I Rode a Horse of Milk White Jade: Chapters 25–30

In a flash her head snaked out, teeth bared, and snapped at the soldier’s rangy horse.

The big horse shrank back, but the soldier mercilessly spurred him forward, charging against Bayan’s shoulder so hard that we almost toppled over.

Sweating, bare-backed men pulled great swaths of leather from boiling pots; others bent over fiery hot metal, pounding it into sharp points.

A winding walkway floated above grasses alive with wild animals that didn’t run from us in fear: white stags, roe deer and fallow deer, squirrels and ermines.

In a regal voice rippling with indignation, Kublai Khan replaced my question with one of his own.

“Arrow riders serve the length and breadth of the empire, of which I am head; thus any horse galloping beneath them serves me. Which is to say, I own this white mare, not you.”

I stamped my foot and, to my dismay, nearly tumbled over.

“Should I be?” My reply was brazen, hiding, I hoped, the panic that weakened my knees.

He shrugged his shoulders, nonchalantly raising his soft palms upward.

His weight swayed from side to side like a boat upon the water as he moved toward the intricately engraved bronze jars and urns that stood upon the table.

“Would you like to see them?” The Khan spoke impulsively, as if the idea had just struck him.

Twirling an oxtail fly swatter, Kublai Khan spoke craftily, in the urgent words of a horse trader.

“You gave a name to your horse?” he asked curiously. Blushing, I nodded.
“I have ten thousand white mares,” the Khan said incredulously, “and not one of them carries a name.”

Raising my head, I said in as steady a voice as I could muster, “These bones say that the journey to Shangtu should be swift. I cannot foretell the weather, for I have not been trained in the ways of the shaman.”

The Khan lifted his hand and a shabbily dressed man with a flat face, one of the earth-workers, I guessed, entered the hall.

He and Kublai Khan climbed into the box atop the elephants, and the procession of a thousand feet began shuffling out of the city.

One of the wise men held a red clay bowl of burning incense below the mare’s nostrils, while another one pried open her lip.

Wringing my hands, I limped circles around her, begging her to tell me what was wrong, begging her to speak to me and let me know what I could do.

Riding directly to the shamans’ smoky pavilions within the city’s walls, knowing full well that they would all be with the Khan’s mares, I asked one of their servants for freshly cleaned sheep shoulder blades.

“I know the cure for your mares,” I called. Faces from all lands turned toward me in a mix of astonishment and scorn.

I explained that the drawing in the cave of the stiff horse and the grinning horses of my dreams were, in this world, the Khan’s white mares, stretched in sickness, their lips taut with agony.

The shamans huddled over a brazier containing white bones.

As the horses’ hooves clattered upon the arching stone bridge that Bayan, Bator, and I had timidly crossed almost a year ago, the Khan’s sentries immediately directed us to him, waiting with his herd of white mares.

A group of women knowledgeable about the area’s plants offered to scour the hills and valley for more gan-cao plants.

“I don’t know why things happen the way they do,” the Khan was saying, “but I do believe that they happen for a reason. People will say that this mare we buried here never spoke to you, that your long journey to our court was pure chance, a whim of your own making.”

The thought of Bator’s antics made the Khan chuckle.

A bittersweet salve was thus kneaded into my raw sorrow as I moved toward the bony foal.

While she possessed her mother’s beauty, the exquisite creature remained small and fine of bone; thus I had to be extra careful in toughening her legs.

So I hugged the warm body of my constant companion Bator—fatter now and inclined to long naps—to my queasy stomach and thought about our last journey to Karakorum.

Between my bouts of nausea, when I lay curled within our ger, Adja and I spent the next two days holding hands and letting ourselves be overwhelmed by the festival’s riotously colorful sights and merry, though raucous, noises.

Between my bouts of nausea, when I lay curled within our ger, Adja and I spent the next two days holding hands and letting ourselves be overwhelmed by the festival’s riotously colorful sights and merry, though raucous, noises.

The night before the long race, as I laid out the new del I had been saving for the event, my husband tried one more time to keep me from stepping into the saddle.
“Oyuna,” he implored, pulling me to him, “please, you are the fire in my heart. How could I go on living without you?..."

Looking back, I saw that a lustrous silk tassel of sky blue dangled below Baltozi’s throat.

Of course, her neck was darkened with sweat, and dirty lather bubbled around the saddle front, but I knew this meant she was in good condition.

I knew where lay every treacherous stretch of sharp rocks, every mucky, grass-hidden bog.

And I also knew that, off to the right, the streambed’s steep banks narrowed just enough that a horse might clear them in a single leap. It was a gamble, to be sure, but I was hoping that jumping the cleft, even away from the straightest path, would be faster than slowing down to scramble into and back out of the streambed.

Only the grittiest horse, the one who could dig down and shove the air beneath heavy hooves, find another swallow of courage to keep driving, would win now. The race was no longer about speed; it was about heart.

We rushed toward the throng—or was it they toward us?—but all at once people surrounded us and I was trying to pull Baltozi to a stop, other hands reaching up to join mine on the reins.

“I know others tease you because you are different. And no one understands your pain more than I. But you cannot let their words fasten the notion of bad luck upon you.”

Ducking her head, she turned to find the inquisitive filly tickling her ear with long chin whiskers.