Motherlines by Suzy McKee Charnas Page B

everyone’s time, and the whole camp lived on fresh milk these days. Alldera could not pick up the trick of seizing the small, waxy teat way up under a mare’s leg, so she felt guilty about her appetite for the pale, sweet food.
    Now: start with the cold water to moisten the shavings or it comes out too bitter. Enough cold, she hoped; then water from the hot kettle, but slowly, not too much, cold again right away so that not all the powerful taste would be leached out in the first steeping. That seemed good; the rising scent was mild and minty.
    Barvaran was speaking with affectionate humor of a pack game that hinged on guessing whether a child who was ‘it’ had a finger in her nose or not by just listening to her talk in the dark. It was weird even now to think of these women as having once lived the life of the childpack and to think of the cub of Holdfaster Tent joining that life. She was growing fast. Alldera remembered how the leather sling had sagged against Nenisi’s back this morning when the black woman had ridden out to the milking lines carrying the cub with her.
    Barvaran and Shayeen talked of a wild dancing game played with the horses, of sleepy sex games, and – in a subdued manner – about harrying the unfit from the pack. Many died in their first pack year. When the children brought in one of their number who was ill to be tended by the adults, that child was generally discovered to have exceptional qualities.
    With a rush of confidence Alldera decided to take the next step: the mixing of flour and water to make noodles, which the women put in their tea along with milk and salt, making it into a meal. She hoped no one would insist on helping.
    They were too deep in talk. Shayeen was saying wistfully, ‘You start to bleed, and the younger ones drive you out, and that’s the end of the free life. There’s no place to go but to the tents, where you remember women once carried you and nursed you and mopped your bottom. And sure enough, there they are, all waiting to make you into a proper woman with a name and a family.’
    ‘Oh, it’s a terrible time, I remember,’ Barvaran agreed. ‘There I was with blood running down my legs and a new smell of myself, all hateful and sour, in my nostrils. My pack mates had to beat me away. Somebody finally whacked me on the head with a horse bone, I still have the mark, look here. That did it.’
    ‘Blood at both ends is a strong argument,’ Shayeen said. ‘Did you ever hear of a Maclaster child who ran with her camp’s pack for almost seventeen years? Just would not start bleeding.’
    ‘Some funny traits show up in that line sometimes.’
    Sitting back, her work completed, Alldera suddenly noticed how cool the morning was once she was not bending over the heat of the tea fire. She tightened her breast wrap – by now she could adjust the knot behind her back by herself – and slipped her long leather shirt on over her head. She put on her headcloth and the rawhide crown that snugged it to her head, and stood up.
    The pants that Barvaran had lent her fit fairly well, closing at the waist with a drawstring; but the legs had to be tugged down every once in a while because Alldera did not like to wear the soft boots that helped to anchor them. She had gone barefoot all her life.
    She sheathed her knife and buckled on her belt. The women wore the knife sheathed at the small of the back, where the tip could not catch the thigh upraised to mount a horse. Alldera stayed clear of the horses and wore her knife at her hip. The horses’ size and strength and impenetrable mixture of cunning and stupidity terrified her, and she still thought of the women’s power over them as a kind of magic.
    Someone called outside – Nenisi’s voice. There she sat on her best bay mare, straight-backed and masterful, having left the cub with someone out at the milking lines. Hastily, Alldera poured out some tea and took it to her.
    Nenisi did not drink. ‘Look,’ she said, and