Fight Like A Girl Read online

  Somewhere distant, a song had begun.

  Still, neither of them had spoken. Was it his task, to begin? Yes. He remembered. He opened and closed his lips, soundlessly, aware of the dryness in his mouth.

  With the hood fallen, he could see her face. She was perhaps a little older than he; her jaw was strong and her bones broad, and there was a dark down of growth upon her shaved head which did not mask a strange series of patterns beneath. He tilted his head to see, and she tilted hers in response. For a moment, he felt the oddest of sensations, that she was moving in response to his mind, as she angled her head, birdlike, and turned it slowly. He saw, more clearly now, that upon her bare scalp were fine, black ink lines, scored into her skin, and beneath it. His eyes widened.

  “Did it hurt?” he said, quietly, and then recoiled. He had made an error. The words he had practised with Master Vey burned in his mind.

  Something of surprise played about her lips. “Yes,” she answered, dipping her head slightly in acknowledgement. “It hurt very much.” She rolled up one sleeve of her robe and extended one slender, pale wrist to him. His eyes traced the lines of similar black inks that wrapped around her arm and vanished into the crook of her elbow. “These hurt as well. They work with a needle, and the tender skin is the worst.”

  “How long does it take?”

  “Years, in total. They begin when we are taken for service. And it is done piece by piece.”

  They both stared, for a moment, their eyes locked together on black ink and white skin. Then they glanced at each other, and smiled, a little bashfully. “This is not how we are supposed to begin, is it?” he asked.

  “I think not,” she said.

  They took a step, each of them, backwards. She withdrew her arm, and he took a deep breath. He would begin again. He tried to recall the precise words.

  “I am come by the command of the High Masters to . . . to request the completion of my training.” She nodded a little, encouragingly. Emboldened, he went on. “For it has been determined that I am fit to stand with my brothers of the Ma’chek, shoulder to shoulder, and as each of them has done in his turn, according to the ritual, I have come to be fully . . .”

  He broke off, suddenly fearful. She mouthed the final three words, slowly, noiselessly. Made. A. Man.

  He repeated them. “Made a man.”

  “Then by the authority of the high masters and the will of the women’s council, I accept you and bid you a warrior’s welcome,” she said, her voice richer than his, more certain. She pulled at her robe, then, untying the broad, dark belt and stepping out of the garment in one fluid movement. Beneath it she was clad in dark bands of skins, all secured with clasps of ornate metal. The intricate tattooing was all at once like a kind of clothing, and like a greater kind of nakedness: it drew his eyes across the plains of her shoulders, her strong arms and thighs, her belly. It demanded that he knew her body with his eyes. She did not shrink from his gaze.

  “Do you fully understand what it is we must do?” she asked, extending one hand towards him.

  “I think I do,” he replied. A feeling that was both familiar and strange was growing upon him, like the wary arousal of the moments before a battle, when the senses sharpen and the body braces. He looked down, abashed, and fumbled with his robe.

  “No. You don’t,” she said.

  And then the air thickened and shimmered, and her first casting hit him with the power of a hundred weapons.

  Blinded, almost, knocked onto the hard earth and against the stony walls of the chamber, he gasped for air and let out an involuntary cry. His first instinct was to look around for the man, the warrior who had crept up on him in this chamber and violated the ritual before it was complete. Lungs heaving, he raised his head and scanned the shadows.

  When her second casting came, he stopped looking for a man. He saw her draw down power, saw the flare in her eyes, saw the body tense: saw all of this in the half-heartbeat it took her to hit him again with a blow that snapped back his head and ran a bright knife of pain down his spine.

  His training took over. He rolled. He left his baffled mind alone and his body moved for him. Habits asserted themselves. He rolled for cover. Threw the robe from him in the opposite direction, drawing her eyes. Then, hidden behind the platform, crouched low, he stilled himself and hushed his hard breathing, and listened.

  Nothing moves silently. A memory flickered, of long-ago desert training, of drawing the powerful sand cats with raw meat lures, so that they could listen for the smallest of noises that even sand cats made as they moved across the dry earth. And so it was that he could make out her footfalls, soft and pulled as they were – and she was good, very good, he realised, as the fear made another coil in his stomach – now approaching the platform, now ascending the wooden steps, now pausing.

  He wondered if he could make himself hurt a girl.

  Perhaps he did not have to. He made himself draw in power, and felt the beating of his heart speed up as he held it. He gestured softly with his left hand, and for a moment a half-transparent yellow line hung in the air. Hurting her could wait. When the line had arched its back and faded into the air, he listened again, and then stood, hands poised in front of him.

  But it had worked. The paralytic cast held her, poised at the platform’s edge with her intricately patterned legs bent, ready to jump. Her eyes were wild, moving furiously as she fought the spell that had frozen her. He backed away, looking about the chamber for anything he could use as a weapon. Hurriedly, horribly aware of the small handful of minutes a paralysing cast would last, he grabbed at a lantern, and fumbled the cord from his discarded robe which lay crumpled on the ground. He passed the curtain which marked the chamber door, but resisted the urge to flee: shame, yes, there was shame pressing on him, but also something inside him that itched to understand the attack, a desire stronger than the desire for safety. He circled back. Her head was already beginning to move, eyes blinking, lips parting. He kept the distance between them.

  “I do not understand,” he said, his voice low. “Do you not wish to perform the ritual?” Her lips parted and closed again. He frowned. “I have done only as I was instructed. I thought . . . I believed . . . If you are unwilling, I will not hurt you. I will leave.” He watched the convulsions of her face as she struggled to speak, her eyes widening, fear written on her brow. Her body still looked frozen, and suddenly he felt barbaric. He took a step towards her and lowered his hands.

  And then he was on his back, body slamming, dust rising, her legs and hands gripping him with an overwhelming pressure. Her leap had come from nowhere. She took his left hand and hit it against the floor, and the lantern skittered out of his grasp and rolled as he felt his knuckles begin to bleed. “It wore off as you picked up the robe,” she muttered in his ear. She pressed her knee into the side of his belly, where the flesh was softer, where the organs were vulnerable, and as the pain mounted in his side he began to care less about hurting her. Gathering his strength, he braced his lower back against the floor and began to use his hips. He had fought off Master Vey and the other recruits time and time again in the arena. He had not been beaten and bloodied by an opponent since his fifteenth summer. If it was hand to hand combat she wanted, then he could provide, without understanding her reasons; he could fight her if fighting was what she wanted.

  Pressing his weight and hers, using the floor beneath him to leverage them, he summoned all his strength and turned her. She flailed angrily, her hands reaching towards his face, and as he struggled to brace himself on his toes, to pin her, she used one foot to drive into the skin behind his knee, once, twice. He flinched. Her painted hand twitched, a cold cast washed over him in a shade of grey, and he found himself chilled, shivering so hard that she was able to crawl from his grasp and escape him. The shaking cast began to wane, and he drew himself up onto the balls of his feet.

  Her combat magic is outstanding, he thought, as he steadied himself. He began to wheel the heavy rope that had belted his robe,
still clenched in his right hand, making it describe blurred circles in the air. Now there was anger in his voice, as he shouted. “I came here in good faith. You welcomed me. You made an oath. We made an oath, your words and mine!”

  She circled with him, body low, feet sure. “And I keep my oath!” she returned, before trying to slide beneath the rope and take out his feet with her own. For a moment he was elated as he leapt sideways and evaded her, but then his spinning rope hit hard against one of the narrow lantern poles, tangled, and yanked at his arms and his shoulders as its speed became a weapon against him. He released it, palms burning. He sighed, and turned to face her once again.

  When Tey’dor reflected on it later, it was not a long bout. No more than a quarter hour, no more than twenty or thirty further passes exchanged. No more than a good bout in the training ring, and yet harder, more breathless, more bloody a fight than he had endured before. It wore both of them down. And at the end, when his strength faded and her agility waned, and when her speed lessened and his casting fumbled, it came down to two simple things. First, that he dropped a half-broken lantern pole from his sweat-slickened hands, and, second, that he stopped in his tracks, with his spirit as shattered as the pole, to stare at its dull length in the dirt. So when, from behind, she softly wound the length of fabric from her own robe around his throat, and began to exert slow but mounting pressure, he dropped to his knees and struck his own chest thrice, and then the floor thrice, and then bowed his head.

  Submission.

  *

  When the chamber curtain moved behind him, and he heard footsteps, he had just enough strength left to feel shame, and not enough to turn his head. His opponent moved from him, back into the room, and conducted the low, humble bow of the champion. She stepped forward, offered him her hand, and clasped his own in hers. She took his forearm in her other hand, and they rested there, for a moment, and her touch was warm, and not unkind.

  “My dear,” came the deep voice from behind him.

  “Master,” she replied, and bowed again, and bowed lower.

  “You have fulfilled your duty, and you were . . .” Master Vey’s voice broke off for a moment’s silence. Tey’dor could sense words being weighed. Master Vey did not complement lightly. “And you were quite dazzling.”

  “I hope always to serve.” The girl looked, for a moment, very serious. Then a smile broke the line of her mouth and lit up her face.

  Tey’dor allowed his body to sag again. He arched his back, bowed his head, and pressed the fingers of his empty hand into a sore spot, where one of her blows had taken him below the shoulder-blade and pushed the wind clean out of him. It had always been a pleasure-pain, this probing of injured flesh with still-trembling fingertips, but now it was coloured with fear and confusion. With his head still sunken, he muttered, “My Master. I have failed in the ritual. I have failed you, and I am sorry.”

  Tey’dor felt himself being lifted. He planted his feet beneath him on the cool earth, determined not to shame himself further by falling. Vey’s eyes were frank and half-amused. “Tell me, then. Why do you think you have failed?”

  Tey’dor gestured helplessly with his raw and swollen hand at the chamber, and at the broken poles and shattered lanterns that littered the ground. “Do you mock me? I entered to complete my training, to be made . . .” For one final time, his voice stumbled on the words. “To be made a man.” His hand lingered, pointing at the girl who still stood before him, arms behind her back, head dipped. “She consented. She said I was welcome. We said the words as you instructed me. She bade me a warrior’s welcome!” He knew his voice was rising, uncontrolled, and that he was close to weeping.

  “Of course she did. And you believed, I presume, that you were the warrior.”

  Tey’dor blinked. “I . . . I . . . Yes, Master. I did.”

  Vey nodded. “And if I asked you now?”

  “I would say that . . .” He watched as the girl raised her head, and pulled neatly into full attention, feet together, hands by her sides, wide shoulders set firm. “That she . . . was the warrior?”

  “Very good. And now, tell me. What did I tell you of the ritual?”

  “That it was the final part of my training. That I would come to the chamber and meet a woman there, and that I must honourably and respectfully perform the ritual, as my brother Ma’chek had done before me, to truly become men.”

  “And one thing else?”

  He paused. Racked his memory. “That I should never speak afterward, to any boy or recruit, of the ritual, and only ever speak of what happened in the chamber to men who had achieved their full ascension.”

  “Quite.” The Master moved slowly, quietly around the chamber, with its round, swept floor and four lantern poles, one broken in the dust. One gentle hand rested on the girl’s bare, patterned shoulder for a moment. “So tell me. What was the ritual?”

  Somewhere, beyond the walls, but close this time, and more stirringly, the song of the women resumed.

  When realisation came, it was as the singing, warm and swelling in his head and all around him, and it made him gasp. “This was the ritual?”

  Beside him, the chamber curtain opened, and light and song flooded in. Tey’dor could see, beyond the doorway, a line of people saluting, and waiting for them to pass. He shook his head and looked helplessly from his Master, to the honour line, and back to his Master and the girl again.

  “Come,” Master Vey said. “Let us walk out together, and greet the others, and then you will both clean yourselves and clothe yourselves, and I will explain.”

  They passed on, into the sudden light.

  *

  Later, when wounds had been dressed and food had been taken, Master Vey and Tey’dor walked the high walls of the compound together. The wall patrol was a privilege reserved for men of the company: despite his aching body and exhausted mind, Tey’dor still felt a thrilling rush as he ascended the carved stone stair for the first time and took his place beside his Master. From this vantage point, he could see the whole vast compound laid out before him, the dunes and mountains beyond, and the sun setting bloodily behind them. He gazed at the adults’ section, where men and women lived side by side, where he would sleep for the first time this very night; he could see figures in gowns and hoods going about their evening tasks, in busy streets, bringing water, leading dogs or livestock, carrying garments or pushing barrows, and it occurred to him that he could not tell which were men and which were women.

  Master Vey had told him many things, as they walked. Told him how the council demanded that every warrior must first learn to be the strongest and best in his cohort, and then must learn to be beaten in combat, and beaten hard. How they themselves had learned, the hard way, that great warriors who have never known what it is to fail, who have never learned submission, were not only a liability in battle but were also cruel and tyrannical in victory.

  “And you felt it, did you not? What it is to be bested, and to feel weak, and to set your mind and body to a great task and – as you believed it then – to fail?”

  “I did, Master.”

  Master Vey paused, dark brow raised once more, eyes knowing. “Then you can remember that moment, and know humility, and that is a great thing. But you have another question for me, I think. You should ask it.”

  Tey’dor turned his head, gripped the wall, and watched the sun. “Why the pretence? You know the things that are said about the ceremony. You must know what the boys believe. You chastise us for it, and so we talk of it in secret and think that the initiation is conducted with a woman because it is a matter of . . .”

  “Sex.”

  “Yes.”

  “We know.”

  “Then why are we not told?”

  Master Vey sighed. “Tell me, Tey’dor. What does your heart say about women, now, tonight?”

  He laughed, a little. “That I was beaten to a standstill by one, this day! And that she was a warrior, and . . . and I liked her, Master. We spoke, a little, befor
ehand, and she was thoughtful, and wise.”

  “And what did your heart say of women when you were laughing with boys, in secret places, on other days?”

  Tey’dor thought, and was silent. The silence grew for a while, alongside the shadows. Eventually, as the red back of the sun arched for a final moment above the horizon, he said, “She truly was a warrior.”

  “Yes.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Ahn’mey.”

  “Are all women trained as warriors?”

  “Not all.”

  “But she was a great fighter.”

  “One of the finest. The best of the women always are.”

  “And do they fight alongside us, then? Those women?”

  Master Vey did not speak. Only, with strong hands and gentle movements, rolled back the sleeves of the long Masters’ robe, very slowly and deliberately, and in the half-light Tey’dor could see, for the first time, the uncovered skin, the dark brown arms that had always been wrapped in protective hide-strips in the battle arena. Each arm was covered, to the wrist, in coiling, swimming patterns of black ink, faded somewhat with age, more subtle on the dark skin, but spinning and twining upwards, towards the crooks of the elbows. Tey’dor looked up at the close-cropped hair and wise, broad-cheeked face, so familiar, of his Master.

  “Yes,” she said. “We most certainly do.” Tey’dor gazed at her in wonder. And she smiled, just a little, as the sun slid behind the mountains, and the sound of the women’s song marked the closing of the day.

  The Turn of A Wheel

  Fran Terminiello

  It had been a year. Winter’s chill hung crisp in the air but the sun shone bright among the headstones. One stood out. Gleaming, smooth.

  Here lies Jorvan Travin, brother of Jermond, husband of Fera.

  The woman laid flowers on the cushion of grass, dewdrops glistening on petals. Her dress, still red in mourning, was the finest brocade silk; hem damp and darkened, sleeves fashionably long with plenty to spare. She let them drape over her hands for a moment, as she stood, silent thoughts passing through the air, into earth and stone.