Great Sky Woman Read Free

the child, and already both loved and hated her.

Chapter Two
    The girl was born to Zebra Moon and her husband, Water Chant, in Water boma, the cluster of huts a day’s walk south of Great Earth. There, hands of hands of folk lived in the shadow of a single thorn ring-wall higher than any man or lion could leap. Most within were blood kin—brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins—or married into the clan. They hunted eland and warthog and ostrich, and gathered berries and tubers, melons and beans. The dusty-skinned, gray old hunters crouched around the men’s fire sharpening their spears and pit stakes and arrows, laughing and joking and recounting tales of their youth as they worked. The young hunters spent half their days in this fashion, singing and learning wisdom from the old ones. The gray-hairs smoked their pipes and leaf-rolls, sang of tracking and trapping and killing leopards in the manner taught by the hunt chiefs. Several paces away was the women’s fire, always protected by a semicircle of stones, not an intact ring like that protecting the men’s fire. Here the old women prepared skins: curing, chewing hides, scraping fat, pounding and softening the deer and giraffe skins with ground plant gums, then stitching them into pouches and loincloths. With brittle bones they danced last night’s dreams, sharing their own secret knowings.
    The boma’s women and their daughters were primarily responsible for child care, remembrance of family songs, and the interpretation of dream memories. What had occurred in the dream world? Who could show a dance step learned in that shadowy realm? The best steps were repeated for the dream dancers when they visited. Sometimes a visiting wise woman marveled, agreeing that boma folk had joined them in the dream dance. On such happy occasions, their songs warmed the clouds above.
    Men rarely visited the women’s fire, and women rarely sat beside the men’s. Only the youngest children moved easily between the fires as they teased and raced and made games, dancing and singing their days. Men and women alike tolerated them with great good humor and little harsh discipline, knowing that the years ahead would be challenging enough to provide all the rigor a child could ever need.
    The older children traversed the worlds of male and female with greater difficulty, and as they neared the age for marriage, the nudges and disapproving comments toward those who strayed across the invisible line intensified, until there was little communication between the two genders.
    There was currently one exception in Water boma, the man called Thorn Summer. Thorn lived in Fire boma, to the northeast, but was visiting Water because it was his sister whom the gods had blessed with child.
    Thorn was thick-bodied and slow of temperament, soft-muscled but of good spirits, one of those rare men with but a single scar on each cheek. He had chosen not to complete his manhood ceremony, not to become a hunter. Thorn would never be offered a worthy bride. No father would give a beautiful, strong daughter to such a man. Thorn Summer was considered not male, and not female either. He was a “Between,” of low status, but still of the Circle.
    Thorn ran toward Zebra’s hut, one water-filled ostrich shell in each hand. A small girl trotted at his side carrying water in a stitched eland skin. As they did, a woman’s shrill, anguished screams rent the air. Hunters squatting nearby glanced toward the hut and then pointedly turned away, trusting in their wives and sisters to deal with this strange and rather magical challenge. One small, dusty male child watched Summer and the girl as they ducked down into Zebra’s straw-roofed hut. When he took a halting, curious step in their direction, his father took his arm and gently but firmly pulled him back.
    Childbirthing was a thing only for women, and for those males who would never be men.
     
    The largest of the hunters at the fireside was Water Chant, boma father.