“Dream then,” whispered the umox. “Dream a thing we have meant for you and made for you. Dream what you will do when you wake.”
For the first time since winter came, I was comfortable. The thick tails of the umox were blanket-warm though light as air, feathered from tip to rump with the finest wool in any world known to man or Ghoss.
“Why didn’t you invite me before?” I murmured, half asleep.
“Why didn’t you tell us you were cold before?” the umox murmured in return. “You tell us stories of Queen Wilvia, you tell us about the nazeemi, you tell us many things we already know very well, but you do not mention to us that you are cold. If you cannot tell the whole world simply by being, as the Ghoss do, then you must tell us. Little one saw you shivering and went to warm you. You feared for her. She came and told us. We do not let those who care for us come to harm.”
“I’m sorry,” I murmured drowsily. “I’m sorry I’m not Ghoss.”
“Even if you are not Ghoss, you are quite likely our good friend.”
I did not try to decipher this, for I was already asleep. In my dream, I wandered with umoxen, walking beside them as they trekked over vast green plains below ranges of snowcapped mountains, while high above us a golden bird cried strange words from the roof of the sky. I knew I was in an umox dream and had no wish to leave it.
Early in the morning, the herdsman came through with his staff, prepared to poke me again, but he found my space already empty. I, meantime, peered at the taskmaster through a fringe of tail wool that hung over my eyes. When the man moved away, gone to breakfast, the great bodies shifted again, making a way out. By the time he and I encountered one another, I was on my way back from the privies.
He stared at me with some suspicion, noting, perhaps, a certain unwarranted rosiness in my cheeks, a certain rested look around my eyes. “Cold last night,” he muttered in an evil tone, obviously hoping I would answer.
I pretended not to hear him, merely standing where I was with my jaw sagging witlessly until he moved away.
He said nothing more, though I noted several questioning glances during breakfast lineup. When I had eaten, I returned to the barn and my winter chores, forking down the fragrant hay into the long troughs that lined the day barn before letting the umox into the day barn and starting the long job of cleaning out the night barn. Fine, rich hay for eating was the guarantee of high prices on the wool market, and there was plenty of it to be had on Fajnard. All the lowlands were grassland, all edible, sweet-smelling, and useful, and it never rained during haying season—so said the Ghoss.
As I had begun to do on my first day in the barns, I accompanied the rhythm of the pitchfork with a silent chant that kept my mind away from the past as the doctor had suggested. “Fifteen” pitchfork into the haystack, “more” pitchfork raising hay, “years” pitchfork tossing hay, one step along the road to understanding how I had come here and what it all meant. One step, then another, and another, and another, three steps more along the road to discernment. Fifteen long, long years.
Eventually, it was spring. Fourteen…more…years, I chanted to the pitchfork. And then fall, winter, and spring again. Thirteen…more…years. And so on, and so on, and only a few more years.
I Am M’urgi/on B’yurngrad
Night on B’yurngrad. A steppe wide as an ocean, rustling with grass. Far in the night a broken horizon surmounted by a toenail of moon and a spear blade of dew-bright stars, pointing downward at the cleft between two hills.
“See,” whispered the old woman, reaching to untie the long plait in which her hair was usually confined. “See,” fingers moving upward through that hair, casting it forward, letting it move in the wind to blow like a veil before her eyes. “See, there, where the spear points downward, where the lance falls to reach the heart of water…”
“I see,” I, who had been Margaret; I, M’urgi, whispered.
“This is the sign of the hunters, the skull-faced ones, who go wandering in the night. When this sign comes, they come eastward, running in the grasses. In this time when there are no wolves, they are the wolves of the night, they the tigers, the leopards, the swift-footed hunters. Prick your ears to the wind.”
I listened. At first I heard nothing. The old woman’s hand touched my ear, featherlight, and I heard. Through the wind-rustled grasses came the pant of breath, the fall of foot, the small rattle of bone beads strung on thong. One, at first, then several more.
“I hear,” I murmured.
“How many?”
“Five, maybe six, but if six, the other is far off, following.”
“If six, he is the one we want. Find him.”
I closed my eyes, laid my hands palms upward on my knees, straightened my spine as though it were a cannon barrel, and shot my perception upward, through the top of my skull. Looking down, I saw myself, the old woman, the tiny fire before us, the circle of amber light that ended just beyond our haunches. I laid myself forward upon a dark pillow of air to follow the night road, the road of discovery, sending my thought in the direction of the sound, swooping along the dark air to meet it, even as it moved to meet me.
I came first upon the five skull-painted ones, panting down a narrow cleft between two hills, feet thudding on the soil, one well in advance of the others, a long pole carried over his shoulder with a pouch
