The Feverbird's Claw
Read The Feverbird's Claw Online
Authors: Jane Kurtz
DEDICATIONTO THE HIGH TEST GIRLS, INCLUDING REBEKAH, FOR ALL THE FABULOUS BOOK TALKING.
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HAPTER
ONE
I
T WAS ONLY BECAUSE
M
ORALIN HAPPENED TO
turn her head at the right half instant that she saw her death coming straight at her. The fight had started the same way it always did, with the traditional solemn steps. But even this routine beginning felt preciousâsince today was the last day of her childhood.
Step to the right, turn to the left, one knee on the mat. As she watched the trainer touch his forehead in a gesture of reverence to the Great Ones, she did the same. She couldn't see his face behind the net, and he couldn't see hers. He would have no reason to imagine she was a girl, a person strictly forbidden inside the fighting yard. But then what made him seem ferocious as they faced each other?
This was a simple fight. Moralin calmed herself as they made their opening moves. Lunge, retreat, arms ready. But she felt small and chilled, as if a wind had whined its way inside the fighting yard and were blowing on the back of her neck.
“Begin,” the trainer called. They swung their fighting sticks this way and that. Routine. She'd wanted to feel and see andâyes, even smellâevery minute of this fight. Tomorrow everything would be different.
Tomorrow she would wake to the li-li-li of joy cries. She would be stuffed full of food and dancing, and at the end of the festivities she, along with her awa clan, all the other girls of her birth year, would enter their time of temple service. When she came out, she would be a woman and would surely die if she ever looked upon the fighting yard again.
The pain of that thought made her do something she had not done for years: break training.
That was when the trainer made his swing for her head.
Standing in the small changing room, Moralin was suddenly as weak as pale broth, so weak that the stick fell from her hand and clattered on the stone floor. She didn't kneel to pick it up. How could she have forgotten the first rule of staying alive in the fighting yard? Pay attention.
Still, what reason would the trainer have had to go against tradition? Boys were occasionally killed in these simple fights, but only because they had done something rash or stupid.
It's true that no one would blame a trainer who killed a
girl
in the midst of such dire trespass. But every time she entered or departed from the fighting yard, she used Old Tamlin's secret entrance, always moving into the fighting yard hidden in loose tunic and pants, netting that covered her head, and a hooded cloak. Fighters did not want to see the face of someone they might kill in the next hour.
She pushed away clammy fear. Just as important, what had caused her to turn at the exact right moment? Had her grandfather, Old Tamlin, broken the strict rules of the fighting yard and made a slight noise, a sucking in of his breath? Or maybe her skin had known what to do. She remembered a day long ago when she was a little girl sitting beside Old Tamlin, holding one small blistered hand in the other blistered hand.
“I cannot pick up the fighting stick today,” she had said, flinching as he looked at her palm. Just the weight of his gaze made it hurt.
He had pointed calmly at the blisters. “Under that skin is new skin. You must keep going until your skin serves you. That way, if training ever fails you, your skin itself will know what to do.”
Even as she whimpered, knowing how the new, tender skin would burn, she had obediently picked up the fighting stick. So today had her skin known? She'd made a move she had never practiced, a duck and then a kick so agile that she was able to knock her opponent's stick to the ground before she even knew what she was doing. Miraculous.
Miraculous?
She quickly touched her forehead. Beware of blasphemy. Possibly it wasn't her own skin at all that had saved her. Possibly Cora Linga or another of the Great Ones had whispered in her ear.
She wrapped herself in the cloak. What if on this very last time in the fighting yard, she had been killed or mangled? At that thought she broke the second rule of staying alive: Manage your fear.
Fortunately, she was alone. Her legs began to tremble so that she had to kneel and put her head down to touch her knees. But inside the small room no one could see her. No one except the shadow who had silently entered and now bent to pick up the fighting stick.
Shadows had grotesque faces, so as a kindness, they were given white masks that were molded to their faces and could not be taken off. Shadows never spoke. They knew their tongues could be removed if they ever did.
The sun had turned the temple tapestries to blazing gold by the time Moralin stepped into the great hall for her noon prayers. She wore her velee draped over her shoulders, hood down. Adult women and most girls covered their heads when they left their houses, but she hated how hard it was to see through the eyeholes.
Tomorrow her new home would be here in the secret temple complex. What work would she do? Would the others talk to her? Every time she asked what it would be like, Mother and Grandmother shook their heads and put their fingers to their lips.
Solemnly she lifted her arms to the central sacred tapestry. In her mind she could hear the elders' chants. “The Great Ones showed us this place of good water in the bowl of a valley surrounded by four sacred hills. We carried our children, under a starbright sky. We built this temple, where the Great Ones now live.”
She looked directly into the woven eyes of Cora Linga, the Great One she had promised to serve always. “Tell me of the next step on my path,” she whispered. “After tomorrow what will my life be?”
She stilled herself to listen. At first no mysteries revealed themselves. But then she was sure she heard something. “If you cannot see beyond the silver threads around you,” the voice said, “why twist and thrash about? When caught in a web not of your own making, why assume the spider's poison?”
Moralin touched her forehead gratefully. It was true. She had been tangled in sadness about leaving her family. Caught in dread about living with the other girls. But the spider's webâas one ancient poet called the temple complexâwas also a chance for a new and even wonderful life. She hurried outside onto the stone street.
“Hsst!”
Moralin froze and coughed to cover up her fear.
“Come here,” someone called softly. Moralin turned and saw three girls from her awa clan huddled by the temple wall. They had never spoken to her before. She was always the strange one, hiding her scarred hands in clenched fists.
“Why even ask her? She wouldn't know.” This second voice was tinged with scorn. Only the highborn were allowed to wear silk, and Moralin could see that this girl's clothing was plain, though she did have a delicate belt with glossy black beads woven on golden threads.
“Right, don't ask her.” The third girl's voice was a scared whisper. “Don't ask anybody. Forget the idea.”
That was Salla, whose grandmother and Moralin's grandmother were weaving partners.
The first girl beckoned. Her fingers were already stained brown with ceremonial dye. “We were discussing whether there was any way to get outside the city wall to gather ripe starfruit. I heard ⦔ She glanced quickly around. “I heard that yesterday three or four people actually did it.”
Why did they think she might know how to get outside? Because she was one of the few Delagua who had seen over the city wall? She shivered.
“You're not afraid of us, are you?”
Moralin couldn't shake the feeling that the girl was staring at her, even though a bold, direct look would be impossibly rude. “No.” She lied calmly, wondering if they had whispered together about what had happened to her when she was small and helpless.
She remembered stooping to reach for a flickering fish in the water that ran in channels beside the street.
“Stop that,” her mother had said sharply.
Her grandmother, more gently, had bent to say something, but Moralin had run away, keeping her eyes on the fish's tail as it swished through the water. She wasn't aware of anything elseânot sights or sounds or smellsâuntil the stones behind her suddenly rang and clattered with running feet.
She'd squatted, terrified. Rough hands grabbed her from behind. The next thing she could remember was screaming, screaming, as a hand held her by the back of her clothes, dangling her into empty space at the top of the city wall.
She would have tumbled, dived, dropped down down except that Old Tamlin, who was old even then, had somehow saved her. All the rest of that year she cowered in the house, howling in terror when anyone tried to take her outside. That was when Old Tamlin saved her a second time by doing something absolutely forbidden. As if she were his grandson and not a granddaughter, he had started fighting training. “Now,” he told the family, “she will never again feel the terrible helpless fear.”
