Wind Follower by Carole McDonnell

Author:Carole McDonnell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fantasy, african, minority, black, warrior woman
ISBN: 9780809557790
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2013-09-10T00:00:00+00:00

SATHA: Year Mark

Sowing Moon—The First Cool Moon

The year mark of my betrothal came and went. As I looked through the window of my room, I was like an old woman whose every thought was of regret. We should have waited to marry. I should not have demanded vengeance. I should not have visited the Third Wife’s room. All this and more.

I found it hard to move. My body ached. If I had looked into a mirror, I would have seen the face of an old woman. I understood then that women are made old by remorse and by the consequences of a mistake made in a single unthinking moment. Although he had been gone but a few days, I began to long for Loic’s return, not caring if he returned with a dagger unstained by Noam’s blood. Many mornings, many nights, my heart told me to climb the Arhe’s rampart, but when I had reached its heights and searched the far horizons, I always found my heart had deceived me. Loic was never anywhere to be seen.

One morning, footsteps echoed outside my doorway; I placed my feet on the cold mosaic tile floor.

“Arhe!” Gala called, “We’ve hung green fern from the wooden lamps in celebration of the Sowing Moon.”

“Come in, Gala.”

She entered, and together we sat on my bed looking through the window. The sun hung lower than it should have, tempting me to retreat to my bed.

“I wonder how Arhe Monua would have comforted you,” she said, looking out at the morning sky.

Gala was not that much older than I, and yet the worried, motherly way she looked at me made me smile.

“Why do you think I need comforting?” I asked.

“Because your heart is broken, Arhe,” she said, absent-mindedly braiding and unbraiding her hair. “So many sorrows all in one year, and if we add the sorrows that came before that—when almost all the Kluna were killed—how can you not be brokenhearted?”

“Am I brokenhearted?” I asked, rising to my feet. “I thought my heart was saddened but I thought it whole.”

“You’re brokenhearted,” she answered. “Sometimes we don’t know when our own hearts are broken. A good friend has to tell us.”

I reached for my gyuilta. “I’m glad you’re my good friend.”

“I’m worried for you, Arhe. You need to cry more.”

“I’ve cried, Gala.”

“Not enough.” She stood up and looked through the window. “Perhaps we should ask Yoran or Okiak to open the gates of death for us! Do you want them to call Monua up from the grave? It might comfort you to speak to her.”

I shook my head. “Ask Okiak? You know what the young chief thinks about such things.”

“He isn’t here, he won’t know, will he?”

“My husband thinks the Arkhai play tricks upon the living and pretend to be our departed ones.”

“But—”

“There are no buts, Gala. Should I disobey my husband and speak with the spirits against his will? No, I will never break covenant with him by doing such a thing.”

“But the dead in Gebelda and the dead in the fields we long for know many things, Arhe.

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