She missed her brother.

  After some hours, the herd caught up with them. Abai shrugged philosophically over the tale of Beskempir and the two strange horsemen. Dulat was angry. He snapped his notebook down on the table. “This whole bare country!” His arm swung out. “This huge and empty country. Surely there is enough space that they don’t need to take ours.”

  “Space is one thing,” said Yerzhan. “Grass is another. That was good grazing they took.”

  “It’s been our place for twenty years.”

  “They say if you do not respect the traditions . . .” said Yerzhan.

  “What does that mean?” snapped Dulat.

  “You know what it means.” Yerzhan was drinking watered vodka from a bowl. It was common to toast and celebrate the striking of a new camp, but it was usual to wait until the walls were up. “You know what it means,” he said again.

  His gaze slapped Aisulu.

  Was he right? Had the horsemen taken their usual camp because she was a girl training with an eagle? Would their herd go hungry? Would her family go hungry? Was it her fault?

  Her hand throbbed and her heart pounded as they put the gers up, lashing the lattice to the doors, raising the crowns, setting the roofs staves in their holes. Her blister seemed to catch on every rope.

  No one part of a ger was strong. It was made strong by the way it was all tied together, each piece pulling on each other piece. What if the Kazakh people were like that too? She was stepping out of her place as a girl. What if that tipped over other things? What if it brought everything crashing down?

  She’d known that a girl training an eagle was unusual. But now, for the first time, she wondered if it was dangerous.

  Chapter Twelve

  In the new place to which her family had been exiled, Aisulu taught Toktar.

  He was a baby whose food had always come to him on the end of a matchstick. Now he had to learn to hunt.

  Kara-Kat-Kɨs showed Aisulu how to squeeze and prod Toktar’s legs and the muscles along his keel, learning to judge how much to feed him so that he was strong and healthy, but light enough to fly. She showed her how to wash his meat free of blood to keep him hungry enough to use his three-mile eyes. She helped Aisulu stuff a rabbit skin with straw to make a lure. They tied it to a rope, and while the men were away with the herds, they took turns running with it.

  Aisulu held Toktar and watched Kara-Kat-Kɨs run sure-footed across the tussocks and hummocks of the flat land by the river. Behind her, the lure bumped wildly, catching with a tug between two stones and then jouncing up into the air, almost as if it were alive. Toktar watched it. Aisulu could feel his talons tighten in excitement, his balance snake as he leaned forward. Suddenly he launched himself with the strength of a yak kicking. He shot toward the lure, swung his talons forward, and landed on top of the skin as if claiming a kingdom. Kara-Kat-Kɨs gave him a rabbit leg, cooing to the eagle as he ripped meat from bone.

  They did this over and over, and Toktar quickly learned to hunt. It was what he was built for. What he was meant to do. There is no joy like the fierce joy of doing what you are meant to do. Toktar felt it.

  Aisulu felt it too. In the new camp by the river, she ran, and Kara-Kat-Kɨs ran, and they were both fast and strong. The ground was hummocked: rises of strappy iris leaves and dips of bare earth the color of dirty salt. To run on it without twisting an ankle took a kind of sixth sense, a way of feeling the land through the bottom of her boots. Kara-Kat-Kɨs had it, and as Aisulu learned it, she had this thought: the Fox Wife was not what they called her, not a witch or a trickster, but a woman whose boots knew hummocks and whose eyes knew faces and whose heart knew hearts. She was different because she had made different choices.

  As Aisulu was making. Running the lure, flying her eagle, day after day, Aisulu began to find a joy to go with her fear, her fear of failing her brother, of failing her family, of being the broken rope that brought down a whole ger.

  On Monday mornings, she would see the children walking alone in the distance, heading to the village to spend the week in the school, in the dormitory. She should have been with them—​she and Serik, hand in hand. But it was as if the breaking of his leg had paused the world, and she had stepped outside it. Outside her routine, outside her family, and into a world with eagles in it.

  That Friday evening, after the great prayers, she took off Toktar’s hood and sat with him by the river, the glove resting on her knee. He was fearsomely quiet, gazing at the bright water, his eyes piercing every ripple, every mayfly. Sometimes he would preen Aisulu’s hair, drawing strands of it through his beak as if arranging her flight feathers.

  After a long while, his head nodded forward and his wings softened and slumped. He ruffled and settled his feathers and tucked up one foot. Soon he was asleep, leaning softly against her. The other children were coming back from school. She watched them, the eagle asleep on her arm.

  She felt herself quiet. She felt herself lost. Both things.

  The joy that goes with fear is sometimes called faith.

  * * *

  By the time the new camp had been in place for a week, things had settled into a routine. Each day after the morning milking had been done and the herds had been driven ploshing through the cold shallow water to the green islands, Aisulu and her family taught the eagle.

  Aisulu could already flick Toktar’s hood off so quickly that it was as easy as breathing. Now, with her uncle dragging the lure, she learned to flick Toktar’s hood off, thrust him into the air on the end of her arm, and give the strike shout, all in one moment. Before she could even breathe back in, Toktar would lock on to the bouncing skin and launch. Three strong thrusts of his white-flashed wings, a swinging out of his striking talons, and he was on the rabbit skin, squeezing to kill it even as the rope made him bump along. Aisulu laughed in delight as his hackles came up and he balanced with his wings, bewildered by the way his catch kept running.

  The eagle was a deadly thing, but a sweet thing. She could hold him cradled like a baby, and he gazed into her eyes. If he was tired, he liked to have his belly rubbed, from the corners of his mouth to the feathers of his boots, from the strong center of his breastbone to the warm creases under his wings. He lay back in her arms with his huge curved talons fisted at the sky and made ker-honk noises.

  He could break her hand without trying. And she loved him.

  Finally they were ready to fly him as he should be flown—​from mountaintops. Aisulu would go with Kara-Kat-Kɨs during the day, or with Dulat in the evening. They would climb into the foothills, the scorched red and purple places. Amid the humped hills of dust and sharp ones of shale, they taught Toktar to dive. He was fast, and he was getting faster.

  He had already learned to come to the lure, and then to get meat from the hand. Next they taught him to come to the hand directly. He learned quickly that Aisulu’s shout meant go, and Dulat’s shout meant come—​quickly learned to spot the rabbit leg clamped between Dulat’s thumb and glove.

  Once Toktar knew his part, Dulat declared Aisulu ready for the hardest task in eagle hunting: not to launch Toktar, but to catch him.

  Toktar had grown huge. He was more than twelve pounds now, and his curving black talons were as long as pocketknives. His level flight was faster than a racehorse’s gallop, and his dive was like an arrow: 120, 150 miles an hour. Standing in front of him was like standing in front of a lightning strike. It took pure faith, and pure nerve.

  At the foot of the shale hill, Aisulu stood. She watched her uncle climbing up with Toktar on his fist, his high black boots sending blocks of shale scattering. She remembered that sound: like bones breaking.

  Her heart beat in her throat. She could smell the blood of the rabbit leg she held clamped in her gloved hand. She knew Toktar would come to her. Or she thought he would. He had learned to come to Dulat. He was a smart creature, at least when it came to raw meat. He trusted her. And she trusted him.

  She watched her uncle climb and the world dialed in, like the world through binoculars. Her vision was narrow and sharp. She was seeing nothing but Dulat standing on the outcrop, dark against the bright sky, the eagle ready on his glove. She was hearing nothing but the wind thumping in her ears.

  She took a deep breath and listened to her own strong heart. Then she thrust up her gloved fist and gave the eagle hunter’s shout. In the same second, Dulat flicked the hood off Toktar and launched him into the air.

  The eagle stroked twice against the hard bright air, his wings and body undulating, his head like an arrow pointed straight at her face. Then he was diving for her, his legs slung back under his tail, invisible, only his jesses trailing. His wings were arched and still, perfect as scythe blades, and he came at her fast. He was coming. He was almost on her. His feet swung forward, his wings flared out, flashing white, flashing silver, and just then, someone spoke.

  “Careful,” said a voice. “An eagle can break your arm.”

  Aisulu flinched.

  It was the wrong moment to flinch. Toktar struck her glove with a blow like a gong striking in her ear. The force spun her around. But she had begun spinning too soon, and one of the eagle’s talons had also snagged in her flying braid. The next second Toktar was hanging upside down from her hair as if from a rope, and flapping wildly. Aisulu shouted, almost screamed—​half her head seemed to be on fire. She couldn’t even hear herself over the rush of wings and the pounding of her heart in her ear. She spun and Toktar spun on the end of her braid. She seized him. Her scalp felt torn, but she set Toktar upright on her glove. Even then he was still caught in her hair. She had to hold him up next to her ear.

  Toktar fell upon the rabbit leg she was holding, snapping, tearing. The sound was huge. He was tangled too close for her to see all of him, but she twisted her gaze to look. From this angle his eyes were clear domes, like drops of glass, with the disk of the iris flat in the back. The hairlike feathers between his beak and his eyes were thick with blood. He looked snakelike, alien, and for a moment Aisulu was terrified.

  “Did I distract you?” said the voice.

  Shuffling her feet, trying not to stumble or tug, she turned. Behind her, watching her, was a man on horseback. He was close, not a ger’s width away. Aisulu recognized him as one of the horsemen who had swooped down on them the day they’d moved the gers—​the one who had stripped off his shirt and squared off with her uncle Yerzhan. He was wearing an eagle hunter’s red hat, but no shapan, just a cowboy shirt with snaps instead of buttons. He was young, and he had the kind of muscles of which some young men are so proud.

  There was a smirk on his face, and a hooded eagle on his arm.

  “Eagle hunting is not a game,” he said. “I’ve really heard about one breaking the arm of an inexperienced man. You should be more careful.”

  There was a little flare of his nose on the word “man.”

  Distantly, she could hear Dulat shouting.

  “You should know better than to bother an eagle in its training.” Her voice was gulping but her words were calm words. She was proud of that.

  The young man shrugged. “You’re going to have to cut off that braid.”

  “What are you doing!” Dulat was storming up to them, outraged as a bull yak. “What do you think you’re doing!”

  “Seeing if the little girl needs help,” said the young man. “It’s neighborly.”

  “I see exactly what you’re doing,” said Dulat. “Go away.”

  “Are you sure?” The young man leaned forward. The eagle on his arm shifted and spread its wings. “You haven’t seen how tangled they are.”

  Dulat’s eyes flashed to Aisulu. His face was flushed and tight. She could not turn to look at Toktar, but she could watch Dulat look. His face frightened her: it was hard and empty.

  “I’ll hold her,” said young man, “and you cut her hair.”

  “Ket,” said Dulat. It meant “go away,” but it was a word only used for dogs. “Ket. Go.”

  Aisulu refused to look at the stranger, but she could hear the hoof beats as his horse shifted and then left.

  She raised her free hand between her face and her eagle, to hide herself from what was happening.

  “Aisulu,” said Dulat. “That wasn’t—​this isn’t your fault. You did well.”

  She felt his hand on her arm, his fingers in her hair. Toktar shifted from foot to foot, and the entangled braid yanked on her scalp. It was being pulled so hard that her scalp felt hot.

  “Not one man in a hundred can catch an eagle out of a dive,” said Dulat. “And you caught yours.”

  But no man in a hundred would wear his hair in two long braids. Girls did that. Little girls.

  Dulat was close to her. She felt him pick up Toktar’s entangled foot. There were more yanks and flares of pain as he tried to work the talons free of her braid. Tears smarted in her eyes. “Unbraid it!” she said. “Unbraid it, try that!”

  He did, but still Toktar was snarled. The eagle flapped to keep his balance, wings whapping Aisulu in the head. Dulat fussed—​so close to her that she could hear his fingers.

  Finally he said, “Aisulu, we have to cut it off.”

  She swallowed and said: “Cut it off.”

  She thought he would be bad at the cutting, forgetting that he was a man who had shorn a thousand sheep. She felt the pinch on the root of her hair, and heard the rasp of his pocketknife. But it didn’t hurt. He spared her that.

  Finally the eagle was free. Aisulu twisted her face away and saw the black hair blowing and snagging in the yarrow around them, lifting and whipping back and forth like prayer flags.

  With her eagle on her wrist, Aisulu looked at her hair, blowing away. She touched the place on her scalp and the top of her ear where the wind was suddenly cold. Her mother’s voice was in her head: Now you look like a fine girl.

  “Let us . . .” Dulat shifted from boot to boot, like a scolded child. “We can wait until tomorrow before we do this again.”

  * * *

  Aisulu gazed into the dressing mirror, trying to avoid the reindeer’s eyes. With one braid partway cut off she looked . . .

  Young. Sick. Injured.

  Like a girl, but in a new way, a way that made her feel sticky and sick with shame. She felt the way she had when thinking if I were a boy I could save my brother.

  Dulat was holding court at the table, telling the others the tale. Aisulu wasn’t listening. Or she was trying not to listen. Toktar sat on his perch by the fire and cheeped as if he’d learned nothing.

  “It was one of Zhambyl’s sons,” said Dulat. “They’re the ones who claimed our grazing places. I don’t know his name, but he’s an eagle hunter. Or at least, he had an eagle. Not everyone who carries an eagle around is an eagle hunter.”

  The young man hadn’t bothered to introduce himself, so Aisulu, in her head, named him as she might name an animal: Sneering Muscles. Just thinking about his face made her feel sick.

  Her fingers fumbled with the rubber band that fastened her remaining braid. She twisted it free and then unplaited her hair. It was long—​unbraided, it fell over the mosquito-bite places where she was beginning to get breasts. It came almost to the bottom of her ribs. It held the memory of the braid in twists of shine.

  There was a hairbrush on the dressing table, an ordinary thing under the reindeer skull and blind eyeglasses, among the strange stones and the dice cup full of anklebones. She picked it up. The tug of it through her hair made her think of her mother—​so suddenly and so strongly that it was as if a ghost had risen beside her.

  Her mother always helped her brush her hair.

  Always, except on that last morning, when she’d gone out to milk with her hair wind-snarled and sleep-matted. That day, her mother had not even scolded her. Who cares about a daughter’s hair when a son was hurt?

  When Toktar was smaller he used to prance about on the dresser when Aisulu did her hair. She didn’t even want to look at him now. She picked up the brush. The cut braid was not all gone. There were long strands left. Yes, there were hacked pieces that curled up, blunt ends amid the shine. But brushed out . . .

  It wouldn’t look too bad. She would still look—​she looked like a girl. She did not look like an eagle hunter.

  Jok, a girl could not be an eagle hunter—​that was what her father had said. Jok, jok, jok. He could not find gear for her. The embroidered collar for her shapan, which he had commanded the women to make, was still stretched on its frame, the patterns drawn in milk fat, the stitching only four inches long. It could never be finished in time. She would go before the judges at the Eagle Festival in worn-out old boots and her brother’s plain shapan, faded gray with embroidery fraying. Her uncle had given her what he could, of his, of his grandfather’s. He’d given the hood and the jesses, the glove and the saddle, the little pouch with its pink and lime embroidery that held the meat for the eagle. But she would go before the judges with her hair hacked off and her shabby secondhand clothes, and it wouldn’t matter what happened next; that would be the end of it.

  She would call her eagle to her hand and he would come and hit her like a spear. Like a spear that would end her. She could never catch him. She was not strong enough. She was going to fail. She was going to fail her brother.

  She had gone too far, too fast, and she had been hurt. She was going to break like a rope. Her whole ger was going to fall down.

  * * *

  They went out again the next day.

  It was a cloudy day, swept with cold winds and spits of rain. The newly exposed tip of Aisulu’s ear seemed to glow with the cold. Her mouth tasted strange, and she’d lost that hooked-from-the-sky sense of balance. Toktar was heavy on her arm, and Moon Spot’s every bounce was jarring.

  Dulat held his reins in one hand, and he kept looking over at her, a sideways look that made his mustache bristle.

 

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