Stardark
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