Read Online Motherlines by Suzy McKee Charnas - Free Book Online

pointed with her chin, as the women often did.
    Out beyond the tents a group approached on foot over the plains, hauling a wagon. The wind was blowing the wrong way. Alldera could barely hear the creaking of the wagon’s wheels and only scraps of voices, though the group was at no great distance from Stone Dancing Camp.
    She knew them at once for ferns. They had a squat, stiff-jointed look about them, none of the suppleness of riders, and the silhouettes of their clothing reminded her unmistakably of Holdfastish dress. As they came closer she could make out the broad, shallow hats they wore and, instead of shirt and pants, smocks with skirts mid-thigh over bare legs. Some of them carried staffs in their hands or across their shoulders. Each staff was tipped with a glinting point.
    Fems carrying weapons and traveling unmastered: a dream of her own people.
    Flooded with a great sense of relief, of homecoming, Alldera dropped the tea pannikin and began to cry. Yet she did not want to run to greet them.
    Barvaran, at her shoulder, said, ‘Those are free fems, come to trade from their camp in the eastern hills. They’ll go right to the chief tent; we have to get our trade goods together. You go ahead.’ She patted Alldera awkwardly on the shoulder and joined Shayeen in rummaging inside the tent.
    Reining close, Nenisi leaned toward Alldera. ‘I have to ride out again. Alldera – if the free fems say anything that confuses you, I’ll try to explain it later. It would be best if you didn’t mention your child to them.’
    Something was wrong; Alldera could feel Nenisi’s anxiety, but she could not read its source. Nenisi galloped off.
    Alldera walked slowly toward the chief tent, alone. She felt dizzy with excitement and apprehension.
    Everyone crowded around outside the chief tent, many women laden with goods – piles of skins and hides, sacks and pouches of dried food. The fems had parked their wagon out of the camp. They made a procession to the chief tent, carrying loads balanced on their heads. Their heavy sandals scuffed the ground as they advanced. They had left their spears, but each one wore a hatchet looped to her belt. To Alldera they looked coarse and graceless, out of place here. Each of them chewed a wad in her cheek and spat brown juice.
    The smocks they wore were of cloth, patterned with colors. As they walked the smocks swung, and the colors appeared to move. Suddenly, jarringly, Alldera saw how drearily brown the women and their surroundings were. Around her stretched the low plain with its yellowing grasses, under the wide tan sky. The camp itself was earth brown, leather brown, the various red and yellow and black browns of the women’s hair and skin, and the colors of animal hides.
    Why, the women were like their horses – as there were so many dun horses in the camp’s herds, so many blacks, so many stripe-legged bays, so there were this many dark-skinned lines of women like the Conors and the Clarishes over there, so many lines with red hair, so many sallow women like those Tuluns bending over their stacked goods, hair like coal and bodies as narrow and muscular as the necks of horses. Grouped at the chief tent, they were like some woven design in which each broad, clear thread could be traced in the image of each Motherline, repeated from individual to individual and from generation to generation.
    She shook her head and blinked, frightened by this vision and the distance it put between herself and the women.
    One of the fems came forward and spoke with the Shawden chiefs. Then they all laid out their goods in rows before the tent. The women milled up and down the narrow aisles, picking up bricks of tea and sniffing them, shaking out coils of rope. The fems watched, tight-mouthed, sharp-eyed, and spoke only when they were asked questions.
    Alldera was glad she had not run out to meet the wagon. She stayed at the outer edges of the crowd, peering at the newcomers. When they spoke she found their