Tarashana Rachel Neumeier (top 10 motivational books TXT) 📖
- Author: Rachel Neumeier
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Bowing her head, Inhejeriel said, I will do as I promised, great lord. I will do everything I promised I would do.
“I hope this is so,” my father said grimly. “My son, my guest, come away from this place and we shall discuss this ... this ...”
“Mad endeavor?” Aras suggested, smiling as a man will do when important matters have been settled in a way that satisfies him. He went to take his pony’s reins, and as though that were a signal, everyone else moved to do the same.
-15-
We left Inhejeriel kneeling alone in her place and went back down the slope to the place our people had so recently camped. I cast one look back over my shoulder. She did not look in any way like a woman who has won her way in a difficult contest; nothing of the kind. By this time, the Sun had stepped below the edge of the world. Clouds had begun to gather in the north, dimming the early light of the Moon so that soft luminescence that surrounded her seemed brighter than before. Nevertheless, if I have ever seen anyone look more weary and forlorn, I could not recall it.
When we came to a place where stones had been arranged in a hearth around a firepit, with fuel laid nearby, my mother took a coal she had carried packed in dry moss in a horn. Iro and I set all our tents one against another, lacing the hides together to make one larger tent. Neither of us had to say anything. We both agreed that everyone would want to stay close together this evening and through the night.
My mother settled near to the fire, with my father near her. Her expression was placid. His was closed and hard. Each would want to think through all that we had learned. Aras sat down on the other side of the fire and gazed into the flames, equally silent. I touched Iro on the arm and gestured toward the caves carved into the roots of the mountains, where food was stored.
The interior of the cave was cold even near the narrow opening. Iro pulled the heavy straw mats out of the way and made his way through the gap between the blocks of ice, still thicker than a man’s arm even half a season after they had been cut from the lake. Many kinds of foods—dried meat and heavy rounds of cheese, grain, dried fruits and mushrooms—were stored behind the ice, hanging in baskets or set within jars of glazed clay. Each kind of food was stored in a different kind of container, so we could find what we wanted by touch.
I took two baskets from near the entrance, giving one to Iro. “I will get the journey sticks,” I told him. He nodded and turned aside to collect the kinds of foods Etta and my mother would want to prepare tonight. I went past him to another part of the storage cave, where bundles of sticks made of pounded meat and dried berries and rendered fat had been wrapped in thin hide and stacked ready. This is a food we carry when we do not intend to take time to hunt. These sticks are light to carry and keep a long time—many seasons, in our storage caves. I took a whole basket of these sticks and followed Iro out of the cave. We walked together back toward the fire.
Etta took the basket from Iro and began to cut dried meat into pieces and add it to the water in one pot. My mother began to make barley flour into a dough with some fat and water. No one spoke while the women worked. Everyone was still thinking. I divided the journey sticks into six portions, wrapping each portion in a piece of thin leather.
My father glanced up. “Five, not six,” he said abruptly. “Let the Tarashana woman depend on the generosity of another person for every bite of food she eats.”
I paused. Then I began to reorder the sticks into five portions.
Aras said quietly, “I do not know much about the part of the land of the shades where your people go. I suppose there is nothing for a living person to eat there.”
My father, though he frowned, gestured to Etta that she should answer. He returned his gaze to the fire, but my sister said, her tone subdued—for her—“Perhaps it is not the same for Lau, but our tales explain that a living person must not eat or drink anything gathered or offered within the land of the shades. Eating so much as one berry means the person will not be able to return to the land of the living.”
“There are other dangers,” I added. “The unquiet dead, those whose skulls have not been placed within the tombs of their own people, may try to steal the life from a living person. They may try to do this even though the lives they take are not theirs and do not content them. Some of them try to come through the paths of the dead. The taiGara prevent them; every tomb is guarded by the settled dead of those people. But if a living person goes into the land of the shades, then he must be very careful not to fall prey to these unquiet spirits.”
Etta nodded. She said, “Also, the land of the shades confuses the eyes and minds of living people. That danger may be less for us than for most living people, because Aras should be able to stop anyone from straying, or find anyone who strays.”
Aras inclined his head. “I certainly hope I will be able to do that. I cannot be certain. No Lau sorcerer has ever returned from the land of the shades to explain whether
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