Dragonfly Song (15 page)
Authors: Wendy Orr
Even though she passes the sanctuary window every morning as she leaves the cave, Aissa doesn't spy into it anymore. It's been too frightening since she'd heard the twins' crazy story of who she might be; too painful to watch and wonder.
Now she has to.
She crouches in the hollow in the rock, waiting for the Lady to come. Every cell of her body is alert, as if this morning the Lady will read an oracle just for her, and Aissa will understand. With her sharpest spying eyes, she watches the Lady choose a pot from the snakes' cool cave to carry into the sanctuary.
Watching as Fila
drops a mouse from her basket to the snakes,
seeing that Fila
still wants to cry.
âShe could never
kill a wolf,' thinks Aissa,
with a thrill of almost-pride,
even though
it's hard to believe
she's done it herself.
The Lady's song begins;
the snake begins to rise â
a hugging snake,
not a deadly biting viper
which is good
because when Fila starts to sing
her voice is still as sharp
as Milli-Cat's claws
and when she leans
over the pot
the snake rears and bites her hand.
Now Fila does cry,
for hurt and shame
as she sucks off the blood
but no real harm.
And Aissa knows â
the Lady knows â
Fila knows â
that if it had been a viper
her tears would be only
the start of her dying.
So the Lady will always choose
the hugging snakes
for Fila to sing
and not think of the day
when her daughter must call
a deadly viper.
The Lady singing again
till the snake is calm
and she can carry it out
to raise the sun.
And all the while,
through the snake song,
through the tears and calming
and the tune for the sun,
Aissa feels her own song
rise in her heart,
swirling, rushing,
flowing through her
like the river
from the Source to the sea â
and her only fear
is that it will burst out
as it did for Luki.
So the Lady doesn't need
to read an oracle
because that inside song
tells Aissa who she is
though it doesn't say why
she doesn't belong.
The night-time cave is too dark for Aissa to work on her dragonfly carving, but she keeps it in her pouch to whittle when she can. It takes days to lick off all the honey after she crams the honeycomb in with it.
The olive wood feels good in her pouch, a solid reminder of who she is. Every afternoon she thinks the dragonfly's finished and that she'll offer it to the goddess in the morning, and every morning she sees a reason to work on it another day. If she doesn't stop soon there'll be nothing left.
She'll take it to the Source early in the morning, as soon as the sun is safely risen, like she did the first time she saw the carved offerings.
The mornings are cool again. It's grape-picking time out in the hills; days are warm and bright, but the nights are cold. Aissa and Gold-Cat sleep folded in the wolf fur, warmth over and softness under. She'll need the fur when she gets out of the water at the Source.
Servants don't wear furs. Outcasts definitely don't.
But servants catch cold and sometimes die if they're wet and can't get warm again. Squint-Eye gives them extra hot soup to make them better because she can't boss them if they're dead.
Outcasts never get hot soup. Aissa figures that's why she's never met another one â they die even faster than servants.
She'll wear her wolf cloak. Inside out, so it looks like goatskin, fastened tight at the neck with her bone pin.
Her dragonfly,
carved bit by bit
over long summer days
and cooler autumn,
chipped and scratched,
wings ragged
where she pushed too hard
with her small flint knife,
maybe not much like
a dragonfly at all,
but it's part of her
and she hopes the goddess accepts it
as her gift.
Not safe to let
anyone else see
because if they guess
the dragonfly is hers
they might destroy it
hoping they'll kill
Aissa too.
So she hesitates
on the slope to the Source,
steam rising in cool morning air;
she can't tuck her dragonfly
under the rocks at the edge
like the other offerings
anyone can see.
She strips off her cloak,
her rope sling and tunic,
folds them neatly on the rock
and slides in,
not where the water's coolest,
but where she can see
an islet of rock
poking through the blue water.
The water hotter
than she thinks she can bear
and deeper;
but she's in too far
to turn around.
Toes clinging
to the end of a ledge
where the floor drops to nothing,
the heart of the earth,
the source of life;
she stretches to the islet,
face in the water,
feeling the dragonfly land,
letting it go
with a silent âplease'
not sure exactly
what the please is for â
and throws herself backwards,
arms flailing,
hot deep water over her head,
but her feet still touching
as she splashes to the edge,
safe,
her dragonfly prayer safe on the rock,
while a dragonfly,
real and blue,
hovering over her as she drips,
accepts the goddess gift.
The grape harvest is good this year. Luki's mother and brother arrive at the Hall leading two goats with panniers of grapes: one for the Lady and three for the market. The rest will be dried into raisins or stomped into wine. It's a busy time.
âI'll ask the chief if I can go home to help,' Luki says. âA few days without training won't make any difference.'
âLuki!' His mother looks around furtively. âYour life is in the Hall.'
For now
, Luki thinks gloomily.
âWhy would you even want to work if you don't have to?' asks his brother. âAre you crazy?'
âDon't call the bull dancer crazy!' his mother snaps.
âI don't care,' says Luki.
A few months ago he would have punched his brother and they would have wrestled until they were
pulled apart. Now he could kiss him for it. His brother is the only one who sometimes remembers that he's still himself.
He can't explain that to his mother. He can't tell anyone how much he misses the farm; how he'd rather be worn out from a day of picking grapes than be pampered in the Hall. Tomorrow is the autumn festival, when night and day are the same length and farmers bring in the baskets of grapes they owe the Lady. They'll pour them into huge tubs, and everyone will have a turn at climbing in to tread them into juice: the Lady and her family, and Luki and Nasta right after them, stamping their god-luck into the wine. He'll feel the juice and the slippery skins squishing between his toes, but he won't do it long enough for his calves to ache, and he won't haul the juice out into barrels to make the wine â and it won't be his family's grapes or his family's wine.
And he won't ever grow up to harvest his own grapes or olives or barley ...
But I'm a bull dancer!
he reminds himself.
What an honour!
Some days he almost believes it. Just not today.
âI need a favour,' he says abruptly.
âThe god-luck boy needs a favour?' asks his brother.
Luki ignores the sarcasm.
âThe girl they call No-Name . . .'
âYou're too holy to spit at her yourself and you want us to do it?'
Luki punches him. It feels good. âNo! I want you to help her.'
âBut she's cursed â and you want us to help her?'
âWhy?' asks his mother.
Luki's taken a long time to work out the answer. They won't help unless they know she saved him, but he can't admit he put his life in danger.
âI tripped on a training run . . .'
His brother snorts.
âI banged my head when I fell.'
âAre you hurt?' his mother shrieks, forgetting the bull dancer's honour as she feels his head for lumps.
âI'm fine! I only blacked out for a moment. But I landed by a viper . . .'
âWhere was your guard?'
âHe wasn't far ahead!' Luki says desperately, seeing his mother ready to attack. âIt didn't matter because the girl called the snake away.'
Stunned silence. Luki has never heard his brother be quiet for so long.
âYou really did bang your head,' his mother says finally. âBecause whatever you think you heard, you mustn't say that. Only the Lady can call snakes.'
âBut she did!'
His mother kisses his forehead, holding his head firmly between her hands. âLuki, even the bull dancer doesn't challenge the Lady. Promise you'll never tell anyone else what you've told us, and we'll help the girl.'
Helping her isn't easy, because Aissa's not to be found. In the end they leave Luki with three big bunches of grapes in a goatskin bag. He adds a stolen poppy cake and cheese from the kitchen, and waits to see her.
But if it's not easy to find Aissa, it's even harder for Luki to hide. At dusk the market is gone and the square nearly empty, but people come out of the shadows to be close to a bull dancer â to press his shoulder, touch his hand, soak up his god-luck.
Until finally Luki realises: the only way to escape his power is to use it.
âI want to be alone,' he says, facing the sanctuary with his hand on his heart. No one's going to interrupt a bull dancer while he's praying â and they can't know the only thing going through his head is,
Go away! Get out of here before Aissa comes back!
They obediently disappear. Luki slips the bag under the boulder, and stands a little longer. It feels good to be alone, and even better to know that he can make it happen. He's so still that Aissa doesn't see him as she sidles along the wall. She jumps in surprise.
Luki feels as proud as if he's snuck up on a wild deer. Aissa glares at him.
âThere's a bag under the rock â for you, not the snake.'
Aissa's glare turns to suspicion.
âIt's not a trick!' Luki says, hurt. âIt's from my mother, for saving me.'
But he knows that his mother's bag of grapes is not enough. Tomorrow the days will start getting shorter. Winter will come, and Aissa can't survive it under that rock.
Squint-Eye has been watching too. She's afraid she's made a terrible mistake in banning No-Name. Sometimes, seeing the girl slip by with a parade of cats behind her, wearing a cloak that looks suspiciously like fur, it seems that she's actually given the cursed child her freedom.
Squint-Eye has never tasted freedom. She's never longed for it; ruling the other servants is all she wants. What could be better than the power to beat and punish the same way the older servants used to beat her? What's more rewarding than seeing the fear in her fellows' eyes?
But she's old now and slow to move, and last year she'd seen that the other servants weren't as afraid of her as they should be. She'd needed something to show her authority.
She had never hated No-Name. The child was a good worker; not talking back was a bonus â and
Squint-Eye's seen worse things than dragonflies in the kitchen. But the drama of banishment was exactly what she needed. Squint-Eye is feared again.
The problem is that No-Name herself doesn't seem to be as punished as she ought to be. She's hungry and uncomfortable, but she's free of the chores that the other servants complain of; she's got a sort of home and a house snake to bless it. And she's not as alone as she was in the middle of the servants; Squint-Eye can't prove it, but she's sure that someone is helping her. Worst of all, sometimes when she thinks no one can see her, No-Name stands like a free person. That's the reason that Squint-Eye does hate her now.
Without admitting that she was wrong, Squint-Eye needs to regain control over the banned girl. Her allies are the twins â who can follow and spy where she can't â and the winter. She just needs to wait and the weather will do the rest.
But this morning the north wind is blowing cold and sharp, and Squint-Eye is suddenly afraid that she might not survive the winter herself. It would be unbearable if she died before seeing No-Name beg to return.
So she waits on her bench, pretending to doze in spite of the biting wind, until Aissa tries to slip past. Lashing out with her stick, furious when she misses, she shrieks, âNo-Name child, you think you can go where you please! But you belong to the Lady the same as those cats â steal what's hers, and it's the cliff for you or anyone who helps you!'
Aissa runs.
âHalf-One!' Squint-Eye bellows. âFollow her! Don't come back until you find her.'
Half-One shivers. She's never been as brave as her twin.
âI'll go,' says Half-Two.
Squint-Eye's so angry now that her lips are frothing. No one is ever going to defy her again. âI called Half-One! And don't think you can try your tricks with me: you'll sit at my feet and not move till she's gone!'
Aissa is faster now
than when she was a privy-girl
and sometimes she wishes
she could race against Nasta
because she might win.
Half-One is strong
but not a runner
and Aissa knows she can beat her.
Sprinting to the sea path
through dry chamomile flowers
Aissa sees
Nasta's mother
waiting at the top of the cliff
like a trap
and Aissa the rabbit
running into it.
So Aissa loops wide
around the town
and across the hills,
but Half-One guesses,
goes straight up the path
and sees Aissa there â
chest heaving, breath puffing â
but Half-One is fresh
and ready to chase
so Aissa keeps running
up to the forest
because surely the twin
will give up there.
But Half-One
has seen Squint-Eye's rage
and that is scarier than the forest,
so she goes on
though her heart is pounding
harder than Aissa's
.
Gasping and stumbling,
chasing through trees
to the mountain crags
with their rocks and caves,
until finally Aissa is faster,
so far ahead
she can't hear Half-One follow
and can sink to the ground
to catch her breath.
Then the wind
catches it too â
that cold north air
swelling from breeze to gale,
bringing rain
that stings like ice.
Aissa's tunic
is as drenched as if
she had fallen in the sea
while her fur cloak
waits safe and dry
at home.
The wind howls so strong
she can hardly walk,
the rain lashes so hard
she can hardly see,
but she hears from somewhere
goats bleating,
ble-aah, ble-aahing
and remembers Lanni the goatherd,
âOur summer cave is nearby,
if you need help.'
Aissa doesn't know how
to ask for help
but this might be
the time to learn.
She turns into the wind,
pushing against it,
pausing to listen
for the goats to guide her
till she smells the smoke
of a good wood fire
and sees the narrow mouth
of a mountain cave
with a gate of branches
to stop the goats from leaving â
and a barking dog
with Lanni beside him.
âWolf girl!' calls the goatherd,
pushing the dog back
and the gate open.
âWhat are you doing?
You'll die out there,
come in to the fire.'
âNo-Name!' says Onyx.
âWe don't want her here.'
âParsley's rescuer,' says Lanni.
âIf you don't want her, you can go out.'
So Onyx is quiet,
while little Sammo
shows Aissa his sling,
âNext time,
I'll get the wolf like you did.'
Aissa tries to smile
but hasn't had much practice
or reason
for smiling
and her teeth are chattering too hard
for her lips to move.
Lanni pulls her
close to the fire,
throws a goat fleece on the ground
and wraps another
around trembling shoulders.
âSit and warm up;
you are our guest.'
As she warms,
as her shaking stills,
Aissa sees past the fire
to the shadows of the cave â
not a cave under the lip of a rock
like hers â
but half as big as the Hall,
with room for the flock,
bundles of green branches
for them to eat through the storm,
gates to hold them
back from the fire,
stacks of cheeses,
bags of milk becoming yoghurt,
and Lanni in the milking pen
filling her wooden bowl
with warm milk for Aissa.
âDrink,' she says, and Aissa does,
then curls like Gold-Cat
in the rug
and sleeps,
even though it's still morning
because it's been a hard one
and just for the moment
she is warm and safe.
When she wakes they feast her
with cheese and grapes
and barley cakes
till Aissa's belly
feels round and full
and a little bit sick.
âYou're lucky,' says Lanni,
âWhen the storm stops
we'll be gone,
it's time to take the goats
home for the winter â
a day later,
and all you'd have found
would be a cold
and empty cave.
But I wish I knew
why you were on the mountain alone,
as if you were running
from a lion.'
Aissa nods yes,
though Half-One is no lion.
âEveryone chases No-Name,' says Onyx.
âWe don't,' says his sister.
âBecause she chases wolves,'
says Sammo
.
All the rest of the day,
while wind and rain howl,
Lanni plays her flute,
the brothers sing,
sometimes they dance
around the fire
and after a while
Aissa does too,
feet stamping
in time with theirs,
hands clapping
just like theirs
as if she is one of them.
And she wishes the day
would never end.
Or even the night
as they sleep by the fire
wrapped in fleeces,
with the smell of goats,
stale milk and smoke â
the safe smell of home
before the raiders.
So Aissa dreams and thinks,
âI could stay here all winter
and no one would know.'
But the goats would be gone
and so would the herders;
Gold-Cat would miss her,
and worst of all,
Squint-Eye's threat is real:
a push off the cliff
for anyone who takes her
away from the Hall.