Sister Emily's Lightship by Jane Yolen Page A

rise,
    Come by shine,
    Come by hearthlight,
    Come be mine.
The Story:
    Zenna called her own dark sister the next moon. Lolla and Senja, twins in everything, called theirs together.
    â€œIt is a wonder they did not call up just one,” their mother said. But she said it laughing.
    Everyone joined in the laugher but Selna. Selna laughed very little these days. No—Selna did not laugh at all. She left the table where the conversation continued and went out into the courtyard of the Hame. She got her throwing knife from the cupboard and fitted it into her belt, then took down her bow from its slot against the wall. The quiver she filled with seven arrows and slung over her shoulder. Then she went out the gate.
    She ran down the path easily, her mocs making little sound against the pebbles. She used wolf breath to give her the ability to run many miles. It was not that far till she would reach the woods. As she ran, she thought about how she and Marda had raced almost every day along this same path, the one keeping breath with the other. How they ran left foot with left, right foot with right. How they matched in everything—the color of their hair the same wheat gold, their eyes both the slate blue of the rocks by the little river. Only she was tall and Marda was a hand’s breadth shorter.
    â€œI love you, Marda,” she had said the day they had opened their wrists and sealed their lives together.
    â€œI love you, Selna,” Marda had answered, as she smoothed the aloe onto the leaf and bound it with the vine.
    They had been children of nine summers then. Now they were fourteen.
    â€œI still love you, Marda,” Selna said. But she said it to the white tree standing sentinel at the woods’s first path. She said it to the three tall rocks that they had played on so often as children. And she said it to the river that rippled by uncaring. Twenty-one stones, the saying went, and water is pure.
The History:
    The women of the mountain warrior clans lived in walled villages called Hames. As far as we can tell, there were five main buildings in each Hame: the central house, in which were the sleeping and eating and cooking quarters, was the largest building. It opened onto a great courtyard where the training of warriors took place. What animals they kept—goats, fowl, possibly cows—were in one small barn. A second, even smaller barn housed the stores, part of which were kept down in a cellar, where stoneware bottles were put by with fermented drinks—berry wines and even, in a few of the Hames, a kind of ginger beer. A small round building housed a bathing pool heated by a series of pipes to a central wood heater. There were two smaller, shallower pools. From the Lowentrout essay “The Dig Arundale: Pooling Resources,” Nature and History, Vol. 57, comes the interesting theory that one of the small pools was for the children while the other, with a separate series of exit pipes, was for women during their menses. The other building, some scholars feel, was a training center or school. Others hypothesized that this fifth building was a place of worship.
The Story:
    Selna found the deer tracks by the river’s edge. They were incautious tracks, scumbled tracks, for the deer was still young and looking for any kind of footing. In the imprint of one was the imposition of a large cat’s track.
    â€œHo, my beauty,” Selna said. Whether she meant the deer or the cat was not clear.
    Both deer and cat had crossed the river at the shallow turning. Selna followed them carefully, the bow already strung. She knew she might be too late. The deer might have made a dash for safety and the cat, in its frustration, got its fill of rabbit or mice. Or the cat might even now be feasting on raw venison. Or tracking behind Selna…but she did not believe the last. The cat’s prints showed it clearly and steadily behind the deer.
    She went back and forth across the river three times