Page 46 of Deja New
TWENTY-TWO
NOVEMBER 1889
KAMCHATKA PENINSULA, RUSSIAN FAR EAST
She had known when the contractions would not stop, even after her daughter had emerged, though in truth she had suspected for some time. She had gotten so big, every woman who saw her tried to smile and then looked away. A few pulled her aside:Do not worry, your man is a big man, and you! So tall! You have a large son in there, I am sure.
She had no sons in there. She had two girls. Twins, as she had been a twin seventeen years earlier.
We have to keep our ways, her mother had whispered, as her grandmother and great-grandmother had reminded their daughters, and back and back, all the way to their beginning, when Kutkh gave the Koryaks the moon and the sun.Without the old ways, we are no better than the Cossacks. Without them, we would have lost one villager for every two.
Pity the Koryaks on the mainland, who had suffered exactly that after enduring smallpox and war. She could almost feel sorrow for the Cossacks, who had never fought Koryaks and were amazed and fearful to see how her people waged war: with everything. Because their lives and their people were so, so precious, they set their homes ablaze to deny the Cossacks shelter. They killed their own women and children to deny the Cossacks slaves and the spoils of war.*Defeat was unthinkable, but if it came, there was nothing left for the enemy, and the price for all sides was high.
Her people’s love was fierce and all-encompassing, and not just in times of war. “Save me,” an elder would say, would demand. “I am sick, weak, show me my value. Did I not teach you the last blow? Do you not love me?” And so the mercifully quick death, rescuing a revered elder from the inevitable slide into the suffering of old age.
Twins? A double burden on mother and tribe. Instead of a strong, thriving infant, the village had to contend with two smaller, weaker babies who would drain resources. Twins were a tragedy.
“I love you,” she whispered to the one, raising a work-roughened hand to press over the tiny mouth and nose. “As my mother so loved my sister.” To the other: “And you in your love for me will someday do the same.”
Without those acts of love, what were they but godless savages?
