Waiting for Auri’s return, I slept fitfully. Nana and Pua were up most of the night, conferring with various women who were put in charge of groups preparing for the walk ahead. Auri never showed.
Just before dawn Toci gently shook my shoulder. Bleary-eyed and wobbly from too little sleep, I dressed in my original outfit - jeans and a sweatshirt and pulled on Isobeau’s boots. I guess they were my boots now, since it looked like she wouldn’t be giving back my sneakers. Clothes given to me by various Daughters, I wrapped in a length of cloth that would serve as my suitcase - a thick robe for colder weather, a tunic for when I wanted to wash my jeans, and a weird kind of underwear the women here wore. I hadn’t found it very comfortable, but I packed it just in case. With what I had on and this little pack, that was it. I was ready to go. Still no sign of Auri. Nana hadn’t heard nor seen her either.
“Should I be worried?” I asked Nana.
“No, Auri has been many places in her life,” Nana reassured me, “and she has almost always been able to avoid danger.”
“Almost always?” Those two words made me very nervous.
Nana came close, rubbing my back, trying to soothe me, “Betty, Auri will be here. You need to stop worrying. Here, help me with my pack.”
Outside, we saw several carts being loaded with packs. I handed over ours to a woman who was inventorying what could go on which cart. One cart was nearly full and elders and their granddaughters were being helped into the back where they made seats out of the packs. Very little conversation was going on in the dark hours before dawn; before we headed out for Chalcedony and whatever our future would be or might be.
In the Great Yurt, only one cooking fire was going and a large pot of oatmeal was bubbling away. A woman swung it to the side so another woman could spread out the embers and douse them. There was honey and berries to add to the oatmeal, though I didn’t much feel like eating.
Afterward, we washed our bowls with sand from a pile near the fire. The pot was emptied and the cooks did their best to scrape and scrub it. They would let the small Woodlanders eat any leftovers.
As soon as Nana had finished, various women came asking questions, which she answered as best she could. They may not have known her as their Nana for long, but they trusted her, followed her directions, believed in her. Would the crew I was to lead do the same for me?
Of course they will - you’re a leader!
No I’m not, I’m just the unlucky one to be picked out of the crowd.
Going outside, I saw that the Kyr were strapped into harnesses at the front of the carts, but not all of them. Only one of the high bovine priestesses would accompany the Daughters. I asked Sangia where her sisters were.
“They’ve gone back to Bovina; back to the Herd,” she said through her interpreter, “to prepare the vulnerable to move to the cave.”
“What are the Kyr doing?” I asked, “I didn’t think they would pull carts, they seem to be more interested in running about.” Sangia snorted a little at this and said, “that is true, they are our wild selves we gave up when we became priestesses. Too bad, too, for I like to kick up my hooves every once in awhile.”
I smiled at this thinking of Sangia, Senu or the others playing in a field of daisies or running full-tilt at butterflies. I could imagine they could be as wild as the Kyr, but maybe not as edgy.
Of the six who had come with the high bovine priestesses, only three were set to pull carts.
“So only half are here in the village, where did the rest go?” I asked.
“They are escorting the high bovine priestesses back to Bovina,” Sangia said, “we are not safe since our own was sacrificed. The Kyr go to defend if necessary.”
“We can count on them to go with us to the Inquisito when the time comes, right?” I asked.
“Though there has been… tension in our relationship with the Daughters,” Sangia said, “now is the time we must come together. The priestesses and the Kyr will do whatever it takes.”
I hoped the ‘whatever it takes’ was going to be maybe a bit of Kyr bluster and some general fist-shaking and shouting to get the Malefici to see the error of their ways.
Right. Like that’s going to happen.
I asked around to see if anyone had seen Auri. All the Brothers had gone the night before, heading for other villages. I was trying to not be anxious that maybe Auri had changed her mind and decided to go with the Order instead of staying with us. I occupied my mind with the business or busyness all around me.
“You can’t take that much,” I heard one of the women in charge of carts say to one of the Daughters dragging a huge trunk of possessions, “remember what Betty, Nana and Pua said - this is temporary, we’ll be coming back. We need to travel light and we need to leave now.”
I was a little shocked and maybe a squoze prideful that my name was included with Nana’s and Pua’s, until I realized that meant I had responsibility. Thinking I must be one of the driving forces in confronting the Malefici made the oatmeal in my stomach feel like I’d swallowed rocks.
A spellcaster stepped in front of the first Kyr and began chanting as several others fell in step at various points on either side of those who were walking, keeping the carts and the women between them. They were the shield against any encounters we might have on our walk to Chalcedony. Haffre - the Kyr pulling the first cart - took a step, straining against the weight and inertia of the cart. A few women pushed against the wheels to get it moving, and that simple principle of physics rolled around in my thoughts - whatever is at rest, stays at rest; whatever is in motion, stays in motion. We were no longer at rest but moving toward a future in which certainty and uncertainty were cast like Castor and Pollux.
Before the Kyr, Isobeau and Arion lead the Daughters from their home. A rider and horse who now lived in a land that was their home more than the land from which they came, carrying the blood of their mothers and their mothers’ mothers. We were all going to a new place, carrying the blood of our ancestors with us no matter where we were to call home.