The next season, one Yaha named summer, was the greatest of Tuya’s young life. Of course, all the prior seasons were about as good as a thorn bush with berries hidden deep beyond the barbs. This season, this summer, the thorns seemed smaller, their bite softer, and the berries riper and sweeter than ever before.
Beneath the smoldering heat in the Hollows, Tuya crafted fires the farawaylander way, scraping metals against special stones, and with that fire she learned how to burn and sharpen the ends of branches. Every morning, Yaha instructed her in the ways of the spear down in the hidden grotto where they slept and gathered Celegana’s blessings aplenty. Now, she could capture snakes and slippery fish that used to evade her bare hands with precise thrusts of these pointed sticks. Her senses converged, her silver eyes seeing and anticipating, her strong mind sense granting insight, such that she could predict where they would be rather than chasing them where they were. Yaha refused to give her too much credit for this skill with her words, but Tuya could sense her amazement.
Even when Tuya preempted Yaha in sparring, there was always some point to be made about how her feet were in the wrong place or how the way she used her hands made her thrust ineffective. These blows struck true, piercing Tuya’s confidence and hitting her hard in her dreams. Yaha explained that Tuya would never get Zafrir’s blessing, not being a child of the Mahogany Isles, she would never soar through the air as a Windjumper like Yaha and her women, blessed by the pearl necklace of their spearmate. Still, Tuya wanted to defend herself, and even that dream seemed unobtainable.
The techniques and stances of a Mahagan Spear were incomprehensible and even linking with Yaha did not make them feel natural. Her feet stumbled through the motions and her hands fumbled on the different grips. Yaha struggled to conceal her frustration with the slow crawl of progress where it seemed that for every day Tuya made gains, she had two days of stagnation, and three days of regression. This continued many days, Yaha’s words growing sharper and Tuya’s discouragement spreading to the point that she hated holding the spear and thought she would never be good enough to fight a tamer. Each day brought her closer to throwing it away and giving in.
Then, one morning when Tuya felt particularly downhearted, Yaha told her to put down the spear and asked her to link with her. They examined not what Tuya was doing wrong, but why it was hard for her. Instead of criticizing mistakes they tried to understand them and make sense of what made it so difficult for her, despite her intuition, despite Yaha calling her the “sponge” when it came to learning words. Yaha reminded herself that the children of the Mahogany Isles were taught from a young age how to stand, how to believe in themselves, and to not back down, whereas Tuya was taught to surrender, to submit, to shrink, and make herself small. Mahagan girls wielded branches and practiced swinging them almost as soon as they could walk while Tuya hid and cowered from branches. Her body memorized these motions, using them to make her pain smaller. Tuya was not struggling to learn something new, she was struggling to unlearn something so old that it had kept her alive since before she could remember.
From then on, Yaha changed the approach. Tuya practiced her stances while standing near tamers, retraining her body’s earliest lessons, she was praised for what she excelled at naturally, and encouraged and reassured through the struggles. Yaha called her the “uncut diamond,” a beautiful thing full of potential that needed to be slowly and carefully shaped to forge it into the masterwork it could be. Her body took shape and the workings of her muscles, of her feet and hands, soon flowed more smoothly and naturally through the stances and techniques. Mornings became one of her favorite times of the day for the first time in her life. Tuya felt powerful, capable, strong in her body. She was not large, but no longer did she feel small.
While the summer heat scorched the Hollows, Tuya and Yaha descended into their cool grotto where her mind grew and grew alongside her body. She learned words and language, absorbing meanings through linking with Yaha’s mind, insatiable to know more and pushing Yaha nightly until the woman finally told her enough. After Yaha took to sleep, Tuya continued reciting words, having conversations with herself, testing words in both her native language and Leverian, the language of Yaha’s people. No matter how much she practiced, her tongue and throat refused to make the musical sounds of Yaha’s softer language. Yaha chuckled at Tuya’s guttural accent, at her inability to stop speaking with her throat. Once, Yaha compared Tuya’s efforts at speaking Leverian with the wails of the empagong, a massive turtle guardian of the Mahogany Isles. From then on, Tuya refused to speak Leverian where Yaha could hear.
Alas, the only thing that could rival Tuya’s stubbornness was Yaha’s. “Speak, Tuya,” Yaha said, during their nightly practice.
Tuya shook her head, breaking their link. She was done letting people make condescending remarks, having spent her whole life listening to tamers call her stupid, worthless, small, and every other mean thing. She folded her arms over her chest and looked away. She would not give this woman what she needed to make her feel small.
Sighing, Yaha sidled beside her and put her arm around her back. “Is this about the empagong?”
Tuya said nothing, seething annoyance, sliding away from Yaha until the woman’s arm fell off her. You would think comparing somebody’s speech with a wailing tortoise might make them not want to talk to you.
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Yaha’s voice was far softer than Tuya’s thoughts. “The empagong are our most sacred protector. They are beautiful, strong, caring, and we consider ourselves blessed to hear their discordant song. We love them, Tuya.” She squeezed Tuya’s shoulder and twisted around her until their eyes met. Tuya looked down, but Yaha did not look down at her. “I could not think of a better comparison for you. So please, speak to me. I love hearing your words, my little empagong.”
Tuya looked up, used her mind sense, and knew this was no joke to Yaha. “I am your little empagong?”
Yaha smiled. “You are.”
Thus, Tuya spoke, no longer focusing so much on whether she blended the throat noises of the Gidiite-Celegan language with the Leverian tongue. The words opened her to a new world of ideas. Her ideas grew with the stories Yaha shared of faraway lands, freeing her mind to grow beyond the confines of the reality the tamers beat into her.
The faraway ideas that once seemed antithetical to her existence as a child of Celegana became less foreign, less repulsive. Her mind opened as she listened to stories of the Fourteenth, a disciple of Divine Leverith who used magic and kindness to spread love to her own warring people in the Leverian Kingdom, to the sixty-four warring clans of the Mahogany Isles, and even, long, long, long ago to the tamers and khorota of the Hollows who once lived in harmony and balance.
Yes, in the distant past, khorota, those who free the wild, or, in Yaha’s more loving language, wilders, lived in equality with the tamers. Not only were these lost stories of her people the key that unlocked her mind, but the stories of other people helped her learn that life could be lived many different ways, and that the tamer way was not the one true way of life, nor was it with the mandate of Celegana. Yaha taught her that Celegan society was a monster created of the most brutal parts of the Hollows of Celegana and the merciless might of their Gidiite conquerors. Yaha freed her from the belief that Celegana wanted this cruel life for her, that, deep down, this was the way life was supposed to be. Truth broke through, like a rainbow after years of rain, spilling vibrant light where once everything was one miserable color. Mother Celegana did not want this; she did not approve of the tamers dominating the wilders, did not approve of their need to conquer faraway lands. She did not.
For all her seasons, tamer society shaped her mind to see things their way and tricked her into thinking this was the will of Celegana. The tamers told her that the sky must be red and she must believe that or be stupid, wrong, or evil. She had tricked herself too by pointing up at the sky at dawn and dusk, when red splashed upon the horizon, and declared, “The sky is red,” while everyone around her said, “Of course the sky is red, stupid khorota!”
Tuya rejected the lies. No more would she squint her eyes, narrow her vision, and see only that which the tamers put in front of her, in the singular angle they wanted her to see, and accept it as the one true way of seeing things. Tuya opened her eyes and studied what she saw from every angle. Yes, the sky could be red at times, it could be orange, purple, black, white, gray, and many other colors too, but most often it was blue.
Tuya and Yaha spent their days under skies of blue, where the big lightmaker, Sun, shimmered bright and bathed the Hollows in burning light. At first, the tamers made threats, tried to keep their claims away from Tuya, and poisoned her reputation by calling her the evil khorota accursed by Celegana while Yaha was a farawaylander demon that worshipped the evil water goddess and rode upon desecrations. The women and little girls in the region hid from them, pretended Tuya and Yaha were invisible when they came with blessings.
The shadows of the past chased Tuya in this time, threatening to swallow her hope and bring her back to the wasting wretch she was the season before. If not for two things, she may have stayed within her shell and remained ever in the dark place. The first came the day Tuya found a little girl, Masarga, in great pain from a beating. The girl was feverish, vomiting what meagre stores her tiny belly kept, bruises covering her body and making every movement a punishment.
Tuya knelt at Masarga’s side, rubbed her head, just like Zaya used to do. “Let me make your pain smaller.”
Masarga coughed, gripped her side, winced, and cried out. Clenching her teeth, she whimpered, and gave the barest of nods. Tuya smiled at her and tended to her pains. Paintaker made her pain smaller, numbroot root dulled it further and brought down her fever, various other herbs tended her hurts, soothing her bruising, opening her airways, and ointment from the numbroot stems sealed her cuts. Masarga fell asleep with her head in Tuya’s lap, Tuya’s hand stroking her hair as she touched her with her strength. You are loved, little Masarga. You are strong. You are safe.
For the first time since the day Sarnai died, Tuya felt like a paintaker.
The tamers still tried to take that away from her. Tamer Bhalu strode toward them with a big log. “Any who are touched by the evil khorota must die!”
This day came before Tuya understood what it meant to stand tall, before she began to change those memories of what her body must do when tamers were angry. She shrank away from big Bhalu and his log, countless memories of what it felt like to be hit, what if felt like to watch as another was hit because of you, of Khula, Sarnai, and Zaya, and all the others she failed before, holding her frozen despite the heat. Soon, Masarga’s name would be among them.
Yaha shared none of these memories, none of these restraints. Bhalu found a pointed stick protruding through his gut. Yaha pushed him to the ground, and pulled the spear out of his back. “Any who harm khorota will die!” She drove the point of her spear through Bhalu’s neck.
Like farawaylander magic, few women carried bruises beyond that day while many accepted offerings of food and numbroot leaf. Yes, the tamers remained cruel creatures that seemed to exist for the purpose of inflicting pain on the khorota. They made threats, they shouted and criticized, they restricted what they gave to the women, they came in the night and put their seed in their wombs, they tried to make the other women fear Tuya. All of them continued on, finding new ways to inflict pain or to hide their malice from Tuya and Yaha. All of them, save for one.
The second change that left Tuya above her sanctuary arrived in the middle of the season on a windy day that blew new air into her life. Of all the berries that ripened on the thorn bush of this summer, Tamer Darrakh was the one that Tuya most wanted to harvest.