White Jenna

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  White Jenna

  Jane Yolen

  For Beth and Tappan

  and new beginnings

  SYNOPSIS

  For years, the birth of a girl child in the Dales had been no cause of great rejoicing. After the first of the Garunian Wars, when the patriarchal tribes from the mainland had sailed across to slaughter the men and conquer the island country, there had been a surplus of women in the Dales. Forced into polygamous marriages or forced to expose excess girl babies on the hillsides, a woman’s lot was not enviable. However, early on, a few of them had begun to reap the hillsides of the grim harvest, saving the infants and raising them in small, walled communities called Hames.

  The centuries passed and the Hames were left alone. Eventually there were seventeen such separated communities filled with women, worshippers of Great Alta, the Goddess who had once been the ruling deity of all the Dales before being supplanted by the Garunian pantheon of gods. As the population regained its balance, the Hames became sanctuaries for dissident women.

  The Altites, as they were called, continued to take in the few fosterlings brought them, but to keep up their ranks often went outside the walls to breed themselves, leaving any male babies with the fathers and carrying the girl children back to the Hames. Women of the Hames also went outside as skilled warriors-for-hire, fighting in the king’s army for a few years, thus honing their own skills and learning the latest in tactics and weaponry. However, the young girls were kept away from the outside as much as possible, until puberty and their mission year when they traveled to several other Hames as part of their education.

  What went on behind the Hame walls was a mystery to the commonfolk of the Dales as well as to their Garunian overlords. Though the commonfolk still spoke of Alta, worshipping her as the consort of Lord Cres, who was the dark warrior god of the Garunians, and as the goddess of childbirth and the homey virtues, the only pure Alta worship belonged to the Hames. Yet as much as the commonfolk of the Dales mentioned Alta in their prayers, they could not even come close to guessing the secret She had gifted the Altite women. Trained from childhood in special breathing exercises, memorizing the words of their goddess as set down in the Book of Light, the Altites had learned how to call up their dark sisters, their shadow souls, when they reached puberty. Ever after, these dark sisters would appear with the moon or in candlelight or firelight, walking and talking, fighting and making love, side by side with their light counterparts.

  There was persistent prophecy, rumor, and myth about one white-haired girl to be born to three mothers, all of whom would die giving her birth. This White Babe, as she was called, would become a warrior queen, a goddess, known alternately as the White One or the Anna, an old Dale word meaning “white.” The prophecy, with typical gnomic misdirection, said that the child would be both white and black, both light and dark. She would conquer ox, hound, bear, and cat, signaling the end of an old era and heralding in a new.

  The Garunians, who had carried a similar prophecy across the sea with them, feared such a phenomenon as a threat to their rule. So to confound the locals, they named their warlords Bull, Hound, Bear, and Cat. The Dalites told frequently quoted cante-fables about the White One’s coming. And the Altite priestesses had a clear charge: nurture the White Babe and warn the other Hames when she is born.

  So when a child, white-haired, dark-eyed, and seemingly preternatural in her abilities, was born to a Dale farmer’s wife who died in childbirth, the story of Sister Light, Sister Dark was begun. The midwife, upon instructions of the farmer crazed by his bereavement, took the child to be fostered at Selden Hame, the Hame closest to their town. On the trip, the midwife herself was killed by a cat, and the cat, in turn, killed by a pair of Selden Hame light/dark sisters who were out hunting. They took the child to foster, but it was a late and first fostering for this particular pair. They grew to quarreling, a quarrel which eventually led to the light sister’s exile and then the pair’s death. Three mothers, and all dead, because of the strange white-haired child.

  That child, Jo-an-enna, called Jenna, was mothered by the entire Selden Hame, for the priestess, Mother Alta, suspected the child was the prophecy’s fulfillment, and wished to have a hand in any glory.

  Young Jenna grew up beloved in her community by all except the suspicious and jealous Mother Alta. Instead of choosing to be a priestess, Jenna chose the warrior/hunter path, going through training with her special best friend Marga, called Pynt. Little, lithe dark-haired Pynt was called Jenna’s shadow, and indeed the two were inseparable.

  At thirteen, Jenna did not understand the priestess’ enmity nor why she was sent to a different Hame for the beginning of her mission year. Resentful, angry, alone for the first time in her life, Jenna was forced to leave her friends and take a different path. She headed toward Nill’s Hame, across the Sea of Bells, a great meadow pied with lilies-of-the-valley.

  But despite orders to the contrary, Pynt deserted Selinda and Alna, the other two mission-going girls, and tracked her best friend. The two were reunited halfway to Nill’s Hame in the dense fog that settled almost daily over the Sea of Bells. Startled by a strange baying, fearing it to be the Fog Demon they had been warned about in tales, they stood back-to-back, swords drawn, waiting.

  The strange howling chivvied a young man into their path who, it turned out, was the third son of the true king. This boy—for he was only a few years older than they—was Carum Longbow, in training as a scholar. He cried them merci, using the old formula. They pledged his safety and, in the fog, Jenna killed the man who had been trailing him, one of the usurper Lord Kalas’ dread warlords known as the Hound.

  Burying the Hound in a shallow grave, with his fearsome Hound’s helm thrown on top of his body, the three made their way out of the forest to Nill’s Hame. It was a strange trio: Pynt jealous of Carum’s attention to Jenna and Jenna’s attention to Carum; Carum falling under the spell of the tall, white-haired girl; Jenna befuddled by her own conflicting emotions.

  Men were not allowed in a Hame, so Carum was disguised. As he was yet beardless and—while tall enough—was not very muscular, the disguise was accomplished with marginal success, despite his grousing. The three were led up to the room of the priestess of Nill’s Hame, a strange, powerful Mother Alta who was blind, crippled, with six fingers on each hand. She recognized Jenna as the Anna of the prophecy, having once been thought to be that prodigy herself. Mother Alta showed Jenna how she had already fulfilled the beginning of the prophecy: being white-haired, with a dark companion, burying three mothers, making “the hound bow low.” Jenna alone was unconvinced.

  As the girls had promised to take Carum to safety to one of the walled “Rests,” sanctuaries that even Lord Kalas did not dare violate, Jenna, Pynt, and Carum started out the back way from the Hame. But they were set upon while still in reach of the walls of the Hame by Lord Kalas’ men who had tracked them from the Hound’s hasty grave.

  Pynt was mortally wounded and carried back to the Hame by Carum. Covering their retreat, Jenna cut off the hand of one of Kalas’ men. When she got back into the Hame carrying this grisly trophy with her, Carum recognized the ring on the hand as belonging to the Bull. Jenna had made the bull/ox “bow low” as well. Surely now she had to admit she was the White One. But Jenna would have none of it. She insisted she was just an ordinary girl caught up in extraordinary events.

  Leaving Pynt to the ministrations of the infirmarer, and with instructions as to the location of the Rest by a water route, Jenna and Carum leaped from the third floor of the Hame straight down into the treacherous river below, linked together by a child’s play rope. br />
  Almost drowned, they managed to make it to shore and find their way to Bertram’s Rest. Being a woman, Jenna could not enter the men’s sanctuary, so she left Carum at the gate. He kissed her tenderly, promising everything in that one kiss, and Jenna returned to the Hame by the back route.

  But it was silent at the Hame. Too silent. When Jenna came closer, she saw why. All the women had been slaughtered; many of them lying next to the men they had killed. The courtyard was filled with them, the stairs, the halls. Jenna raced desperately through the Hame to discover anyone alive, to find her wounded friend Pynt. Eventually, she came upon the place where the brave women of Nill’s Hame had made their last stand: in the priestess’ room. All the women of Nill’s were dead and the children—including Pynt—were gone.

  Sorrowing beyond measure, Jenna spent the entire day carrying the bodies of the women down to the kitchen and the Great Hall, laying them out side by side, with enough room between for their dark sisters. Then she returned to the priestess’ room to bring down the great wood-framed mirror. Standing before it in the priestess’ room, Jenna unknowingly recited part of the ritual of Sisterhood which called forth the dark sisters. Though a year too young and untrained in the proper rites, Jenna’s great need and the intensity of her calling brought her own dark sister Skada out of the mirrored world.

  Skada—as dark-haired as Jenna was light. Skada—who spoke the things that Jenna had never dared speak. Skada—who urged Jenna to deeds that Jenna never dared dream.

  Jenna and Skada together tried to lift the mirror to bring it downstairs for the funeral pyre. But when they moved it, they triggered a secret door which opened under Jenna’s feet, exposing a passageway where the children of Nill’s Hame had been hidden from the marauding men. Pynt was there, too, bedridden and still desperately ill from her wound, but alive.

  Jenna, Skada, and the young priestess-in-training Petra set the funeral pyre. Then they led the troop of children, some only babes carried by their older sisters, along the Sea of Bells and back through the woods to Selden Hame.

  There the story of their adventures was told and Jenna lay claim to the title of White Goddess, not because she believed in it, but because she felt it would help the cause: the other Hames must be warned. Suddenly afraid of what Jenna’s title might mean, the priestess denied her; but, with Petra’s help (she invented prophecy in instant rhyme), Jenna convinced the rest that she was indeed the Anna of whom it was written that she is the beginning and the end.

  Accompanied by Skada, Petra, and the twinned older warriors light Catrona and dark Katri, sworn enemies of Selden’s Mother Alta, Jenna went forth on the road.

  Prophecy

  And the prophet says a white babe with black eyes shall be born unto a virgin in the winter of the year. The ox in the field, the hound at the hearth, the bear in the cave, the cat in the tree, all, all shall bow before her, singing, “Holy, holy, holiest of sisters, who is both black and white, both dark and light, your coming is the beginning and it is the end.” Three times shall her mother die and three times shall she be orphaned and she shall be set apart that all shall know her.

  BOOK ONE

  MESSENGERS

  THE MYTH:

  Then Great Alta looked down upon her messengers, those whom she had severed from her so that they might be bound more closely to her. She looked upon the white sister and the dark, the young sister and the old.

  “I shall not speak to you that you may hear. I shall not show myself to you that you may see. For a child must be set free to find her own destiny, even if that destiny be the one the mother has foretold.”

  And then Great Alta made the straight path crooked before them and the crooked path straight. She set traps for them and pits that they might be comforted when they escaped, that they might remember her loving kindness and rejoice in it.

  THE LEGEND:

  It was in the town of Slipskin, now called New Moulting, soft into the core of the new year’s spring, that three young women, and one of them White Jenna, rode out upon a great gray horse.

  His back was as broad as a barn door, his withers could not be spanned. Each hoof struck fire from the road. Where his feet paced, there crooked paths were made smooth and mountains laid low, straight paths were pitted and gullies cut from the hills.

  There are folk in New Moulting who say it was no horse at all, but a beast sent by Alta herself to carry them over the miles. There are footprints still near the old road into Slipskin, carved right into the stone. And downriver, in the town of Selden, there are three great ribs of the thing set over the church door that all might see them and wonder.

  THE STORY:

  The road was a gray ribbon in the moonlight, threading between trees. Five women stood on the road, listening to a ululating cry behind them.

  Two of the women, Catrona and Katri, were clearly middle-aged, with lines like runes across their brows. They had short-cropped hair and wore their swords with a casual authority.

  The youngest, Petra, stood with her shoulders squared. There was a defiance in the out-thrust of her chin, but her eyes were softer and her tongue licked her lips nervously.

  Jenna was the extremely tall girl, not yet a woman for all that her hair was as white as the moonlight. Whiter, as it had no shadows. The other tall girl, but a hairbreadth smaller, and a bit thinner, and dark, was Skada.

  “I will miss the sound of their voices,” Jenna said.

  “I will not,” Skada answered. “Voices have a binding power. It is best for us to look ahead now. We are messengers, not memorizers.”

  “And we have far to go,” Catrona said. “With many Hames to warn.” She drew a map from her leather pocket and spread the crackling parchment upon the ground. With Katri’s help she smoothed it out and pointed to a dark spot. “We are here, Selden Hame. The swiftest route would be there, down the river road into Selden itself, across the bridge. Then we go along the river with our backs to the Old Hanging Man, never losing sight of these twin peaks.” She pointed to the arching lines on the map.

  “Alta’s Breast,” said Skada.

  “You learned your lessons well,” said Katri.

  “What Jenna knows, I know.”

  Catrona continued moving her finger along the route. “The road goes on and on, with no forks or false trails to this Hame.” Her finger tapped the map twice and Katri’s did the same.

  “Calla’s Ford Hame,” said Jenna. “Where Selinda and Alna have begun their mission year. It will be good to see them. I have missed them …”

  “But not much,” murmured Skada.

  “Is it the best place to start?” Jenna asked. “Or should we go farther out? Closer to the king’s court?”

  Catrona smiled. “The Hames are in a great circle. Look here.” And she pointed to one after another, calling out the names of the Hames as if in a single long poem. “Selden, Calla’s Ford, Wilma’s Crossing, Josstown, Calamarie, Carpenter’s, Krisston, West Dale, Annsville, Crimerci, Lara’s Well, Sammiton, East James, John-o-the-Mill’s, Carter’s Tracing, North Brook, and Nill’s Hame. The king’s court is in the center.”

  “So none will complain if we visit Calla’s Ford first,” Katri said, her finger resting, as did Catrona’s, on the last Hame. “As it is closest.”

  “And as our own Hame’s children are there,” added Catrona.

  “But we must be quick,” Jenna reminded them all.

  Catrona and Katri stood simultaneously, Catrona folding the map along its old creases. She put it back in the leather pocket and handed it to Petra.

  “Here, child, in case we should be parted from one another,” Catrona said.

  “But I am the least worthy,” Petra said. “Should not Jenna …”

  “Now that Jenna has seen the map once, she has it for good. She is warrior-trained in the Eye-Mind Game and could recite the names and places for you even now. Am I right, Jenna?” Catrona asked.

  Jenna hesitated for a moment, seeing again the map as it had lain under Catro
na’s hands. She began to recite slowly but with complete confidence, outlining as she spoke with her foot in the road’s dirt, “Selden, Calla’s Ford, Wilma’s Crossing, Josstown …”

  “I believe you,” said Petra, holding out her hand. “I will take the map.” She tied the leather pocket’s strings around her belt.

  They started off down the road, walking steadily, each an arm’s length apart. There was little sound in their going and Catrona on the right and Jenna on the far left kept careful watch of the road’s perimeter. Only young Petra, in the center, seemed in the least uneasy. Once or twice she turned to look behind them, back toward the place where the long, low cry of the Selden Hame farewell had echoed.

  THE SONG:

  Anna at the Turning

  Gray in the moonlight, green in the sun,

  Dark in the evening, bright in the dawn,

  Ever the meadow goes endlessly on,

  And Anna at each turning.

  Sweet in the springtide, sour in fall,

  Winter casts snow, a white velvet caul.

  Passage in summer is swiftest of all,

  And Anna at each turning.

  Look to the meadows and look to the hills,

  Look to the rocks where the swift river spills,

  Look to the farmland the farmer still tills

  For Anna is returning.

  THE STORY:

  They stopped only once in the woods to sleep under a blackthorn tree by a swift-flowing stream. Taking turns, they kept the night watch, leaving Petra the shortest time, and that near dawn when she would have awakened anyway. Besides, as Catrona reminded them, with the moon they watched in pairs and Petra was alone.

  There was nothing to disturb their rest except the mourning of owls back and forth across the stream, and the constant murmur of the water. Once on Jenna and Skada’s watch, there was a light crackle of underbrush.

  “Hare,” Jenna whispered to her dark sister, alert for more.