Lady of Horses

1 WALKER WAS MAKING magic. It was only a small magic, a matter of fire and breath and a green plover's feather, and yet he set his soul in it, as if it had been a great working before all the tribe. Keen lay in the tumbled sleeping-furs and watched. He had forgotten her, as he had forgotten everything else but the magic he was making. She did not mind. She had given him the strength to do this thing, whatever it wasshe seldom asked. Her body in its deep places, the fire in her spirit, had fed his, till he rose and left her, and went to rouse the fire and work his spell. Whatever he did, she loved to watch him. Walker was a young man, far too young, some said, for a shaman; and yet he was the prophet of the tribe, the speaker to the gods who rode on the wind, the Walker Between the Worlds. He was beautiful, too, in the way of the People: slender and tall, fair-haired and grey-eyed, his face carved as clean as the edge of a fine flint blade. When the young men danced, he danced in front of them all, and all the women envied Keen, because her husband was both graceful and strong. Keen hugged herself amid the furs, clasping her arms tight about her breasts and running her hands down her belly. One came to rest there; the other slipped between her legs where she still throbbed gently from their loving. Maybe this time, if the gods were kindmaybe this time they had made a child. She smiled, thinking of it; letting herself slip into a dream of a bright-haired infant, a son for his father, with Walker's beauty and his grace, and his gift of magic. From the middle of the dream, she almost convinced herself that he would be born; that he would exist. That she could reach in the furs beside her and touch him, and show him what his father did, finishing his spell, letting the feather fall spiraling into the fire, and so vanish in a flare and a brief, pungent stench. Walker lingered for a while after his spell was done, crouching in the fading firelight. The shadows stroked the long lines of his back; they clasped his lean hard buttocks as, only a little while before, Keen's own hands had done. When he rose, he took her somewhat by surprise. She lay still. He took no notice of her. He was smiling, a faint, edged smile. Whatever the working had been intended for, it seemed he was satisfied. She was ready to take him back to bed again, and to do the other thing, too, that he loved to do after his workings as before; but he ignored her. He pulled on the long tunic of pale doeskin that was his right as shaman, and plaited his thick pale-yellow hair, weaving into it another feather of the plover; and then he went out, leaving her all alone in the dimness of the tent, with nothing to keep her company but the dying fire and the lingering stink of burnt feather. * * * Sparrow did not see Walker come out of the tent he shared with Keen, but she knew that he was out and about, just as a sparrow knows when the hawk has left his nest. The camp was different when Walker was abroad in it. People walked softer where he was, and watched their tongues. Everyone was afraid of the Walker Between the Worlds. Sparrow was not afraid of him. But neither did she exert herself to attract his notice. She was on her way to fetch water from the river, a task not particularly urgent but demonstrably usefulnot least for that it freed her from her father's tent. The wives were at their feuds again, White Bird taunting the others with her beauty and her wealth and the son who, she was certain, was swelling her belly. The rest, who had given the old man mostly daughters, were inclined to be bitter about it. And when the wives were bitter, the daughters were most likely to suffer. Sparrow, eldest and least regarded of those daughters, kept her head down and her shoulders bent as she trudged through the camp. Her back was still sore fromTarr, Judith is the author of 'Lady of Horses' with ISBN 9780312875725 and ISBN 031287572X.