As every parents experiences, every child gets to an age where they ask the embarrassing questions. In a place, a more urban place where whole families didn't sleep in one wagon, those questions tend to be about where babies come from or if the child is more astute the the child's best friend Tommy has red hair and green eyes when both his mommy and daddy have brown.
Matria would have been comfortable with just simple questions about sex. She lived in a wagon with her daughter and a wise woman, and she had grown up in a wagon with her parents, three brothers and a sister. Luckily it had been a large wagon.
She was not comfortable with the question Seetha asked when she was five. Although thinking back she thought she handled it rather well.
That day, while she was hanging up the washing to dry, her daughter had made a very profound statement. “Mumma,I think I understand something,†she said in that grave voice of a small child making deep realizations about theuniverse. “You have brown hair, and I have black hair. But the other Imari who come visit have black hair too. And Tan-Ti has black hair and she is my aunt. And you are my mumma and you are Imari even if you have brown hair.â€
Matria smiled a bit at this and replied “Yes, you have black hair like most Imari, but some Imari also have brown hair like me.â€
Seetha cocked her head a little and made a face of consideration, as if working this all through to a greater truth.
“Does that mean that most Imari have pink skin like you and Tan-ti, there are also some that have grey skin like me?â€
It was one of those embarrassing questions.
Looking back, Matria thought she handled it well. She explained to her grey-green daughter that her Puppa had the same color skin and he had been a soldier from another land. Seetha accepted that this made sense and went back to playing even if she did now explain to her doll that Mumma's and Puppa's came in different colors because Mumma's were Imari and Puppa's weren't. A few days after this, Martia found her daughter had colored her doll's skin a pale blue. Seetha explained that her doll had a dolly for a Mumma but her Puppa was bluebird who flew away because he was a bird and that's why her doll lived with her, even through she was blue not grey. Old Siti had laughed at this and Matria relaxed and the world went back to normal, just with a few more colors in it.
Looking back she should have known it wouldn't be that easy forever.
*****************************************************************************
“You're going to have to tell her the truth soon.†Siti said handing over a hot mug of cider.
Matria sighed and looked over at her daughter, now ten, whom she hoped was as asleep as she looked.
The old woman sat down next to the younger on the bench. “She's been asking me about it. For a while now.†Matria made no reply, but watched her daughter for several more minutes. Siti had never been a patient woman and old age had given her liberty to indulge herself. More harshly she said “Girls her age pay more attention to other's attention. She's already noticed how other's notice her size and strength, not to mention her color. You can't let her think her life will be just like other girls.â€
When the mother made no reply, the old woman's patience fully broke. She hissed in a low voice to avoid waking the child. “Matria, we do not lie to each other and if you do not tell her the truth now, if you let her believe that she will live as an Imari woman for the rest of her life, you are lying to her. You might as well tell her to trust gaji if her own mother mother won't tell her the truthâ€
“I know. I know, Tan-ti.†Matria's voice wobbled as sadness, resignation, fear, and dread fought each other in her breast. “But how do I tell her. I don't know what kind of life she can have. If she can have a regular life with with what she is.â€
Siti reached over, placed her paper dry hands on Matria's clenched one's. “If she has the truth, then whatever life she will have, she can make. She is a strong child, in her spirit as well as her heart.†She paused to let her words sink in. “She is Imari, we find our way on the Road whether or not someone has traveled the way before us. You did.â€
More minutes passed before Matria looked up and replied “Yes, I did. And for all it's hard turns and rough patches, it was been a good road. My daughter will do the same.â€
Siti smiled at this, patted Matria's hand then rose to get the cider jug and another mug. At the younger woman's perplexed look, she grinned and said in a louder voice than before. “I think now that you are settled, Seetha should join us and we'll all have a good long talk.†The grin grew even broader. “Then maybe the girl will actually go to sleep.â€
At this the blankets rustled and a sheepish looking grey face looked at the women. “Don't try to fool an old woman, child. I know tricks you haven't even dreamed of yet.â€
So Seetha climbed off her ledge bed and sat down with with the other two feeling a bit like a fraud to be sitting up late, drinking cider with the adults but too curious and too proud to admit it. Imari didn't lie if they could help it so Seetha said nothing about why she had been listening in to her mother's conversation.
When her mother began talking, Seetha didn't dare interrupt. It had taken years for Mumma to tell her daughter the truth and now that it was all coming out, neither wanted to stop it. So Seetha said still and silent, her cider half-drunk, afraid that if she stopped her, her mother wouldn't start again. Some information is important enough just to get that questions can wait.
The tale started with her mother at fourteen, running away from her marriage contract, then getting captured by a raiding party of monsters. With about seven other young women, she was taken to an place; a town, an encampment, an estate, she never really found out. Half the other women were crying all the time and cowering, but they were cowardly gaji women. Matria refused to show fear. The rest were quiet but with hard eyes. They were taken to type of barracks and put two to a room, given decent food and clean water, blankets and warm cloths, even the tools needed for mending and cooking. Given this treatment, Matria figured they probably weren't prisoners or slaves and she was right.
With some difficulty, she explained how an orc officer came to talk to the women about why there were there. The gaji women were by now at least quiet but still to afraid to talk and the hard eyed women said nothing anyway. The ruler of the orcs had an army but he wanted a better one, the officer said, one that could hold their own against the human armies attempting to wipe them out. Matria saw nothing wrong with this, as Imari she understood being how gaji, human gaji at least, treated outsiders.
The officer said that humans were smarter than orcs and without honor, so they would come up with tricks and deceits the orcs couldn't prepare for. Again Ma tria understood this, gaji lied all the time to each other, they didn't seem to value truth or family or anything other than what they could hold in their hands. Maybe they didn't understand the honor of the orcs either and hated them the same way they hated the Imari.
The ruler has a plan, the officer explained, to make his army smart enough to figure out human tricks but still have the honor of the orc. They would make an army led by officer's that were half-human and half-orc. That was what the women were for. They were to mate with the best orc warriors and the offspring would be raised and educated as officers trained in both human and orc tactics. The woman would be valued tools of the orc plan and treated with care and honor as befitted bearers of elite warriors. They would not be raped and would only be asked to be with their warriors at the correct time, but they should not try to return to the human lands. If they did, they would certainly not ever be accepted by the humans again, they were told, but here were valuable to the barony.
After the officer left, two of the cowardly women started to cry quietly on each others shoulders, but the third looked at Ma tria and the groups of hard-eyed women and asked what they were going to do. One of the hard-eyed women shrugged and said she wasn't going to do anything. She and the other three had been destined to as whores and streetwalkers back home. They had more here than they'd ever had back home and would only be asked to do it once or twice a month with only one man. One of the crying women, a gaji called Shalesa, cried out that they weren't men, they were monsters to which the prostitute said that most men were monsters whatever their race. Matria agreed but said nothing. Her position wasn't much different from that of the hard-eyed women. She had run out on her marriage contract, even if her family accepted her back she would now be forced to bear whatever penance her shame required and have to pay off her family's contract debts. At least here, maybe she could bargain for the money to do so.
In the end, the other three gaji women were convinced that the orcs ' offer was better than what awaited them back home. None of them had come from loving and protective families. They had dreamed of love but in their hearts knew they would settle for someone who didn't smell too bad and wouldn't hit them. Inner practicality told them there here their children would always have food and clothing and become important officers; not live as peasants and workers trying to scrap by on luck when hard work wasn't enough.
So Matria's new life began. As promised, the women were all treated with care and honor, although it took some time for them to understand the mix of aggression, posturing, and bravado that came as part of orc honor. They learned that the more strength and fight they showed, they more they were valued and soon even the most cowardly of the gaji women was heard to be shouting at their chosen mates, usually demanding they bathe regularly.
Matria's chosen mate w as the officer who had originally spoken to them. Thren was highly ranked in the Baron's army and had been offered his pick of the women. Matria's refusal to be afraid from the very beginning had caught his attention and so he had chosen to listen in to the human women's debate himself instead of delegating the task and getting a report. He became more impressed as she confronted to water-women about their cowardice and fear. She was not disdainful like the hard-eyed women, nor did she frighten the water-women. She used her own honor as a guide for the other women.
Thren explained all this to Ma tria when he first visited her. He told her of his distinguished career, of his many military accomplishments and his pride and honor as a warrior. He explain that he saw her as part of his chance to not only serve his home in new ways but to create young that would grow to be even greater. Matria said it was a load of crap. She explained to him of the Imari, of freedom and the Road. She said she had no use for military rank or battlefield prowess. Mostly she told him she didn't care what it was between his people and the gaji, but that if he wanted her, he would have to batter with her like an Imari and pray to whatever gods he used that she wouldn't clean him out. Thren met her eye to eye and told her bring it on.
Matria continued, telling Seetha about Thren and how a fondness grew between them. How when she longed for the road, he would take on bivouac with some of his soldiers. How he taught her to fight with orc weapons and orc honor. How she taught him to cheat at cards and other Imari ways of dealing with gaji. Matria said she did not know if she loved Thren, but didn't worry for the Imari know love to be a fickle and tricksy emotion. With Thren she had friendship, understanding and respect and in a year she presented him with their first young, a boy.
Many of the other women had already birthed their first young and were enjoying the added honor of fulfilling their duties. Shalesa, indeed, had birthed twins and became almost unbearable in her pride and was soon seen every morning down at the training rings with her two boys in a sling, telling them to watch and learn so they could become glorious fighters. Matria left such talk to Thren and instead told her little Rith tales of the Imari and of the Road, and prayed that he would grow to see family as life and military as only a job.
The human women had their children for three years when the young were physically strong and coordinated enough to start training. After that they saw their children only occasionally, then their training allowed. It was planned that the half-bloods would begin their military life years sooner than their orc counterparts so as to take their commands as soon as possible. Meanwhile the women would go back to creating the next group of cadets.
Thren remained with Matria although some women chose new officers and he often brought Rith with him, indulging his mate's honor of family. A year later, came another boy, Marin, who quickly promised to be even bigger and stronger than his older brother. Both boys excelled at training both as warriors and as officers. Their commanders were amazed by their grasp of human tactics and the twists their minds could work out. Thren never gave away that it came from his sons' Imari background. He had come to see small changes in the direction of the Barony, talk of expansion, settlement, riches, empire; gaji things. He encouraged Matria to teach the boys more of the Imari ways, so they could keep their honor in this new world as the Imari keep it among a gaji-controlled world.
As his Marin entered training, the new gaji ways of the Barony grew and Matria found herself growing uneasy. The half-blood children were become seen not as warriors, with their own will and honor, but as livestock, thinking animals bred for the use of the rulers. The content, even fulfilling, lives the human women had made for themselves developed shadows of worry. Miscarriages began to happen and soon only one or two half-bloods was born a year. Shalesa had a still born and was cast out of the compound. Hope was that she had been released into the wilds to find her way back to human lands. Suspicion was that she had simply been killed, slaughtered like a worn out brood mare.
By now, Matria was carrying her third child, and was having a hard pregnancy. Thren, under the guise of a worried owner, arranged for a trusted shamaness to attend to her, but it wasn't enough. Seetha was born a month early, small and sickly grey. Thren's influence was enough to keep any of the lords from looking in on Matria and the baby, who would probably be feed to the miners if her weakness was exposed. The rumor was started that the babe was so strong that it had almost killed the human woman and the shaman was needed to ensure sufficient care.
Rith and Marin were as Imari as Matria could have hoped, and lied right along with their father. They feared for their baby sister and would sit beside her cradle, telling her stories about great warriors and fighting Imari spirits so that she would grow strong. But hope and love and strength could not make up for this new world of non-human gaji. Matria told Thren that the child was born in a time of darkness and her only hope was in finding an Imari healer to cure the baby's spirit of the taint. Without healing, the darkness-in-the-spirit would continue to poison the body until it died and the baby would be doomed to become ravenous ghost.
There was no chance of getting any Imari healer into the Barony's lands. So Seetha's only hope had been to be taken back to the human lands. There Matria would seek out the healer Siti, who was eccentric enough to not question the babe's race. That only left the escape.
One by one, Thren and a few of the other officer-mates secretly provisioned their human women and arranged for their disappearance. It was easiest after a miscarriage. The woman would be requested by the shamaness as a wet nurse, as the child was too strong for one measly human. After a few weeks, the woman would “die,†drained by the insatiable child. Her mate would take the “body†into the wilds, where she would head toward the human lands, leaving camp and provisions hidden behind from the other women to follow.
By the time the last human woman had “died,â€the lie was becoming hard to maintain, so Matria suggested they try the truth. The boys said they couldn't lie with the truth, that it was dishonorable, but Thren explained that the people they would tell would be all be orc and goblin gaji. As Imari the boys knew gaji don't value the truth, so they can't really understand such a lie. So Thren and the boys suddenly talked of the baby weakening, growing listless and grey. They suggested it had been all too much ditch-water human milk, that they should have called for an orc as wetnurse. Then a few weeks later, the child “died†and her mother went insane with grief. The shamaness made a great ceremony of casting the mad woman out of the compound, performing all sorts of rituals as the woman walking into the wilds half-clothed cradling her dead baby.
Once out of earshot, Matria quickly made her way to the nearest cache of supplies. Thren would now be speaking to his commanders of the wisdom of continuing the half-blood breeding. By now, he would argue, there was enough of a corp s to see if the plan would work, and would be best to turn the military resources to another task. He would look after the boys, and see to it that they remained Imari, while she got the girl child healed so she could survive to adulthood. Of anything further in the future, they did not speak. Removing Seetha from her shroud and settling her warmly in a sling, Matria emptied the cache, covered her tracks and made her way back to the human land. She told herself, as she walked away, that her tears were from the cold, not being on the road without her own family, left behind in the growing darkness.
It took a month and a half before Matria was able to track down Siti. The route had been well stocked and no pursuit seemed to follow her, but she still didn't feel safe until she stood in the shade of the wise woman's wagon. Siti took them in and began to perform the rites to heal the baby's spirit, with Matria trying desperately to be useful. Before long, the old woman lost her temper, yelling at the mother that if she wanted to be helpful, she could go inside and make some dinner and stay out of the blessed way.
Hours later, Siti entered the wagon with the baby wrapped in colored clothes and smelling of just about every herb one could name. She gave the sleeping child to Matria and said that she had done all she could and it was all over but the waiting. With luck and good fortune, the darkness-in-the-spirit, of which there was plenty, would run out with no lasting damage and just in case maybe they should stay here until they all knew the answer.
“Well, I couldn't well leave you to head back out there and maybe end up haunted by a hungry spirit.†Siti interrupted. “Would ruin my name among the caravans, word like that getting out.†But the outburst seemed break the spell of the story.
Matria looked down her nose at the old woman before turning to face her daughter with a grin. “And you know, every month you got better and stronger. And every month, this old fraud would say that we needed to stay a little while longer yet. Just to be sure.â€
Siti just smiled at this and added, “Well, now we are sure. And besides, does this old fraud good to have the company....and the cooking.†With this the conversation between the two women entered the realm of food, always fertile ground. Seetha said nothing.
It was so much to take in. She knew she must have had a father. Everyone had a father. But an orc. She wasn't even sure what an orc was. And brothers. She had brothers! Where they grey like her? Where were they now? Where was her father? He had sounded like a husband to Mumma but was he? Did they want to know about her? Did they know if she survived? Did she have a more family not just Mumma and Siti?
As if she knew Seetha was full of questions, Siti hushed Matria and gazed intently at the child. “Go ahead and ask†she said quietly
“Mumma, where are my puppa and my brothers?â€
Matria sighed and closed her eyes. When she opened them, they shone with tears. “I don't know, baby.â€
The hopelessness and resignation in her mother's voice seemed to spark heat in Seetha's chest. “You don't know? How can you not know? Don't they speak with other Imari? Don't they want to know if I lived or died? Didn't you want them to know I was alive!?†By now, Seetha was half standing and her voice raising into a yell.
Matria tried to soothe her daughter but something in Seetha kept going. “You ...They....you all went through so much work to keep me alive but now I can't be with my family? What kind of Imari are you?! How can you do this?!â€
Seetha's rage poured out, leaving her mother stunned and unmoving, staring at her daughter out of wide, unblinking eyes.
“SEETHA! SIT DOWN!†Siti's voice cut through Seetha like an ax. Her knees bent, planting her in the chair before she even realized she was standing. “Control yourself! Your mother doesn't know because I didn't tell her.
In the months after you arrived, I would catch her crying in her sleep. In the morning I would ask her what she dreamed and she would say she couldn't remember. I only figured she wasn't ready to face it yet. Only way an intelligent woman like your mother would think that I couldn't spot a lie that weak five miles off. But as you get better, as we saw you were going to live, I forced her to tell me and she cried the whole time about how she had left her sons behind with the darkness.â€
“But Puppa was....â€
“Shush, child! Don't interrupt old folks. Yes, your puppa was there to look after the m. He had to remain with them. She couldn't ask him to stand between his commanders and you, not without risking all your lives. Which an Imari WON'T do! He couldn't bring you to me, not without his bosses sending people after him.â€
“And they would have killed him for his dishonor.†interjected Matria softly.
“And your brothers too. Two such promising cadets; sons of a traitor? They would have been made examples of. This way there was still a chance they would survive, a chance for them to remain alive and Imari in that world of non-human gaji.â€
“But I'm healthy now! I'm strong now! We can g...."
“No, child, you can't.â€
Siti's quiet voice was worse than her yelling. It frightened Seetha to her core, dousing the flame that had been growing in her chest until it landed as cold, wet ashes in her stomach. She stole a glance toward her mother, who looked at her daughter with silent tears sliding down her face.
“I didn't tell your mother, but I think she's always known. The darkness you were born under, that wasn't just the darkness of gaji greed. It was something worse. Whatever moved into your father's lands, his Barony, is not just the evil of the breathing races; it's an evil much deeper.
I've asked of caravans coming from that way, tried to get word of two Imari half-orcs, but nothing that goes in comes out...comes out right. Only the stupid and the desperate now head that way on the road. But I keep listening.
Your brothers' are Imari, and they have your father, who has the heart of an Imari. We have to hope it is enough for what they face. They are from before the darkness, separate from it. But the darkness tried to grab you before you were even born, tried to make you part of it before you even had a chance. Don't go and ruin all their hard work by giving it another chance at you.â€
Siti's voice trailed off into nothing, leaving silence all around. For a long time, nothing was said. Then a small voice came out of Seetha's mouth. She wasn't never sure it was her speaking or some spirit simply using her mouth. It was a tiny sound, like it came from very far away.
“Imari saved me, Imari freed me. I will save Imari. My time is coming.â€
With that she collapsed into her mothers arms, who held her close until they had both cried themselves to sleep, mourning a past that had been unknown, yet missed. |
