The Tiger Queens Read online

  “Thank you,” I said, pulling my mother in that direction and feeling the angry glares directed like spears at my spine. I pulled her close and hissed in her ear, “Why would you say such a thing?”

  Yet my mother didn’t answer, and when I glanced back it was to find only one man staring at me.

  Teb Tengeri’s eyes were narrowed into a murderous stare, aimed right at my heart.

  * * *

  No one spoke of my mother’s outburst, and she recovered well enough to duck into my ger on the morning of my marriage, ushering in a breath of fresh morning air. The cranes still slept and horses snorted in their slumbers, but my eyes were swollen from a sleepless night spent alone in my new tent. The wedding ceremony would take place in the spring breeze at first light, when the wildflowers open their faces to the sun. A time of new beginnings.

  Yet my dreams had been full of late snows and spring hail trampling and killing the happy blossoms.

  The day before, the river ice had broken and we women had sweated next to each other to build my ger while the men hunted red deer and spotted marmot for the wedding feast. As my mother-in-marriage, Hoelun had pounded the felt panels for my tent with her own hands, and over the years, I would beat in new wool as the panels wore out, slowly making the ger mine with my own sweat. I tried not to linger over the embarrassment that my new family couldn’t afford proper doors for their tents, settling for a flap of wool to replace the carved wooden door only the bountiful southern valleys could provide.

  My mother stoked the fire, adding spruce branches to purify my soul, and worked to ready me for the wedding, her gnarled hands suddenly deft as she worked by feel and memory. She undid the knot of hair I’d worn as a girl, separating and plaiting it into three sections. The braids were stiffened with goat fat and then twisted around a wooden stick and fastened with a leather lace. Her fingers brushed the worn leather thong at my neck, lingering on the white wolf tooth. For a moment I thought she would set it aside, but then she moved on without a word.

  Off came my brown skirt with the hole on the hem and my worn leather boots. I stepped into a red felted skirt embroidered to match the flowered belt she cinched around my waist, the same worn by my mother and my mother’s mother, generations of nervous women awaiting their future husbands. Next came the leather cone headdress topped with white feathers and horsehair strung with mismatched beads and precious red and pink silk ribbons hanging to my chin. Holding one hand so I could balance the headdress with the other, she helped slip my feet into thin red felt slippers, the toes embroidered with elaborate flowers and upturned in the traditional manner so as not to injure the Earth Mother when I walked.

  “Sochigel made them for you,” my mother whispered. The gesture made my eyes sting and I struggled to swallow.

  My mother clasped my shoulders, her opaque eyes shining as she sniffed both sides of my face in order to carry my scent, and part of my soul, with her. After today, I would no longer be a child, but a woman with a family of my own.

  “Hoelun will be your mother now,” she said, pressing her cheek to mine in a final good-bye. “But you come from a family of seers. Remember that gift and use it well.”

  “I will,” I said, blinking hard and flinging myself into her arms as the women of Temujin’s family burst into the tent. Outside, the air hummed with the deep vibrations of men’s hoomii singing, and the first blush of dawn lit the sky.

  Then my mother and Hoelun took my hands and led me out into the cold air, to whatever the future held for me.

  * * *

  Hoelun sprinkled milk on the ground to begin the ceremony while the men’s voices from deep in their throats made the very air quaver. My mother passed the horn cup to Temujin, demonstrating her adoption of him as her son, and then he scattered the remainder of the milk over the earth. My husband stood especially tall in his red headdress, his skin tanned from the sun and his dark hair loose down his back. We faced each other and clasped hands while our mothers wound a single piece of blue yarn around our shoulders, a reminder that we were now bound together. Together, we dropped to our knees nine times to honor the Golden Light of the Sun, the Eternal Blue Sky, the rivers that were the lifeblood of the Earth Mother and the revered mountain Burkhan Khaldun, the khan of all mountains. Temujin shook out a red felt cloak and draped it reverently over my shoulders before allowing me to help him into the black sable jacket. Then we touched foreheads and breathed deeply, inhaling the scent of each other, sharing our very souls.

  Temujin was now a part of me, come what may.

  The wedding celebration afterward was small, but for the way Temujin’s family acted, one might have thought Ong Khan himself had just taken a new wife. A day-old lamb was butchered and Hoelun made the traditional sacrifice to the fire spirits, offering a small piece of purple intestine, a tiny chunk of heart, a strip of meat, and one rib bone to pacify the flames.

  Afterward, my new brothers stripped down to their breeches to circle each other in an impromptu wrestling match while taking long gulps of fermented mare’s milk. I did my best to avoid looking at the smooth muscles of Jamuka’s chest, the bare skin I’d once touched, as he took off his deel and shirt to join them. An old horse had been slaughtered earlier in the day, so the meat now cooked in a giant iron cauldron over a roaring fire. I sat between mute Sochigel and my blind mother, glad for once that she couldn’t see as Temujin’s entire family slurped airag straight from the skin jugs and sucked the marrow from their soup bones.

  The youngest member of the family approached me then, Temujin’s younger sister, Temulun, and thrust a handful of grass and wilted spring poppies at me. “These are for you,” she said, her shy smile revealing two missing milk teeth.

  “Thank you,” I said, making a show of sniffing the blossoms. “Poppies are my favorite flower.”

  “Mine, too,” she said. “But tonight you’re even prettier than they are.”

  She scampered off before I could answer, leaving me smiling into the posy.

  Temujin had shrugged off the sable jacket, shedding the black fur to reveal the thick chest and mass of muscle hidden beneath, and joined the wrestlers. He and Jamuka grappled together, laughing good-naturedly as they took turns dropping each other to the ground. I listened with half an ear as Hoelun recounted to my mother the story of when he and Jamuka took each other’s blood for the first time, lauding Jamuka’s loyalty to Temujin and Temujin’s adoration of the anda who was closer to him than his own brothers. I tried to close my ears, but then Hoelun shifted to a new topic.

  “The Tayichigud attacked us after my husband went to the sacred mountains.” Her voice shuddered like a larch in a winter storm. “They tortured Temujin by locking him in a cangue and forcing him to beg for the very air he breathed. I doubt he would have survived had it not been for Jamuka’s support. His anda saved him when he could no longer save himself.”

  I didn’t care to think of the bond between my husband and his blood brother, of the kiss I’d once shared with Jamuka. I stared at the ground, glad that not even my mother or Teb Tengeri could read my thoughts.

  Two scuffed boots entered my vision and I looked up to see my husband, his chest sweat slicked and dusty from wrestling, and bearing a bloody scrape across one shoulder. He held out a hand for me, the fire in his eyes making my stomach buck like a colt.

  Somehow, I managed to take his hand and stumble to my feet. I did my best to ignore the heat of Jamuka’s eyes on my back, to keep from my nose the scent of pine I remembered from another celebration not long ago.

  I would carry the soul of only one man to my marriage bed.

  Temujin tied a leather and ivory necklace over my wolf tooth and fastened matching bracelets on my wrists. Two fires to keep evil spirits at bay roared merrily outside my new ger, symbolic of the trials we would face together, and we walked between them hand in hand, purifying ourselves with their heat before entering our new home.
<
br />   This would be the tent where my children would be born, and one day, its walls would be my final sight before I drew my last breath.

  Temujin and I ducked inside while everyone else pushed in behind us. A cheerful fire crackled in the center and thick wisps of smoke twisted through the hole in the roof, obscuring the rope that crisscrossed down the far wall in a reminder of the many paths our lives might take. My eyes stung to see new rugs on the floor, ones woven with a familiar pattern of yellow flowers like the fields back home. My mother’s final gift.

  I dutifully prepared the salt tea that a bride traditionally offered to her guests, then bowed my head as the men and women drained the cups. Someone pressed a jug of airag into my hand and toothless Mother Khogaghchin grinned up at me. “One good drink and you won’t even feel the pain, my goat.”

  It would take more than a jug of mare’s milk to numb the flutter of panic in my chest, but I took a long swallow, letting it scald my throat. Hoelun bent before me, placing a polished black stone at my feet.

  “Our family is strong as this stone,” she said, a temporary hush falling over the merriment. “May you be blessed with the strength of the sacred mountains and the fertility of the Earth Mother.”

  Then Mother Khogaghchin tweaked my nose, laughing so I was made dizzy by the smell of airag on her breath.

  “Out!” Temujin roared with laughter, ushering everyone to the door as he tossed off his headdress. Most of the men took up singing bawdy songs of encouragement that made my cheeks flame. Yet one man didn’t raise his voice in song.

  “Jamuka!” Temujin yelled too loud. Jamuka had been almost outside, and he turned slowly now, his face a mask. “No well-wishes from my anda?”

  “You’ve been showered with many blessings today,” Jamuka said, although his smile didn’t reach his eyes. “I pray that you enjoy them.”

  “You need more airag, my friend.” Temujin clapped Jamuka on the back. “Rest well and perhaps I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Jamuka’s jaw clenched as he glanced at me, as if he couldn’t bear to be within sight of me. I wondered at his animosity, whether he believed like so many others that I had doomed his anda. I tossed my head in defiance and waited for the tent flap to fall behind him before turning back to my husband.

  As I watched Temujin pull off his boots, the tent felt suddenly too hot and too cold at the same time. I craved fresh air but shivered so the beads on my headdress rattled, like the voices of ancestors long since dead. My head pounded in time to my heart so it was all I could do to keep my stomach calm.

  I tugged at the bone toggle on my red felt cloak, but the airag made my fingers slip. Temujin suddenly stood before me and covered my hands with his.

  “Let me help,” he said.

  But instead of pulling off my cloak, he removed the wedding headdress and tossed it unceremoniously to the ground. I couldn’t stop the sigh of relief that escaped my lips, and his mouth curved into a smile. His fingers undid the intricate braids my mother had toiled over and then wove their way through my hair, kneading my scalp and soaking up the tension of the day. The hammers in my skull gradually lessened, but my heart still pounded a steady beat. I knew the tactic, the same used to relax an animal before its slaughter.

  But I would grasp this destiny I’d chosen with both hands, uninhibited and undaunted.

  I pressed my body against his and caressed the scrape on his shoulder, my fingers coming away with a smear of his blood. The hardness of his desire didn’t shock me, but instead made me bold. I kissed him then, relishing his groan as his lips parted under mine. He picked me up and spread me over the black sable coat, covering me with his body. I felt his inhale, the way his soul spread its eager fingers into mine. “I am indeed a lucky man,” he said, his voice rough with emotion as his lips brushed my ear.

  “The luckiest of men,” I murmured, feeling wanton as my skirt bunched up around my hips. Only the thin fabric of our trousers separated us from each other.

  He laughed then, and I smiled, my cheeks warming. Outside there was a shout for us to get on with it, then a roar of laughter.

  “We’d best do as they say,” I murmured.

  Temujin pulled me to him. “Do you always do as you’re told?”

  “Rarely.” I worked off his belt and tossed it aside. “You’d best enjoy it while you can.”

  * * *

  I awoke the next morning, heavy limbed and sore at the cleft between my legs, but finally free from the worries that had circled over me these past weeks. I noticed for the first time the bristly back of a hedgehog’s hide tied over the door for good luck, and wondered at my fortune this far, pondering for a moment whether it would last. I tried to untangle myself from Temujin without waking him, but he reached out and clasped my wrist.

  “Stay,” he said.

  “You don’t need me to milk the goats?” I teased. “Or gather dung for the fire?”

  “Not today,” he said, his fingers moving to caress the underside of my breast. “Perhaps never if I can keep you right here instead.”

  My body responded to his touch and it didn’t take long before my husband was inside me again, both of us gasping at our release. He lay next to me for a moment, then swung his legs over the bed and stretched, every muscle in his body chiseled like the boulders of the sacred hills.

  “I leave for Ong Khan’s today,” he said, shrugging into his leather breeches.

  “We won’t observe the eight days?” Wedding celebrations traditionally lasted eight full days before the bride’s family deserted her. If Temujin left, there would be no reason for my mother to stay any longer. My family was here now, in this tiny tent.

  “I must deliver the sable,” he said. The stubble of his cheeks scratched my skin as he trailed kisses down my neck. “Don’t tell me you’ll miss me.”

  I shrugged, unsure of the answer. “Perhaps I should come with you.”

  He seemed to consider it as he tied his belt, but then he shook his head. “It’s a dangerous journey for any woman, especially you.”

  I scowled. “I wouldn’t slow you down—”

  Then I realized what he meant, that he was unwilling to tempt any clans along the way into stealing me and inciting a war. My shoulders slumped, the worries from before settling onto their old perches in my soul.

  Temujin kissed my nose. “My brothers and Teb Tengeri will join me to see Ong Khan, but Jamuka will remain here. He’ll keep you safe.”

  I let my husband of one night leave me then, ignoring his brothers’ ribald teasing as he kissed me from the door of our ger. He walked away with Jamuka, their heads bent in the ever-important discussions of men, while we women remained behind.

  I’d done my best to avoid Jamuka since he’d brought Temujin back into my life. Now I’d have to face him whether I cared to or not.

  * * *

  My mother disappeared with Temujin over the horizon that afternoon, for my husband had offered to accompany her cart home to my father before he continued on to Ong Khan. I missed her already, and so it was that Jamuka found me shaking wooden buckets of goat milk and salting the curds with my tears.

  “Greetings, Borte Ujin,” he said, his voice strangely formal. I recalled the conversation we’d shared on the mountaintop and the way the moon had lit his face, but now I dragged my sleeve across my eyes at his approach.

  His easy elegance was out of place in this crude camp, the fine cut of his deel and his chiseled features, yet his easy manner now seemed forced, his shoulders squared as if for battle. “I came to see how you fared.”

  “I’m happy among my new family.” I gestured to the bedraggled tents that surrounded us, longing instead to see the bright gers and familiar mountains of home. Jamuka studied me and I ducked my head so he wouldn’t see my blotchy face.

  “You seem as happy as a lost crane,” he said. “Just like that night on the moun
taintop—”

  I held up a hand. “That night never happened.”

  He stared at me for a moment; then his face hardened. “I see.” He straightened and brushed his fine tunic free of imaginary dust. “As you have no need of me here, I’ll return to my clan.”

  “But I thought Temujin asked you to remain—”

  “Temujin will return in a few days. Until then you shall have Khasar for protection.”

  A lone boy to protect me, three old women, and a little girl.

  “Does my husband know you would leave his wife and mother to fend for themselves?” I aimed the barb at his retreating back. As much as I preferred Jamuka gone for my own peace of mind, I didn’t relish the idea of being left unprotected and surrounded by unknown clans.

  He didn’t spare me a final glance, as if he couldn’t bear to look at me. “My anda will understand.”

  I went back to straining the goat curds and was startled when Hoelun touched me on the elbow, peering through squinted eyes at Jamuka’s shrinking silhouette.

  “Jamuka leaves our camp in a hurry,” she said, both a statement and a question. He took only his horse, leaving the tent he’d shared with Teb Tengeri as the only testament to his existence. “Jamuka has never before gone against his anda’s wishes.”

  I shrugged. “He claimed Temujin would understand.”

  She stared at me overlong, then turned and shuffled toward the ger. “I doubt he would,” she said, casting a wary glance at me over her shoulder. “At least not yet.”

  * * *

  I wiped the sweat from my brow, bent over the fragrant goat-meat-and-onion stew boiling over the cooking stones outside while Hoelun and Mother Khogaghchin worked to stretch the skin of the freshly slaughtered goat. Temujin had returned a week after Jamuka’s retreat—puzzled and then annoyed at his anda’s disappearance—and we’d fallen into a comfortable routine as I learned that my husband had an insatiable appetite for everything: horses, airag, wrestling, hunting. And me.

  Ong Khan had received Temujin warmly, exchanging the black sable coat for promises that he would protect Temujin’s people. Flush with his victory, Temujin pulled me onto his blankets each night, both of us so eager for each other that we’d often wake throughout the night to rouse the other. I was well loved, and surprised to find I enjoyed my husband’s thorough attentions.