to fear, with such talk of cold cruel hearts, you didn’t like women very much and that you had chosen me because—”
A sound like that of an eel slipping out of a woman’s hand issued from the mouth of the lavishly dressed woman and silenced me.
“I like women well,” Taer answered, looking briefly in the woman’s direction. “And I find—now that I have spoken to you—that I like you very much.” He again glanced at the woman who seemed to have made herself my enemy. “Women who speak their minds don’t betray their husbands. Only, only, be gentle with my boy. He’s young yet and hasn’t enough experience to challenge your wit.”
He smiled again, and perhaps I saw too much in it. Perhaps it was only a fatherly gesture, but it troubled me, for already my eyes and heart were finding him too pleasing.
“May I ask you one more question, New Father?” I asked. Behind me, Mam was shaking like a volcano about to release its fury. “Do you truly want a wife for your son? Are you sure you haven’t brought me here to be his mother?”
Taer did not hesitate in his response. “Loic has many mothers, New Daughter. He doesn’t need another. A guardian of his heart, though—someone who will allow his heart to rest in her bosom—would do nicely.”
Many mothers. Orphaned children abounded in our land in those days, and my heart melted at the words. How sad, I thought, to have the falling sickness and to be motherless at the same time!
A din sounded in the mirrored hallway. All the guests stood up and I, too, prepared to stand. But Mam’s hand pushed me back into the pillow. Soon the thin slats of the ebonywood curtains seemed to fold themselves away, and behind them—as if rising up from an unseen realm—was the willful eighteen-year-old who had changed my life. On either side of him near the mosaic-tiled walls, singing servant girls played on tambourines. Leading him was an old woman whose braided white hair flowed out from under a Doreni coif. She wore the cotton leggings of a mamya under a buckskin tunic, and he kept glancing back at her as if asking for her approval. Her response was always a doting smile. She led him toward us as if he were Our Matchless Prince himself.
I should have been happy to marry the son of a great chieftain. Indeed, he was good to look at, nicely proportioned with thick hair tumbling over his shoulders like the waves of a waterfall, not like the little baby I half-remembered. He wore a green clan-cap made of dyed deerskin, with the Pagatsu beadwork. However, no feather or ribbon hung from the two golden loops in his earlobes. The only signs he was a chieftain’s son were the flowing embroidered sleeves of his long buckskin gyuilta and the jade Doreni firstborn bracelet.
He walked toward me, and when he arrived at my side, he turned his eyes on me. How silent the room became as he stood there attempting to peer behind my veil. Pale eyes he had, strange eyes, which seemed to mirror everything they looked at. For as they roamed my brown skin, brown they became, and when they rambled over the neckline of my green dress, a forest glade rose in them. Yes, he was good to look at. Except that his nose was a little too long, and one tooth was broken. A dull brown bruise near his chin, and a scar running the length of his forearm made me remember his illness. I thought, I’ve married a boy so doted on and spoiled he’ll probably end up even more useless than Father. No, he doesn’t seem like someone destined to be a warrior at all.
The moment this thought entered my mind, a hurt look appeared on his face. Surprised, I glanced at Mam. She shot me a threatening glance. I remembered her warning and her fear of ending up on the streets. My eyes stung. But how could I cry when the wounded eyes of a Doreni warrior’s son were trying to peer into my soul?
LOIC: Half Marriage
The lace veil didn’t entirely conceal my future wife’s face. But in those days, veils were made to tease as well as shield. Like a light winter snowfall on a sloping golden hillside, it flowed over her forehead. Beneath the veil, her eyes shone like sunlight and I longed to bask in them. The hem of her dress flowed onto the embroidered carpet like a river flowing into a meadow. Her perfumed skin was a floral garden—that scent alone would make the desert-dweller weep. How my lips longed to kiss hers. My hand wandered under the veil’s long hem. I found her fingers and squeezed them. None saw me touch her; none saw how she struggled against my touch, digging her fingernails into the palm of my hand.
“Are you hoping to draw blood?” I whispered. “You’ve only succeeded in piercing my heart.”
She turned her face away as if my whispered yearning was the buzzing of a bee she wished to swat. I thought, I’ll win our private undeclared war. Sensing she would keep her poise and not betray the struggle between us, I forced my fingers through hers and interlaced them. But her nails dug deeper into my flesh.
I saw a thought floating through her mind. The Creator has given me a child husband, one who will always be a child. My heart sank. It was like a boulder crushing my chest. I was seeing the marriage as she saw it. I thought, How can I prove to the one I love that I will become a true Pagatsu warrior?
All around us, my clan ate and danced. Although the Kluna clan was absent, scrolls of alliances were made. Wherever the remaining Kluna were, they would be brothers to the Pagatsu.
My heart, however, was on none of this. What, I thought, if I cannot prove myself and she rejects the full marriage when the year mark comes?
I watched as her gaze fell everywhere—on my father, on her parents, at Ydalle, at my Little Mother—but never at me.
With sunken heart, I sat and listened as New Mother Monua said, “The jewel of my life has now been given to your son—the crown of your life. Taer, your son must now forego wearing the youth cap. He’s to be a husband now, after all. Let him wear a marriage cap so all the ladies of Satilo know he’s married.”
Father laughed and removed my cap. “Layo, layo! Truly, yes! Let’s be rid of daughters sending their fathers to me for marriage talks.”
Everyone but Satha laughed at this. She looked at me with eyes that clearly said, I wish some other woman’s daughter had married you.
Little Mother said, “It’s time we leave the betrothed couple alone to get acquainted.” Then she crept up behind us and threw the red courting blanket that Mad Malana had made over our shoulders. Our families left the gathering room, and as the last foot disappeared behind the curtained entrance, Satha yanked her hand from mine and threw the courting blanket onto the ground. She gave me a warning look, something one would give a child playing too near fire.
“This is a good day the Creator made,” I said. My voice cracked, making me feel even younger than I already felt.
“It brings blessings for you and for me,” she answered, although she looked as if the day had brought disaster and not blessing.
“It is strange to be at my own betrothal ceremony,” I said, trying to look into her eyes. “Last year a cousin of my dead mother married.”
She answered with a voice neither inviting nor cold, but patronizing nevertheless. “Is that a fact?”
I pressed on. Oh how lovely she smelled. I can still remember it even now. “I didn’t attend. Father received the Desai News Runner and sent gifts but said it was best if I refused the invitation.”
She raised her eyebrows. “I thought you people were enslaved to customs.”
I thought angrily, We are not enslaved to customs, Thesenya! As a people, we always do what we consider right in our own hearts, and we change customs more often than you, an outsider,
