Wonderful in recall – if so much simpler than the wedding feast at Island when she was a girl, where victory had lain smoking with bloody beef-steaks on silver platters, glass-grown vegetables of almost every kind, and cane-and-honey sweetened cakes, pastries, and pies of Kingdom apples and far-southern fruit from over the Gulf Entire…
Her mouth filled with the saliva of imagination, Patience labored along, sometimes a little dizzy. If memories could serve, she would starve never. – But ground-walking in the present-now, and through tribal country, she didn't dare to linger even for the hope of a sometime rabbit, possibly snared with dark-blue thread from her clothes, twisted and set looped beneath a springing branch.
A throwing-stick was a perhaps for squirrel – would have been an almost certain, except she was left-handed. "Bad Goddamned luck," she said aloud, omitting even Mountain Jesus. The continual slope she walked along the mountain had her hobbling, with occasional awkward climbs over storm-blown trees and stony outcrops, as well as burrowing through vine tangles, berry bushes not yet bearing.
She had tried twice that day – as she'd tried the days before – to push the rocky ground away beneath and behind her. Tried and failed to clear her mind of grinding pain, so that rising in the air would be simple as taking a breath… It was almost certain that she would have been able to do it, younger. Then, two – and even three concentrations had been possible for her, at least for short periods. Now, the pain upset all.
She'd failed both times – was frightened after the second attempt, as if to try and fail too often might spoil the talent-piece in her brain forever, and leave her walking the earth as long as she lived.
So she traveled as humans and most Persons did – as she'd done for casual Warm-time miles herself, years before – trudging on the ground, long coat-tails catching in thorn and thicket. Ground-walking really an awkward business, after all – seeming, each step, to lean to a fall… then catch oneself to step again. Clumsy as an only means, and stupid as starving to death, which she seemed likely to do.
Being down-wind had spared her the mother bear's attention two days before – and light-headed, weary, her shoulder burning as if a bright coal were buried in it, Patience found being downwind useful again as, along an uneven slope, she smelled the faintest odor of wood smoke… then its companion odor of men.
She sniffed the air as an animal might – as any Person would – and sifted out three men, perhaps four. Men's pleasant, slightly bitter odor, but no woman's sweet and gluey scent. They were above her on the mountainside, just past its massive turning.
… There were considerations. First, the immediate of staying alive – she was left-handed, but her left arm was slung and useless. She'd have to fight with her right, so not as well. Second, there being at least three of them, there was no chance of killing one and settling in peace to roast and eat him – sad though that disgusting meal would be for her purity, and upsetting to the baby if he sensed it. Third, their odor was steadily stronger; they were coming down-slope. And though they were Sunriser-humans, and could hardly scent at all, they could and would see any trail marked clearly as hers.
She might run along the mountain's scrub and rubble – or down into the thick stands of hemlock, to be hunted through the coming dark, hunted again in the morning. Or she could stand and talk – then fight if that must be… Best, of course, would be to spurn this difficult earth, and Walk-in-air, with only curious ravens for company.
Patience stood still, closed her eyes – which she shouldn't have had to do – and tilted her head a little to one side… to pour and pour all thought, all consideration out of it, leaving only room for pushing the ground from beneath her.
She felt… she certainly felt the beginning of that wonderful vacancy… emptiness enough to fill with a single purpose. But still an edge of Patience Nearly-Lodge Riley stayed anchored, fastened to the fact of an agonized shoulder. No matter what trying – mind-dodging this way and that – there was not the singleness and simplicity of setting her mind against the ground, to refuse it, shove it down and away so she rose into the air… It would have been done, but the damaged shoulder ached to stay.
Patience felt the mountain stone still firm beneath her boots, and opened her eyes to evening light and trouble.
… Four men, and closer. Tribesmen, by their weather-washed, smoke-stained scent. If they'd been speaking, not hunting, she would already be hearing their voices.
The Robins' Thoughtful-man, Paul French, occasionally said, "Surprise."
Meaning, of course, that the world, packed with things unknown, was often startling – even discounting the secrets women knew.
The Robins' War-leader, Chad Budnarik, always added, "Response," meaning a man- – who was a man – met surprises with speed, force, and modest good sense.
These sayings were not in Pete Aiken's mind on Wild-plum Mountain, but came to mind on seeing the lady – of Boston unmistakably by her coat, her style, her curved sword and everything.
No one could say that a Pete-led posse didn't swiftly respond. The notion of hunting immediately thrown away, the notion of killing-or-capturing immediately in its place.
So down the mountainside went Pete Aiken; down the mountainside went Lou and Gerald and Gerald's brother, Patrick. The Boston-woman – a sort of Person for sure, who for sure had not walked far in these Robin mountains – did not rise up into the air, but limped and scuttled like a wounded bobcat down to the hemlocks.
"Ours!" Pete called, and led them down – then ducked since Gerald's brother, running behind, had thrown a javelin… sent it hissing barely over everyone's head.
The javelin went nowhere near the Boston-woman, but she ducked away as if it had… and was gone, tucked into the stands of evergreens.
"Never again," Pete said, which was taken to mean he wouldn't go hunting with Gerald's brother, anymore. Pete had his hatchet out – better for tangled fighting – so everyone else gripped theirs, and followed him into the hemlocks, calling, "Yoiks… yoiks!," an habitual humorous thing that was called after something seen, then treed or dug into a den – the Robins being usually a light-hearted people.
Deep in the trees, dark under tree-shadow, Patience stood waiting, wishing for sooner night, her greatcoat's blue blending into shade. She'd drawn her sword, Merriment, whose slim curved blade – forged so raindrops seemed to dance and run along it – had killed for her for more than twenty years. It had been a gift from her mother, presented perhaps as apology. Perhaps as anger, also, at Boston's womb-shaping of her daughter.
With the next birth, her mother had died.
… The Robins seemed a noisy four, young, cheerful, and confident in their mountain country at the corner of old Map-Kentucky. Patience smelled them, heard them coming in, and caught a distant glimpse of one – then another – between shaggy hemlocks. Presentable young men, lean-muscled, with cropped curly beards and mustaches, and already becoming summer-tanned, possessing the gloss and glow that well-fed savages sported while young. They'd be thickly scarred up and down their bare chests and bellies in sinuous feather-and-plumage patterns, to honor their totem… None would go naked as Sparrows and Thrushes often went. These all would be wearing – as those she'd glimpsed were wearing – the mid-east tribes' leather kilts and strap sandals. The hunt leader likely sporting a headdress of feathers dyed robin's-egg blue.
"Lou! Try in there." That called in fair book-English. Better, at least, than what the tribesmen chattered a Map-State to the south.