Obsidian and Stars (Ivory and Bone #2)
Julie Eshbaugh
ONE
The day is so new, it’s barely day at all. Yet we are already far out on the blue water, gliding under the blue sky. The first rays of the sun paint long stripes of light on the surface. I watch that light—watch it shimmer and ripple until the movement makes my head swim.
Either the movement or my nerves. Or maybe both.
That’s the kind of day this will be—a day of movement and nerves.
I wriggle in my seat, unable to relax. I go back to the moment I last saw Kol, standing on the edge of the sea. I can see his warm eyes, his half smile. I remember every detail of that last good-bye—that last time he said my name and kissed my lips. I can still feel the heat of his breath on my cheek. I hold that image in my mind as the oarsmen stab at the water, bringing me farther and farther north, closer and closer to that very same strip of shoreline.
Bringing me back to Kol.
I wish I could get comfortable. This canoe is so narrow I feel the rock of every wave in the pit of my stomach. My clothes are new and stiff—each place where the hides of my tunic and pants touch me, they rub against my skin. At the back of my neck, in my left armpit, against my right hip bone and the backs of both knees. I have no one to blame but myself, of course, since these clothes are the products of my own hands, made from my own designs. But though I may have bold ideas for intricate patterns of dark and light—the brown of caribou stitched to the tan of sealskin stitched to the gray of otter—I am not always the most patient of tailors. I do not always take the extra time to make sure the fit is perfect. The design on the front of my tunic may draw praise, but no one would want to spend a long day wrapped in this discomfort.
Though that’s exactly what I must do today.
This morning, as soon as I was dressed, I visited Ela’s hut. I don’t ask many people for their opinions, but Ela is one of our clan’s healers, and I trust her. She had not yet seen the new tunic; this was the first I’d shown it to anyone besides my sisters. “It’s supposed to suggest a meadow,” I said. “The golden grass bending and turning in the wind . . .”
“Yes, it looks just like that, Mya.” She smiled, the sort of smile that belongs to a girl with a secret.
“What?”
“I just never thought I’d see you looking so much like a bride.”
“This is not the tunic of a bride,” I said.
“Not yet.” She laughed, and I shoved her, and I laughed, too.
She was right, of course. These are the clothes of a girl coming for a betrothal. If a promise of marriage is made, this betrothal tunic will be enhanced, and even more pieces of light and dark will be worked in. It will become even more ornate. . . .
It will become the tunic of a bride.
A wave tosses and lifts the canoe as I think of this—as I let myself imagine for just a moment a wedding to Kol—and my stomach flips as I brace myself against the sides of the boat. This trip to the Manu camp would feel long on the calmest sea, but today, on these choppy waves, it will feel like it goes on for days.
Before I left Ela’s hut, I sat on her bed, held very still, and let her do my hair. Her hands are the hands of a healer—hands blessed by the Divine. Pulling my hair up and away from my face, her fingers quickly divided sections of strands. She wove tiny ivory beads into a fan of small braids that met at the crown of my head.
“The beads stand out like stars in a night sky,” she said, smiling at the product of her work.
Now, out here on the water, I let my own fingers trace the beads in my hair. They are so similar to the beads that are strung on either side of my ivory pendant—the symbol of the Bosha clan I inherited from my mother.
Will my own daughter one day wear a pendant of bone, as I did when I was a girl?
I glance at the coastline. Short, stunted trees dot the cliffs, thinned out by the cold wind that even here, south of the mountains, begins to sting my cheeks. I think of Kol, somewhere on the other side of those mountains, and my head swims again. This time I cannot blame the movement of the boat or the light reflecting on the sea.
This time I can blame only my nerves.
Where are you at this moment? I wonder. Are you out in the meadow—the meadow that inspired the design on my tunic? Will you recognize your meadow when you see these clothes?
In front of me in the canoe sits my sister Seeri. Like me, she wears ornate clothes, and her hair is carefully styled, but on her, these things look less out of place. From her clothes to her hair to her easy smile, Seeri is so effortlessly charming. So different from me. But then, she’s not the oldest girl. She didn’t have to take on as much responsibility when our mother died.
But I don’t begrudge Seeri her lack of responsibility or envy her charm. I’m happy for her, just as I know she’s happy for me. This visit to the Manu camp will change both our lives.
This trip is so different from the first I made to Kol’s camp, when I wore my simple hunting parka, the parka that had once belonged to my mother. When my brother, my sister, and I each paddled, sharing the work in one canoe. For this trip, with its more formal purpose, rowers have been employed—two to paddle this boat, and two to paddle the other. The second boat carries my brother Chev, High Elder of our clan, and my twelve-year-old sister, Lees. Her clothes are plain—this trip is not for her—but at least she is coming along. Chev had planned at first to leave her home, but she had pleaded and cried and pleaded some more, until he’d given in.
“How can you keep me away when my sisters are becoming betrothed?” she’d whined, and he’d acquiesced. He’d admitted that this visit was important enough for all of us to attend.
True enough, but I suspect Lees has another motive. By coming along on this trip, she will get to see the boy she hopes one day will be her own betrothed—Kol’s youngest brother, Roon.
The spray from the waves grows colder as we press farther and farther north, and I look back over my shoulder at the boat that carries Chev and Lees, a few oar strokes behind. Chev’s head is down, leaning into the wind, but Lees’s eyes are raised, fixed on the ice-capped mountains that rise ahead of us, her lips curled into a smile, oblivious to the knife within the wind.
Or perhaps welcoming it, as it signals that we are drawing closer to our destination.
I wish I could welcome it, too. I wish I could welcome the cold and the wind, and all the other small signs that announce that I will soon see the Manu. A part of me does welcome it. Of course I’m anxious to see Kol’s clan—to see Kol’s family—but I am not anxious to be seen. I know that one glance at me will reveal my intentions, and I shrink at the thought of my private hopes displayed so publicly.