by Wendy Orr
Even Nunu cheers up as we walk. Mama hums a cheerful no, no, no song, and when we come around a bend and look out at a greyness that is definitely the sea, I sing praise to the goddess. She answers by showing us a tree to rest under at noon – and before nightfall, just as the farm woman said, we see the stone walls of a town. Houses and workshops stretch down to the sea, and a tall building in the middle must be the palace of the priest-folk.
As the sun sets, we hear a chorus of chirping, and the hazy red sky fills with birds, swooping and darting: swallows. The sign of our home, of spring and rebirth.
We will be safe now.
Men armed with clubs and scythes patrol the outskirts of the town. They let us through to the gate, where the captain has a dagger and breath like a dog’s.
‘No one enters after dusk – get back to the camp!’ he orders, pointing at a smelly, noisy confusion of people on the west of the town, small campfires the only sign of comfort.
But finally, it’s safe to tell the truth. My shoulders sag with relief.
‘We’re women of the Swallow Clan – kin to your priest-folk.’
‘Welcome!’ he’ll say, apologising for his confusion and sending a runner to prepare for us. To prepare food, a drink and a bath before we’re presented…
Dogbreath looks at us and laughs. ‘I don’t know what it’s like where you come from, but our leaders don’t wander around like lost goats in the night. It’s the camp for the likes of you – and they’ll be glad to see you’ve brought your own dinner.’
He means Chance! No one’s going to eat my dog!
The guard stops laughing and waves us away with his dagger. ‘I don’t care where you sleep, but no one gets into the town tonight, and no strangers get into the palace until day and night are as they should be. Our Lady and her clan are working to appease the moon goddess and her brother the sun. They have no time for visitors or beggars. If you want help, go back where you came from. We have enough trouble of our own.’
It’s like being punched in the stomach. Thoughts whirl in my head, and I can’t breathe.
Where else can we go?
But I saw the swallows! They were an omen.
What are we going to do?
Mama’s face crumples. She doesn’t have to understand all the words to feel their meaning from gesture and tone. Nunu’s face is blank, but her body looks as if it’s shrunk. She’s only as big as a ten-year-old child at her fiercest – if she gets any smaller she’ll disappear.
So it’s not what are we going to do? It’s what am I going to do?
What am I going to do? What am I going to do? What am I going to do?
Have I said it out loud? Does it matter if I have? No one cares.
I take Mama’s hand. ‘Come. We’ll find somewhere safe for the night.’
‘She won’t like the camp,’ Nunu mutters.
‘We’re not going there!’ Not even if eating Chance was a joke. We can hear the sounds of too many people in too small a space: babies wailing, adults shouting in anger or frustration. Too much noise for Mama to bear – and her screeching might be too much for everyone else. We would not be safe.
I turn as if I know where I’m going – as if there is somewhere to go when it’s nearly dark and we’ve been turned away from the town we’ve been walking to for five days. The place we’ve lost everything to get to.
There’s a tap on my shoulder. I jump, shudder – and reach for the dagger tucked into my skirt. Nobody is ever going to beat and rob me again.
It’s one of the young guards; he has a stick, but uses it only to point in different directions. ‘The purple works are over to the right of the bay – your nose will tell you soon enough if you get too close. The fisher-folk live on the left side; they’ve lost everything, but they won’t bother you if you camp close by.’
The words filter through slowly – this is the best we can hope for.
He’s being kind, even though he’s not supposed to.
So I salute him as an equal, just like I did the goatherd. And just like the goatherd’s, his face is kind.
He’s better looking, though.
We walk towards the left of the bay, quick as we can because it will be dark soon, though we’re twice as slow as when we still had hope.
The purple works smell just like the purple village at home – turning the other way is easy. We bypass the small fires of the fisher-folk who’ve lost everything, and find a rock wall, a ruin from the days when giants lived on the land; it’s close enough to the sea that we can hear the waves shushing below us, but too high on the cliff for them to come up to drown us.
In the corner of broken walls
built when the gods were young,
we huddle under cloaks –
Mama in the middle for warmth,
and to make sure she doesn’t wander –
but even with Chance at my side
I am more alone,
colder than I’ve ever been
because I was searching for safety
and I failed.
I am not good enough
to save my Mama,
to help my homeland
or even myself.
I will never get home,
never finish my Learning
or become a woman.
But in the morning
the sun rises, though my song is weak –
I don’t know the custom here
or who is listening,
I just know the dawn needs
all the help she can get –
and when I finish
the sun glows stronger
and so do I.
The guard last night was confused
because of our filth.
We will wash in the sea;
Nunu will do our hair as best she can
and I will offer a gift
that will buy us shelter.
The sea is cold and salt;
we have no oil to smooth our skin
or kohl or rouge to paint it,
not a grain of saffron,
but Nunu’s fingers are wise,
combing out Mama’s thick plait
and my thin tail in its fuzz of curls.
And though our tops are nightshifts,
filthy from hem to neck,
she tucks them so smooth
and ties our skirts so straight,
no one could possibly think
we were runaway slaves.
Mama’s golden chain
is around her neck where it belongs
and the bronze dagger
is back at my waist.
The guard at the gate
is older than Dogbreath
and his face is kinder.
Hope rises as I tell him,
‘I am Leira of the Isle of Swallows,
daughter of Lally,
whose speech was lost
when the gods shook the earth.
My father the captain
left me in good faith at Tarmara
to care for our land’s trade
but he told us of your great town,
and when we fled the riots and the sea
we remembered his words –
though bandits robbed us on our way.’
The guard’s eyes widen,
his face pales in shock –
though he must have heard
of riots and bandits before –
so I rush on before he can speak,
and hand him my dagger,
gold hilt first.
‘We carry this gift to your goddess
and ask sanctuary of your Lady and chief
as priest-folk kin.’
I have never heard
a guard whisper before,
taking the dagger
with a muttered, ‘Wait here,’
as if his speech is as lost as Mama’s.
We wait so long –
standing straight though bellies rumble –
that the s
un’s shadow leaves the gate.
But the guard, when he returns,
moves slowly
and his eyes do not meet mine.
‘The Lady has offered your gift;
the goddess has spoken.
The land you name,
where the gods of sky and sea
fought the earth’s great mother,
is no more.
‘The ashes of its death
are blighting our land
just as its wave
destroyed homes and ships –
its name will not be spoken
and all who come from it
are cursed.’
‘No!’ shrieks Mama,
or maybe it’s me.
Suddenly my mind hears
Dada’s voice saying the oracle
proclaimed worse death to come,
warning him to sail
before the season had begun –
but it still can’t make this true
and I struggle to hear the guard:
‘The chief says you may stay in the camp
with the other homeless,
and find work as you can.
You may enter the town in daylight
to collect water from the well,
but rations for this day only.
‘And in the camp or outside
he warns you to never
mention your homeland again
or claim to be priest-folk or kin.’
My tongue has stuck to the roof of my mouth. My throat is so dry it clicks. I’ve lost my speech, just like Mama!
And what is there to say? There are no lessons in courtesy for being told to deny who you are.
‘Andras!’ shouts the guard, and the boy who showed us the way last night comes running – I don’t know from where because my mind is so black that I’m seeing through layers of veils. ‘Take them to the storerooms and see that they’re given a day’s rations.’
Andras nods; beckons for us to follow, and we do, obedient as slaves – are we slaves now, if no longer priest-folk? Is this what Nunu thought, when she was sold to my grandparents?
Slaves get fed. That thought is important. I’m very hungry. Half of me is disgusted with the hungry half. The hungry part says it wants to survive.
Out of sight of the old guard, Andras asks, ‘Last night I wasn’t sure – I didn’t really think you were runaway servants – but you’re priest-folk!’
‘Not if we want our rations!’ snaps Nunu, and Andras laughs, because a blind dog could see that Nunu is not a priest-woman.
‘I thought that the chief might allow lost priest-folk in, once it was daylight.’
‘He’s ordered that we mustn’t claim to be who we are,’ I say bitterly, ‘or ever mention where we come from.’
Andras’s fingers flash against evil.
Why am I so stupid? I’ve just told him exactly what I’ve been ordered not to. And we need those rations!
‘Goddess weeping!’ he breathes. ‘I knew you were alone – but you’re the last of your people!’
‘There are as many islands in the sea as there are meanings to an oracle!’ I snap. ‘The land the sailors saw dying was not our home.’
He nods, half convinced.
‘Our island and its people are strong. My father and brother will return from the trading season with goods to rebuild, and we’ll see it again next year.’
How will they find us? I’ve got nearly a year to work that out. Right now we need food.
The storeroom is packed tight with pithoi, rows and rows of huge pots – but the room itself is not huge, and when Andras asks for the rations, the woman asks him to help her lay one of the pots down so she can reach in for the last dried fish. ‘All those are already empty,’ she says, pointing.
There are two small dried fish for each of us, a handful of chickpeas and another of barley.
‘Homeless rations,’ says Andras. ‘They have nothing to cook with.’
The woman raises her eyebrows in surprise but says nothing. She exchanges the barley for a small stack of barley cakes.
‘Do you have a jug for ale?’ she demands.
‘No.’
‘Or a wineskin?’
‘No.’ We have nothing. It sounds too pathetic – I can’t say it.
The storekeeper stares at the gold around Mama’s neck. Does she think we’re going to offer her that for a jug of ale?
‘Wait!’ says Andras, and disappears. Time stands still while he’s away; the woman is studying us with open, hostile curiosity, Nunu is glaring her down, Mama is crooning ‘no, no, no,’ Chance is licking an oil spot on the floor, and I – I don’t really know what I’m doing. I’m floating somewhere outside my body, watching all this and the pale, worried girl that is me.
Andras returns with a clay jug, too misshapen to be an accurate measure.
‘My cousin Teesha is the potter’s apprentice,’ he says, as if that explains it. ‘She was supposed to smash it – but she gave it to me.’
He’s looking at me as though I should say something, but my mind is still struggling to think through its veils. This is the ugliest jug I’ve ever seen. No, that’s not right. I made better ones as a child at Nunu’s knee. Not that either.
‘For you – she gave it to me for you. So you can get your ale today, and water from the well.’ He hands the jug to the storekeeper, who fills it from a barrel at the end of the room and gives it back to me.
Idiot! It’s a gift! It doesn’t matter what it looks like – it’s a jug, and it’s yours.
‘Thank you,’ I say at last, hand on heart, my face glowing hot as a sunburned boy’s. I hope he couldn’t guess what I was thinking. ‘Please tell your cousin we are grateful and beseech the gods to reward her kindness.’
We move out of the storeroom with its suspicious keeper into a quiet corner of the square. Andras is still with us, and he’s blushing too; I don’t know why.
But there are other more important things I don’t know: where we go now, where we can live, what we’ll eat tomorrow, what the guard meant by finding work…
Nunu is quicker than me. ‘Young master,’ she interrupts the silence, ‘you have given us time and help, and I offer you a grandmother’s blessing. But we are strangers, and do not know what the guard meant by work that we might find. I have raised two generations of children – are there households that need help in this way?’
Andras shakes his head. ‘Since the war of the gods, every house is full with family who have lost their homes; there are more willing servants than people to serve – and the folk who can afford them still have their slaves. Folk might be grateful for a child nurse in these hungry times, but they’d have no room to keep you, let alone the priest-woman and the maiden.’
‘You can’t call us that!’
‘Sorry,’ he says, blushing again. ‘But that’s the other problem. Everyone will know that you’re priest-folk – so if the palace doesn’t trust you, they won’t either.’
‘Like the storekeeper?’ I ask. It still takes me by surprise when people don’t try to please me. In Tarmara I thought it was because of Mama’s wailing, but she’s not shrieking now. This is just because of who we are. Panic rises in my throat; I want to claw out of my own skin till I become invisible.
‘She doesn’t know how to talk to people who look like priest-women and need help like beggars,’ Andras confirms.
‘So why don’t you mind?’ The words come out before I think. I haven’t had a conversation with a boy my age since I started my Learning – until the goatherd, and now this boy, Andras. Does it count if they’re not our clan? I don’t know the rules anymore.
He doesn’t either. Maybe these rules have changed, like everything else. ‘My family are seal-stone carvers. Priest-folk like to discuss their seals – the stone, the design – with the person making them. I’ve learned that we’re not so different.’
‘I can say that we’re craft-folk! I can spin…’
‘
Like every other child in the world,’ sniffs Nunu.
‘And weave.’
‘There’s a weaving workshop for trade, for the fabric to be dyed at the purple works,’ Andras explains, ‘but most of their wool was lost in the flood, so they have nothing to weave now till the sheep can be shorn again.’
I can find the flowers the goddess requires in different seasons, the lilies, anemones and crocuses; I can pluck saffron threads and dry them for make-up and medicine; I can sing and dance in her praise. But those are all the things I’m not allowed to do here.
‘If you go to the homeless camp, you’ll be sent to labour wherever the palace needs you, and be paid in rations.’
‘Not the camp!’ I protest.
‘Or you might be able to work with the fishers. They’ve lost homes and boats; they might feed you in exchange for help with their rebuilding.’
Hope flashes through me again. ‘I know about boats! My father…’
‘If the chief said…I wouldn’t mention your father’s ships.’
He’s right. We’re not Swallow Clan. Dada isn’t an admiral or a captain. We’re nothing and we come from nowhere.
‘Andras!’ shouts the guard at the gate.
‘I thought you were a seal-stone apprentice?’
‘That’s for normal times. Until the troubles are over, every man and boy has to take his turn at guard duty.’
Normal times. I can hardly remember what that means.
‘Good luck!’ Andras calls, and races away. Mama waves like a child; Nunu and I look at each other.
‘A barley cake each and our ale,’ I say, ‘then we’ll find the fishers.’
Every crumb and drop is gone, and I’m still not ready. A feast wouldn’t have been long enough.
Don’t think about feasts! Don’t think about creamy cheeses and roasted snails and figs and goat skewers and honey cakes and…
‘We’re servants,’ I say. ‘Mama and I are a priest-woman’s maids, from a place where the maids dress like their mistresses. The master was a sea captain, and we fled when the house and its people were taken by the sea.’
Nunu nods. ‘Where is this town?’
‘On the other side of Tarmara. It’s not a town, just a settlement that we won’t name because it was taken by the gods.’
‘They made pots there,’ Nunu says sadly.
‘Beautiful pots,’ I agree. ‘Painted with the sign of a swallow. But they’re all gone.’