by Wendy Orr
‘Has the captain been paddling at the beach like a small boy?’ I tease.
Everyone freezes. I don’t need Mama’s warning glare to stop talking; my fingers flash again: I’m sorry, earthmother, forgive me, god of the sea, I didn’t mean to ask about sacred secrets. But even though I guessed that the Learning boys were on those boats in the bay, how could I know that Dada would be guiding them?
I should have. What other man of the Swallow Clan is a ship’s captain, the master of our trading fleet? When the room we’re in now is the sea god’s shrine?
What happens to a Saffron Maiden who offends the gods twice on her first day? Three times if you count dropping my basket.
‘Leira’s bath is ready,’ Nunu calls, and I escape up the stairs.
The bath is hot and scented, strewn with petals of summer-dried flowers and orange threads of saffron. The water turns gold and so do I. I’m truly a Saffron Maiden. I absorb the knowing with every fibre of my body, and the more golden my skin becomes, the more I feel it with pride instead of fear. I see the line of Saffron Maidens stretching back through time to my great-great-grandmother, and know it goes on back past her, to before our town was built. One day I will have daughters, and a daughter and a granddaughter and great-granddaughters who will follow on till the end of time.
Nunu brings me honey cakes and cheese to eat in the bath, and ale to drink, and I know that she wants me to go on soaking up the saffron for as long as possible. Finally she holds out a towel, and I step out of the tub so she can pat me dry. The yellow stain doesn’t rub off; I study my outstretched golden arms as Nunu dresses me, and they are beautiful.
My embroidered red shift has been shaken clean; the three layers of my woven skirt have been brushed and the small tear from a prickle bush mended. Even my jewellery has been rubbed to a new glow. Nunu smooths olive oil onto my fuzzy head, and brushes my forelock and pony tail into loose curls. She tugs hard at the tangles the way she always does, making me yelp, and then snaps at me to hold my head still as if I were a child.
But when she tells me to go to my mother, it looks as if there are tears in her eyes too.
Mama is in her room, freshly clean and made up, though the make-up pots are still open and she’s holding the fine brush in her hand. I sit on a stool and she works on me like the painter worked on the wall. Bright pink lips and nails, and rouge-red cheeks like hers, but instead of kohl, she smudges a saffron paste on my eyelids and the tops of my ears, till they are as yellow as my stained fingers.
A shiver like the earthmother’s trembling runs through me – the face in the mirror belongs to the Saffron Maiden on the wall, and I don’t know if I’m still me underneath.
Mama opens the chest under the niche where the house goddess sits, and takes out the tiny bowl I made last month. Each of the Learners made one, but I was the only one who’d played with clay before – and Nunu’s brother’s family are the best potters in the land. They make the fine pots for our clan and the temple, and the swallow pots that Dada trades around the world.
It was Nunu’s sister-in-law herself, younger than Nunu but twice as cranky, who taught the Learners. She pretended that she’d never seen me before, though of course Pellie knew the truth. And suddenly I understood Mama’s knowing smile about the little pot I took home when I was a child – maybe it wasn’t just that it wasn’t good enough to be used. Maybe she didn’t want anyone to know I’d already played at one of the crafts of the Learning. Better to let everyone think that even a girl who’s late to bleed can be gifted at something.
Now, my shift laced to just below my breasts, my skirt swinging, my wrists and ankles jingling, I take my little bowl and follow my mother into Triangle Plaza.
The street is empty. Women wave from the windows, but servants, children, men and boys are forbidden to see us until the goddess has received our gifts. And yet, if Dada spent the day with the Learning boys, surely they’ll be going to their part of the temple too.
What if we see them? What if I bump into a boy and have to marry him at the end of my Learning?
I don’t even want to think about it!
But if any boys are in the temple, they’re safely hidden in their own section. Only Kora waits for us in the entrance.
In the hot, heavy-scented drying room, she portions out the dried saffron threads into our tiny bowls. We climb the Crocus Mountain stairs again, bowls held reverently in our two hands, mothers following with our baskets of petals.
The Lady, waiting on her throne, beckons for us to tip our saffron into the urn on her lap. With a moistened, crimson finger, she draws a sacred three-in-one pistil on our cheeks.
Kora hands her a jug of honeyed wine, and the Lady pours it into our empty bowls, draining the last of it into two cups for herself and Kora. ‘Drink, crocus-learners,’ she says, ‘for not a grain of the goddess’s saffron must be wasted.’
She drains hers at a gulp, throws her cup to smash on the altar stone, and watches us with a strange half-smile. I gulp mine down in the way Mama has always taught me not to, and smash my bowl.
I was so proud of that little pot. I thought it would stay in our house forever, to be treasured like my great-grandmother’s swallow vase – though that’s smashed now, too. Wine and emotion are spinning in my head, and then I understand. Making pots is not for the Swallow Clan. I see my childhood dream smashing with the bowl, but there’s no time to feel sad because Kora has picked up a flute, and the Lady is dancing.
‘Come!’ she calls, and the six of us join hands to circle her. Our hearts are thumping; our legs are awkward, afraid of stumbling or kicking the Lady by mistake. Then the mothers begin to ululate, shrilling an exalting lu-lu-lu over Kora’s high, wild music, and we circle faster and faster, finally breaking free to whirl and spin as the Lady does, our ponytails flying like her long black curls. The mothers toss the flowers from our baskets; mauve-tinged petals flutter like butterflies before being trampled underfoot. The room fills with the sweet crocus scent, flooding my senses like the honeyed wine; the other girls are a blur and so are the mothers – all I can see is the Lady, still dancing while one by one we drop to the floor around her. I can hardly tell if she’s twirling or the room, except that her golden dragonfly necklaces are flying as if they’ve come to life.
Maybe they have, I think. Maybe this is the magic.
But she stops, finally – just comes to a halt, still smiling, not dropping sick and dizzy like the rest of us. She sits on her tall throne, barely panting. Her left foot is bleeding from a pottery shard, like the earthmother’s daughter before the swallows take her. Mine is too. It doesn’t hurt; I wonder if it’s a sign.
‘Goddess keep you, my crocus-learners,’ says the Lady. ‘My almost-women.’
I think that means the night is over, but it’s not. We drink another cup of wine, and then the Lady and our mothers sing:
Dance for the blooming crocus,
born of autumn rain,
dance for our dying Kora
crying in her pain,
dance for the flying swallows
till they bring her back again.
As they sing, our mothers drape us in the wide fishnet shawls of the swallow dance – how could I forget? – then Kora takes my hand – me, the newest Learner – to follow the Lady down the stairs and out to the street, with the other girls and mothers following. The waiting people sing with us, holding torches high as we dance through the town, our shawls opening and closing like wings of the swallows we’re calling to bring the earthmother’s daughter home next spring.
Weaving in the upstairs room –
Nunu, Mama and me –
companionable in the unexpected sun
of this shortest day,
and the anticipation
of tonight’s feast;
our looms strung with wool for coverings
for a bed that will be mine
when I am a woman.
‘Ha!’ says Nunu, hands and shuttle flying,
‘She’s wondering i
f she’ll ever
find a husband to bring home.’
‘Shush!’ says Mama.
‘Tonight’s the last
Midwinter joy of her childhood –
let her enjoy being a girl
while she can.’
My face burns –
it’s not even true that I’m still a child
but sometimes
I’m not ready to be a woman
and want my Learning to last forever –
though it’s true I was dreaming
of my daughter one day
offering her saffron
and seeing me
on the temple wall.
Nunu would say I’m offending the goddess
even to think it
but Nunu doesn’t always know
what I’m thinking.
I’m still wishing I could find
something clever to say
when a loom weight swings,
hitting my hand so hard
I squeak an ouch
and drop my shuttle –
while from downstairs
comes the crash of a pot
hitting the floor.
Mama and Nunu stop their weaving and Mama rises.
‘I’ll go,’ I say,
happy to hide my burning face
in the solitude of stairs.
But I haven’t reached the landing
when the house shakes
like a dog wet from the sea.
A moment follows –
shivering silence.
I turn to see
my loom weights swinging,
tok-tokking,
hitting and spinning –
then Mama is screaming,
‘Get out! Away from the house, far as you can!’
And I obey, good girl that I am –
two stairs at a time
with my skirt held high,
reaching the bottom
when the house shakes again
not a dog now
but a rabbit in the dog’s mouth
neck snapping,
shaken to death.
Then, like the dead rabbit
loosed from the jaws –
tossed one last time –
Mama flies
from the landing,
her head touching a step
halfway along
and tumbling the rest of the way
with no more sound than the dead rabbit
except for the thump of her head
on each step –
and though the journey
lasts a lifetime
I can’t move or breathe
till she lands crumpled
at my feet.
Now I’m screaming,
crouched at her side,
screaming for Dada,
for Nunu,
or anyone to help
because Mama doesn’t move
or speak
and her face is all blood
like the rabbit,
skinned.
But only Nunu calls back –
because Dada is at the shipsheds;
the maids have fled
as Mama told them
and the great beam above the door,
forgetting its job of holding the wall,
has crashed in,
bringing the wall with it
in mounds of brick,
painted fresco and dust –
so we can’t get out
and no one else can get in.
Nunu calls again
though I don’t know where from
or what she’s saying
because the house is groaning,
the earth rumbling
and everywhere
people are screaming
and walls are crashing –
and I am alone
with my maybe-dead Mama
and Nunu trapped at the top
of the broken stairs.
The stone step
where Mama rests her head
is snapped in half
like a branch over a knee
because the walls on each side
have moved in their places,
so most of each wall
is on the steps.
I can’t see round the bend –
but can guess Nunu won’t be here soon.
The earth’s rumbling
grows to a roar
and now the house,
is shaking again,
trying to throw itself
onto Mama and me.
The kitchen’s great table is the only shelter
but in the middle of the room,
so far from the doorway –
how could I drag poor Mama
across the stone floor –
so I run to the table
as if fleeing a wolf,
shove it across till it hits the wall –
I never knew
I could be so strong.
‘Sorry, Mama,’ I say,
tugging her through the entrance
to crouch beside her
under this new roof.
The shaking lasts for hours, days, a lifetime. The ground floor windows are small and grilled; they’ve disappeared completely now, but some light and then rain come in from a new gap in a wall. There’s enough light to know when the dark comes.
I don’t know if it’s here for evening or forever.
I’ve been lying with my head against Mama’s chest, trying to tell myself that the movement I feel is not just the goddess still shaking the house, but my mother’s breath. I’m terrified that it’s not true. With my face right there, I can smell her blood above the choking mist of grit and dust. Blood and the sour stink of piss, and as the floor gets colder I realise I’ve wet myself. I don’t know when. I don’t even care, and I’m not even shocked that I don’t care.
A groan and another hot flood – and it’s not from me. I didn’t think I could ever feel so happy: Mama’s alive.
I scream again for Nunu. Nunu will know what to do.
If she answers I can’t hear. The goddess is still rumbling and I hate her with a blind red rage – and I’m not shocked at that either. Then I’m begging her to save Mama, promising whatever sacrifice she wants and the only one I can think of is my painting in the temple. Take that, I plead, I offer it to you and all that it means, the painter can paint another maiden, but no one can make another Mama.
The goddess doesn’t care. She shudders again, dumping ceiling onto my table roof, and I’m shaking too, choking in the dust of what used to be my home. My eyes are streaming, though I don’t know if that’s dust or fear, because this is not how the world should be.
There are no more screams or shouts from the street. Nunu still doesn’t answer. I don’t know if she’s dead or trapped behind rubble on the stairs. All I can hear is the grumbling of the house and the deeper rumbling of the earthmother.
She’s no mother, to destroy like this!
I’m alone. As alone as anyone could be: the only one left alive, with my dying Mama.
Why didn’t you finish the sacrifice and take me too? Though I don’t scream it out loud, even now. The goddess has shown what her rage can do, and I don’t know if I can face what she wants of me.
I also don’t know how all this can race through my head while I’m still coughing, screaming and weeping, my body trembling as much as the house.
Then my face, pressed against Mama’s chest, feels a quiver. Another muffled moan escapes her lips. And finally, I understand.
The only one who can help Mama is me.
Which is almost more terrifying than being alone with her death.
So, as the shaking stops, I crawl out from under the table. Clearing the way to the outside door will take too long; I need to clean Mama off now and give her something to drink. The storage pots of food, wine and oil are stored under a bench – I can’t see it in the darkness, but it’s o
nly a few paces away. All I have to do is creep along beside the wall and I’ll find it.
But the floor is a pile of sharp clay shards; my palms are bleeding by the time I crawl out from the shelter of our table. My knees are too, stabbed right through the thick wool of my long winter tunic.
My sandals are by the door, lost in darkness and rubble, but there’s no choice. I slide myself upright, waiting for the terrible unknown thing that will hit me, jab me, cut me. Nothing does, so I edge along, my feet tentative, feeling their way, till my right foot hits the bottom of the cupboard. Closer, and I’m touching the side; it seems to be intact, though covered by a layer of debris. The pots and ewers that should have been standing on top are part of that wreckage, their contents scattered and lost, but underneath are the niches holding the storage pots.
Bracing myself against the wall, I start shoving debris off the bench. There’s wetness and stickiness, and I’m imagining even more blood and horror – is someone trapped between benchtop and rubble? My skin crawls at the thought of touching a dead maid. And how would I ever move them to get what I want?
Ouch!
A sudden sharp jab, a splinter in the side of my hand, and I’m sucking away the pain before I can think. But it’s not blood I’m tasting, it’s gritty, sticky sweetness – the remains of something for our solstice feast. I suck my fingers clean before tracing them gingerly across the benchtop. They find the holes for the niches; I lean closer and reach in.
Three of the big pots are broken, but there are smaller pots inside – some of them are whole, and so are all the baskets of dried foods. No point in looking for water; the giant pithos was at the door for easy refilling of jugs, and the jugs would have been on this benchtop or the table – I’m probably standing on one now. What I have is olive oil, wine, honey and goat milk. The milk is delivered for me fresh every morning, because Mama believes women need it to grow their own breasts, to feed the babies that will come after marriage. My throat is so dry and choking I drink it straight from the jug, three great gulps before I even think of sharing.
The goddess shakes again, punishing me for my greed. I feel so wicked I’d spit it out if I could. But instead of crushing me, she tumbles out a chunk of wall between kitchen and storeroom. There’s no window in that inside room, but a dim light comes in from somewhere – and wherever that is, I’m grateful.
I pick my way back with a jug in each hand, dip my finger into the honey and put it to Mama’s mouth. ‘Sacred food of the gods, feed my mother and let her wake!’