White Jenna Read online

  The trees were tall and full, a busy forest of much variety. Jenna identified beech, oak, whitethorn, and larch with ease, but there were many trees she had never seen before, some with spotty barks, some with needle leaves, and some with roots that twisted over and around one another above the earth like a badly plaited braid of hair. Ahead of them bright birds piped warnings from the branches, then flew away in noisy confusion. If there was sign of larger animals, Jenna did not notice for Piet kept up a quick pace, threading them through the trees on the ever-ascending path as if he knew where he was going.

  After a couple of hours, the path suddenly narrowed and they had to dismount, leading the horses for another hundred yards until the path disappeared entirely. They were forced to leave the horses tied loosely, and set off on foot. The way Piet chose wound upward at an even steeper angle, and soon they were all three breathing hard. Jenna felt a small pain under her breastbone but she would not admit it out loud.

  It was clear Piet understood the deep woods. He knew how to check before stepping. But Petra, in the full skirts she had been given by the New Steadingers, was having a great deal of trouble in the pathless ascent. Her clothes caught frequently on the thorny bushes and they lost precious time freeing her. Jenna clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth in annoyance, glad that she, at least, had kept her skins for the trip.

  At last the ascending woods thinned out and they could see a clear space ahead. When they reached it, they found themselves at the start of a high, treeless plain. The plain was covered with what seemed to be a forest of gigantic, towering rocks, some slim needle points, others wider sword blades, still others enormous leaning towers of stone, all hundreds of feet high. They had to crane their necks to see to the tops.

  “It is true, then,” Petra said when she had caught her breath.

  “The cliffs at least are true,” Piet said. “As to the Hame …”

  “Look!” Jenna pointed. Atop one of the broadest of the stones, far across the plain toward the north, was some kind of building. As they moved closer, over the rock-strewn plain, they could make it out. It had wooden galleries scaffolded into space and a roof like a series of giant mushrooms. Jenna could see no continuous path cut into the rock’s side. “There must be steps on the other side,” she whispered to herself, but the others heard.

  “We’ll look,” Piet said.

  It took them another two hours, into the fading light of evening, to circle the stone, but they found nothing.

  “Then how does anyone get up?” Petra asked.

  “Perhaps they fly like eagles,” Piet suggested.

  “Perhaps they burrow like moles,” Jenna added.

  They were still offering suggestions, when not twenty feet from them first a sound and then a cascading of something down the stone face brought them to the spot. It was a hinged ladder of rope and wood.

  “Someone is up there,” Petra said, staring beyond the ladder, her hand shading her eyes.

  “Someone who knows we are down here,” Piet said. He began to draw his sword.

  Jenna put her hand on his arm. “Hold,” she said. “It is a woman. A sister.”

  Piet looked up. Someone was descending the rope ladder. He slipped the sword back in its sheath, but his hand did not stray from the hilt.

  In the swiftly darkening night, it was hard to make out the figure climbing down. The shadow was stocky, heavier on top than on the bottom, somehow badly misshapen. Jenna wondered if only disfigured women—or the deranged—would remove themselves to such a place. Then she remembered Mother Alta of Nill’s Hame: blind, twisted, with six fingers on each hand. She had not needed a sanctuary apart from the others. We women take care of our own, she thought. There is another reason for this forbidding Hame.

  The shadow unwound itself from the ladder and stood before them. It was a woman, of that there was no doubt by the closeweave bodice she wore. But her strange humped back was …

  “A babe!” Petra said.

  At that very moment, the child bound to the woman’s back gave a cry of delight, waving its one free hand.

  “I be Iluna. Who be ye?” the woman asked abruptly.

  “I am Piet, first lieutenant to …”

  Pointedly ignoring him, Iluna stepped up to Petra and Jenna, putting her back to Piet’s face. The babe, seeing his heavy beard, stopped laughing and pulled in her little arm tight against her chest.

  “Who be ye?” Iluna asked again.

  “I be … I am Petra,” Petra began, “of the ruined Nill’s Hame, in training to be priestess to my own.”

  “And ye?”

  “I am Jo-an-enna of …”

  “She is the White One, the Anna, the anointed of the Great Alta,” Petra said. “She is the one of whom prophecy sings.”

  “Nonsense!” Iluna shifted the baby slightly.

  “What?” Clearly Petra was startled, but Jenna decided in that instant that she liked Iluna.

  “I said nonsense. She is a woman. Like you. Like me. Even in the shadows I can see that. But she is a woman with a message.”

  “You know …” Petra began.

  “Else she would not be here. Nor ye. No one comes to M’dorah, lest they be terribly lost, without a message or a quest.” She turned back to the stone and put her hand upon the ladder. “Come. After I am half up, put thy hand to steady the rung, then mount. The bearded one stays here.”

  “I go with them,” Piet protested.

  Iluna turned, her face unreadable in the almost-dark. “If ye mount the ladder, it will be cut when ye near the top and ye shall fall the hundred feet and we will leave thy bones below. No man enters M’dorah and lives. Be ye starving at the foot of our tower, we will throw down food. Be ye wounded, we will send a healer to ye. But mount the ladder, and we will cast ye down without another thought. Believe it.”

  “We believe it,” Petra said quickly.

  “I will return, Piet. On Catrona’s grave, I swear it. I will go back with you,” Jenna promised.

  When Iluna was halfway up, Petra began to climb, holding onto the shaking ladder with sweaty hands. By Jenna’s turn, it was pitch-black, the sky overhead sprinkled with stars that gave no light. She grasped the ladder and found rung after rung by feel alone. A slight breeze brushed loose hair over her eyes. Drawing in the spider breaths meant for difficult climbs, she felt her arms and legs begin to move fluidly, the rock face a blankness before her eyes. One slow breath after another, she drew herself up the ladder. When the ladder stopped its strange tremblings, she guessed that Petra had reached the top. Twenty more rungs, and she heard voices above her, calling encouragement. The last rungs held steady as they were wood set right into the stone itself with iron bands.

  “Welcome, sister,” a woman called.

  Jenna looked up into a lantern the woman held. It illuminated the ladder with a strong light.

  “Or should I say welcome, sisters!”

  “Thank you,” a voice said suddenly by Jenna’s side, “though in the dark I made little of the climb.”

  “Skada!” Jenna turned slightly, surprised to see her dark sister clinging to a shadow ladder on the rock face next to her.

  “Well, Jen, and what have you been up to these past few days, eh?” In the lantern’s glow, her mocking smile was unmistakable.

  Unaccountably, Jenna blushed.

  “You need not get red-faced on my account, sister,” Skada whispered. “He does smell sweet.”

  “Sssssskada!” Jenna hissed. Then she laughed uneasily. Of course Skada would know everything.

  As if reading her mind, Skada laughed back, “Not everything, sister. After all, it was very dark in that room and you lit no candles. I have only your memories …”

  “I will light no candles. Ever! Carum would not allow it!”

  “Hmmmmm,” Skada said, “and have you asked him?” But then she was forced to laugh at Jenna’s discomfort and Jenna, in turn, laughed with her.

  “Come, sisters,” the woman called down to them,
“ladders are no easy places for conversation. Join us at our meal. It is a simple feast, but there is enough for three more.”

  “Feast?” Skada said. “And I starving!”

  They scrambled up the last few rungs and the woman led them toward the building. Hung now with soft lights that bobbed in each twist of wind, the Hame was of both wood and stone, built to accommodate the various surfaces of the rock tower. Yet unlike a dirt foundation that might be smoothed for the easy placement of a house, the stone had resisted the makers who had to erect according to the cuts and crevices nature offered them. It made for a strange building, Jenna thought, with rooms on many levels and odd risers within a single room.

  The dining room was on three different levels, all dictated by the rock. A great table sat on the highest level with over twenty chairs around it. On the next level there were a half dozen smaller tables with between four and eight chairs. The lowest level held serving tables, loaded down with food. When they got close, Jenna saw that the tables and chairs were not of solid make but pieced together.

  The meal held many familiar foods: eggs boiled in the shell, forest greens, mushrooms, crisped and browned hare, roasted birds. But there were also strange berries Jenna did not know, and several pies whose fruits were a strange color. There was no wine, only water and a bluish watery milk.

  “What of Piet below?” Jenna asked.

  “Men can graze like cattle,” a woman answered.

  “If he were starving, we would throw food down,” said another. “But Iluna says he does not have the look of a starving man.” She put her hand out before her belly in gross imitation, and laughed.

  The others laughed, too, as they brought their heaping plates up to the great table. Jenna, Skada, and Petra were ushered before them. When they were all seated, they introduced themselves one after another, the names coming so quickly, even Jenna could not sort them out.

  “And ye three,” asked Fellina, the woman who had held the lantern, and one of the few names Jenna had caught. “What message do ye bear?”

  Petra began, “I am …” but Jenna and Skada stopped her with a hand on her forearm.

  “We are sisters from different Hames but with the same message,” Jenna said. “And it is a message of war.” She slipped the ring from her little finger. “This was given me by the Mother of Nill’s Hame.”

  “My Hame,” Petra said in a quiet voice.

  “Before she and all the women there were cruelly slaughtered,” Skada added. “By men.”

  “Kalas’ men,” Jenna amended. The women were so quiet, she went on. “Mother Alta said that I must go from Hame to Hame to warn them that: The time of endings is at hand. She said the Hame Mothers would know what to do. But you are …” Her voice cracked, and she looked down at her plate, suddenly overwhelmed by her memories.

  “We are what … go on, child,” Fellina said gently.

  Oddly comforted by being called a child again, Jenna looked up at the women around the table. The faces were different, yet they were somehow as familiar as those at Selden Hame in their concern. She drew in a deep latani breath and counted silently to ten. At last she spoke. “Yours is the only Hame I have found so far beside my own that has not been destroyed.”

  “How many have you actually been to?”

  “Two. But …”

  “But we have had reports of ten destroyed utterly,” Petra said.

  “Ten of how many?”

  “Of seventeen,” Jenna answered.

  “Eighteen, if you count M’dorah,” Skada added.

  “No one ever counts M’dorah,” Iluna said, unstrapping the baby from her back with the help of her dark sister. She began rocking the child slowly in her arms.

  “I had never even heard of M’dorah till yesterday,” Jenna admitted.

  “I had—but I thought it only a tale,” Petra added.

  “Ten. Gone utterly. Ten.” The number seemed to make its way around the table, drifting down even to the women sitting on the lower level. Slowly they mounted the four steps to stand by their sisters.

  Jenna and Skada looked around, waiting until everyone was silent. Then Jenna spoke, articulating the way the king had on the great steps at New Steading, consciously letting her voice carry. These were her people. She had to speak now.

  “I have been called the White One, the Anna, though I have not really claimed it. Whether or not you believe that is who I am, believe this: I come with a message. There is war. Men against women; men against men where women still suffer greatly. Something is ending, so prophecy warns. I do not know if it is the world that is ending, but surely the world of the Hames is being destroyed.”

  “Destroyed utterly,” Petra muttered. “Go on, Jenna.”

  “We cannot let that world go without fighting to retain something of what it means. Something must remain of Great Alta’s teachings. Some of us must be sure there is a place in the new for sisters side by side.”

  “Side by side,” Iluna echoed, spinning the phrase around the table.

  “What would ye have us do?” the woman next to Iluna asked.

  “Come down from this hidden Hame, from this secret safety and join us. Fight with me, side by side as the old rhymes say. Do not let only men fight for us. For when men fight alone, the victory is also theirs alone.”

  “Ye would have us leave this secret safety to die among strangers? Among men?” Several voices called out, then answered themselves, “No!”

  “No!”

  “No!” The word spun crazily around the table.

  Jenna could not tell which of them had spoken.

  “Speak for us, Maltia,” someone cried.

  A woman and her dark sister stood at the opposite end of the table from Jenna. They were both tall, with jet-black hair ending in graying braids, as if the crown of their heads were younger than the ends. They stared down the long table at Jenna.

  “I be True Speaker of this Hame,” one of them said at last. “And this be my sister Tessia.”

  Jenna nodded her acknowledgment, as did Skada.

  “We have no Mother Alta as ye have,” Maltia continued. “We have no one ruler. I be the True Speaker but I do not otherwise lead. In this way we broke long ago from the false Alta’s teachings, coming to this place of eagles and bright air, worshipping only the true Alta. She who waits in the green hall where it be said Every end is a beginning and it is also said No one stands highest when all stand together.”

  “Jenna,” Petra whispered to her, “that is what the Grenna teach.”

  Jenna pursed her lips and stood herself, Skada by her side. She addressed Maltia directly. “We understand more than you think, True Speaker. We have been in Alta’s grove with the Greenfolk. We have stood in their circle. We have seen both cradle and hall.”

  “Ahhhh!” The sound came from all around the table.

  “But …” Jenna said, hesitating for effect, “we were not women alone there. We were women and men. Petra and I and …” This time it was not for effect.

  “And thy dark sister?” asked Tessia, her face full of a cunning Maltia’s did not hold.

  “There are no shadows in the grove,” Jenna said quietly, “though you would have me stumble on my memories and say it was so.”

  “Ahhhh!”

  “What men be there with ye?” Iluna asked suddenly.

  “Iluna!” Tessia’s voice was sharp. “Ye be not True Speaker.”

  Iluna seemed to draw back into herself, holding the baby against her breast as if it were a shield.

  “Who be those men?” Maltia asked as if there had been no interruption. “Was the bearded one with the belly below one of them?”

  For a moment Jenna considered lying, considered saying that Piet had been with them, for such an admission might help him, help their cause. But then she set aside the idea as unworthy—unworthy of the audience and unworthy of Piet himself. She was, after all, talking to their True Speaker. She must be a true speaker herself. To do otherwise, was to be like the ki
ng.

  “No,” she said, still looking straight at Maltia, “they were not three grown men at all, but boys. One Alta gifted with a crown, one with a wristlet, and one with …” She put her hand to her throat, for a moment unable to speak.

  “And one She gave the collar?” asked Maltia.

  “Yes!” Jenna croaked. “And because of it he cannot speak.”

  “Ye would not have him speak his terrible truths,” Tessia said. “They would bring doom on all. True Speaking be as much truth as any human can bear to hear, though it be but a shadow of the Herald’s words.”

  “You know …” Skada began.

  “They be The Three,” said Maltia. “The Young Heralds. The Harbingers. We know. But how any followers of the false Alta could know of this, be too much of a puzzle for me. It be writ nowhere but in the Second Book of Light.”

  “The second Book?” interrupted Petra. “There is no second Book.”

  “It be the Book of M’dorah,” said Maltia, “written by the true Alta herself when She left the grove and came to this place of high rocks to build a sanctuary, an aerie where even eagles dare not rest.”

  “Where even eagles dare not rest …” Petra whispered, “Jenna, Alta said others had come to the grove.”

  Maltia and Tessia sat down heavily in their chairs. “We must think on this.”

  “You have no time to think!” Skada roared, pounding her fist on the table. “You only have time to act. We must be back down and to our army before the sun’s light.”

  “Skada!” Jenna cautioned, though Skada had spoken only what she, herself, had been afraid to say.

  But Maltia and Tessia were lost to them, hands over eyes, deep into latani breathing and thought.

  Standing suddenly, the baby still clutched against her and her own dark sister by her side, Iluna cried, “I will go, though no one else goes with me.”

  “And I!” Two long-faced young women stood.

  “And I!” A middle-aged woman with deep carved lines from nose to mouth rose slowly. By her side rose another woman, the lines on her face more shadow than real.

  Maltia looked up. “Wait!” she cried. “We may not be part of this ending, nor part of this beginning either. Do not rush into it. Remember: If ye rise too early, the dew will soak thy skin. Do not drown M’dorah in this.”