10
The River and the Precipice
Koshmar said, “So it is to be Lakkamai for you, is it?”
It was the third day since the end of the time of rains. Koshmar and Torlyri were together in the house they shared, at nightfall, after dinner, when all the tribe had gathered to observe the midwinter ceremony of the Provider: all but the mysteriously absent Sachkor, for whom daily searches were now being undertaken.
Torlyri, who had been lounging, sat swiftly upright. Koshmar had never seen such an expression on Torlyri’s face before: fear, and a kind of sheepish guilt, and something close to defiance, all mixed together.
“You know?” she said.
Koshmar laughed harshly. “Who doesn’t? Do you think I’m a child, Torlyri? The two of you making eyes at each other all over the settlement for weeks — and you, mentioning Lakkamai’s name in every third thing you say, you who could go a year and a half without ever once having occasion to speak of him—”
Torlyri looked down, abashed. “Are you angry with me, Koshmar?”
“Do I sound angry? That you should be happy?” But in fact Koshmar was troubled more than she had imagined she would be. She had known for a long while that something like this was coming, and had told herself that she would be strong when it did. But now that it was here, it was like a huge weight on her heart. She said, after a moment, “You’ve been coupling with him already, have you?”
“Yes.” Torlyri could barely be heard.
“You used to do that, a long time ago, when we were girls. It was Samnibolon you did it with, I recall. Minbain’s Samnibolon, am I right?”
Torlyri nodded. “And one or two others, yes. But I was very young then. It has been an extremely long time.”
“And you find pleasure in it?”
“I do now,” said Torlyri softly. “There was nothing for me in it, those times long ago. But there is now.”
“Great pleasure?”
“Sometimes,” said Torlyri, huskily, guiltily.
“I am very glad for you,” Koshmar said, her voice high and tight. “I never could see the sense of coupling, you know. But they tell me it has its rewards.”
“Perhaps it must be done with just the right person.”
Koshmar snorted. “For me there is no right person, and you know it! If you were a man, Torlyri, I’d couple gladly with you, I think. But we have our twining, you and I. We have our twining, and that’s sufficient for me. A chieftain doesn’t need coupling.”
Nor does an offering-woman, Koshmar added silently.
She glanced away so that Torlyri would not see the thought in her eyes. She had sworn not to interfere with what Torlyri was doing, however painful it might become for her.
Torlyri said, “Speaking of twining—”
“Yes, speak of twining, Torlyri! Speak of it anytime.” Sudden eagerness made Koshmar’s breath come quickly. The deeper Torlyri’s involvement with Lakkamai became, the more eager Koshmar was for any token of affection from her. “Now? Right now? Certainly. Come.”
Torlyri looked surprised and perhaps not pleased. “If you wish, of course, Koshmar. But that was not what I was starting to say.”
“Oh?”
“It’s time for Hresh’s twining-day, is what I was beginning to tell you. If I can manage to get him away from his machines and his Wonderstone long enough, I have to take him aside for his initiation.”
“Already,” Koshmar said, shaking her head. “Hresh’s twining-day.”
That was one of the offering-woman’s tasks, to initiate the young people into the way of twining, and Torlyri had always performed it with great care and love. Koshmar had never minded all those shared twinings, though twining was so much more intimate than coupling. Initiating the young was Torlyri’s god-given task. If any of this made sense, Koshmar thought, I should be more troubled by her twining with Hresh than by her coupling with Lakkamai. Yet it is the other way around. Torlyri’s twining with the young was no threat to her. But her coupling with Lakkamai — her coupling with Lakkamai—
Coupling is nothing, Koshmar thought angrily.
She told herself that she was being illogical. And then she told herself that all these matters were far beyond logic. The heart has a logic of its own, she told herself.
“Taniane has had her first twining, and Orbin, and now it is Hresh’s time,” Torlyri said. “And then Haniman.”
“How fast time moves. Sometimes I still think of him as that mischievous boy who tried to slip past you through the hatch, that day when the ice-eaters came and the Dream-Dreamer awoke. That strange day seems terribly long ago. And so does Hresh’s boyhood.”
“This has all been so odd,” said Torlyri. “For the old man of the tribe to have been someone not even old enough to twine.”
“Do you think it will change him, once he begins?”
“Change him? How so?”
“We depend on him so much,” Koshmar said. “There’s such wisdom in that strange little head of his. But children change, sometimes, when they first begin to twine. Have you forgotten that, Torlyri? And Hresh is only a child still. That is something we must never let ourselves forget. Once he finds a twining-partner he may give himself up to nothing but twining for many months, and what will happen to the exploration of Vengiboneeza? He might even begin showing interest in coupling.”
Torlyri said, with a shrug, “And if he did? Would that be so bad?”
“He has responsibilities, Torlyri.”
“He’s a boy just becoming a man. Do you mean to take his youth away from him? Let him twine all he likes. Let him couple, if that’s what he wants. Let him mate, even.”
“Mate? The chronicler, taking a mate?”
“This is the New Springtime, Koshmar. There’s no need to hold him to old customs.”
“The old man should not mate,” Koshmar said stiffly. “No more than the chieftain or the offering-woman. Twine, yes. Couple, if coupling is desired. But take a mate ? How can that be? We are selected by the gods as people apart from others.” Koshmar shook her head. “We’ve strayed from our subject. How soon are you planning to do Hresh’s initiation?”
“Two days. Three. If he has no duties which will get in the way.”
“Good,” said Koshmar. “Do it as soon as you can. Tell me when you do. And then we must watch him, to see that he does not change.”
Torlyri said, smiling, “I’m sure he’ll be no different afterward. Remember that he has the Barak Dayir, Koshmar. What can twining do for him that the Wonderstone has not already done fiftyfold?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps.”
There was a long moment of awkward silence.
“Koshmar?” said Torlyri, at last.
“Yes?”
Torlyri hesitated. “Do you still want to twine?”
“Of course,” said Koshmar, softening, becoming eager.
“Before we do, one more question.”
“Go on.”
“The offering-woman, you said, should not mate.”
Koshmar stared. This was something entirely new. She had not realized the situation was so bad.
“It has never been done,” she said coolly. “Not the chieftain, nor the old man, nor the offering-woman. Coupling, yes, if they wished. And twining, certainly. But never mating. Never. We are people apart.”
“Yes. Yes, I know.”
There was a silence again, an ugly one.
Koshmar said at length, “Are you asking for permission to take Lakkamai as your mate, Torlyri?”
“We would like to take each other as our mates, yes,” said Torlyri cautiously.
“You are asking permission of me.”
Torlyri regarded her with a steady gaze. “It is the New Springtime, Koshmar.”
“Do you mean to say that you think not even my permission is needed? Say what’s on your mind, Torlyri! Say what is in your soul!”