didn’t answer, only turned his face away. After a typically long Doreni silence, he said, “Think of it, my heart, when we see our fathers at the end of the year, our lands, houses, servants, allies and property will be established. We will be equals with my father, then, and no longer under his will—” “To be allied against one’s father? How warlike that sounds!”
“Such customs preserve order and create stability.”
He led me to a cleft in a small hillside within the prescribed boundaries and far from the Large Path. “Here,” he said, “behind these tall dry lingay grasses, and these colrona shrubs—” he pointed to the leaves “—these can hide us.”
The shrubs, their immature gourds and wide shady leaves already green and mottled under the fast-approaching heat moons, became our nightly private meeting place after the household had gone to bed. There we would share our hearts, but not all our hearts. If Mam or Mamya Jontay suspected our trysts, they never mentioned it. Such trespasses were expected as long as we did not couch together.
On the fourth night of our betrothal, Loic came running to my room. “Little Mother likes you,” he whispered as if this were some great news. “She even likes New Mother Monua.”
“Little Mother has always liked me,” I answered.
He raised his eyebrow, indicating that perhaps she had not. “When I first saw you, I told Little Mother all my heart. She was angry and shouted at me: “Loicuyo, your whim has destroyed your future.” Queen Butterfly, you see, had wanted me to marry her daughter Thira. A pretty girl, yes, but she honors the spirits too much. She’s also too ladylike and proper, too obedient to her mother. Waihai, there were too many things wrong with that girl. Jobara! I could not live with one like that, and frankly, who wants Butterfly for a New Mother? Even so, marrying the girl would have ensured my future. If I were joined to Jaguar’s family, my clansmen would forget my—” He broke off as if he had caught a thought before it escaped his lips. “But now Little Mother thinks you’re a good choice, that you’ll mother me as she has done.”
“Is that what you want?” I watched his face closely. “A mother?”
A Theseni man would have been insulted by such a question. But Loic—perhaps because the Doreni love their mothers so—only answered, “I can’t truly tell what kind of wife I want. My father’s marriage is not a good example for me. I hope to love you purely. Nevertheless if there is, in my love for you, something like a son’s love for his mother, or a brother’s love for his sister, what can be done? We are what we are. I have had many mothers and I have liked them all, although I grieve for my true mother. Yes, although I never knew her.” He seemed lost in thought for a moment. “I hope you will not die before me. I hope it is I who will leave you bereft and not the other way around.”
“How strange you are!” I said.
“Even so. Promise me this, anyway.”
“My husband, I promise I shall not die before you do.”
“And I promise I will linger near the gates of the fields we long for and will enjoy none of its pleasures until you arrive.”
On the sixth night, hurried footsteps sounded outside my wooden curtains. I raced to them. It was Loic and he held both my shoulders tightly kissing my cheeks through my veil. Then he let me go and leaped in the air, turning about several times.
“I’ve managed it,” he said and finished dancing an Ibeni two-step.
“Managed what?” I asked. “Please stop that dancing! Tell me, what have you done?”
He stretched out his arms to me and smiled a large gap-toothed smile. “I sent word to Father asking him to remove the Restraint.” He retrieved a tiny square piece of parchment, showed it to me and, throwing all caution away, shouted, “He has agreed!” His words must have echoed throughout the hillside. “We’ll have the full marriage tomorrow.” His eyes pleaded with me to share his joy.
I did not dance or leap. I stood silent, trying to understand the full implication of this new event. “What about the year-mark?”
“Father’s a traditionalist.” His eyes seemed to be trying to see inside my soul. “But he chooses carefully what traditions he’ll cling to.”
“I see.” I began to realize that even a reasoned plea to wait until the year-mark might be seen as rejection. “How did you convince him to set this tradition aside? And why would you want it set aside?”
“I told Father we were young.” His voice had grown less excited and more suspicious. “I told him our blood boiled hot for each other, that we were having trouble controlling ourselves. I reminded him that I was whimsical and willful and you were gentle and kind and who knew what would happen? And would it not be a disgrace if you were found with child before the full marriage was celebrated.”
Fearful because his face had become more wary and pleading, I phrased my question carefully. “And he believed you?”
My new husband looked at me as if I was suddenly becoming a stranger to him.
I softened my question. “I think only of my honor, Loic. Will Treads Lightly not think I’m as unrestrained as an Ibeni woman? That I forego the Restraint because I myself have none?”
“Father doesn’t think like that.” The wary pleading look turned to an angry scowl. Anger and fear alternated on his face. “So you don’t want me?”
“My husband, you speak often about the wisdom of the ancients. Were they not wise in creating the Restraint and the half marriage? Does it not benefit me? How can I create a household if I have not lived among the servants and understood them? How can I order a household if I have not lived long with the customs of your people? How will you understand how virtuous I am if you have not seen me withstand your advances for a year?”
“Wife, if we marry tomorrow, you will not have to wait a year to see your father.”
I grew silent then, not knowing what to make of what was obviously a bribe. I suspect he saw my heart because he hid his face from me as I pondered his words. Mam’s advice also returned to my mind: bend to his will.
The scowl left Loic’s face and suddenly he was carefree again, smiling widely. He put his hands around my waist, then slid them upward to my breasts. “Yes,” he said, “a wife should bend to her husband’s will.” Then, as if I had already agreed to his intentions, he turned about and faced the surrounding field, turning his head to the left then to the right, obviously searching. “But we cannot play here.”
He interlaced his fingers in mine and together we ran—How fast! The treetops whizzed by. How breathless we were when we arrived at our private place!
We tumbled onto the grass and he put his hand into the sleeve of his gyuilta. Soon he was holding something up in the moonlight, a nose-ring. “It’s a heirloom from my mother, part of her dowry.” Of pure intricately wrought gold it was. “This is one of many gifts I inherited from her. When the full marriage is completed tomorrow, all I own and all that she gave me will be yours.”
I took the nose-ring and removed my own silver one. Somewhere in the darkness a hornbill sang. I wondered, Is the male hornbill protectively entombing his mate in a tree even now? “Perhaps we should wait,” I said, shifting on the grass. “Since, you say our wedding night is only a day away, why not wait to consummate it then?”
“Exactly. What is a mere day? Why wait?” While I looked on, surprised, he quickly removed his tunic, leggings, breechcloth and undergarment. “Come now, remove your hand from your eyes. I’m your husband now. Or do you consider my body puny?”
“No,” I said, uncovering my eyes and staring at the beautiful slender tan body before me. “It isn’t puny. Jobara! Indeed, you’re quite good to look at.”
“Yes,” he said. “My New Mother told me you like slender men. I’ll show you, Little Theseni girl, that thinness and muscles aren’t what matters. Take your