Young Warriors (15 page)

STUDENT OF OSTRICHES

Tamora Pierce

MY STORY BEGAN as my mother carried me in her belly to the great Nawolu trade fair. Because she was pregnant, our tribe let Mama ride high on the back of our finest camel, which meant she was also lookout for our caravan. It was she who spotted the lion and gave the warning. Our warriors closed in tight around our people to keep them safe, but our people were in no danger from the lion.

He was a young male, with no lionesses to guard him as he stalked a young ostrich that had strayed from its parents. He drew closer to his intended prey. Its mama and papa raced toward the lion, faster than horses, their large eyes fixed on the threat. The lion was young and ignorant. He snarled as one ostrich kicked him. Then the other did the same. On and on, the ostriches kicked the lion, until he was a fur sack of bones.

As the ostriches led their children away, my mama said she felt me kick in her belly for the first time.

If the kicking ostriches were a good omen for our family, they were not for my papa. Two months later he was wounded in the leg during a battle with an enemy tribe. The leg never healed completely, forcing him to leave the ranks of the warriors and join the wood-carvers, though he never complained of that. Not long after my papa began to walk with a cane, I was born. Papa was sad for a little while, because I was yet another girl. He would have liked just one son to take his place as a warrior, but he always said that when I first smiled at him, he could not be sad anymore.

When I was six years old, I asked my parents if I could go outside the village wall with the herds. Who could be happy inside the walls when the world lay outside? My parents spoke to our chief. He agreed that I could learn to watch goats on the rocky edges of the great plains on which the world was born.

Of course, I did not begin alone. My ten-year-old cousin Ogin was appointed to teach me. On that first morning I followed him and his dogs to a grazing place. Once the goats were settled, I asked him, “What must I know?”

“First, you learn to use the herder's weapon, the sling,” Ogin said. He was very tall and lean, like a stick with muscles. “You must be able to help the dogs drive off enemies.” He held up a strip of leather.

I practiced the twirl and release of the stone in the sling until my shoulders were sore. For a change of pace, Ogin would teach me the names of the goats' markings and body parts until I knew them by heart. Once my muscles had relaxed again, I would take up the sling once more.

When it was time to eat our noon food, my cousin took the goats, the dogs, and me up onto a stone outcropping. From there we could see the plain stretch out under its veil of dusty air. This was my reward, this long view of the first step to the world. I almost forgot how to eat. Lonely trees fanned their branches out in flat-topped sprays. Vultures roosted in their branches. Veils of tall grass separated the herds of zebra, wildebeest, and gazelle in the distance. Lions waited near a watering hole close to our rocks as giraffes nibbled the leaves of thorny trees on the other side.

Watching it all, I saw movement. I gasped. “Ogin— there! Are those—are they ostriches?”

“You think, because your mama saw them, they are cousins to you?” he teased me. “What is it, Kylaia? Will you grow tail feathers and race them?”

The ostriches
were
running. They had long, powerful legs. When they ran, they opened their legs up and stretched. They were not delicate like the gazelles, like my older sisters. They ran in long, loping strides. Watching them, I thought, I want to run like
that.

For a year I was Ogin's apprentice. He taught me to keep the goats shifting in the fields around the stone lookout place so there would be grass throughout the year. He was patient, and he did not laugh at me as I struggled to learn to be a dead shot with a sling, to be a careful tracker, and to understand the ways of the dogs, the goats, and the wild creatures of the plains.

Ogin taught me to run, too, as he and my sisters did— like gazelles, on the balls of their feet. After our noon meals, as Ogin slept, I would practice my own ostrich running. I opened up my strides, dug in my feet, and thrust out my chest, imagining myself to be a great bird, eating the ground with my big feet. Each day I ran a little farther and a little faster as Ogin and the dogs slept, and the goats and the song-birds looked on.

When I had followed Ogin for a year, my uncle, the herd-chief, came out with us. Ogin made me show off my skills with the goats and the dogs.

“Tomorrow morning, come to me,” said my uncle. “You shall have a herd and dogs of your own.”

It was my seventh birthday. I was so proud! I was now a true member of the village, with proper work to do. Papa gave me a wooden ball painted with colored stripes. Mama and my sisters had woven me new clothes and a cape for the cold. I ran through the village to show off my ball and to tell my friends that I was now a true worker.

Five older boys caught me on my way home. They knocked me down and they took my ball.

When I reached our hut, my family noticed my bruises. Papa limped through the village until he found my ball and brought it back to me.

My pride lay in the dust. I pretended to ignore my family's conversation as my sisters demanded that the boys be punished, and my father said he would appeal to our chief. Whatever punishment the boys got would have nothing to do with me, only with the peace of the tribe. Their penalty would not make me any taller, or less ashamed.

In the morning, I took my new herd to graze in the tall stones. While the goats found grasses tucked into rocky hollows, I stared at the plain. The village would deal with the boys, but later they would take their vengeance out on me. What would I do then?

I don't know why a wild dog decided to be a fool that morning, or why he left the protection of his pack. I only know that he was alone when he found the old ostrich nesting-ground. It was not breeding season. There were no eggs or young to protect. The king ostrich, his queen, and his other wives were nibbling grass seed as a shift of wind brought them the scent of wild dog. My thigh muscles twitched as the pair ran to catch the intruder, their great legs eating up the yards between them. The dog tried to flee too late. The ostriches were upon him. The queen's first kick sent the wild dog flying into the air. He lurched to his feet, but the ostriches had already caught up. A few more kicks finished the dog.

He must have taken their ball, I thought, impressed with ostrich vengeance. If
I
had been an ostrich, those boys would have returned my ball to
me.

An idea flowered in my mind. It was said that 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 was to hook a foot behind an opponent's leg to pull him off-balance. But surely a person with strong legs could fight by kicking, as ostriches did. 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 did not let go of my ostrich-kick fighting. I chased the idea through my days as I took my goats out to graze, then I practiced my sling and kicking—with attention for both legs—as well as ostrich-running, all before the noon meal. When I finally ate, I watched the thousand stories of the plain. Afterward, I continued my many practices though they made me sweat, and sometimes made me sick in the dry season's heat. At day's end I went home, too weary to do more than play catch with my ball and my little cousins.

I was not yet eight when the bullies caught me alone 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 my chest, 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 rushing boy's 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. The bullies 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 zebras, who are mean and tricky, had come to the watering hole, where a family of giraffes were already drinking. Giraffes take time to drink, spreading their legs to lower their bodies, then dipping their heads at the ends of their very long necks. They took up half the water hole. Some zebras got impatient waiting for their zebra chiefs to drink. I 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 be idling along as he circled the giraffes. It was a male giraffe who saw him. He watched as the zebra drew near.

Then the male giraffe did a strange thing. He pulled his head back. 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 had discovered the secret of punching.

I began to practice. Soon I learned the best way to punch 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 taught me that. I ground my teeth and began to toughen my hands as the warriors did, a little at a time, striking bark and stone day after day. Young antelopes 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 practiced my new skill with the goats and the dogs for company. I built calluses on my hands, feet, and elbows. I hit, I kicked, and I ran. 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 the girls' races. I was too slow to win the short races; my gazelle sisters overtook me easily there. Then came the long race, three times around a neighboring village's wall. I ran across the finish line while my gazelle sisters limped in after me. I was not surprised; after all, I ran greater distances than that every day, with the goats.

Five months later, 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 gone mad.”

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

My sisters' eyes were bright and shining. Ogin—now fourteen and chief herdboy—grinned wickedly. 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 at the spring festival 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 for me. 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!” boys would tease me. I ignored them. Thanks to my height and strength, my boy-less 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 the 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.