Listening at the Gate Read online

  Dawn birds called, deer ran, the dew rained down like tears. The mountain was as big as the sea, it was the sea’s equal, earth so alive that it trembled with itself—and it was mine, as the sea was Nall’s. Up and up I ran through the thickets until they were too dense for running, then I crawled, then I squirmed on my belly like a snake. The thorns were like knives but they did not stop me, I did not stop until the way opened a little, like a door, and I lay at the edge of an aspen meadow. There, standing against the trees’ new green, I found what waited for me.

  Bearlike, but not a bear; not a wolf; not a cat; a creature dark as shadow, warm as blood, lovely, terrible, shining in the morning.

  It was nameless, with no being but Being. It was myself.

  I stroked its sooty fur; I looked into the living eyes that met mine. “Oh you, beautiful!” I said. I leaned into the mouth that opened for me, that grew wider, deeper as I leaned into it. “Yes,” I said, and the white teeth came down.

  So.

  I woke on the hillside by the holy spring. My cousin Jekka found me there and ran to fetch the women of Creek. Frightened, weeping, they raised me up. I had been gone three days.

  “A bear came to you!” they said. “It ate you after all!”

  For, to them, it was a bear. It had to be a bear. If it was not a bear, then their narrow, certain world had gone vast and unknowable, out of their control; it had to be a bear.

  But it was not a bear. Whatever I had been for those three days—when, transformed into the being that had eaten me, I ran wild and alive upon the mountain—it did not fit inside the little word “bear.”

  In that timeless time I had heard the hawk cry, had snuffled the wet night meadows, tasted blood, watched the red sunrise. The world had spread out beneath my flying paws like spiderwebs on dewy grass, a loom of countless threads in a wordless order, and I was part of it.

  Then, as I had given myself to that being, it gave itself back to me. Once more just Kat, I woke, naked and shivering, by the spring where my cousin found me.

  The sisterhood of Creek brought me home. They gave me long skirts and deference; they said I was a woman. Even Raím had changed—his heart was not healed, but he no longer hid its wounds. He still loved me.

  But I did not know who or what I loved now. I was puzzled, unfinished, restless as water on a griddle.

  I had wanted to know who I was. Now I had a strange knowledge but no words to describe it. What was I to do? What I knew did not fit within Creek’s theology—and certainly not in the League’s; it did not fit anywhere in the world I could think of.

  I had no one to talk to about it. And what could I say? How do you talk, or even think, about something that has no name?

  So I named it. What had eaten me—the Being in whose being I had run upon the mountain—I began to call “the Bear,” with a big letter. I was just learning to read and write, and my spelling was terrible, but I knew that important things got a big letter.

  I longed for my brother Dai. He would think I was crazy, but that would not matter; his love for me was as steadfast as morning. Creek felt too small. In the weeks after my time as the Bear-with-a-big-letter, spring turned to summer. I used any excuse to get out of my aunt’s house and climb the mountain—listening, wondering, watching snakes and squirrels, hearing the bees in the sweet grass hum till the meadow shook like a purring cat.

  I wanted to be in the world again, as I had been in it when I was the Bear. I wanted to sing it or speak it, but all I had were words, clumsy and common, not the right ones. The world hummed; I listened and listened.

  Cautiously, with the edge of my mind, I thought about that other listener, Nall. I wondered whether I had dreamed him. He felt long ago and far away, part of the time before my breasts were scarred by that first, very ordinary bear. A voice in me began to speak, saying, What now? What next?

  And it is here that the story really begins.

  Listening at the Gate

  1

  Before the green sea

  struck the black rocks,

  I was.

  Before the blue earth

  rang like a bell,

  I was.

  I breathed before breath.

  I am beneath and above

  and through you,

  the sound of a soundless gong.

  I was, I will be,

  I am nothing at all.

  Nothing. At all.

  I am nothing,

  and the shore on which I break

  is all.

  Old Chant. The Rigi.

  ON THE DAY AFTER my seventeenth birthday I was on the mountain, digging wild celery root for my aunt Bian. It was near midsummer, but the peaks were still white; the aspen meadow was cool with spray from the snow-water creek that hurried to get down off the mountain, west and away.

  The meadow soil was black and damp, and the roots smelled like the cellar of the world. I was digging with both hands when a bear came down the mountain, along the far side of the creek.

  I stopped digging and sat quietly. I was not afraid; I had been eaten by the Bear, so this one was my sister. She was black and had two cubs, both brown, that rolled and pounced and fell in the creek and scrambled out. She was digging roots the same as I was. She grunted; her loose coat shone as she moved, and the meadow grass shimmered.

  She raised her nose from her digging and saw me.

  The meadow went still. Something will happen. Something. It was the hush before an earthquake, or the pause of a bell at the top of its swing, the clapper not yet fallen.

  Then the wind blew, the grass dipped. She dropped her head and snorted, and her children came rollicking. Without haste they ambled away down the creek.

  I watched them move out of sight, the pungent root in my hand. Not thinking, but with something shaping itself in my heart like thought.

  They disappeared beyond a willow bank. Then, from somewhere beyond that bank, a woman’s voice rose up.

  I am a man upon the land,

  I am a beast upon the deep,

  I am the fin that hides the hand,

  I am the dream that riddles sleep.

  I was on my feet, leaping toward the voice, scattering the roots in my lap. At the brink of the creek I saw nothing, but the voice rang like a bell.

  I am the wind that breaks the door,

  I am the pulse that fans the pain …

  I jumped from rock to rock, slipping and sprawling, plunging into a deep pool to claw and spit, for I could not swim well yet, only in the millpond. But when I had floundered abreast of the willows on the far bank, I did not see a singing bear, or a seal, or a Rig. I saw a Roadsoul girl no older than myself, kneeling on a stone and scrubbing a green shirt.

  I knew she was a Roadsoul by her tattered silks. She was alone; no encampment, no painted carts, no horses or camp-fires or lounging, laughing men. Only a pile of laundry and her little fat son, maybe a year old, naked on the grassy bank with both hands crammed in his mouth.

  When she heard me sputtering, she did not cease to scrub or sing, but fixed me with that look Roadsouls have, as if the rest of us are here for their amusement.

  I am the skin that sleeks the bone,

  I am the sun on the black sea.

  I am the heart that heals the stone.

  Come to me! Come to me!

  I had come, heart and eyes wide open. Mouth open too: I gaped at her. If a bear were to turn into a woman, I did not think it would choose to be a Roadsoul. Roadsouls are disreputable, and for two cubs, shouldn’t there be two boys? Forgetting all courtesy, I shouted over the water’s noise, “How do you know that song?”

  Now, with a Roadsoul one does well to be polite. She narrowed her eyes and grinned, showing teeth inlaid with gold stars. Then she harked about and said, “Do I smell a bear fart?”

  She did not mean those real bears which must have passed close. It was me she wrinkled her nose at. In that part of the world everybody knows a Creek girl must be eaten by a bear, and she could see that my
long skirts were new.

  “A wet fart,” she added.

  “It’s horse droppings you smell,” I said. Roadsouls burn those in their campfires. Scowling, I straightened my sopping clothes.

  Then she stared. Though my aunt Bian had sewn a special blouse for me, water had dragged down the cloth. The girl could see the four scars, purple across my breasts.

  I let her look. I told myself I was not ashamed. Her own breasts were unmarked, big with milk. Her eyes moved between mine and the scars. She said, “Did the one that marked you eat you?”

  “No.”

  “What ate you, then?” She asked this without scorn. She was my own age, she was not from Creek, she had sung that song.

  “In Creek they have to call it a bear,” I said. “They can call it that if they want to.”

  She spat into the eddies. “And they have to wrap you up safe in those long skirts?”

  Then I really wanted to know what she knew—and why. I asked again where she had learned the song.

  “All water sings that song,” she said.

  If it did, I had never heard it. But I did not say so.

  “It belongs to the First Ones. The Rigi.” She looked at me to see whether this hayseed knew who the Rigi were.

  I made my face be humble.

  She said, “The Rigi came out of the sea, at the beginning of the world. They were seals, but they took off their skins and were people. Sometimes they come among us.”

  “Do they?” My blush began. I said, “Why do they come among us?” Stammering: “Do you know any Rigi? Were they men? Why were you singing their song?”

  She made the slightest shrug. “I shall not tell you.”

  I wrung my hands. “Oh, please—only tell me, where did you learn that song?”

  “Everybody knows it.”

  “Not in Creek!”

  Her face said what she thought of Creek. “That song is for Long Night.”

  I shivered. She saw it. I said, “Did you ever dance Long Night in Downshore, by the sea? Roadsouls go there, I’ve seen them. Were you there last year? Did you see them dancing?” For he would have been dancing. Surely she would have seen him.

  “The year is near turned to Least Night. Why should I speak of Long Night?”

  “But—but—”

  Her little son took his hands out of his mouth and mimicked me. “Buh! Buh!”

  She bent to her scrubbing. Now and then she stole a glance at me. I could only fume and listen to the mountain water that—she said—had been singing the Rigi’s song all along, tumbling from every high place, west and down across the folded continent, past every gate and weir until it spilled into the sea.

  Maybe that mystery showed in my face. She laid aside the shirt and said, “Give me your palm, Eaten Girl. I shall scry your fortune.”

  “I have no money to pay you.”

  “Give me your palm.”

  I held it out, frightened. Fortune-tellers can see who your lover will be.

  My hand was strong, with earth under the nails. Hers was slender and took mine as if it had taken many. She gazed into my palm. As she gazed, her touch grew light, lighter, until my hand only lay on hers.

  I thought this meant she scorned it, and I tried to pull away. But she caught it again and held it as you might hold a bird. She looked up at me—looked and looked.

  I grew uneasy. “What do you see there?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You mean—I am to die?”

  “I did not say I saw a death. I saw nothing.” But her eyes narrowed again, her voice was singsong. “This hand shall be full and have nothing. This hand shall be heavy with gold and empty. This hand shall embrace the sea—” Her voice went ordinary, mocking. “But nobody can do that! You just get wet.”

  Indeed, my palm was still wet from the creek. To my surprise she kissed it, picked up her baby from the bank, and held him out to me, saying, “Thus is your fate. I shall tell you no more. Now give my child a gift, Eaten Girl.”

  He was sunburned and dirty; he kicked and crowed and laughed so that all in a moment I laughed too. Offering up my palms, I said, “But I have nothing!”

  “Give him a song.”

  I could not think of any songs but the one she had sung. “My father was a Leagueman,” I said. “We weren’t allowed to sing.”

  She threw me a sharp look, jigging the child. “Give him a song,” she said again.

  “The only songs I know are baby games.”

  “He’s a baby.”

  I thought of the League children’s chants and taunts, of which I had most often been the target, and could not find one kindly enough to give to a little boy with a tuft of brown fuzz like a bear cub. Then I said, “Wait, I know one. It’s not League, it’s Creek. My mother was from Creek. She sang it to my brother and me.” I put it into the Plain tongue, and thinking of the family of bears I had seen, I sang it to the baby.

  Bear in the black rock,

  Bear’s two children.

  My red cub, O!

  My brown cub, O!

  Warm in the black rock,

  Bear’s two children.

  My red cub, O!

  My brown cub, O!

  “O ba!” cried the child, and wet in the creek. We laughed, and that made the baby laugh. She washed him in the rushing water—he squealed—and let me hold him, squirming and warm. Then she kissed me and said, “Blessings on you, and on your brother, and on your parents and all your ancestors!”

  That seemed a big blessing for such a little song. Also, Father’s half of my ancestors would despise to be blessed by a Roadsoul. I gave the baby back, feeling that a person with such rude ancestors did not deserve him.

  Maybe she saw that sadness in my face, for she said, “Ask me one question, and I will answer it.”

  I could have asked again about those Rigi who come among us, or why she had sung their song, or what, truly, she had seen in my hand. Instead I pulled down the neck of my blouse and said, “Would a man—if he hadn’t seen me since I was an ignorant little girl, before I got these scars—would he still—?”

  She swung the baby to the bank, bent again to the pile of silks, and said, “The answer is: Go find out!” Then, when I did not move, “The child has his song, and you have yours. Go.”

  I went. Wading again across the creek that rushed down and down, jostling and sprawling in its haste to reach the sea, I looked back and saw for the first time the tracks of the bear and her children pressed into the mud at the bank, passing or stopping between the Roadsoul and her child.

  2

  Button, button,

  Tell me true,

  Who’ll she marry?

  Who’ll she woo?

  Fisher, tinker,

  Slacker, stinker,

  Shoreman dog,

  Hillman hog,

  Leagueman, pig man,

  Bald-with-a-wig man,

  Beggar with a tin can,

  Thief!

  Button-counting Song. Upslope.

  I GATHERED UP THE ROOTS I had dug, thinking of the man I had called to me with the Rigi’s song. I remembered the smell of him, like a young cat come from hunting with night in his fur. I walked down the mountain and straight home, to tell my aunt Bian and get it over with.

  I knew she would not want me to go. She had made the nine-day journey to Downshore twice, chosen by the Circle to be among the women who carried Creek’s pottery to sell at the great market that attends Long Night. It was on her second trip that she had found me there, dressed in my mother’s wedding clothes, searching among the festival crowds for her people.

  But Bian did not want to go to Downshore again. Her grandmothers and great-grandmothers were Hillwomen, she thought Creek was the world’s navel, and she hoped never again to leave it. So when I came to her where she hoed among the young melon plants and said, “I will go back to Downshore for Least Night,” she was not happy.

  “You’re a bear of the Circle now,” she said. The hoe blade chopped the youn
g weeds with strokes that grew sharper as she spoke. “That is an honor dearly bought. Why should you go away now, into the big crazy world where there’s nothing but fighting and paidmen, and nobody knows the signs and rites? Back to your father, who hit you on the mouth?”

  Her voice had risen. My cousin Jekka, picking the last peas, straightened and looked at us with eyes bright as a fox’s.

  “I won’t go to Father,” I said, lowering my voice. “I’ll go to my brother, Dai, and to Mailin the healer.”

  “It’s to that lad you’ll go,” said Bian.

  I blushed hot.

  “Let’s speak the truth,” she said. “One look from that lad carries more weight than duty or custom, more honor than being eaten by the bear—”

  “It wasn’t a bear! I don’t mind calling it that; I have to call it something. But it had no name. It wasn’t some little, harnessed bear in the Bear House—”

  “I won’t hear it!” Hoeing again, she spoke between whacks. “You made the proper fast. We said the proper prayers. If, instead of to the Bear House, you chose to go up the mountain alone; and if, as I believe, Ouma the Bear Mother herself found you and ate you, and in three days brought you back to us; still”—she thumped the hoe handle into the dirt and leaned on it—“still I say it was a bear that ate you, and you are a woman of Creek.”

  “I’m a woman of more than Creek.”

  I had not meant to say that. It sprang out of my mouth. But it was true. There were things I loved about Creek—making pottery with the other women, picking peas—but it was not my home. No place was. Home is where you belong, and the only times I had belonged anywhere were moments with Dai, his warm shoulder warding off the world’s demons.

  And when I had run on the mountain as the Bear; then I had truly been at home, part of the living world itself.