Tortall and Other Lands A Collection of Tales 1st Printing Edition Tamora Pierce PDF Download
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Tortall and Other Lands A Collection of Tales 1st Printing
Edition Tamora Pierce Pdf Download
EBOOK
Available Formats
When a Gene Makes You Smell Like a Fish And Other Amazing
Tales about the Genes in Your Body First Edition/First
Printing Edition Lisa Seachrist Chiu
True and Untrue and Other Norse Tales 1st Edition Sigrid
Undset
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Student of Ostriches
Elder Brother
The Hidden Girl
Nawat
The Dragon’s Tale
Lost
Time of Proving
Plain Magic
Mimic
Huntress
Comments on the Short Story “Testing”
Testing
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Excerpt from Mastiff
S TUDENT OF O
STRICHES
My story began as my mother carried me in her belly to the great Nawolu trade fair. Because she was
pregnant, our tribe let Mama ride high on the back of our finest camel, which meant she was also lookout
for our caravan. It was she who spotted the lion and gave the warning. Our warriors closed in tight around
our people to keep them safe, but they were in no danger from the lion.
He was a young male, with no lionesses to guard him as he stalked a young ostrich who strayed from
its parents. He drew closer to his intended prey. Its mama and papa raced toward the lion, faster than
horses, their large eyes fixed on the threat. The lion was young and ignorant. He snarled as one ostrich
kicked him. Then the other did the same. On and on the ostriches kicked the lion until he was a fur sack
of bones.
As the ostriches led their children away, my mama said, she felt me kick in her belly for the first time.
If the kicking ostriches were a good omen for our family, they were not for my papa. Two months later
he was wounded in the leg in a battle with an enemy tribe. It never healed completely, forcing him to leave
the ranks of the warriors and join the ranks of the wood-carvers, though he never complained. Not long
after my papa began to walk with a cane, I was born. Papa was sad for a little while, because I was a girl.
He would have liked a son to take his place as a warrior, but he always said that when I first smiled at
him, he could not be sad anymore.
When I was six years old, I asked my parents if I could learn to go outside the village wall with the
animal herds. Who could be happy inside the walls when the world lay outside? My parents spoke to our
chief, who agreed that I could learn to watch goats on the rocky edges of the great plains on which the
world was born.
Of course, I did not begin alone. My ten-year-old cousin Ogin was appointed to teach me. On that first
morning I followed him and his dogs to a grazing place. Once the goats were settled, I asked him, “What
must I learn?”
“First, you learn to use the herder’s weapon, the sling,” Ogin said. He was very tall and lean, like a stick
with muscles. “You must be able to help the dogs drive off enemies.” He held up a strip of leather.
I practiced the twirl and the release of the stone in the sling until my shoulders were sore. For a change
of pace, Ogin taught me the words to name the goats’ marks and parts until I knew them by heart. Once
my muscles were relaxed again, I would take up the sling once more.
When it was time to eat our noon food, my cousin took the goats, the dogs, and me up onto a rock
outcropping. From there we could see the plain stretch out before us under its veil of dusty air. This was
my reward, this long view of the first step to the world. I almost forgot how to eat. Lonely trees fanned
their branches out in flat-topped sprays. Vultures roosted in their branches. Veils of tall grass separated
the herds of zebra, wildebeest, and gazelle in the distance. Lions waited near a watering hole close to our
rocks as giraffes nibbled the leaves of thorny trees on the other side.
Watching it all, I saw movement. I gasped. “Ogin—there! Are those—are they ostriches?”
“You think, because your mama saw them, they are cousins to you?” he teased me. “What is it,
Kylaia? Will you grow tail feathers and race them?”
The ostriches were running. They had long, powerful legs. When they ran, they opened their legs up
and stretched. They were not delicate like the gazelle, like my older sisters. They ran in long, loping
strides. Watching them, I thought, I want to run like that.
For a year I was Ogin’s apprentice. He taught me to keep the goats moving in the lands around the
stone lookout place, so there would be grass throughout the year. He was patient and he did not laugh at
me as I struggled to learn to be a dead shot with a sling, a careful tracker, and one who understood the
ways of the dogs, the goats, and the wild creatures of the plains.
Ogin taught me to run, too, as he and my sisters did, like gazelles, on the balls of their feet. After our
noon meals, as Ogin napped, I would practice my ostrich running. I opened up my strides, dug in my feet,
and thrust out my chest, imagining myself to be a great bird, eating the ground with my big feet. Each day I
ran a little farther and a little faster as Ogin and the dogs slept, and the goats and the birds looked on.
When I had followed Ogin for a year, my uncle the herd chief came out with us. Ogin made me show off
my skills with the goats and the dogs.
“Tomorrow morning, come to me,” said my uncle. “You shall have a herd and dogs of your own.”
It was my seventh birthday. I was so proud! I was now a true member of the village with proper work to
do. Papa gave me a wooden ball painted with colored stripes. Mama and my sisters had woven me new
clothes and a cape for the cold. I ran through the village to show off my ball and to tell my friends that I
was now a true worker.
Five older boys caught me on my way home. They knocked me down and they took my ball.
When I came home, my family noticed my bruises. Papa limped through the village until he found my
ball and brought it back to me.
My pride lay in the dust. I pretended to ignore my family’s conversation, as my sisters demanded that
the boys be punished and my father said he would appeal to our chief. Whatever punishment the boys got
would have nothing to do with me, only the peace of the tribe. Their penalty would not make me taller or
less ashamed.
In the morning, I alone took my new herd out to graze in the rocks of the seeing place. While the goats
found grasses tucked into stone hollows, I stared at the plain. The village would deal with the boys. Later,
they would take their vengeance on me. What would I do then?
I don’t know why a wild dog decided to be a fool that morning, or why he left the protection of his pack. I
only know that he was alone when he found the old ostrich nesting ground. It was not breeding season.
There were no eggs or young to protect. The king ostrich, his queen, and his other wives were nibbling
grass seed as a shift of wind brought them the scent of wild dog. My thigh muscles twitched as the pair
ran to catch the intruder, their great legs eating up the yards between them. The dog fled too late. The
ostriches were on him. The queen’s first kick sent the wild dog flying into the air. He lurched to his feet,
but the ostriches had already caught up. A few more kicks finished the dog.
He must have taken their ball, I thought, impressed with ostrich vengeance. If I had been an ostrich,
those boys would have returned my ball to me.
The idea flowered in my mind. It was said the Shang warriors, masters of unarmed combat, could kill by
kicking alone, but I had never seen a Shang. Our young men wrestled for the honor of our tribe. The only
time they used their feet, it was to hook a foot behind an opponent’s leg, to yank him off balance. But
surely a person with strong legs could fight by kicking, as ostriches did, I told myself. One kick would
knock an opponent—an enemy—onto his back. Onto his thieving, mocking back …
So I tried to kick like an ostrich, and fell on my behind.
I was a stubborn girl. As the dogs and goats watched, I kicked. And kicked. I learned that I had to stand
a certain way in order not to fall. Then I learned to stand in a better way, so I would not fall or wobble as I
kicked. My legs cramped, so I ran like an ostrich to stretch them. But I could not let go of ostrich-kick
fighting. I chased the idea through my days as I took out my goats, found grazing, practiced my sling,
practiced kicking with attention for both legs, practiced ostrich running, ate my lunch, and watched the
thousand stories of the plain. After lunch, though it made me sweat and sometimes made me sick in the
dry season’s heat, I continued my many practices. At day’s end, I went home too weary to do more than
play catch with my little cousins.
Three months before my eighth birthday I was on my way home from an errand when the boys caught
me again. “We could be playing kick-the-ball and building the muscles of our legs, while you only play with
children,” their leader told me. “The ball is wasted with you. You will give it to us and tell your papa that you
are tired of it. If you do, maybe we will leave you teeth to chew with.”
His friends laughed. The boy behind me wrapped his arms around me, pinning my arms. He was going
to help me, though he did not mean to, by keeping me balanced and free to use both legs. I watched their
leader come closer to take the ball from my hands.
They were wild dogs. I was an ostrich. I kicked their leader in the belly so hard that he bent over and
vomited. One of the others tried to punch me. I kicked to the side and rammed his upper thigh. He fell.
Another boy rushed me. Twisting in my captor’s hold, I drove my heels into the side of his leg, knocking
him down. Then I used my elbows to make the boy who held me let go.
I learned many things from this, like what will make a boy yell and what will leave him unable to chase
me. And I kept my ball. They did not dare complain of me to the chief, either. They were older than I.
Everyone would laugh to know they feared a girl.
The next morning I scrambled up onto the rocks to watch for my next lesson. The zebra, who are mean
and tricky, had come to the watering hole after a family of giraffes. Giraffes take time to drink, spreading
their legs to lower their bodies, then their heads on their very long necks. They took up half the water
hole. I suppose some zebras got impatient waiting for their leaders to drink. You could see it in their
wicked black eyes. If the zebras made the giraffes go, then all of the zebras would have room to drink.
One of the young zebras pretended to do something else as he circled the giraffe family. It was a male
giraffe who saw him. He watched the zebra draw near. Then the giraffe did a strange thing. He drew back
his head. The zebra took two more steps toward the giraffes.
The male giraffe swung his head like a mallet and clubbed the zebra with his heavy skull. The zebra
went tumbling in the dust. With a snort, as if to say he had only been playing, the zebra struggled to his
feet and went back to his herd to wait.
I soon learned the best way to imitate the giraffe was to make a giant fist of both clasped hands,
fingers locked together. The flesh of my hands, though, was tender. A few blows against the nearby rocks
and trees soon taught me that. I ground my teeth and began to toughen them as the warriors did, a little at
a time, striking bark and stone, day after day. Young antelope toughened their horns, after all. I had
toughened my feet on the rock-and-briar-strewn ground outside the village wall. I could toughen my hands
to hit like a giraffe.
Two years passed as I studied my new work, out there with the goats and the dogs. I built calluses on
my hands, feet, and elbows. I ran; I hit and I kicked. I drove off wild dogs with my sling. I began to hunt,
bringing extra meat to my family at the day’s end. When I was ten, I was eligible for the harvest games we
held with neighboring villages. I entered in the girls’ races. I was too slow to win short races. My gazelle
held with neighboring villages. I entered in the girls’ races. I was too slow to win short races. My gazelle
sisters overtook me there. Then came the long race, three times around a neighboring village’s wall. My
gazelle sisters limped in after I ran across the finish line. I ran greater distances than that every day with
the goats.
Five months after, before the spring planting celebration, Ogin and my sisters took me aside. “We want
you to do something that will put coins in our purses,” Ogin said. “We want you to run in the boys’ races.
We will bet on you and everyone will think we have run mad.”
“Or let our pride in our village fool us,” said Iyaka. “They will bet against you and we will win.”
My sisters’ eyes were bright and shining. Ogin—now fourteen and chief herd boy—grinned broadly with
wickedness. I turned to my sisters, who were runners. “You think I can beat them?” I asked.
They giggled. “We know you can,” said Iyaka.
And so I lingered on the sidelines of the boys’ first short race until Ogin, according to our plan, dragged
me over to the starting line. Everyone hurried to bet against me as the boys who were to race protested.
The judge said that there was no rule against girls, only custom. The boys had to give in.
I was third in the first short race of sixty yards, second in the second short race of seventy-five yards,
and first in the ninety-yard race, as my sisters had planned. I won the boys’ long race, too. That night
there were honey cakes with supper and coins in the family purse.
Our lives marched on through festivals and races. My sisters grew older and more beautiful. I simply
grew. “She is turning into a giraffe!” the boys would tease me. I ignored them. Thanks to my height and
strength, my boyless family had meat in the pot and coins for my sisters’ dowries.
Besides, I liked giraffes. They looked silly, but wise creatures let them be, and they feasted among
thorns.
My goats were exchanged for Ogin’s old cattle herd when I turned eleven, while Ogin was made a
hunter. As I learned the ways of cows, I studied the plains and the rocks. In the tall grasses and wiry trees
of the plains I was free to join nature in its blood and power. There I practiced running, hitting, and kicking,
using the blows to break fallen branches for firewood or to give a wounded animal a quick death. I learned
more kicks from zebras, a double hand strike from lions, and a back-of-the-fist blow from elephants.
Sometimes I dreamed about the world beyond the plains, trying to imagine its shape. My first taste of it
would come when I was thirteen, when I would be allowed to attend the Nawolu trade fair for the first time.
It was a week’s journey from our village, a gathering where tribes came from hundreds of miles to sell and
to buy, to marry off daughters and sons, and to hold games of strength and speed. Daughters were
presented when they were thirteen, though they were not actually married until they were sixteen or
seventeen. During my twelfth year, my next-oldest sister went with the others to the fair. She came back
talking of nothing but boys.
Iyaka, who was seventeen, returned quietly. Mama told us the good news. A chief’s son, a young,
wealthy man named Awochu, had seen Iyaka race. He had fallen in love with her. It was odd for young
people to choose their own mates, but Awochu’s father could not deny his only son. It did not matter that
Iyaka’s dowry was tiny. For a bride price Awochu would give us thirty cattle and accept Papa’s blessing in
return. Awochu would marry Iyaka at the next trade fair.
“What can I say? I am so honored by my family-to-be,” Iyaka said when we begged for details. “Thirty
cattle will make Papa rich and respected. I could not have refused even if I had wanted to.”
When she put it that way, she made me ask myself what I would say when a man’s family offered for
me. I thought about it as I watched over my cows the next day. Did I want to be married? I would have to
leave my days on my beloved plains and never see the world beyond. I would retire behind a wall like the
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