The Totem-Maker (part ninety-seven)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Ten

Crafter Becomes Maker

(part ninety-seven)

Noakale kept me at her side during those days the suitor and his entourage eked into Lord Ei’s establishment. She was certain of her strength, quite untroubled by the loftiness of Darsale, the sourness of Jute. United were the sisters in exile and forced wedlock; at daggers, privately, otherwise.

We had not been alone, Noakale and I. I waited my moment.

“Come help me choose my gift,” she said one morning, and led me by the hand.

I was at the window, watching a rider I could at last recognize as Wosogo. I spoke when Jute’s stare after us was eclipsed by a falling curtain.

“A gift for Jute? Or does Lord Ei bring his wife?”

“Lord Ei has no wife. A gift to adorn the fine gown, and the gown is a gift, as well. All kindnesses to my cousin Darsale.”

“And no personal kindnesses to Jute?”

“Personal. There’s a word. But this honors me, your piercing eye. My husband puts great store by it, frets putting himself under that eye’s disapprobation.”

“He does not!”

“Oh, yes. What a creature you are! There is no ill-luck in these stones of yours?”

“They need not be mine alone. You may have one, Noakale.”

“You sound up to mischief. Do you counsel me to keep my totem a secret?”

“Have one and wield it, though I can’t tell you how to wield it.”

She only laughed, and pulled me before the polished round of copper. Rather than show me her gift, she drew behind me and fastened it round my neck. The plates were luminous pearl. Silverwork in traceries held them in the shape of a collar.

“A treasure! I fear asking Ami’s blessing. Jute despises my charity.”

“You’ll learn to have better fun. Of course she despises charity. Just why we go out of our way to give it.”

A moment, and I asked, “Would you have me bear this to Jute now?”

“Do you wish, at all, to wander the grounds? I have not been keeping you from your meditations…? You shall have the garden to yourself, dear, and I will give the order.”

I made motions towards the obeisance I’d been wont to use, when last I’d served a kind mistress, but Noakale had many years’ wisdom on Pytta. “Go now, and have your lunch. The servants will trouble you long enough to lay it. Nur-Elom, I feel you have been trying to ask me things.”

Catching me with this, as I’d turned to leave.

“I wish,” I said, clasping my hands at my waist, “that you would tell me how you yourself came to marry. I don’t conceal my reasons. Jute and Darsale…”

“Are Wolgan. Wolgan himself was the son of a white eagle, and an exiled chieftain’s daughter. I am Kale Kale. We have no home, our people, but we have wealth, and there is a story how that came about.”

But saying so, she shooed me on my way. I had no time to ask if she could believe a man had been sired of an eagle, if in the north they had ever seen such things.

101

The Recalcitrant One

The Totem-Maker (part ninety-eight)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)