The girl looked up, and her hair fell back, revealing dark eyes and pale skin. She looked at me without shame, and I met her over-bold gaze. She fell silent then, her song unfinished, and without warning she smiled.
I smiled back. Her face grew red, and she leaned back over her spinning.
I knew, then, that I could not leave without her. I turned to my cousin.
“Your daughter,” I said, for this had to be one of his daughters. “Do you intend to arrange a marriage for her soon?”
You ask for our story. I do not know how to tell a story. I only know that until I came to Garen’s Steading, I was not content.
I had my work, in my father’s home: endless spinning, and weaving, and cooking, and caring for littles. The work needed doing; I understood that. I understand it still. Is it different in the north? Here, we know that every person is sacred in the eyes of the Goddess, put in the place we are put, given the work we are given, because that work matters, and is meant for us.
Yet knowing this, I still longed to walk the barren ridges, to look out over the narrow valleys, to feel the wind tangling my hair. When I was younger, I’d spent my days outside on sheep watch, and been happy; but that was long ago, before I was replaced by littles too young for other tasks. By the time Garen came, my days were mostly spent indoors, with my mother and my sisters and the other wives of the Steading.
But the Goddess never gives us a task without also giving us what we need to complete it. And what She gave me was song.
I sang as I worked, hymns and teaching songs, songs no one could find improper. The work went better when I sang. The walls and roof felt less near, the wind and sun less far. I was fortunate; my father’s firstwife welcomed my songs, perhaps because the littles also worked better when I sang.
Then a stranger entered my father’s hall and met my improper gaze. And—I do not know how to say this. When I looked into his gray eyes, I saw open fields and the spaces between clouds. For the first time, I thought maybe marriage—the marriage I knew my father must arrange, soon or late—might be more than just another set of walls.
Of course I left without her, that day. There was the dowry to negotiate, and the priest to consult, and the ceremony to arrange. But at last we knelt together, beneath the open sky, the men and the women of our households around us. It was one of those rare spring days, when the sky is so blue you fear it will break in two, exposing the first level of Heaven above.
But I forget—you don’t believe in Heaven, only in endless Havens and countless gods, with none to tell which is true.
The priest chanted the ritual prayers. We gave the ritual responses, and if my attention was more on the curve of Nara’s neck and the sun on her bound hair than on my own words, still I meant those words.
At last the priest asked for our vows. “Do you, Garen Aranson, vow to serve the God and honor the Goddess? To defend your Steading and your fields, your brothers and sons, your daughters and wives?”
“I do so vow.”
“And you, Nara Jethsdaughter. Do you vow to serve the God and honor the Goddess, and to obey your husband and your elder wives in all things?”
Nara smiled. “I do so vow.”
The priest drew us to our feet. I looked into Nara’s dark eyes; they seemed as large as all the sky. I could have gazed at her forever, but then she bowed, as the ceremony demanded, and stepped back to join the women of my household, showing she accepted her place as one underwife among many.
The priest sang a hymn then, recounting the first meeting of God and Goddess—when the Goddess grew restless, and wandered beyond her realm, and could not find her way back. Both households joined him in that song, all but me; the God gave me no gift for singing, and I knew my voice would be no tribute.
Nara stood with my other wives, her shoulders straight, her eyes cast properly down. She sang with my other wives, her voice no louder than theirs. Yet somehow her song rose above the others—and though I knew better, her voice still seemed not one among many to me, but its own, distinct.
I was happy, married. I did not expect that.
Garen’s Firstwife, Latya, had work for me, of course, laundry and cooking, cleaning saddles, grooming horses, mending tack. But often that work took me outside, where I could linger over the blooming of orange paintbrush and purple lupines, where I could watch the shifting gray clouds. I sang beneath those clouds, and I sang in the hall, too. So long as the work was done, and done properly, Latya did not complain.
It is true that proper and improper matter a great deal more to Latya than to my mother, or even to my father’s firstwife. Latya expects hair to always be bound, and collars to always be buttoned, and tunics and leggings to always be ironed beyond creasing. Yet I am dutiful, as much as I am able.
I did not see Garen often, those first months, save for mealtimes and the nights he came to my room; he had his work, just as I had mine. But sometimes, I would turn from grooming horses to see him in the stable doorway, silent, listening to me sing. He would smile, and I would smile back, and the stable walls would seem to fall away, as if we stood together beneath the sky, just as we had on our wedding day. My work somehow always seemed lighter, after one of those meetings.
But I am telling this out of order. Before the stables, there was the first time Garen came to my room, the night we were married. I was shy and afraid; my mother had told me to expect pain. Yet Garen was slow and gentle, as concerned for me as for himself. When we came together, I felt as if we were closer than skin and bone should allow; felt as if we shared a single body, a single space. Afterward, I pressed my body close to his, not wanting to let the feeling go, yet knowing that all things fade, in time.
Garen brushed my loose hair aside, and he whispered in my ear, “I am glad you have joined my Steading.”
“I am glad, too,” I said, and meant it with all my soul. The times after have been like this, too, more often than not. Is it so for everyone, or only for us?
It seems immodest to ask.
Lying with Nara is not like lying with anyone else. My first three wives are dutiful. They give what is required. But they draw away from me when that duty is done, and I from them. I don’t linger in their beds as I do in hers. I could lie with Nara every night, if not for my other wives. I could spend my days watching her, if not for the work of my Steading.
But that is not for you to record, and it is not for sharing with your fellow Heralds.
Say instead that spring turned to summer, summer to fall, the seasons in the order the God set them. Raiders attacked other Steadings and Holdings, but spared mine. Latya bore another son, and my second underwife, Isa, a daughter. Nara showed no signs of bearing children, but she was good with the littles. Like me, they seemed to listen for her song.
One stormy afternoon I entered the common room to hear Nara singing as she twisted dried grasses to rope, while wind pounded the walls and hail pounded the roof. The littles sorted grasses by length around her.
Nara sang of Jania’s ride. You do not know this song; it is a Holderkin song, about a maiden whose brother was killed by raiders while they were on sheep watch. The raiders dishonored the girl, but she escaped, riding alone through darkness and storm to warn her Steading of the attackers. She knew her duty, you see. She delivered the warning first. Only afterward did she take her life, to keep her dishonor from her family.
Yet when Nara sang this song, I heard more than duty and honor. I heard the joy of hooves on stone, of rain on skin, of wind through hair. I longed to sing with my wife—but no, I’d not sully her verses with my rough voice. Instead I smiled as I listened, entranced as the littles.
Nara did not look up, but she smiled as well. Then Latya entered the room, her arms full of laundry. I looked away from my underwife, but not before Latya saw my lingering gaze. Latya’s frown made that clear enough.
I see you don’t understand. You know only that a holder is free to do as he will. And he is; the God made that clear long ago. But the God lives in His Heaven, with only His one Goddess. I have four wives, and Latya is first among them. She oversees the work of hearth and hall, waking before dawn to do much of that work herself. I value my firstwife, and I would not have her think otherwise.
So I decided I would be more careful. But my gaze drifted to Nara again before I left the room.
And again, it was Latya, not Nara, who saw.
