Tortall (2 page)

The idea flowered in my mind. It was said the Shang warriors, masters of unarmed combat, could kill by kicking alone, but I had never seen a Shang. Our young men wrestled for the honor of our tribe. The only time they used their feet, it was to hook a foot behind an opponent’s leg, to yank him off balance. But surely a person with strong legs could fight by kicking, as ostriches did, I told myself. One kick would knock an opponent—an enemy—onto his back. Onto his thieving, mocking back …

So I tried to kick like an ostrich, and fell on my behind.

I was a stubborn girl. As the dogs and goats watched, I kicked. And kicked. I learned that I had to stand a certain way in order not to fall. Then I learned to stand in a better way, so I would not fall or wobble as I kicked. My legs cramped, so I ran like an ostrich to stretch them. But I could not let go of ostrich-kick fighting. I chased the idea through
my days as I took out my goats, found grazing, practiced my sling, practiced kicking with attention for both legs, practiced ostrich running, ate my lunch, and watched the thousand stories of the plain. After lunch, though it made me sweat and sometimes made me sick in the dry season’s heat, I continued my many practices. At day’s end, I went home too weary to do more than play catch with my little cousins.

Three months before my eighth birthday I was on my way home from an errand when the boys caught me again. “We could be playing kick-the-ball and building the muscles of our legs, while you only play with children,” their leader told me. “The ball is wasted with you. You will give it to us and tell your papa that you are tired of it. If you do, maybe we will leave you teeth to chew with.”

His friends laughed. The boy behind me wrapped his arms around me, pinning my arms. He was going to help me, though he did not mean to, by keeping me balanced and free to use both legs. I watched their leader come closer to take the ball from my hands.

They were wild dogs. I was an ostrich. I kicked their leader in the belly so hard that he bent over and vomited. One of the others tried to punch me. I kicked to the side and rammed his upper thigh. He fell. Another boy rushed me. Twisting in my captor’s hold, I drove my heels into the side of his leg, knocking him down. Then I used my elbows to make the boy who held me let go.

I learned many things from this, like what will make a boy yell and what will leave him unable to chase me. And I
kept my ball. They did not dare complain of me to the chief, either. They were older than I. Everyone would laugh to know they feared a girl.

The next morning I scrambled up onto the rocks to watch for my next lesson. The zebra, who are mean and tricky, had come to the watering hole after a family of giraffes. Giraffes take time to drink, spreading their legs to lower their bodies, then their heads on their very long necks. They took up half the water hole. I suppose some zebras got impatient waiting for their leaders to drink. You could see it in their wicked black eyes. If the zebras made the giraffes go, then all of the zebras would have room to drink.

One of the young zebras pretended to do something else as he circled the giraffe family. It was a male giraffe who saw him. He watched the zebra draw near. Then the giraffe did a strange thing. He drew back his head. The zebra took two more steps toward the giraffes.

The male giraffe swung his head like a mallet and clubbed the zebra with his heavy skull. The zebra went tumbling in the dust. With a snort, as if to say he had only been playing, the zebra struggled to his feet and went back to his herd to wait.

I soon learned the best way to imitate the giraffe was to make a giant fist of both clasped hands, fingers locked together. The flesh of my hands, though, was tender. A few blows against the nearby rocks and trees soon taught me that. I ground my teeth and began to toughen them as the warriors did, a little at a time, striking bark and stone, day after day. Young antelope toughened their horns, after all. I
had toughened my feet on the rock-and-briar-strewn ground outside the village wall. I could toughen my hands to hit like a giraffe.

Two years passed as I studied my new work, out there with the goats and the dogs. I built calluses on my hands, feet, and elbows. I ran; I hit and I kicked. I drove off wild dogs with my sling. I began to hunt, bringing extra meat to my family at the day’s end. When I was ten, I was eligible for the harvest games we held with neighboring villages. I entered in the girls’ races. I was too slow to win short races. My gazelle sisters overtook me there. Then came the long race, three times around a neighboring village’s wall. My gazelle sisters limped in after I ran across the finish line. I ran greater distances than that every day with the goats.

Five months after, before the spring planting celebration, Ogin and my sisters took me aside. “We want you to do something that will put coins in our purses,” Ogin said. “We want you to run in the boys’ races. We will bet on you and everyone will think we have run mad.”

“Or let our pride in our village fool us,” said Iyaka. “They will bet against you and we will win.”

My sisters’ eyes were bright and shining. Ogin—now fourteen and chief herd boy—grinned broadly with wickedness. I turned to my sisters, who were runners. “You think I can beat them?” I asked.

They giggled. “We know you can,” said Iyaka.

And so I lingered on the sidelines of the boys’ first short race until Ogin, according to our plan, dragged me over to the starting line. Everyone hurried to bet against me as the boys who were to race protested. The judge said that
there was no rule against girls, only custom. The boys had to give in.

I was third in the first short race of sixty yards, second in the second short race of seventy-five yards, and first in the ninety-yard race, as my sisters had planned. I won the boys’ long race, too. That night there were honey cakes with supper and coins in the family purse.

Our lives marched on through festivals and races. My sisters grew older and more beautiful. I simply grew. “She is turning into a giraffe!” the boys would tease me. I ignored them. Thanks to my height and strength, my boyless family had meat in the pot and coins for my sisters’ dowries.

Besides, I liked giraffes. They looked silly, but wise creatures let them be, and they feasted among thorns.

My goats were exchanged for Ogin’s old cattle herd when I turned eleven, while Ogin was made a hunter. As I learned the ways of cows, I studied the plains and the rocks. In the tall grasses and wiry trees of the plains I was free to join nature in its blood and power. There I practiced running, hitting, and kicking, using the blows to break fallen branches for firewood or to give a wounded animal a quick death. I learned more kicks from zebras, a double hand strike from lions, and a back-of-the-fist blow from elephants.

Sometimes I dreamed about the world beyond the plains, trying to imagine its shape. My first taste of it would come when I was thirteen, when I would be allowed to attend the Nawolu trade fair for the first time. It was a week’s journey from our village, a gathering where tribes came from hundreds of miles to sell and to buy, to marry off daughters and sons, and to hold games of strength and speed.
Daughters were presented when they were thirteen, though they were not actually married until they were sixteen or seventeen. During my twelfth year, my next-oldest sister went with the others to the fair. She came back talking of nothing but boys.

Iyaka, who was seventeen, returned quietly. Mama told us the good news. A chief’s son, a young, wealthy man named Awochu, had seen Iyaka race. He had fallen in love with her. It was odd for young people to choose their own mates, but Awochu’s father could not deny his only son. It did not matter that Iyaka’s dowry was tiny. For a bride price Awochu would give us thirty cattle and accept Papa’s blessing in return. Awochu would marry Iyaka at the next trade fair.

“What can I say? I am so honored by my family-to-be,” Iyaka said when we begged for details. “Thirty cattle will make Papa rich and respected. I could not have refused even if I had wanted to.”

When she put it that way, she made me ask myself what I would say when a man’s family offered for me. I thought about it as I watched over my cows the next day. Did I want to be married? I would have to leave my days on my beloved plains and never see the world beyond. I would retire behind a wall like the one around our village to weave, cook, sew, and bear children. No more watches for game at the watering hole. No more entertainment from zebras and giraffes. No more gazelle and cheetah races.

I could wait to marry.

Still, every girl must turn thirteen, and so did I. The time of the trade fair came around. Our whole family went to
Nawolu for Iyaka’s wedding and my first fair. Nawolu was a walled city on a deep river, beyond anything I had seen on the plains. In the distance towered a lone mountain dusted with a white powder on the top. Everywhere there were travelers, animals, bright cloth, and flawless animal skins. I thought my eyes would burst from all the new sights.

Our village had its place on the fairgrounds outside the walls. Before we had even pitched our tents, friends from other tribes came to visit and stayed for supper. Our chief finally sent them away so we could sleep. In the morning we would wash and dress in our finest to meet Chief Rusom, who governed Nawolu and the lands around it.

I was close to sleep when Mama whispered, “I did not see Awochu.”

After a very long silence Iyaka said, “He did not come.”

In the morning we girls fixed our hair, put on our best dresses, and decked ourselves in our few pieces of jewelry. Then, with our mothers to guard us, we went to the fair. There was so much that was new. I saw the wonders from the world beyond my plains and felt a tug on my heart, a call to see where it had all come from. What exotic creatures wove the wispy cloth called “silk”? Who made fine jewelry from countless tiny gold beads, and small stone pots of cosmetics? What ingredients went into the strange new perfumes? I wanted to know these things. The people who sold the goods would only point and name a country, or a city, and speak in strange languages.

Our companions drifted away until it was only Mama, Iyaka, and me going from booth to booth. We were having a
good time on our own when Iyaka suddenly fell silent. Mama and I looked up. Here came a handsome young man, well muscled, with the scars of a warrior on his cheeks and chest. A girl clung to his arm like a vine. She wore a blue silk dress and so much gold jewelry that it was impossible to tell if she was truly beautiful or simply dressed in money.

The young man, who also wore gold, halted. She had to halt with him, and to stare as he did, at Iyaka. The blue silk girl looked at Iyaka, who had gone pale, and she
smirked
. At
my
sister, who was more beautiful than she without jewelry or silk!

“Awochu,” Iyaka whispered. The young man in gold licked his lips as if they were dry.

Mama stood in front of Iyaka. “Is this how you act before the family of the girl you are to marry in a week?” she asked sharply. “You parade this fair with a strumpet on your arm, mocking my daughter’s good name?”

The girl with gold scowled. She will have wrinkles before she is thirty, I thought as I put an arm around my sister.

“She is no strumpet!” said my sister’s betrothed. “
She
is my bride-to-be. I will not honor a contract with a witch and the family of a witch.”

Mama put her hands on her hips. “My daughter is no witch, you pompous hyena! You slander her name and ours to speak so!”

“She put a spell on me last year,” said Awochu. “My father’s shaman cured me of her spell. Now I will have nothing to do with a witch!”

A crowd was gathering. People are jackals, always willing to feed off someone else’s kill.

“You signed a marriage contract in blood,” Mama said. “You did it with your eyes open and your mama bleating like a sheep, saying there were girls ‘more worthy of you.’ More worthy, with Iyaka and her family and chief standing right there! The only witchcraft was in you knowing she wouldn’t lay down for you without marriage, and you being like a spoiled baby who won’t hear no!”

“She put a spell on me!” Awochu cried. “She put it in the stain she used on her lips, so I was half-mad.”

“Witch,” someone whispered behind me. I whirled to glare and saw people crowded all around us.

“Unlawful to spell a man into marriage,” a woman said.

“Oh, no,” Iyaka said. She shook out of my hold and walked up to Awochu, her muscles tight with anger. “You courted me with flowers and sweets and promises until I barely knew my name. You pursued me because I said no that first day, when you kissed me like a barbarian. And now you sully my name and the name of my family?” She spat in the dust at his feet and looked at the blue silk girl. “You want to be watching now,” Iyaka told the other girl. “This is what you want to marry. He will blame
you
when things go wrong between you.” Iyaka turned her attention back to Awochu. “You want your freedom? You may have it—
after
you pay half my bride price for breaking the contract and lying about me.”

He had looked arrogant, then petty, then furious. Now he looked smug. “I pay you
nothing,
” he told Iyaka. “Not to one who uses magic for love. Nawolu chief Rusom judges all trade fair disagreements.
He
will know what to do.”

He marched off to the chief’s pavilion. We had no
choice but to follow, to stop him from lying to Chief Rusom. The witnesses followed, eager for the sight of someone else’s quarrel and judgment.

Luckily, friends heard Awochu’s claim and ran to fetch our tribe. By the time we could see the chief’s bright red pavilion, Papa, our shaman, and our own chief had come, with my kinfolk. My heart swelled with pride. All of our village had come to stand with my sister. Surely Chief Rusom would see that she was a girl of good family, the kind who would never use magic in a foul way. He would order Awochu to admit to his lie before everyone, so my sister’s name would go untainted.

In order to hear the many people who came to speak with him during the day, the chief had the pavilion floor raised up a foot from the ground. He and his companions could then sit under the shelter of the canopy and talk with those who stood on the beaten dirt before them. We moved to the front, passed along by the people who knew why we were there. Iyaka clutched my hand and Mama’s and would not let go. I had to move into line behind her as she stood with Mama, Papa, and our chief.