Free The Tiger Queens by Stephanie Thornton Page B

seeing him for the first time. “You shall fail her, Temujin of the Borijin,” she said, her voice coming from far away. “Yet without you, she cannot become the woman she was meant to be.”
    There was a stunned breath of silence before my mother heaved a great sigh, listing dangerously. I caught her arm, frightened by the way she leaned on me. “My mother is weary from the long journey,” I said. “Is there somewhere she can rest?”
    Temujin nodded, although he didn’t meet my eyes. “She can remain in my mother’s
ger
until I’ve built her tent.”
    “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 breezeat 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 shesniffed 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