by Wendy Orr
She starts when Ibi kisses her goodbye and swings onto the ship. She shrieks louder when Dada does the same.
‘Quiet!’ Nunu says sharply. ‘You’ll call the sea demons, you naughty child!’
Sometimes it works if Nunu speaks to her as if Mama was still a three-year-old and Nunu her nurse. This time it doesn’t.
The sailors pick up their oars, and Dada helms out of the channel to the sea and the start of his great journey around the world, all the way to the land of the pyramids where his grandfather came from, back again to our home and eventually, here to us.
Nunu and I take Mama by the arms to lead her back to the palace, while townsfolk, whispering and pointing against evil, stop in the streets to see the wailing woman.
‘I am the trade ambassador,’ I tell myself the next morning. It doesn’t feel real.
‘I’m on my own,’ I say, and that does.
‘The Isle of Swallows depends on me,’ I say, and that is terrifying.
As the grey light of dawn filters in the window, I dress. I put on my tunic that ties at the left shoulder, to show that I’m priest-folk; I wear my gold hoop earrings, Pellie’s bracelet on my left arm, and my Saffron Maiden’s on my right, but no anklets, because I want to look serious, not like a girl preparing for a festival.
The palace-folk are in the courtyard for the dawn ceremony. In our land each household greets the morning with their own gods and in their own home, only going to the temple for the great festivals, but here, with the priest-folk living together in one big tangled family, the Lady is the mother of the house and the only one who can greet the sun. If I’m living here, I have to attend.
I didn’t think it would feel so hard to go alone, now Dada and Ibi have left.
How can you represent your land if you can’t even go to the dawn ceremony? a voice whispers in my head.
Mama is still asleep, but Nunu is watching me. She waves me off, a flick of her hand saying, Go, go!
You can’t even get out the door unless your nurse tells you!
I’m not going to let that horrible voice defeat me. Calling Chance to my side, I slip out of the room, down the halls, the tiles dew-damp under my bare feet, to the courtyard.
I edge closer to two girls about my age, though I can’t tell if they’re still in their Learning. Girls here don’t shave their heads for the goddess, so their hair is already long by the time they put on women’s dress. My short curls feel bare and childish. Maybe that’s why the closer I get, the more it feels as if they’re not just ignoring me, but gossiping about me. They’re leaning in to each other so their shoulders are rubbing and I can tell from the way those shoulders move that they’re murmuring secrets and laughter to each other, just the way Pellie and I used to.
If only Pellie were here!
I touch her bracelet. Pellie, my sister-friend, send me your thoughts!
A harpy’s shriek rips the silence. I want to pretend I can’t hear; to pretend it’s the Lady entering with a strange new song. But I’m already slipping away, down the halls towards our room, because I know it’s Mama. She’s woken knowing that Dada and Ibi have gone.
I can’t do it. I can’t go back into the room to see my mother the way the spirit has abandoned her, screaming as if all the orphans and abandoned lovers in the world were singing their grief out through her mouth. I slip past it down the hall, lurking in shadows until the courtyard empties and the priest-folk are having breakfast – and once again, I should be there, but I can’t. My stomach is too tied into knots to face the people who watched me flee the dawn ceremony because of my wailing mother.
Besides, it’s my job to trade for my people. It’s time to start.
The craft quarter is already busy, clattering with tools and shouts, humming with laughter and song as the artisans bring their work out and set up for the day. I stop in front of the seal-stone carvers with their fine tools for etching complicated scenes on gold and gems, some the size of my baby fingernail, others as long as a finger.
Dada’s seal is a ship engraved on a golden agate. He wears it on a thong around his neck – and everywhere in the world, when people see that image stamped onto a clay tablet, they know they can trust the merchandise they’re promised.
‘You should have your own,’ Dada said before he left. ‘I should have thought of it before.’
There was no point in reminding him again that I hadn’t finished my Learning. ‘I’ll have a swallow flying over Crocus Mountain,’ I said, and he smiled.
‘Order it as soon as you can.’
Tomorrow. I’m not ready today.
I move on to the potters. Despite the mounting heat as the kiln is fired, the familiarity is comforting. Apprentices are mixing and kneading clay; one man is starting to roll clay ropes, and the first lumps are being thrown onto wheels. There are three wheels and a potter at each – two women and a man. I watch the way they shape their clay, how they throw and the way they hold, and although the methods are nearly identical, there’s something individual in each one.
The pottery waiting to be fired is exquisite, as fine as any of ours, with writhing octopus on fat jars and white flowers on ewers. There are cups and bowls, goblets, jugs and vases. My fingers itch to touch them.
I smile my praise before remembering that if I’m going to buy I’ll need to haggle, and they nod in reply, their hands too wet and busy to salute.
An apprentice is making clay tablets to be taken, still damp, to the scribes for the palace records of goods and taxes. Her hands are fast and sure; it’s a lowly task, but I envy her confidence. I wonder if she’s worked on the rows of simple clay cups drying in the sun – for the feast tomorrow, I guess, to be used once and destroyed.
‘Do you wish to buy?’ a woman asks, saluting as she comes out of the storeroom.
‘Not today,’ I say, but as she turns away, something makes me add, ‘I’ll be trading for the Isle of Swallows. I’m the sister of Glaucus – did he buy from you?’
‘Glaucus! I can see it now – you have the same nose. I’m not sure I’d say I sold to him – he was that hard a bargainer, it was more like giving it away and being grateful I didn’t hand over the kiln as well. No, lass, don’t cry – that’s just my talk. He was a fair man, and a man who appreciated beauty. I’m sorry for your grief, truly I am.’
I didn’t know I was crying, but now I can feel tears dripping down my cheeks. I sniff and wipe them off with the back of my hand.
‘As for the pots,’ she says briskly, ‘he had two great pithoi packed with our best wares – did the captain not find them before he left?’
I shake my head. Her face is kind; I wish I could ask her if Glaucus gambled.
‘Perhaps he sold them to another trader first,’ she suggests.
‘Perhaps,’ I agree.
‘When you’re ready,’ she says, ‘we can do a good deal if you take a big enough shipment. Your brother was a great record-keeper. I don’t know what god has stolen my wits this morning, the last thing I need is another trader as shrewd as Glaucus – but you should study his tablets.’
‘Thank you.’ Tablets! They weren’t with his few belongings, the spare cloak and tunic. If it was true that he’d gambled it all away, he might have erased them – but I get the feeling this woman wouldn’t believe the gambling story any more than Ibi and Dada did.
‘What do I need to offer you for a clay tablet, so I can start making my own records?’
She calls the apprentice, and puts a fresh tablet, smooth and cool, into my hands. ‘For this one, a smile and a promise to return. The scribes can spare it.’
Her kindness starts my tears again. I can’t help it and can’t stop.
But the potter comes out from her workspace and hugs me; holds me in her strong arms as if I were her own child.
‘Life is hard,’ she says. ‘But we’re all stronger than we think. Even priest-folk.’
Drawing back in surprise, I see that she’s grinning.
I don’t care who sees me;
I don’t care what the ambassador should do.
I hug her back.
Mama’s wailing is down to a hum. Nunu’s got her up and walking, round and round the room in circles; she never shrieks as loudly when she’s pacing.
‘Nunu, when you first set out our things in this room, did you find any record tablets?’
‘That’s right, child – this ignorant old woman found the trade records and destroyed them without telling the captain!’
‘Sorry, Nunu. I just had to check because of what the potter told me.’
We both know those records were lost before we arrived. We just don’t know if it was before or after Glaucus died.
But if Glaucus hid them, they could still be here.
The only possible hiding place is the carved wooden chest where we keep our clothes and bedding. I take off the lid, kneel and lift our things out.
‘What are you doing?’ Nunu shrieks. ‘The chest was empty when we came – I told you I looked.’
She’s right, of course. There’s nothing underneath. I smooth my hands over the wooden bottom, but it’s as solid as it looks, hiding nothing. And it sits flat on the floor, with no room to slip anything underneath.
Flat on the floor, but not flat against the wall. A fancy carved panel has been added to the bottom, running around it like the flounce on a skirt, a good finger’s length out from the chest. With the lid off, I can see the gap against the wall.
Even empty, the chest is heavy. I tug so hard I tumble backwards. Chance yelps in fright – and the clay tablets tucked between the chest and the wall crash to the floor.
Only one breaks; I can read them all. Can read the story of Glaucus’s trading, what he got for the goods he started with, what he gave as host gifts, what he paid for what he bought: pottery, ten statuettes in bronze, four sealstones…He’d traded well, as the potter said, and had rich goods for Dada’s next season.
He did not gamble it away. It disappeared after he died.
The trade priest lied. Lied about the dead. Lied about my brother.
Rage bubbles from my belly like a belch from the goddess.
The same angry fire flashes from Nunu’s eyes – but Nunu, as she so often reminds me, is old and wise. ‘We are guests here,’ she hisses, putting her finger to her lips.
She’s right. Trust no one, Dada said.
No one can know that we’ve discovered the trade priest’s lie. No one. Even the wise-women Granny and Wart Nose, who are kind as well as skilled, are part of the palace.
We’ve been as quiet as we can, but our rage and grief are filling the room and soaking into Mama. Her murmuring crescendoes to a wail.
I shove the chest back into place and slide the tablets into the gap, keeping out the stylus that was hidden with them. Nunu moves quickly, dropping the clothes and bedding inside and replacing the lid. I use it as a seat, and with my brother’s stylus and my new clay tablet, start to list everything that Dada has left me.
The first sign, for a dagger, is barely scratched into the damp surface when the wise-women rush in with poppy tea to calm my mother.
Nunu’s already singing to her, combing her hair and stroking her forehead. Mama thrashes and shrieks, slapping Nunu’s face and throwing the comb to the floor.
‘It’s the spring festival tomorrow,’ says Wart Nose. She’s kinder than the older one; she talks to Mama as if her spirit is still there, as if she’s a person. ‘Rest today so you can join in.’
‘Join in?’ snaps Granny. ‘Are you mad? That noise would drown out the Lady’s prayers!’
‘You won’t shriek tomorrow, will you?’ Wart Nose says soothingly, manoeuvring Mama onto her bed and encouraging her to drink the calming tea. ‘You’ll sleep now, and your daughter and your nurse will sing your spirit back. Gods and spirits are roaming for the spring; it’s time for yours to come home.’
So Mama sleeps, and we sing as hard and long as we did right at the beginning in the farmhouse, because it’s true that her spirit has been wandering for so long now that we’ve almost given up trying to sing it back. We still do it every day, but not for long, and sometimes I think about other things while I sing. Today I sing with my heart as well as my voice, and I know that Nunu does too.
Wart Nose is truly kind.
So was the potter. And the Lady.
It’s easy to mistrust someone like the trade priest, but trying not to trust these women makes me feel like the earth is moving beneath my feet again. I want Mama back, more than I can bear. Suddenly I’m crying as I sing, the tears that started with the motherly potter turn into great gulping, hiccupping sobs for my real mother, whose spirit is strong and wise, who people trust and respect; who knows what to do.
We sing to her spirit all day and into the long evening, till Nunu’s voice cracks and my throat is sore, and still Mama sleeps. But when she wakes in the morning, she doesn’t wail. She looks at me and smiles, and says, ‘Leilei.’
My baby name; what I called myself and what Mama and Dada called me till I said I was too old, long before the start of my Learning. I never knew it could sound so beautiful. I kneel by her bed with my arms around her, my head on her shoulder. ‘Mama, you’re back! Your spirit has come home.’
‘Leilei.’ She nods, stroking my hair just like she used to, when I was small and needed comfort. ‘Yes, yes, yes. Fish, fish, fish?’
The words hit my stomach like rocks. Her strong, wise spirit hasn’t returned. Maybe it never will.
But some other part of her has, some part of the girl and the maiden and the woman who is Mama, is still there, and that’s who knows my name and strokes my hair in the way only my mother can.
As the sun climbs
I bathe and dress,
paint face and lips –
wondering how long my pot
of saffron will last –
the embroidered shift first worn
for the crocus Learning,
half a year or a lifetime ago,
and my skirt, in the colours of home,
its red and black layers
tied tight at my waist.
Nunu does the same for Mama
and this time my mother looks
like a woman with an empty face,
not a corpse on a bier –
and I think that empty
is better than dead.
Nunu, too, is washed and clean
as even the lowest slaves in the palace
must be ready
to welcome the season of growing,
of fertile fields and food for all –
the fresh new year.
We are ready long before time
but I cannot wait
any longer.
In the courtyard,
in the halls and open rooms,
the workshops where no work is done
today,
a hiss of whispers
slides around corners
and between the pillars –
rules are different here
if their gods forbid speech on this great day.
Now my ears are tuning,
I hear the words,
catch even the servant talk –
so harsh and rough it’s hardly speech at all –
and all are of fear,
omens of darkness
and wondering what
the oracle might foretell.
Then someone murmurs –
a clear priest-folk voice –
‘There’s the wailing woman
who cursed the sea as her husband sailed.’
And my spine tingles
like hackles on a dog.
But whispers are lost as the sun rises high
and the courtyard fills:
priest-folk, craft-folk and town,
flowing into halls and onto roofs
to watch Sarpedon and the Lady
accept from their thrones
tribute from each group:
flowers and honey
g
rain and dried fish
oil and wine –
a taste of each poured into altar-stone hollows
to feed the gods
and remind our great mother
of what she must produce
if her people are to live and serve.
Now the beasts: two new lambs
and a full-grown goat, rangy and strong.
He fights and bucks,
thrashing even as his dark blood flows
knocking the bowl from the Lady’s hands
splashing blood on the Lady and chief.
The gasping crowd moans and mutters
at this most evil of omens –
a sacrifice refusing to be given –
then stills again with shock.
The trade priest leads in a woman –
small and thin as slaves often are,
so young that if she were priest-folk
she might still be Learning –
her hands tied with plaited rope.
She sways beside him as if
she’s drunk too much wine
or the wise-women’s tea.
‘Great Mother,’ sings the Lady
‘you have sent omens of your rage
so we offer a gift as never before
to please your heart.’
The woman does not
struggle like the goat
or bleat like the lambs
but lies still where she’s laid
across the bloodied stone
and the crowd is hushed
as her life blood drips away
though I sway and feel I could fall.
Nunu puts a firm hand on my arm. The touch steadies me, but her glare is a clear reminder, Don’t upset the priest-folk – or your mother! Which is really the same thing, because I don’t know what will happen if Mama begins to wail right now.
Luckily, though she understands it’s a ritual, standing silently with her hand on her heart, she doesn’t seem to have noticed what the last sacrifice was. I step in front of her to block her view as the priests pile flowers and fruit onto the young woman’s body before carrying it to the sanctuary.