In a beautiful room filled with beautiful people who told her beautiful things: she put on a beautiful dress and prepared for her wedding: and a fairer maid in all the land there never was and never had been. And each gold necklace they put on her, each earring with the red wooden beads and the coral outlines, each golden bangle with the little bells that were supposed to herald the dawn of something new and beautiful, the anklets and the body paint and the blood red they drew so preciously and adamantly on her lips, all these things were burdens and scalds to her as much as they were joy and merriment to the people around her: empty promises and redsome reminders that she was about to give herself away.
It was a beautiful day, I do remember. The sky was never bluer and the clouds were awash with white: the smiling sun bore down on a mountain land that had stood the test of trying time. We led her down the path, the bride, past the house she would never see again and past all the things she grew up with.
And although the smile on her face was enough for her parents and the people around her, it was never enough to hide what she felt from the ones who knew. And for these: her smile was the lure on the hunters’ snare: the wildsome beast being led to slaughter or sacrifice or the virgin to ritual suicide; the red of her lips nothing but the false diamonds of a trade-off between two enemies.
And these people must have been blind or deaf or dumb: or they saw what she felt and chose to ignore it. All the people were out in full array to see and celebrate the union long bespoken; little children ran underfoot all asplendor and gleesome and waving the red cloth that meant fortune and marital happiness; the women sang and danced: the menfolk trumpeted in all their male glory.
On the highest hill of the tallest mountain there was a little wooden house, and it was there they brought her to be wed. And ah! She was the most beautiful bride they had ever seen, even more so than their grandmothers of old, who were rumored to come from the stars. And according to tradition she was bound to her husband with a mandatory gift of fifty sheep and ten calves and forty baskets of the black mountain corn: the price of a virgin bride.
Her husband was the sort of footloose man who believed women were for householdery and possession and status alone: the sort of man without a heart and a heavy hand and a loose, brazen tongue. For twenty long years she bore down under him and his selfish wants and needs: and his perpetual infidelity and mortal lust and abuse.
Four children she bore him: three heart-brave sons and a beautiful, precious daughter with knowing eyes the color of the deepest sea and wild hair like fire: this daughter was the last, and then there were no more. Of all the children she bore him it was this daughter that was most like her in thought and word and deed and mind: the daughter of her heart. In this child was the happiness she had not felt since her own childhood: and for a while she was content. People who chanced to pass by gave tell that the stories that she told her babe surpassed all imagination and wonder: and the music she made like heaven.
The day after the twenty-first birthday of the youngest child, she disappeared. Folk say she was one of the sky-children of old after all, and her time had come. Her sons and daughter she left behind to find themselves in the world: and indeed these four became some of the great people of that time and that world: perhaps in the end they too went back to the sky in search of the mother they once knew.
Her husband continued to the end of his days the exact same way he started them: miserable and alone and selfish. In the end he got what was coming to him, but that part of the story does not come into this tale. But there are people who say that on the day of her leaving, his wife left behind, as perfectly and as untouched as though it were the day of their wedding: the bride price he paid: fifty sheep and ten calves and forty baskets of the black mountain corn.
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