by Nel Franks
As we entered the orchards, Ellina pulled me along, dodging between rows until we were deep in the centre. These were the oldest trees, oaks and other nuts that needed many years to mature before they fruited. She pulled me down on the grass beneath a huge old tree and sat with my hand in her lap, slowly rubbing her fingers over the mound of my thumb.
‘Gaia, tell me True what you think of me.’
‘Oh, Ellina. Surely you know?’
She shook her head. ‘I want you to say it. You’re so cool and reserved, and sometimes I think I know, and then I start to doubt myself, so I want you to say it.’
‘I... well, of course... I ...’ I couldn’t just blurt out how deeply I felt about her. ‘You tell me first.’
‘Oh no, you can’t just get out of it that easily.’ She laughed. ‘You know how I feel about you. I’ve made it very clear. So now you have to tell me. Say True.’
I took a deep breath. ‘Alright. True: You are the person I think most about being with. I get excited and happy every time we talk together. I think about what we’ve said, and what things we may do together at night in bed.’ She raised an eyebrow at that.
‘Oh, I mean ...’ Now I was embarrassed. ‘No. I meant, at night when I’m in bed, I think about things we might do together.’ She raised her eyebrows further, grinning.
‘No! I mean, like go for walks ... oh, you know what I mean, Ellina. Stop teasing me!’
She laughed and hugged me. We relaxed back against the sloping foot of the tree with our arms around each other.
‘I think about you too, Gaia. I want to be with you all the time. I want us to be a couple, not to see other girls. Will you be my partner?’
I nodded, unable to speak past the lump in my throat. It felt right to commit myself to her.
‘And will you be my partner?’ I managed, as the ritual demanded.
‘Yes, of course.’ She leaned toward me and we kissed lightly to seal our pledge.
We lay entwined for a while. She looked deep in my eyes, smiling, and stroked my face. She slid her fingers through my hair and brushed over my ears. I closed my eyes and absorbed her delicate touch, the dappled sunlight playing on my eyelids, the quiet accented by bell-toned birds. Her fingers traced down the side of my neck, and out along my shoulders, slipping under the neckline of my robe, and ripples of shivers ran down my arms. I felt her breath on my face, and I leaned into it as she kissed my cheek, my eyes, down my nose, and then the corner of my mouth. She pushed more deeply, pressing my lips open with hers, and I felt the strange and absorbing sensation of her tongue in my mouth. She laid her whole body along mine, arms wrapped tightly around my shoulders and waist. Eventually she pulled away, flushed and sparkle-eyed, and looked at me closely.
‘This is what you want, isn’t it, Gaia?’
I pulled her closer and kissed her, for a long time.
MUCH LATER WE WALKED hand-in-hand out of the orchard. I felt somehow transformed. We had kissed so long and deeply, absorbed each other’s warmth, lain with our legs and arms so closely entwined that I felt as though we had become one multi-part organism, our breathing timed together. And yet, we had not taken off our clothes or moved any further towards sexual intimacy. But the knowledge that it would happen soon excited me.
We parted in the Core as she went to visit other friends for dinner. She smiled at me, glowing with pleasure, and kissed me lightly.
‘See you tomorrow, Gaia. You and I belong together.’
I was delighted with the open declaration of our love.
When I got back to the room, only Lenna was there. I sat on her bed.
‘Why aren’t you outside enjoying the day, Lenna?’ I asked, facing toward her.
She shook her head. Then she looked at me carefully, and gently stroked my cheek, raising her eyebrows inquisitively.
‘Yes, I do feel different, Lenna.’ She nodded, then looked outside the room and raised her eyebrows again.
‘Oh, it’s Ellina; she’s a novice. Do you know her?’
She nodded again, and smiled, raising her thumb in the sign for approval.
‘I think she’s a good person too.’
She nodded emphatically, ‘Bir...’ and joined her two hands together at the thumbs, making winged flapping movements with her hands.
‘Yes, she’s the one who made the little bird.’
I got up and brought it from my bedside cabinet to show her again. She took it carefully and admired it, turning it around and gently stroking the raised wings. She gave it a little kiss on the beak, and I laughed softly.
‘It’s even more special to me now, Lenna. We’ve pledged ourselves to each other.’
She hugged me warmly with a big smile. ‘Ah ‘appy for ‘ou, Gah.’ But there was a hint of sadness in her eyes.
‘Do you ever see your pledge anymore, Lenna?’
When we had first met, Lenna had been pledged with a woman who worked in the local laundry. Lenna’s face fell and she shook her head.
‘’e finis’’ She put her hands together again and then pulled them apart fiercely.
‘Oh no, you broke up?’ She nodded sadly.
‘You didn’t want it to happen?’ She shook her head.
‘What happened?’
She brought her two fists together against her chest, then flung them apart. ‘She gorn.’
‘She just left you?’ Lenna nodded sadly.
‘Did she find someone else?’
Her head dropped again. ‘Ah saw ‘er. Wiv Trina.’
‘Oh Lenna, I’m so sorry. When did it happen?’
Her arms came up to cradle an invisible baby. ‘Whe’ babbie gorn.’
‘Oh no! She left you right when you had to put your boy through the Crawling Gate?’
She nodded again.
‘Oh, that’s just cruel, Lenna. You poor thing.’ I hugged her again, and she sighed and leant against my shoulder.
Tomma came through the door, taking in Lenna’s sad face and our comforting hug.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked as she sat on the bed. Lenna sat up, shaking her head gently and smiled sadly at her.
‘Can I tell her, Lenna?’ I asked. She nodded, shrugging slightly. ‘Lenna was just telling me how her pledge left her after she had to give up her baby through the Crawling Gate.’
Tomma looked shocked. ‘Oh, that’s so nasty, Lenna! You poor thing, two great losses together.’ She hugged Lenna too, and said, ‘Well, we’ll be your friends forever, Lenna.’
Lenna smiled a little more warmly and clasped Tomma’s hands.
‘And what’s happened with you, Gaia? You look quite different.’
‘Do I? I’m amazed it shows so much.’
‘Something has happened. Tell True!’
We sat together while I told them about pledging with Ellina. Tomma was excited for me, and we talked about all the ways in which my life might be different now Ellina and I were official; how my Recreation time would be taken up; whether Ellina would be interested in doing things with Tomma and Rosie and I; how I would fit in having sister-friends and a pledge. And then Rosie came in and we had to tell her everything too. By the time we had talked it all over again, it was time for our evening meal. We all went, including Lenna, to the Refectory, and sat together at one of the small tables by the windows. I looked for Ellina, to invite her to join us, until I remembered she was eating with her friends. It was one of the happiest meals of my life.
The next day was Firstday, which meant that Melly and I would have a large pile of filing from the previous week’s endeavours in the Administration Office. The Office was strangely quiet however, with none of the senior Traders or Mistresses in sight. I asked the most open of the clerks, Judine, where everyone was.
‘There’s a Trading mission tonight; didn’t you hear about it last week?’
‘No.’ I was very intrigued. ‘Who is it trading with?’
She looked a little thoughtful and glanced sideways at the other office workers. Sylva, possibly the m
ost fussy and officious of all the clerks, was staring at us with a very disapproving expression.
Judine said loudly, ‘That’s not something I can discuss with someone as young as you, Initiate Gaia.’
As she turned away, she said under her breath, ‘Lunchtime. Tell you then.’
I was keyed up till lunch and made several mistakes in my paperwork. Luckily Melly picked them up and helped me correct them.
‘Goddess, Gaia! Get it right! What’s the matter with you today?’ she said. ‘You never make mistakes in filing.’
I mumbled some kind of excuse and went back to thinking about trading missions.
At lunch, Judine took me outside to eat our sandwiches on a bench beside the wall in the sunshine.
‘I always try to get outside for lunch,’ she said, stretching and turning her face up to the sun. ‘I can’t bear being inside all the time.’
I smiled, wanting to encourage her to be open with me. ‘Do you get outside much for your Recreation time?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes, now I always choose outdoor teams. I made the mistake last year of taking on some handicrafts and I nearly turned into a mushroom, I was inside in the dark so much!’ She gave a free and easy laugh. I grinned. Judine was fun, at least when the older clerks weren’t around.
‘You didn’t hear about the trading mission last week?’ she asked, sitting down and unwrapping her sandwich. I shook my head. ‘I suppose it isn’t talked about much. I think you just learn to keep an ear out for any little hints. And anyway, it’s about time there was another one.’
‘How often do they occur?’ I mumbled around a mouthful of bread and cheese.
‘Usually towards the end of each season. We have different products in each season, like wool, or sometimes some of the excess produce. But the Council of Chief Mistresses don’t like to trade food too much; they like to store as much as possible for winter for our own use. But sometimes there’s just such an excess, like that amazing crop of apples we had last year. Trouble is, if we’ve had a good year with apples, so has everyone else.’
‘Who is everyone else? Who do we trade with?’
‘Mostly the Male Enclave. Sometimes we also trade with the Expelled, but it’s rare.’
This was the kind of detail I wanted. ‘Do the traders actually go out into the Male Enclave? The Expelled? I mean, I’ve never seen an Expelled person come into the Enclave. How is it done?’
Judine explained some complex negotiations between the traders, the Male Enclave and the Expelled. ‘Our women traders only go out into the nearby Expelled. It’s generally considered dangerous to go too far away. There are people out there with very twisted opinions of the Enclave, who might try to take revenge on us, or kidnap us for our fertility.’ That was something I had never considered. I began to realise why traders learned their defensive arts. ‘Often we negotiate with the Male Enclave to trade on our behalf. But occasionally it’s important that we conduct the trade ourselves, so sometimes our traders will go with a trade mission from the Male Enclave. We’re less likely to be attacked if we have the men with us. Of course, there’s always the danger of being attacked for our goods anyway, so mostly the traders go to negotiate the deals, and the goods are delivered sometime later. We send ours out through the Male Enclave, and Expelled goods come in through them too.’
‘It must take some trust all round then,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘I mean, the Expelled person has to trust that we’ll send the goods we said we would, and we have to trust the Male Enclave to deliver on our behalf. What do we get in return for our trade? What comes back in?’
She looked at me approvingly. ‘You’re beginning to think like a trader, Gaia.’ I flushed, really pleased. ‘We get things we don’t produce here, like metal tools. The Male Enclave has a foundry that makes metal tools. And in the Expelled there’s an instrument maker who makes lutes and guitars. We have some of her instruments here.’
I began to reconsider what the Expelled might be like. ‘You know, I think I’ve always thought the Expelled were barbarians or something. Living wild and being ferocious. I never thought of them as having music.’
Judine nodded. ‘Yes, I used to, too. But it’s made up of people who came from here, who had all their knowledge and skills when they were expelled. Other than hating us for expelling them, they’re just like us. We mostly trade with villages near here, so they have the same kind of climate and land that we do. They’re not that different.’
I sat back to reconsider. The Expelled seemed much more interesting and much less fearful than I had previously believed.
‘Why are they always talked about in ways that make them seem so scary?’
Justine looked thoughtful. ‘I don’t know. I used to feel like you, when I first joined the Office. Nobody’s ever really explained it, but I think they want the Expelled to be fearsome so no-one will think about leaving. I mean, if you hated it here for some reason, what would stop you going over the Wall if you thought it was quite liveable out in the Expelled?’
I gazed at her. ‘Do people try to get over the Wall? Is it possible?’
She paused, looking at me thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps I’ve said too much. You’re very young.’ She looked a bit guilty. ‘Please don’t tell anyone I told you about all this. Say True.’
I nodded. ‘Oh, of course, Judine. True, I won’t tell anyone what you’ve told me.’
I regretted it as soon as I said it; now I wouldn’t be able to share this information with Tomma or Ellina. I couldn’t imagine trying to share it with Rosie. She would be too disapproving. We went back into work, but I barely noticed the afternoon’s activities, my head was so full of trade and women going over the Wall.
A week later, I tried to engage Judine in another conversation, but she refused to talk with me. Out of the corner of her mouth she said, ‘I got into a lot of trouble for talking with you Gaia. It’s best if we don’t spend time together for a while.’ I kept away from her after that, keeping an eye on the older clerks.
The Traders had reappeared in the Office. I saw them moving in and out of their rooms carrying long lists and asking for files from the records. They often went in to see the Most when she was in the Office. Curious, I spent time talking with clerk Sylva. Flattery always worked with her.
‘I’m in awe of the Most, Sylva. She has so much to be responsible for.’
‘Oh, yes, she does, Gaia. It’s good that you realise this now. Of course, she relies on us clerks, well, on me really,’ she simpered, ‘to keep track of the many things she has to do.’
‘Oh, you must be such a help to her,’ I gushed.
She smiled archly. ‘It’s not everyone that the Most trusts with her details, you know.’
‘You must know why the traders go to see her so often,’ I said in a wondering tone.
‘Of course I do,’ she said, preening. ‘They are planning a major trading mission with the Men’s Enclave, and there have been lots of representatives here from the men.’ She nodded smugly.
‘Ooooh, really? There have been men here? I haven’t seen one!’ I poured on the wide-eyed amazement.
‘Well, of course, you wouldn’t have seen them, Gaia, you’re much too junior. But I have. I was there when they came through the tunnel. The Most selected me to be there to receive them, take their cloaks, hand out refreshments, carry her documents.’ She glowed with her own importance.
There was a tunnel? I was amazed. Sylva mistook my expression. ‘I know,’ she went on, ‘it’s a blessing you can talk to someone important like me, isn’t it? But I do like to keep myself open to bright young things like you. I see it as my responsibility to guide you, using my own experience as a model.’ She smoothed back her frizzy hair.
I swallowed hastily. It was necessary to keep on her good side, as she was such a source of information, although probably not in the way she imagined.
‘You are so special,’ I managed. ‘I’m so glad you’re willing to talk to me,’ I said with slightly more genuine sinc
erity. ‘I think I can learn a lot from you, Mistress Sylva.’
She smiled benignly at me and patted me (patted!) on the hand. ‘Well now, Gaia, I’m not a Mistress, though it is kind of you to think so. You just call me Sister Sylva, and learn from my experience, and I’m sure you’ll do very well here in the Office.’
I backed away, looking at her with what I hoped she took as gratitude. I was determined to find out more about the tunnel and the secret presence of men in the Office.
THE NEXT DAY WAS THIRDDAY, and now the traders had returned, Panndra’s classes in the arts of self-defence had resumed. I hustled to her class, missing dinner, after a long session refiling notes from the Traders. I had managed to catch a glimpse of their contents, although I couldn’t openly read them as Melly and I were supervised by Sylva. But I had seen long manifests of goods to be traded into our Enclave, and a much shorter list of goods to be traded out from us to the Male Enclave. How was Trade conducted, if there was such in discrepancy in the lists?
Panndra again welcomed us to class, and many of the women stripped down to their long silken underwear. I couldn’t decide whether I felt pleased I could continue to hide my body under my robe, or regretful that I didn’t have the beautiful long underwear that allowed such freedom of movement. Panndra worked us gently through the beginner’s levels of postures and movements. Her body moved smoothly and strongly in and out of the positions.
‘It’s always good after a break away from classes to begin again at a slightly lower level, to warm up and recondition the body’ she instructed.
I appreciated her advice, discovering some tight muscles I hadn’t stretched in quite a while. Gradually she began to introduce some more taxing positions and movements, demonstrating the control and flexibility necessary to maintain them. After the class I felt wonderful and told her how much I appreciated it. I really wanted to develop the kind of strength and grace she had.