The Rite of Spring: The Priest of the Cunt

The Rite of Spring: Fragment 11

The Priest of the Cunt
in which Kiara describes a journey by barge, and how a stranger helped her with her hurts.

I know that I was stupid that day, and that if I had behaved differently it might have been better for all of us. But I was tired and disspirited, and my abdomen was sore. I don't believe that the stories about Kiar taking the King Horse for her lover and having several children by him are true. For all the preparation I had had, the stallion was just too big and pushed too hard and it hurt. I do not believe any woman could take a stallion for pleasure. Also, he'd managed to bite my shoulder, so that was torn and bruised and painful, and the bit had cut the corner of my lip. The trouble with a big ceremony is that you can't take a rest, or say you don't want to go on with it; you have to see it through to the end. Hurting the way I was, all the dancing was just hard work, not fun or exciting at all.

Then there had been some mix up about the number of mares, and Brachs was saying we hadn't covered them all, which if it was true would mean I had failed to complete the ceremony properly, so that there would be more trouble for me back at the House. I'd had a row with Brachs about it, and that just made matters worse.

So I wasn't speaking to the boys when we got down to the barge landing, and when we got a barge, they stayed at the stern joking with the steersman, and I went up and sat in the bows. There was a woman sitting there, asleep. She was wearing clothes cut to a barbarian pattern, but she had no veil, and appeared to be alone, so it simply didn't occur to me that she could actually be a barbarian. She was young, dark skinned, and exceptionally good looking. There was something about her I was sure I had seen before, but I couldn't work out what it was.

The bite on my shoulder was extremely painful, and had blown up into a huge area of swollen purple mess. I stripped off my body harness, and took salve out of my bag to work into it. It irritated me because I couldn't see all of it and it was very sore. At this point I looked round and saw this woman looking at me as if I was leprous - a sneering mixture of distaste and disdain. I couldn't see what she had to get uppity about. I assumed she must be another Eye, and that didn't mend my temper, because I was pretty worried just then about Ratface.

Anyway, I was sore enough and cross enough to say something irritable about coming and helping rather than sitting looking like a prune. To my surprise, she did. She came and looked at it, and then turned me round quite firmly to look at it from behind. I have to say I was surprised at how gentle and competent she was when she was working on my shoulder. She said something like

"it looks very painful". It was hard to make out exactly what she did say, because she didn't properly voice her speech, but used a hoarse whisper. I remember thinking it was rather attractive. I said

"I got bitten by a horse", and she just said

"yes". I remember thinking that was odd, because it's not a likely place to get bitten. I can see her now at the covering; she was just beside the first girl we did. But I knew all of them were Yachorach, and she clearly wasn't, and I just didn't twig.

Anyway, I was pretty tired, and I think she was too; so I just thanked her for what she'd done, and we both settled down to drowse. She was very gracious when I thanked her, as well. I thought she might actually be quite a nice person, under the frost.

So we drowsed; and then, at the hostel that night, at the table I sat with the boys, who reopened the quarrel about the numbers, and after that I just went to bed. In the morning, when we came down, two of the Hand were there waiting for her, and when the time came to get back on the barge she wasn't around; and I didn't think any more about her.

Comments, criticism and feedback welcomed.

give me feedback on this page // show previous feedback on this page