Enemy Embrace

©Charlotte Babb

ENEMY EMBRACE     

Rachi trudged along the crest of the ridge that overlooked the valley at dusk. Like a shadow in a dark leather tunic and leggings, her black hair braided close to her head, she skirted the scrubby brush against the fading blue and violet twilight. She might be taken for a spirit herself, pale, wiry, haunted. No ancient steel or granite cliff would protect her from the wilderness, spirits, or mages this night, only her knowledge, her strength, and the hand of Aai.     

Hunger pangs sang harmony with her barely healed injuries, now in full voice from the Rebirth. On her seventeenth birthday, she had been washed and perfumed by her neophyte sisters, clad in the initiate's pale silk gown, sweet herbs and flowers braided in her hair. She danced to the ceremony. Her praises were sung, gifts presented her and toasts of fine wine swallowed.

Abruptly rough hands grabbed and stripped her, hurled her into the hands of the assembly. She was pitched and carried in many hands and arms, passed over the heads of the adults and elders and finally pushed through the one-way gates of the ceremony hall into the dark, cold, wetness of the passage to the wilderness.

Her friends had been kind, putting the gifts and bundles for her to find in the dark. One with so few friends was lucky to find so much:  clothing, a waterproof, dried food, a fire starter, and her bundle of healer's pigments. Encouragement and tools would help her survive until she could find her future, be it in the Enclave, among the Eastlanders or even in the depths of the Mages' Lair.

The Wymyn of the Enclave had escaped the dark Lair magic generations ago to make their own Wysedom. As the clans were reborn, so each child. Some did not survive the vigil, and others had no vision. Rachi would survive and Aai would provide the vision. Or, if there were no vision for Rachi, she would sell her sword and practice what magic arts she brought with her.    

Those who became Wyse entered the spirit world, seeking knowledge of the Other Life. In a tapestry, the Crafts were the texture and pattern of the weft, and the Warriors were the selvedge who kept the fabric whole. But the Wyse searched the warp for the length of the cloth, its structure, and use. Rachi was a loose end, to be clipped out if she could not find her spirit thread.      

She hiked along the ridge to the crest that divided the Enclave from the Eastlander peasants who lived in the valleys towards the sea, where lay the Mages' Lair. Mother's second child, the child of age to replace the dead child of youth, she refused a life without position. Her knowledge would fetch a price outside the walls of her childhood. If her line ended here, so be it.    

Rachi set her mind against the older scars on her ribs and the new bruises, clearing a camp site, raking twigs and rocks aside. As she unrolled the waterproof, Rachi found her mother's dagger, an unexpected token, wrapped in the center. She stuck it in the girdle of her tunic with a prayer of thanksgiving. Aai, Mother of mothers, had touched the heart of Tawnya.    

She built a cairn for a signal fire on a rock that overlooked the Enclave. Those below would be watching for it. She lighted it with incense she herself had prepared, herbs of power and strands of her hair, along with spirit prayers to Aai for a true vision. The child's prayer came to her mind, bringing memories:         

"Circle me with thy crown,         

All myself by one side bound,         

All myself in one edge be,         

Aai keep all harm from me.". . .    

She had prayed when the children of Warrior Clan taunted her, "Know Father, Know Father." She ducked and dodged their blows, but finally struck back, fierce as a puma kit. She won acceptance after that battle, but not love. No matter her efforts to do more, to do better, as if Aai's Crown with its unending edge set her apart.     

One does not speak of a father in the Enclave. Mother's choice, even if known, is not questioned. But one man came to her in her infant dreams, thin and dark, secretive and silent. She could read and write, for he had taught her in her dreams. Unlike the men of the Enclave who loved all children, he adored only her, showing only her his magic. He spelled their names in shimmering runes and drew lovely pictures. He held her close, as Mother never did, his only child. He said he would appear one day to claim her as his own.    

Rachi didn't know this broke sacred law; she accepted his love. When she told her mother, finally making Tawnya believe by spelling out his name, the dreams vanished and the taunting began. The Den's mistrust never ended, leading to the last clash in the Ring....    

Rachi arranged the pigments she had concocted under Grae's watchful eyes. A handful of the pungent yellow powder flowed between her thumb and forefinger to make the sign of Aai's Crown, the symbol of the wholeness of life and death. Around it she made a blue circle with a sign at each direction for each age: east-maiden, south-mistress, west-matron, north-maven. Inside the circle, between the directions, she made the balances: moon\darkness, earth\fire, blood\water, one\zero. One balance at each season, one balance for each age: the powers that shape life making one of all.    

She said the prayers for full sight and understanding, with the wysdom of each element. Then with the spirit powder, white and sparkling, she marked in runes her name and the name of the Goddess Aai. She knelt before her sacred place, facing the fire.        

She remembered the Ring of torches, the challenge of the daughter of the Eldest's daughter, and the taunts of her agemates. She had fought well, but had tired, slowing against her attacker. She lost to an easy thrust she should have been able to avoid, taking away her consciousness and her place in the Den.      

She remembered awakening in the dark, disoriented and in pain, hearing her mother's voice, cutting and strained.    

"You have no rights to her. She is of our Den. She lives under our custom."    

An old, yet intense voice quavered, "Is it your custom, then, to leave a gravely injured comrade drugged and senseless outside your Den? To beat each other nearly to death?"    

"You already had her when we came for her. Do you spy on every clash among the young for your perversions? Return Rachi to us now!"     

Mother had never fought for her, Rachi thought. She thought Rachi didn't learn fast enough, work hard enough. Rachi never reached some undefined standard Mother held. Mother had threatened to send her away for her questions about her dreams. But now Mother wanted her back in the Den, even though she had been defeated.    

"We do not kidnap anyone," the old healer said. "But we have watched Rachi. She knows her father, and he knows her."    

"Obscene abomination!" her mother spat. "I am taking her away from you."    

"You may kill her then, as you killed the boy."    

"I did not kill him. Your meddling did that."

"Nevertheless, if you had let us teach him, he would not have been tricked by the mages, and he would still live."    

A brother? Rachi thought.    

Silence.    

The healer continued, "She has been unconscious for two days. If she recovers, she may never be a Warrior. She will be safe here. She can return to her training when she is healed. Or she can be useful here. We need young ones as well."    

"Never. You've had too much influence over her already!"    

"One foresees destiny, and every effort to change what will be simply puts it on another path."    

"Rachi was raised in the Den as a Warrior, even to be a paladin to guard the Eldest, to protect our way."    

But, Rachi had learned, no one in the Den leads without followers. And that last fight, that beating just before Rebirth time, showed Rachi that her place was not in the Den.    

She focused on the signal flames, entering Battle Trance. She would not deny any tool Mother had given her, now that Mother's blessing was secure. Trance sharpened her senses and blocked her body's demands. The evening was cold. Not yet moonrise, the darkness yielded shapes.    

A chilling breeze brought a scent. Something moved. To her left, eyes glittered briefly. A large furred shadow with faintly gleaming teeth paused, a deeper shadow in shadow. A she-wolf circled Rachi, belly hanging low and swaying. It stole closer, silently.        

A vision, a true beast, or something spellbound?

Rachi listened with ears and body for signs of ensorcelment:  a glowing shadow, a voice, or static sparks from its fur. Rachi waited as the wolf came closer, wary, but not growling. She touched the dagger, but only held out her palm at waist level, fingers extended. If attacked, her only defense would be to crush the wolf's throat.

But if it were a true beast, it would make a fearsome Warrior's familiar. Mother had walked with such a one, a panther who had been killed in battle. She had worn its black pelt tonight in honor of her own Rebirth. Rachi said a small spell for clear seeing, moving only her finger to shape the runes.    

No spinal shiver, no seeming touch of her mind, this beast was all hot-breathed carnivore. Rachi made ready, praying for protection. The wolf sniffed her fingers, lowered its neck fur, and whined softly. Rachi looked into its eyes, then away in wolf-lore submission. The wolf sniffed her again. It circled her, snuffling her scent and her gifts. Satisfied, it lay by her side. Slowly Rachi moved her hand to her side, then over to scratch the wolf's ears. It leaned against her, its rough fur as warm as a den mate's.    

She sat motionless, petting the wolf only with slight movements of her fingertips. When she stretched to make her blood flow into her cramped limbs, the wolf bristled, alert. Slowly Rachi reached for the waterproof. She let the wolf smell the cloth and pulled it over both of them for warmth.     

Mother would be proud that so strong a familiar had found her. And Rachi would speak Mother's name, Tawnya, for she would return and she would be an equal. Whatever else the night held, she would return if she lived. Let the Den deny this sign.. . .    

"I am a Warrior, not a Healer," Rachi had told Grae as she pounded the white stones into crystalline powder, only three weeks ago.    

"So your mother tells me," Grae said, "but I tell her, there is life beyond battle. And for you, potions beyond healing. Warriors can not read, yet you find the herb jars I have not taught you."    

"You think I'm Wyse?" Rachi almost laughed. No one had ever praised her wit.     

"There is more than one battle and many weapons from which to choose, Rachi. Do you not learn mace, spear, and staff as well as sword?"    

"And rope, hand, and foot."    

"Invisibility, intelligence or intrigue?" The old voice became deep, almost as if another person spoke. "Warriors learn how to fight, but not when. You can charm even the beast if you do not attack it first." Grae's eyes twinkled in that odd way, as if a secret side of herself had spoken, as if something she hid peeked out.    

"But you must always be ready, even to cast a spell. And if attacked, you must counter."    

"Yes, but it is best to have options. If the enemy embraces you, you will have many targets within easy reach."    

"So does she!"    

"The trick is for her to embrace you." Grae's usually stern mask broke briefly into a smile, her voice now light. "Seek what you most desire, but keep your Warrior wit about you, for your enemy may find you out."

                            . . .    

Still petting the wolf, Rachi thought, If two embrace, who is the enemy?       

She watched as the waxing moon rose melon yellow in the blue-black sky. It aligned with the fire, the circle, and Rachi. To her eyes, the disk became the parchment face of Grae, gossamer hair floating over sapphire eyes set deep in wrinkles.

Grae smiled, satisfied. But when Rachi bowed her head in respect towards her, she frowned, her lips pressed together. Grae made the breaking sign in fiery runes and disappeared behind the moon.

Not much of a vision, more like real seeing. Rachi looked down into the circle to refocus her mind. Two meters below her, she saw herself kneeling beside the wolf! Her throat constricted; her heart thundered. She fought for control of her mind against the surge of panic. 

Grae's words came to her:  Water flows down. Water soaks in. The body is mostly water. Water seeks earth.

Rachi thought of water, flowing from the sky, pouring into a puddle, right where her body sat transfixed. She felt nausea, disorientation, a sense of falling. Cold, exhausted, fighting to stay awake, she concentrated. When she thought she would vanish into a night fog, she found her body again, cold, stiff, sore and hungry, but alive.

The wolf held her hand in its teeth, leaving marks but no blood; she had stopped petting. Rachi scratched its ears again. It licked her face, and then put its head on its paws with a sigh. Rachi used the pigments and the runes to paint a spell to protect and hide them both.

She re-entered trance to wait for her vision, to follow where her spirit led. Her hand found the hilt of her mother's dagger. In the instant she thought of her, Rachi was by her mother's side.

Tawnya was drinking ale with her cronies after the Rebirth ceremony. The worn pelt and Tawnya's graying golden hair made her appear the more formidable, tall and hard muscled. Her face held an expression like a stone gargoyle, a cold laugh with no sparkle in her gray eyes. Grae had seen Rachi's spirit appear, but Tawnya did not.      

"She is my child of age," Mother was saying. "I had a boy when I lived with the Eastlanders. I lost him to the Mages and now they'll get Rachi, too, most likely."    

"They go where they will, Tawnya,” the man said. He might have been Tawnya's brother, so much were they alike in expression and stance. "The mother always takes it hardest, especially with the second."    

"Rachi's strong; she'll find her own way." A Healer woman hugged her shoulder. "After all, you did."    

"Can she challenge the world and the Wyse too?" Tawnya gulped a long drink and shook her head, knowingly. "She's been in Grae's clutches since that last Ring. Who knows what spells Rachi's wrapped in? And Rachi's half-Mage. Grae bewitched me herself to fulfill some plot of hers."    

The others looked away for a moment, but stayed to support her. Tawnya took another long swallow.

The Healer leaned on the table beside her. "Long ago you said Grae's name. You are your own person, and so will Rachi be."    

"I still fight, but I'm afraid she's winning. I've taught Rachi all I know. Aai be with her."    

"Then you must let her," the man said. "She will have some of Grae's power, and some of the father's, as well. Even with only your puny strength, she should survive." He laughed and punched her shoulder, and dodged the expected return.    

Tawnya didn't rise to the taunt. "I hope it's enough. She turned out well so far. I never told her."    

"As if you should! Time enough for that when she returns."    

"If."    

                           . . .

Rachi saw that she must have answers only Grae could give. She pictured herself in Grae's chamber and was in it. Grae sat in meditation on the thick-carpeted stone floor.

"Teach me, O Wyse!" Rachi said. "What mark does my thread make in the pattern?"    

The old woman's eyes opened, startled. Grae's body seemed to waver, and then collapsed. Not one spirit but two emerged, one a man holding the woman by her throat. He was older, but still recognizable as the man from her infant dreams.    

"Daughter," he said, "son that should be. As I promised, I have come for thee." He dropped the old woman's spirit which flowed into the limp body. He reached out towards Rachi, his fingers brushing her face.

Had he been within the old one since he vanished from her dreams? His touch which was as solid as if they were bodily face to face. She backed away. His face set into the mask she had seen so often on Grae. He clutched at her arm.    

"You are mine. Come with me now!"    

Rachi evaded him only by a leaping kick to his shoulder. "Is this what a father does--seize an Elder to steal a child?" she said, dodging his grasp.      

Surprised by her strength and agility, he was slow to react. He was nearly surrounded by the crown and circle before he marked his own runes.

"One reborn is no child. This is your destiny, what you were bred for."    

Why did everyone want her so much just now after she had been ignored and pushed away for years? She gestured the signs of protection between them.    

His spells of fire attacked her runes. Rachi sidestepped deftly, but being unused to spirit travel, she weakened. She tried to escape to her body, far away on the ridge, but she was unable even to see herself on the ridge above, blocked against the damp stone walls. The pain of her body on the ridge eroded her strength.     

"You have overpassed your learning, Daughter," he said. "Surrender to me now. Learn true wisdom, not these womanish conceits."    

She knew she had to stand and fight here, or be taken away, to let her body die in the wilderness, or to become the Mage's servant. She placed herself over Grae's body, singing, and signing the spells she had hardly learned. Her father's spells burned her, and the dust of them obscured the pattern of her designs. Her voice slowed, barely able to whisper, and her hands grew heavy.    

"His skills are yours, Rachi," Grae croaked, "You know him as you know me."    

Her childhood dream world came to Rachi's mind; images flashed of companionship and touch, of playing with magic runes, and a name. With her last strength, she dropped her hands and opened them wide, kneeling.    

"Father,” she said, "does not the Father take the life of the first born? Yet I am the second. The 'joy of the later age' you once said. Do not destroy me."     

The air around her cleared. Her father faltered, warily watching. When she did not move, he came to her, pulled her to her feet, and embraced her. They stood motionless, her arms around his neck and her head on his shoulder. She relaxed. He held her closely as when she was a child, perhaps even with love.    

"Come to the Mountains with me," he said, "You will be my heir. All that is mine will be yours."    

"Father," she whispered, drawing strength from him, from his embrace and knowledge as well, "Darkstalker of the Mountains, I know your name." She seized his neck with one arm, and marked his runes with the other hand behind his head. The signs glowed opalescent before the dark stone. "But it is your name. I have my own, mine alone. I choose my own way."    

He pushed her from him, turning too late to see his name and the crown of Aai surrounding it.    

Grae's quavery voice began the chant which was said after intercourse to make a child:         

"Man who has come within this room,              Withdraw.             

Leave your seed and go.         

Return there from, ere you become

As straw,

Which has no seed to sow."

His image faded with the runes.

"You saved me, Grae of Wyse," Rachi said, gesturing a sign of thankfulness. She had spoken directly the name of an adult, a Maven, for the first time. "I will go now to seek my vision."     

"You have completed that task," Grae said. "You are Wyse. Come to me to learn more of your power and destiny."     

"No," Rachi said, "I have only completed your part where you influenced my birth and spied on me through my sire's magic. My name is my own, and I will find the way of it." She felt again the hilt of Tawnya's knife in her hand. Gripping the phantom blade, she made the crown and circle but this time around Grae. Rachi felt more power flowing into her spirit self.    

Grae whispered, “You have freed me of my own vision, Daughter of my Daughter. You will be a great Sorceress, O Rachi of the Wyse." Her face was altered, no longer confident, but wistful, longing. Grae uttered the Name of the Goddess, the cry of birth, rage, ecstasy, and pain, and then died.    

Rachi could not lift the mortal body to its couch to put it in its peace, so she said the song of Aai and left the body for mortals to find.     

Rachi visualized fog, rising up through around clammy rocks into the sky and condensing into dew on a clear night. Dew falling on the high ridges of the boundary mountains.    

Rachi's spirit flowed back into her body lying still on the ridge. She expected cold, weakness, and hunger, but felt warm, comforted, and full. She lay on her side by the wolf with her face in its belly; her body had suckled its fill. Spirit weary, she would sleep until dawn, and then make her way back to the Enclave.

Whatever her destiny there, Rachi, Wyse-Warrior, would not wait for it to find her.  

-END-