never warned, or even intimated, that this is what marriage could bring, and her father had always been reassuring and gentle with her. As Elga screamed out in those dark hills, the most unbearable pain she felt was that of her parents’ betrayal.
Two days later they reached her new home. Her husband, Oman, came from a shepherd clan, with three brothers who tended their goats together. Life was not easy; she was the only woman working for the four of them and the chores were onerous, endless, and came with no gratitude. She labored hard at backbreaking tasks, receiving no tenderness from her husband, a man who was absolute, resolute, and methodical in his actions.
Soon she bore a son, and this pleased Oman greatly. The arrival of a child into their home brought the tender side of Oman to the surface. After his work was done, he would sit out in the field with their son for long periods, watching the light leave the day.
Life was still brutal and hard, though it was only after she was pregnant a second time that the absolute horror of her existence arrived in full. She gave birth on a feast day. It was a painful, tearing birth, and when it was over she held the baby girl for only a few moments, watching her squeak and cry at the new light of life, before Oman took the child from her arms and told Elga to rest. When she awoke, her husband and the baby were gone. Her brother-in-law told her that the child had died in the night and her husband had gone to bury it.
Over the next five years, three more sons were born, each of them healthy, and two more daughters came who did not live a day. Each girl she briefly held and comforted, and each one was taken from her hands. In the morning, the men always told her the same story. But by then she had been living with the tribe for nearly a decade, she knew their trades and how they bartered and dealt with the strangers passing by. She knew how to read her family’s eyes, and this was a tribe of bad liars.
Oman’s youngest brother, Elon, was a sweet, foolish man. He was the one ready with song and drum when the wine was poured. She would work chores with him and gossip about the family. One day, as they were combing wool for the looms, she gaily chatted and led him down to her trap. “You are so good at this! I think I’ve changed my mind, I agree now with what my husband says.”
“What does my brother say?”
“Oh, you know, how he grumbles and says, ‘Bah, women are a waste of food.’ I say, ‘No, Oman, though I do not mean to dispute you, I say we women are very useful.’ Now, look at you, Elon, you are showing that he is right, you are so much better at even this chore than I am.”
“Well, I am certain you women are better at some tasks.”
“In the towns, perhaps. But not here. We need men for all our tasks. I can help with cooking and the wash, but you only need one woman for that. Too many women would be more useless mouths to feed, right? And even if our neighbors could pay enough for a wife, we get too few visitors looking to strike that kind of a bargain. Why, look how far my husband had to journey to find a woman.”
“Yes, he went a long way and he still got a fat, ugly bride,” Elon said and both laughed.
“Yes,” she said, “I am only good for making him sons.”
“You have given him strong sons.”
“I know. It is good too that those daughters of mine did not live. My husband did the right thing there.”
“Yes, he did,” said Elon. He was about to say some other words, but stopped himself. That was when she knew the truth.
“It is all right, my friend,” said Elga, shaking her head as if it were nothing. “He is a wise man, he is very wise. But tell me, where did he bury them? He never told me.”
Elon was silent for a moment and then he answered her question. “In the river swamp. He buried them down in the reeds of the swamp.”
She nodded and said no more. Then she waited, almost three moons, simmering and stirring her plans in her boiling and turbulent mind. She would wander the muddy wetland trails in the dawn’s bleak mist, amid the shrill, disturbed cries of waking starlings, searching, wild-eyed, for a sign of where her daughters might be buried. She would at times collapse and kneel on the ground, blinded with anger, a grief hot inside her that felt like molten metal. At dusk, after feigning her way through the day, she would return again to the swamp, clawing at the earth for graves she could not find. Night would come and the screaming wind would blow as the tall reeds swayed thick, looming above her like hissing serpents. During these trying days, she kept her face serene at home, and when she went on trips into the village, she was chatty and friendly. The horse trader found her full of idle questions about the roads and trails that ran out of town. When she asked for ways to kill off the squirrels nesting in her lofts that were eating at her grain, a bullman’s wife gave her a recipe for poison.
Finally, the spring moon turned and Oman rode off, his mare topped with goatskins for the new season’s trade. Only hours after he was gone, she went round and invited his brothers to her house for dinner. “I have a seasoned boar that needs roasting.” She put out bulgur stew, sausages, radish, and blackberry wine. As she was setting out the meal, Elga told them that she had woken that morning from a nightmare in which her husband faced terrible trials on his journey. She raised a glass: “We must frighten this bad dream away with a toast to his safe return. All of us. Even my boys must drink this toast for their father’s safe return,” she insisted.
“You’re going to make the little ones drunkards,” teased Elon.
“Ha ha, no, I have mixed some water with the wine, so indulge a superstitious woman; let us drink and shout the devils away.”
They all drank the wine and soon the men were unconscious, their heads heavy on the table. She pulled each one down from his chair and lined them up next to one another on the floor.
She killed her sons first, hammering a long fence nail through each of their hearts. Then, taking an ax, she methodically beheaded each one of her brothers-in-law. Going out to the pens, she drove the livestock into the barn, bolting it shut, and while the goat kids and spring lambs panicked and brayed, she put all the buildings to flame. When she took Elon’s strongest horse and rode off, the mad screaming of the dying livestock burned in her ears.
She was sure Oman would try to track her, but she never saw him again. She felt no sense of guilt, no sorrow. Her husband had brought that pain to the world, she had merely set the scales to balance. Still, she was wise enough to keep running, blazing over the mountain passes and across the high plateaus. She wrapped herself in shawls to cover her eyes from strangers’ questions and risked the bandits at night to cover as much ground as possible. On some loose and rocky flats she lost her horse to a sprain and then continued on foot, lying down on her belly to sip from the streams she passed, rarely pausing for long.
As the eighth sun rose, now starving, thirsty, and dizzy, she found herself following a strengthening scent of woodsmoke down a broken ridge of alder and pine that led her into a bustling encampment. A group of women were busy caring for a field full of injured soldiers. The women paid her no mind until the leader of the group whistled loudly and signaled for her to approach. Without introduction, and in a blunt tone, the woman told how the forces had already advanced over the next rise, harrying a retreating army. Supply horses were supposed to bring up the rear, the woman said, but for now they were alone there and overworked, with three of their own ill from fever. They needed help. “What about you?” the woman asked. “Did the soldiers attack you?”
The woman pointed at the blood that was still splattered on Elga’s dress. “Oh,” said Elga, looking at the stains. “No, I was only slaughtering animals.” Already a good liar, Elga knew to wrap her deceptions in vestiges of the truth. The woman nodded, and Elga felt as if a conditional trust had been achieved.
The woman pointed her to the campfire and she began helping, washing rags and filling pots while watching the other women work. They cleaned out the dirt, gravel, and pus from the open wounds, applied herbs and poultices to fight infection. Some of the women sang. The men writhed and screamed. Over the next few days, most died, but some were saved. Elga took directions well and could feel the women observing her out of the corners of their eyes, judging her strength as she worked. When the riders came to tell them of the battle past the next rise, the women packed up and went off to find the injured. Elga traveled with them. This is where her long life began. These nurses had skills and secrets.
XIII
