Erdeni's Tiger Read online

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  Copyright (C)1995 Pamela Sargent

  First published in Ancient Enchantresses, ed. Kathleen M. Massie-Ferch and Martin H. Greenberg, DAW, 1995

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  The spirits came to Erdeni as she slept, their mouths contorted into grimaces, their sharp teeth showing in their smiles. Hair covered their long black arms. They hovered over a dismembered horse, tearing at the dead animal's flesh as a tiger circled them.

  Erdeni crept toward the spirits, keeping her fears at bay. She had not seen the tiger before, only the spirits, who had tormented her in the past. As she lifted her hand, the evil spirits scattered, but the tiger stood its ground, gazing at her with its black eyes, daring her to come closer.

  Erdeni woke, gasping for breath and clutching at her blanket. For a moment, she did not know where she was, and then remembered. She was in her husband's camp, inside the yurt she had brought there in her two-wheeled cart after her wedding fifteen days ago. She was a married woman now.

  The spirits could not be tearing at her again. She would never be able to assent to their demands.

  “Erdeni.” Jirghadai, her husband, stirred next to her. “You were dreaming, I heard you cry out. What were your dreams trying to tell you?”

  “I don't know.” The sharp-toothed evil spirits had fled from her, so perhaps they were no threat to her or to Jirghadai. But the tiger had not run away, and the look in its black eyes had frightened her.

  There were tigers in the Khingan Mountains to the east of her father's camp and the other Tatar grazing lands, but the big cats rarely showed themselves. Not long before her wedding, her father had glimpsed one while hunting with his men, but the creature had disappeared before he could take aim with his bow. Most of his warriors feared tigers. A tiger was treacherous and dangerous, and not always what it seemed to be; a tiger could be a ghost.

  “Dreams shouldn't be ignored,” Jirghadai murmured, as Erdeni well knew. Dreams could be omens, one of the ways in which the spirits might make their wishes known.

  “Evil spirits came to me,” she said at last. “They were feasting on a sacrificial horse. I moved toward them and then they ran away from me.” She did not speak of the tiger.

  Above the yurt's smokehole, the sky was growing light. Erdeni sat up as her husband pulled the blanket back over his head.

  Jirghadai and two of his comrades had ridden to the camp of Erdeni's father in early spring, when the snow was still on the ground and the Khalkha River south of their camp was clogged with ice. After introducing himself to her father, Goghun Bahadur, Jirghadai had gone on to say, while staring intently at Erdeni, that he had come there to see if the young women in that Tatar camp were as beautiful as those of his own Onggirat people.

  Jirghadai was a handsome, sturdy, broad-shouldered young man with a quick smile, golden-brown eyes, sharp cheekbones, and the beginnings of a man's mustache. Erdeni had warmed to him almost immediately. His voice would grow softer whenever he spoke to her, and she had liked the way he sounded when he asked for her in marriage—respectful, but also confident, as though he was certain his request would be granted.

  The marriage had been a good bargain for her father. For Erdeni, Jirghadai had given Goghun Bahadur four mares, three geldings, several fine sheepskins, a gyrfalcon he had trained himself, and a sable coat. Jirghadai was his father's only son, so eventually all of his father's herds would be his. Everyone had called it a good match. Only Erdeni had worried earlier that Jirghadai might not want her as a wife, that he would ride on to another camp without asking for her if he found out about the spirits that had once afflicted her.

  She had been the first to tell him of herself, on a day when Jirghadai and his two Onggirat companions, on their way to the mountains to hunt, had stopped to talk to the Tatar women and girls watching the sheep. Jirghadai had dismounted to let his horse graze, and had lingered near Erdeni.

  She had guessed then that he might ask for her, but could not allow him to bind himself with a promise of marriage until he knew the truth about her. Her parents were not likely to say anything that might discourage a suitor, and her brothers would not want to frighten him off, so it was up to her to speak. To hide the truth from the young man seemed almost as evil as deliberately lying to him.

  “I thought no girls in other camps could be as beautiful as those in my own, but I was wrong.” Jirghadai's warm smile grew broader. “I'll have to tell my father what I've found here when I ride home.”

  Now she knew that he would ask for her. Erdeni gazed past him at the flat grassland stretching toward the forested mountain ridge to the east. Koko Mongke Tengri, the Eternal Blue Sky that covered all the world, had sent a harsh winter, but was showing more mercy to the Tatars lately. The weather had grown warmer, the wind was dying down, and countless clumps of grass were poking through the last of the snow. The promise of spring was in the sharp dry air; soon blue and white flowers would dot the land, and the yellowish grass would grow until it reached to a man's waist. It might be her last spring in her father's camp; she was sixteen, old enough to be a bride, so there was no reason for Jirghadai not to marry her right away once they were betrothed. She did not want to speak, to risk driving him from her.

  “I must tell you something about myself,” she said.

  “I already know what I need to know, that you're strong and skilled at a woman's tasks, and there's also a light in your eyes that tells me you would give me wise advice when I need it. You have six brothers yourself, so it's likely you can give a man several sons. And you're beautiful, Erdeni. What more could I want in a wife?”

  “You should know this, too,” Erdeni said softly. “Four springs ago, I lay in my bed, unable to leave it. I couldn't eat, and lay there crying until I was exhausted and no more tears would come. My mother summoned a shaman, but all his chants and spells couldn't restore me. An evil spirit must have been inside me, for life had become a burden I could not bear. My despair even made me long for death.”

  Jirghadai fluttered his fingers, making a sign against evil.

  “Then other spirits called to me,” she went on. “They whispered to me of all the power they could give me, and then drove me from my father's tent into the night. I wandered among the dead, and nearly died myself. A spirit in the form of a bird tore at me and stabbed me with its beak and scattered what was left of my body under a great tree.”

  Jirghadai drew in his breath. “You had a shaman's vision,” he said.

  “And other visions as well.” She could not look at him. “My father found me more than a day's ride from our camp. He wept as he put me on his horse. He knew what my visions meant and how hard the way of the shaman is.”

  “A wife who knows magic can be useful,” Jirghadai said.

  “Even if her power might be troublesome? Even if she wanders off to go into trances and speak to the dead instead of preparing her husband's supper and gathering fuel for her fire?” Some men might be grateful for a woman who could cast a few spells, read omens, and knew the arts of the midwife, but a powerful shamaness was a woman to be feared, one who might use magic against even those close to her.

  “That's for the spirits to decide,” he said. “I couldn't stand against them.”


  “My mother told me that I should master the shaman's lore,” she said, “but I was afraid. I didn't want the spirits to use me in that way. I didn't want to see those visions or hear those voices any more.” She paused. “The spirits came to me again, a few days after my father carried me back to our tent. In their voices, I could hear the thoughts of everyone in our camp. That was how I first found out that my grandmother was near the end of her life—I heard her voice inside my head, whispering to me.”

  Erdeni took a deep breath, willing herself to get past this part of her story as quickly as possible. “I went to her tent,” she continued. “A voice was telling me that I could save her. My grandmother had taken to her bed. I could do nothing for her. The shamans couldn't save her, either. That was the last time the spirits spoke to me directly.” She had told him enough; he did not have to know more.

  “Well.” Jirghadai's horse nudged him with its muzzle; he reached for the reins. “I won't hold it against you that you're not to be a shamaness after all.”

  “It isn't that. I was frightened. I prayed that the spirits would leave me alone, and they did. I didn't think of how they and I might work together to help others—I thought only of myself. I am a coward, Jirghadai. That's what I found out after the spirits no longer spoke to me.”

  “I think you judge yourself too harshly,” he replied. “I've spoken to brave men with many battles behind them who still fear those that lie ahead. We all have our fears, Erdeni.”

  He would say that, she thought; he was an Onggirat, after all, and Onggirats, unlike other men, went out of their way to avoid fighting unless honor or their own defense demanded it.

  By then, Jirghadai's comrades were in their saddles again and calling to him. There had been no chance for her to say anything more to him alone. He had returned that evening with the carcass of a musk deer; at supper, he had asked her father for her.

  She had been impatient to be wed, waiting out the days after he had returned to his own people to secure her bride-price. The wedding feast in her father's camp had lasted two days; her mother and two of her brothers had ridden with her and Jirghadai to his Onggirat camp. She had rejoiced at discovering that Jirghadai could be gentle with her in their bed, and was content to have found such a good husband.

  The spirits might still rob her of that happiness. They might return to torment her again.

  Erdeni slipped from the bed and pulled on her trousers and robe. Her hearth, made of curved iron bands, rested on six metal legs in the center of the yurt. She warmed her hands over the glowing embers, then peered into the kettle of meat broth that sat over the hearth.

  “Jirghadai!” a man shouted outside the doorway. Erdeni recognized the voice of Nayan Bahadur, Jirghadai's father. “Are you going to sleep the day away?”

  Jirghadai groaned and threw his blanket back. Erdeni took a scarf from the top of one of her trunks, covered her braided hair, then went to the entrance and quickly rolled up the flap. “Greetings, Father Nayan,” she said, bowing from the waist. “Your son is awake, and you're welcome to join us for the morning meal.”

  “I've eaten.” The skin of Nayan's face was lined and leathery, and the ends of his mustache hung past his chin, but his quick smile was like his son's. “Still, I wouldn't mind a sip of kumiss.”

  The older man stomped inside and sat down on a felt cushion in front of the bed. Jirghadai was already in his trousers and long tunic; he tied a thin leather belt around his waist, then sat down to pull on his oxhide boots. “You've been married some days now,” Nayan muttered. “Time to start dragging yourself from your new wife's bed and getting up with the rest of us.”

  Jirghadai laughed as he sat down next to his father. Erdeni brought a bowl of broth to her husband and a goblet of fermented mare's milk to Nayan, who dipped his fingers into the drink, scattered a few drops in a blessing, then downed the kumiss in one gulp. “Dei Sechen wants us to ride out to the horses,” Nayan went on.

  Erdeni fetched herself some broth and sat down at her husband's left. Dei Sechen—Dei the Wise—was chief in this camp; his wife, Shotan Ujin, had been among the women who had helped Erdeni raise her yurt here after her arrival.

  “Aren't there enough men watching them already?” Jirghadai asked.

  “Dei wants us there now,” his father replied. “One of the mares wandered away from the herd. Okin followed the tracks and found what was left of the horse near Mount Chegcher. Something had torn her to pieces. Okin said that the carcass bore the marks of a tiger's teeth and claws, but he found no tiger's tracks.”

  Erdeni's hands tightened around her bowl. “A tiger?” Jirghadai said. “Near here, and during summer?”

  “And leaving no tracks,” Nayan added. “The south wind might have covered most of the tracks with sand carried from the desert, but still—” He made a sign to avert ill fortune. “Okin rode back here last night to tell Dei what he'd seen.” Nayan got to his feet. “I'll saddle our mounts while you finish your breakfast.” He bowed slightly. “Thank you for the kumiss, daughter.”

  “You're welcome, Nayan-echige,” she replied.

  “Your dream showed the truth,” Jirghadai said after his father had left the yurt. “Let's hope the spirits are satisfied with the horse they took.”

  “I also saw a tiger in my dream. I didn't tell you that before. Be careful, Jirghadai.”

  “I shall.” He handed her his bowl, adjusted the braids coiled behind his ears, then tied a band of wool around his shaven head. His bowcase and quiver were hanging near the doorway, on its western side. He slipped them from the horn on which they hung and went outside.

  Her husband might be gone for some time. Most of the horses were grazing a day's ride from the camp; this was the season in which the mares gave birth to their foals and the men decided which of the two-year-old horses should be gelded. Many of the men would be needed for that work even without a tiger threatening the herd. She would be in this camp without Jirghadai for the first time since coming there as his bride.

  They were still strangers to her. All of the Onggirats in this camp—wise Dei, Nayan, Jirghadai's smiling, rosy-cheeked mother Doghuz—were all strangers. She would have to live out her life among these strangers, forever separated from the family and friends she had grown up among and loved. She caught her breath as a sudden rage filled her, anger against her husband and all the Onggirats who now claimed her as one of their own.

  Something stirred at the side of the tent, in the shadows. Erdeni turned toward the movement, but saw only the chest and trunk holding her household goods.

  What could she have been thinking? Such hateful thoughts were not hers. She loved Jirghadai, and had been relieved to discover that his people were as warm and welcoming as he had claimed they would be. How could she feel such rage at them?

  She turned toward the back of the tent. Her ongghon, a carved image of a sheep's udder, hung over the bed next to Jirghadai's ongghon of a mare's udder. Above them were a pair of felt dolls that harbored two of their household spirits.

  “Protect me,” she whispered as she bowed to the images. The work of the day awaited her. She would not give evil spirits a chance to poison her thoughts.

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  Dei Sechen's circle of mushroom-shaped tents was to the north of the camp, not far from Nayan's camping circle. His tugh, a standard of horsetails on a pole, stood in front of his yurt. Erdeni saw the Onggirat chief near a wagon, talking to his brother Hujuri. Dei's wife Shotan was sweeping vermin from the doorway of her yurt with a wicker broom; Dei's daughter Bortai and her cousin Ardai were herding Dei's flock of sheep toward the Urchun River, where Nayan's sheep were already drinking under the watchful gaze of Doghuz and two of Nayan's black dogs.

  Erdeni hurried toward her husband's mother. “Doghuz-eke,” she called out. The older woman lifted a hand in greeting as Erdeni approached. “I should have come sooner, but there was dung to gather and dry for fuel, and then—”

  “You needn't make excuses, child
.” Doghuz smiled, puffing out her red cheeks. She was a short, broad woman; her bocca, a tall square headdress of birch bark adorned with feathers and beads, was almost half her height. “I was even later than you getting up to go about my work when I was first wed.” She laughed. “And Chelig is later still, even without a new husband to keep her abed.”

  Erdeni turned to see Chelig hobbling slowly toward them. Old Chelig, the widow of one of Nayan's uncles, was a servant to Doghuz and lived in her yurt. Doghuz smiled and bowed respectfully as she greeted the old woman. Chelig was partly deaf, and too feeble to do much more than tend the hearth fire and watch the sheep, but she also knew a midwife's lore and as an idughan had helped Doghuz give birth to her children.

  “Stay with Erdeni, Chelig-eke,” Doghuz said. “I must go help Shotan beat more of our wool into felt.” She lifted the skirt of her long robe up to the knees of her trousers and hurried off toward Dei's circle of tents.

  The barking dogs were herding a few strays back to the riverbank. Erdeni followed them, Chelig close behind her. Dei's sheep mingled with the others, bleating as they pushed their way to the shallow ribbon of the river.

  Bortai turned toward Erdeni. The Onggirats were known among all the tribes for the beauty of their girls, but Bortai was more beautiful than any girl in this camp, with large brown eyes, golden skin, thick black braids, and a frame nearly as slender as Erdeni's. Their daughters, the Onggirats claimed, were their shields. They had no reason to fight against other peoples when they could marry their beautiful girls to chiefs and Noyans in other camps and thus secure alliances with those tribes. With the offer of the beautiful Bortai as a bride, Erdeni thought, they could have made a treaty with their worst enemy.

  “It seems we're to watch the sheep together,” Bortai said in her lilting voice. “How I wish I could go hunting with my brother's falcon.”

  “We might have been beating wool instead,” Erdeni said, “which is much harder work.”