“That’s so sad!”
“Yes, but his lover is expecting another baby. They will not have to be sad much longer.”
The next two to come to their feet sang much sweeter melodies, though the tunes were still wistful enough to leave Miriam depressed. She was so tired. She was so far from the people she loved. Well, she was not actually sure she loved anybody these days, but everyone she knew was far away and had no idea at all where she might be. She wanted to curl up in a little ball and shut her eyes against the firelight, the starlight, the chance of thinking. She came unsteadily to her feet and looked around her for a place to sleep.
Instantly, Tirza was beside her, leading her from the circle of firelight. “Over here,” she said. “We’ve spread our pallets on this side of the camp. See? Anna is sleeping already. I knew you would be exhausted—this has been a long few days for you.”
“That music is all so dreary,” Miriam blurted out.
“Do you think so? They’re just folk songs, little tunes about everyday life.” Tirza guided her to a pallet and knelt beside Miriam as she sank to the ground.
“They’re about babies dying and—and I don’t know what else, but they sound like they’re about broken hearts and lovers leaving and—and things like that.”
Tirza pulled a cover up to Miriam’s chin. “Well, babies do die and lovers do leave. That’s part of life,” she said. Her voice sounded amused. “But many babies live and some lovers stay around forever, and we have songs for those events, too. It is just that firelight tends to bring out the sad memories for some. But just because they are sad, that doesn’t make them any less precious.”
Miriam turned on her side. “I’m so tired,” she said.
Tirza leaned over to kiss her on the cheek. “Sleep well, allali girl,” she said. “You will have another full day tomorrow.”
C hapter S eventeen
And indeed, the next day, and next day, and the day after that, were all very much like the day that had just passed, and so were all the following days. Everyone in the camp rose early, wakened by the sun, and took just a few minutes to eat and do some desultory personal hygiene. Then they were on the move again. Some nights they camped by a riverbed, and then they took care to fill every canteen and jug and pot with water; other nights they camped by stands of trees, and then they gathered firewood against the cold nights ahead.
Sometimes when they traveled, they passed through fields of wild onions or groves of fruit-bearing trees, and so they foraged as they walked. Berries, nuts, hard little apples—all of these they found on the way. Dathan, Eleazar, Thaddeus, Bartholomew, and the other men would disappear during the course of the day, to return, if they were lucky, with rabbit or gopher or pheasant prizes. Once or twice, the men would combine their skills to bring down bigger game, and then the whole camp would feast for a day or two. It did not matter who caught the game or who found the fruit; everything was shared equally. Everyone did his or her part in readying the meals or the camp at night, and no one went to bed hungry or alone.
When there was more meat than they could eat in a night, or more fruit than they could consume for breakfast, the women carefully dried the food and packed it away in special containers. Winter was coming, even Miriam could see that; winter would be here in a month or two, and then there would be no easy hunting or foraging. They had to prepare now or die.
Miriam continued to be surprised at how hard the life was—hard in every sense—from the unyielding ground they slept on to the sheer physical difficulty of preparing every single meal from scratch, the near impossibility of keeping clean. But she was even more surprised at how quickly she adapted to it. She became adept at spotting the spiky little marrowroot shrubs before anyone else had seen them (they made an excellent addition to stew when water was scarce), and she didn’t mind kneeling in a field for half a day, stripping berries from their secret places under sleek dark leaves. She learned that she was strong enough to haul heavy buckets of water uphill, and coordinated enough to spill very little. She also learned that she wouldn’t die if, three nights in a row, they camped somewhere so far from water that there was no chance she’d be able to wash herself thoroughly in the morning. But this in turn taught her how happy she could be made by the simple sight of a brisk little streambed and the promise of clean hair by day’s end.
She also learned that she could master a new skill if she put her mind to it. Because she had asked them to, Tirza and Amram had begun to teach her the fine art of rock-throwing. The men of the tribe hunted with a variety of weapons, including small spears and compact crossbows, but Amram was not considered old enough to handle such items without supervision. And though Tirza could handle a crossbow (“When I feel like it,” she added), she and most of the other women chose not to deal with actual weapons. But, like Susannah, they could throw rocks with deadly accuracy and bring down a rabbit or, occasionally, a low-flying bird. It was a skill the young ones of the tribe also possessed, and Miriam was intrigued by it.
“As much as anything, it’s practice, practice, practice,” Tirza had told her. “Throw at everything, as we walk along. Pick a target, see if you can hit it. See how hard you can hit it. See if you can hit it without making any noise as you approach it. See if you can avoid swinging your arm in a wide arc that will draw the animal’s attention.”
All this seemed contradictory to Miriam, but she began to practice all the same. Most mornings, she would fill a shoulder bag with rocks of all sizes, and she would spend part of the day aiming these at various trees and weeds and boulders as they walked along. By trial and error, she began to learn which sizes of stones fit best in her hand, which weights and shapes were the easiest to throw. She didn’t have a great deal of range, so she suspected she would never get close enough to any wildlife to put it in danger, but her accuracy improved fairly rapidly. She didn’t have much strength, either, though she could knock a small stone off a big boulder if she hit it just right. Not quite like braining a rabbit and rendering it senseless. But if she lived with the Edori long enough, she was sure she would eventually get the hang of it.
She had been traveling with the Lohoras for more than two weeks before she realized, one night, that she was not completely exhausted. She was pleasantly weary, yes; her legs felt stretched and tired from her long walk, and her back ached a little from bending over bushes in a field. But those were minor sensations—welcome, actually, because they made the act of sitting that much more enjoyable. She was looking forward to settling down on her pallet, but she wasn’t so drained that she almost couldn’t imagine taking the twenty steps necessary to move between the fire and her bed. She felt pretty good, actually. She felt pretty happy.
So she waited until Thaddeus’ pregnant lover had finished her sweet but mournful melody, and then she rose to her feet. There was a little murmur of surprise from those still gathered around the campfire, because until now, she had not once indicated any interest in singing. In fact, until this very moment, it had not occurred to her that she might ever want to do so. But she did. She wanted to sing a happy song.
“Some of you may know this. If you do, please feel free to join in,” she said, glancing around at the faces looking up at her from around the fire, and feeling a fierce surge of affection for every one of them. There was Dathan with his gorgeous face and sleepy eyes; Bartholomew with his serious, watchful expression; Anna, so severe and so incapable of anything but kindness. There was Amram, even now trying to tease a smile from Claudia’s daughter, five years older than he was and not interested in the attentions of younger boys. There was Claudia, sitting with Tirza, no doubt gossiping about Bartholomew and Anna, who everyone knew had shared a tent for the first time last night. There was everyone, in fact—everyone in her small world.
Miriam raised her cupped hands before her as if to catch dew or starlight; she tilted her head up toward the watchful god. When she started singing, her joy poured out of her like honey from one of Anna’s spice cups. The song was
an upbeat one of praise and thanksgiving, a harvest song she’d heard in the Bethel fields. Each short little dancing line was punctuated with a quick off-count handclap, and each verse ended with a different list of benefits.
“Jovah, we thank you—Jovah, we thank you—Jovah, we thank you, for giving us this day,” Miriam sang. “Thanks for the sunlight, thanks for the moonlight, thanks for the starlight, shining on this day.”
About a dozen Edori voices came in on the next line, changing the main word to suit themselves. “Yovah, we thank you—Yovah, we thank you—Yovah, we thank you, for giving us this day.”
Miriam took the lead vocal back. “Thanks for the cornfields, thanks for the wheat fields, thanks for the bean fields, growing on this day.”
Now she called him Yovah, too, a much more beautiful name, simple to say, moving through her mouth as easily as breath. Then, “Thanks for the young ones, thanks for the old ones, thanks for the sweet ones, living on this day.”
Everyone was clapping along with the music now, a few of them stamping their feet. Claudia’s daughter had even gotten up and started to dance. It was an irresistible song, simple though it was; it conferred liveliness and goodwill. Thaddeus jumped up before Miriam could go on to the next verse, making up his own words, as Edori were wont to do.
“Thanks for the fair ones,” he sang, pointing at Miriam. “Thanks for the dark ones,” he continued, sweeping his hand around to indicate the circle of Edori. Then he bent over to put his hand to his lover’s swelling stomach. “Thanks for the new ones, here with us today.”
That was it, Miriam knew; she would not get her song back. Laughing, she sat down as Dathan rose and offered his own thanks to the god. And after Dathan, Eleazar, and then Tirza, and then, one by one, nearly everyone in the camp. They were all giddy with silliness by the time, finally, no one could think of one more set of prayers, and the song came to a sputtering halt. Miriam let herself fall backward onto the ground behind her.
“Oh, that feels so good!” she exclaimed. “I haven’t laughed that hard for—for years, maybe.”
Dathan came over to push her back to a seated position, and then knelt on the ground beside her. “You should sing more often,” he said. “You have a beautiful voice.”
“I have a nice little soprano voice that sounds like a child’s cry when you set it next to an angel’s,” she retorted.
“Then you should not sing with angels anymore,” he said, gazing into her eyes. “You should sing only with Edori.”
And, staring back up at him and willing herself to say something clever and snappy in return, Miriam found herself at a loss for words. The firelight turned him into a still, gorgeous Edori statue, all leather-brown face and midnight-dark eyes, the embodiment of freedom and beauty. It was not even Dathan she was seeing as she stared up at him, it was the collective soul of the Edori people, simple, straightforward, never at rest, always at peace.
I will never go back, she thought, unable to speak, unable to look away from him. I will be with the Edori for the rest of my life.
Their wanderings took them, one afternoon, to a place already set up as an Edori campsite. Miriam, pushing a cart for Thaddeus’ pregnant lover, was one of the last to make it over the little rise in the land, the last to see the triangular shapes of the tents against the sky, to catch the unmistakable smell of an Edori cook-fire. She stopped a minute, scowling down at the unfamiliar faces, wanting to pick up the handles and awkwardly turn the cart around, heading back in the direction from which they’d come.
But all the other Lohoras were elated, running down the hill, calling out words of excitement and joy. Miriam saw Tirza deep in lively conversation with two young women about her age. She saw Claudia scoop up some little girl, maybe three years old, running half naked through the tents. Bartholomew and Eleazar had already threaded their way to the back of the camp and were standing with unknown men near the hobbled ponies, where they were no doubt discussing horseflesh, weather, and the availability of game.
But Miriam did not want to mingle with these strangers. They were not her Edori; they would not be her friends. She wanted the Lohoras all to herself.
Still, she could not set up her own camp, here on the crest of the hill, and pretend she was too good to take a meal with the others. Frowning even more heavily, she pushed the unwieldy cart down the hill and right to the edge of camp.
Thaddeus came running up to her, excited as a boy. “Come meet Shua’s mother and father,” he invited. Shua was his lover, the one expecting the baby in a few months. It was to be the first baby born to the Lohoras in a long time. “We have fallen in with the Corderras, can you believe it? Shua’s family. They did not know our news and they are so delighted!”
Well, that kind of happiness it was impossible to begrudge. “Does she need anything from the cart?” Miriam asked.
“No—no—just come meet them,” Thaddeus said impatiently, and grabbed her hand. He towed her through the camp, calling out greetings and insults, and shouting, “This is Miriam!” anytime someone looked with interest at his companion. “Yovah bless you, Miriam!” these new friends called as she was tugged past them, and all she could do was wave and start to laugh.
Shua’s parents were hovering around their daughter, talking extremely fast and interrupting their words only to pause, stare at her in exquisite joy, and swoop in to kiss her on the cheek. So were Shua’s siblings, a brace of girls and a boy about Amram’s age—or maybe these were cousins or friends or simply other children of the tribe. Who could tell? Shua was flinging her arms around each voluble well-wisher, mingling her black hair with theirs for the duration of that brief hug, and pulling back to gaze with at them with heartfelt emotion.
Miriam did not particularly wish to intrude upon this reunion, but Thaddeus hauled her right into the circle. “This is Miriam,” he announced. “She’s been pushing Shua’s cart since she got too slow and heavy to do any work.”
There was a general outcry at this, but everyone was laughing, and Shua went to stand next to Thaddeus, his arm going around her. Miriam listened politely to all the Edori names, even tried to match them to faces, but she was still feeling a little sullen. She did not want to share her friends, her family, with anyone else. They were a small, perfect unit as they were, just the right number of people, just the right mix of personalities. She did not want strangers exerting their inevitable pull, changing alliances, stirring up new emotions.
Who knew, perhaps Shua would choose to sleep in her parents’ tent tonight, leaving Claudia and Bartholomew and Anna lonely? And what if her sisters whispered in her ear, told tales of how much they missed her? What if Shua’s mother begged her to come live with the Corderras for the winter, have her baby under the safe, watchful eyes of family? Would Shua listen to such entreaties? Would Thaddeus follow her to the Corderras? Well, of course he would. He could scarcely let Shua out of his sight as it was, he would hardly let her go off without him to bear their child. Then what would the Lohoras do, missing so many of their clan?
“I have left your cart at the bottom of the hill,” Miriam said somewhat baldly to Shua. “Shall I go fetch it? Where will you be?”
Shua waved a languid hand. She was always so tired by the end of the day. “Thaddeus will get it when I need it,” she said. “But won’t you stay and have dinner at our fire? We will eat with my family tonight.”
“No—thank you—I must go find Tirza,” Miriam said, hoping she did not sound rude. “It was very nice to meet you all, of course,” she added politely before turning away. She heard the chorus of replies as she stalked through the camp, looking for her own tent.
But it was hard to find anything or anyone here. The Corderras were a big tribe, twice as many as the Lohoras, and everywhere she turned, there was another strange face and another cadre of children, heedlessly careening past the fires. She could not find the Lohora section of camp—or, no, that tent looked familiar, sandwiched between two tents that she did not recognize at all. Was that
it, then? The Lohoras were pitching their own tents in the spaces between Corderra campfires, deliberately trying to be absorbed into the larger group, to erase their own identity—to become, for this one night, at least, Edori and not merely Lohoras.
Miriam did not like it at all.
She was standing there frowning, looking about for her own tent or at least someone she recognized, when a little boy came darting out from around a cart and headed unsteadily in her direction. He tripped and fell, an action that triggered a look of incredible surprise on his solemn face. And then he screwed up his eyes and began to wail, more in anger and consternation, Miriam thought, than real pain. No young mother came instantly running. He had, it seemed, escaped all supervision in his one quick dash for freedom.
Miriam crossed over to him and caught him up in her arms, cradling him against her to stop the crying. “There now, mikale, it is not so bad,” she said, swinging him from side to side in an instinctive rocking motion. “Did you hurt yourself? Or are all those tears for show, just because you do not like the way the world is ordered? I could cry just as hard as you could, you know, and for the exact same reason, but I try not to make such a spectacle of myself. I try to have a little pride.”
He had stopped sobbing almost as soon as she picked him up, and now he was staring at her with great interest, his big eyes only inches from hers. He took his fingers out of his mouth and extended them, wet and sticky, to touch her cheek and then, wonderingly, her hair.
“Yes, I am a blond allali girl, not a type you’ve seen very often, I’ll guess,” she said, still rocking him, still staring down at his perfect little serious face. “But let me tell you, where I come from, more people look like me than look like you. You would be the strange one among my family, little mikale.”
A light laugh behind her turned her around, the child still in her arms. “You would appear to have a way with children,” said the young man who had come from nowhere to eavesdrop on her ridiculous conversation. He was slim and tall, with his black hair tied back in a braid and his dark eyes huge and long-lashed. “He will not sit still for me for five minutes.”