FSF, March-April 2010

by Spilogale Authors

  From here I can see the flat roof of our cottage, with its high stone wall squaring off the large garden in the back. The valley dips down, split by a dirt path. Our fields billow with wheat on one side, and on the other, a corral encircles our little herd of goats. They rest in the shade of a lemon tree, not far from our barn and silo. From here, it all looks like something effortless, a spread of wildflowers cropping up naturally by a roadway. You can't make out any of the muck and sweat from so far up. A light wind trails its cool fingers up my spine and across the nape of my neck. I lean my head back into a fork in the olive tree's trunk, stretch out my legs on the mossy grass, and close my eyes.

  A muffled trill of laughter sounds somewhere behind me, waking me with a start. The book drops from my slack hand and snaps closed on the ground. I scoop it up and pick my way through the olive grove, toward the meadow that lies on the other side, and the sound of voices. The sun still rides high in the sky, but tilts a little more sharply than when I fell asleep. I've only slept a short time. I pause at the lip of the meadow behind the shelter of a broad, old tree.

  "Ollie ollie oxen free!” a voice rings out from a low scrub bush only a few yards to my left.

  Two girls in pale blue and pink frocks, with hair like tails of wheat, dash from the shade of the trees out into the blinding bright meadow. The smaller one chases the taller, her hands outstretched. The older girl turns back, shrieks in mock terror, and lifts her knees higher as she hurtles forward through the tall grass.

  "Maria! Julia!” a woman's voice calls from the near corner of the meadow. I shift my gaze and see a matronly figure in a pale, fitted dress and a broad straw hat sitting on a checkered blanket. “Stop running around and come sit in the shade. You're going to give yourselves heatstroke."

  "Yes, Mama,” the older girl says. The small girl drags her feet as her sister leads the way over to the blanket.

  "Look at you, you're all red,” the mother says as they draw near. “You know young gentlemen don't want a wife with ruddy skin, right? Come out of that sun."

  The girls drop down, obedient, to the blanket and begin making chains out of the same sort of yellow weeds my mother and I rooted out of the garden earlier. The mother reclines stiff-like into her resting place, as if something is hemming in her stomach and keeping her from moving in the natural way. Maybe it's all the lace and ruffles across her bodice, or the tight row of pearl buttons down the front of her dress. I look from the bare arms of my chiton to the patches of sweat darkening the sides of her dress and the fair curls at the back of her neck. She must be a strange one to wrap herself up this way in the dead heat of summer. I peer out from under cover of the olive tree, my palms pressed against its rough bark. I look at my hand on the wood. The sun has browned my skin the color of an oil-fried fish and dirt rims my fingernails. This woman must be rich, to never have to go out in the sun. She must have servants to milk her goats and serve her dinner. Father has told me about such people, and Mother has read to me about them from her books, but I thought they were fancy tales, like the cat who makes his master into a lord.

  The small girl drapes a chain of weedy flowers around her neck, and the older one arranges a shorter chain on the crown of her head like a diadem. But the sun must be making them drowsy, for after a few minutes they rest their heads next to their mother's breast and close their eyes. The wind rustles the leaves, and the dappled sunlight ripples over their sleeping forms. They make me think of statues fallen to the bottom of a clear pond.

  I step forward to the edge of the meadow, meaning to take a closer look at them in their strange clothes. As I move from behind the tree, something comes into view that makes me freeze, poised with one foot in the air and one hand trailing behind me. On the other side of the blanket, a young man lies on his back. He's clothed in white shirtsleeves and trousers of the same pale, striped material as the woman's dress. A vest crosses his middle, fastened with a row of brass buttons. A broad-brimmed hat tips back from his head, and under it, two dark brown eyes stare back at me.

  I turn and flee through the olive grove. I hear a scuffle in the dirt as he springs up to follow, and a hoarse whisper calling after me. His shoes crackle over the carpet of twigs and small stones, where my bare feet pass silently. I round the last row of trees and am about to hurl myself forward into the safety of the sunshine, when he grabs my arm. My own momentum swings me around. He catches me about the waist with his free hand, and we stand face to face, gaping at each other. He can't be more than a few years older than me, around the age when my father says men should be off learning war. His eyebrows angle down into a troubled knit as he stares.

  "Let go,” I say, and push him. He lets my arm slip from his hand and stumbles back a step. I should run, but I don't.

  "Who are you?” he asks. The words are soft in his mouth, not clipped like the woman's. He holds his hand out, as if asking me to wait.

  "Ourania,” I say.

  "Have you come from a play?” He turns to look around the wood. “Or do you belong to the Classical Society?"

  "I don't know what you mean,” I say, creeping back against the nearest tree. “Why would I want to be in a play?"

  "Your dress,” he says.

  I look down at my chiton. Mother and I painted it with beeswax and dyed it blue so a pattern of cream-colored birds and flowers shows through. Some of the flowers have come away smudged a muddy green from my leaning against tree trunks and falling asleep in the grass. I lick my finger and try to rub at the stain, but it's set in already. I sigh. He must think I'm part of a paupers’ troupe with my dirty robe and bare feet. I reach up to retie the bands around my hair and pull away a dead olive leaf. I crumble it in my free hand and drop the shreds to the ground, hoping he hasn't added that detail to my catalog of shames.

  "I've been working,” I say. “I fell asleep on the grass."

  He blinks at me, then swallows and blinks some more. “What are you?"

  I feel a scowl cloud my features. “I'm Ourania, like I said. What are you?"

  "Aaron Lyell. I'm an apprentice engineer."

  "A what?"

  "An engineer. You know, for locomotives."

  I stare at him.

  He clears his throat. “Trains. You know.” He shuffles his feet over the rocky ground.

  I cock my head to the side and wait for him to explain himself.

  "If you don't mind my asking, where do you come from?” He raises his eyes and looks at me with pure, innocent curiosity.

  "Down the valley,” I say, nodding to the slope beyond the break in the trees. “This is our olive grove."

  "I'm sorry,” he says. He runs his hand through his mess of short, curling hair, the same burnished yellow as the girls’ braids. “The company was surveying this tract of land for railway development, and I found this lovely meadow. Looked like a nice place for a picnic. I didn't know anybody was living here. We'll have to go back over the property records now, naturally....” He trails off, staring at me again.

  "Should I draw you a picture?” I say.

  "What's that?"

  "I said, should I draw you a picture,” I repeat. “That way you wouldn't have to look so hard."

  "Sorry,” he says. His pale skin goes a deep red and he looks down. “It's only...I've never, well, in books, but I've never seen anyone like you before."

  "You're a strange one,” I say, leaning against the tree behind me. “I've never seen anyone like you either. It's like you stepped out of a wives’ tale or—"

  "You're lovely,” Aaron interrupts, looking up at me suddenly.

  I feel my own face go hot and I look down at my bare feet. A peddler said something like that about me once, when my mother and I traded him some eggs for ribbons, but it didn't mean the same.

  I hug the book to my chest. We stand in silence, avoiding each other's looks.

  "May I ask,” Aaron says to break the long pause, “what is it you're reading?"

  I hold the book face-out so he can read the lettering.


  "On the Origin of Species,” he reads aloud. His eyes light up the way Father's do when he's telling how he brought down a hart after a daylong stalk through the forest. “You're interested in natural history?"

  I shrug, then lift my eyes to look at him sidelong. “Have you read it?"

  "Oh, yes,” he says, a grin parting his lips and tugging up his serious brow. “Engineering science is my trade, but I've a great interest in naturalism. Mr. Darwin is marvelous. Here.” He digs in his back pocket and produces a thin leather-bound volume. He holds it out at the tip of his fingers.

  I step forward warily and take the book. It opens up to reveal small, cream-colored pages crowded with precise drawings of flowers and birds, sketched in graphite. Below each likeness, the name of the specimen flows in Aaron's neat hand. I sit down on the ground and begin to page through from the beginning. “You did these?” I ask.

  "Yes.” Aaron sits cross-legged beside me.

  "I've never had time for drawing. Mother calls it a hobby.” I lift a page and stop with the book open to a sketch of the two girls I saw in the meadow. The older one is sitting with her feet up under her on a plump cushion, her head bent over an embroidery hoop. The younger leans against her, fast asleep, her hand resting on a cloth poppet.

  I look up from the book. “Are they your sisters?"

  He opens his mouth to speak, but a voice echoes up from the direction of the meadow instead. “Aaron?” It's the woman, stretching out the sound of his name. “Aaron, where've you gone?"

  He jumps up at the sound of her voice. “Coming,” he shouts back. Then quietly, his voice straining with nerves, he leans close and says, “Will you come here again next Sunday?"

  I sit on the forest floor in a muddle. “When's that?"

  "Seven days,” he says. A twig pops some way off among the trees. He glances over his shoulder and begins backing toward the sound. “Meet me here. Please. In the meadow. I only want a chance to know you better."

  His eyes stay fixed on me until I nod, and then he's gone, the soft thud of his shoes fading into the twisting file of trees. I wait a moment longer, and hear the woman's voice cut out mid-call. My body feels odd and full of humming energy. I can't feel my fingers, and when I look down, I see I'm still holding Aaron's little leather-bound book. I stumble up after him. I jog through the shaded grove, dodging olive trees and hopping stones. But when I reach the meadow, the only trace of my strange visitors is a square of flattened grass where they laid their blanket. I walk slowly back to the spot where Aaron and I sat, gather up both books in my arms, and turn my feet toward home.

  * * * *

  The afternoon passes slow and sluggish in the heat. Mother sets me to a column of geometry equations that have to do with the volume of water in our well during different seasons, while she ties on her veiled straw hat and heads out to check on the bees. I sit by the window with a wax tablet and stylus laid out in front of me and watch her white-swathed figure moving between the bee boxes. I would rather be out under all that cloth and sun than cloistered here with mathematics.

  I slip my hand between the folds of my robe and pull out Aaron's book. Its cover is worn smooth from handling. I dart my eyes to the window. Mother is easing a honeycomb from one of the hives. I spread the pages open and crease each one down as I turn. Aaron's hand is exact, picking out the smallest veins and petals of the flora and fixing a lively glint in a bird's eye, but I don't recognize a single one of them. A Latin name and a common one accompany each drawing. Both sound strange on my tongue, like a cousin to a word I know. Cercis occidentalis. Judas Tree. Junco hyemalis. Dark-eyed Junco. Callipepla californifica. California quail. I try to sound them out, but they turn my tongue to clay.

  I flip the pages under my thumb and the book falls open to a detailed sketch of an even road, flanked on both sides by tall bricked buildings. It's a street in a city of some kind, but nothing like the places I've read about or Mother describes. What might be blown glass clings to the buildings in sheets, and little curls of iron or wood jut from the stonework. Tradesmen's signs hang down from posts ensconced in the walls. There are hardly any animals in Aaron's picture, except a single horse and some kind of pygmy dog led by a woman dressed more or less the same as the one I saw in the meadow. No oxen. No goats. No chickens. No market stalls, even. The men wear tall hats, and the women cover their hair with bonnets. The next page holds the schematics for some sort of spoked wheel and chain device. Next, the skeleton of an impossibly tall building, and an oblong shape moving among the clouds. Zeppelin, the script beneath it reads.

  I put my hand to my lips and remember to breathe out. Is it real, or something Aaron made up in an idle hour? When I was young, I would draw fancy pictures full of lichen-dripped crevasses and monsters with hundreds of heads bobbing on their long, eel-like necks.

  "Ourania!” Mother's voice clips across my thoughts. She is struggling up the hill with two pails balanced out from her body in either hand.

  I snap the book shut.

  "Ourania!” Mother calls again. “Help me with the door."

  I open the door and stand back so she can pass through with the pails, honeycombs resting in sticky blocks at their bases. I keep quiet the rest of the evening. We finish butchering the stag in the cellar and jar the honey. We bake more bread. We light our lamps. We wait.

  * * * *

  "Father,” I ask that night when most of the bread from our dinner is gone. “Could you take me with you to the wood, if you wanted?"

  He chuckles, raising his eyebrows at me over the soup bowl at his mouth. “What do you want with the forest?"

  My eyes slide down to the empty bowl in front of me. I pick at a heel of bread. “You could teach me to hunt. I could help you."

  "But then who would help your mother? And who would be our messenger?” Father asks. He reaches across the table and pats my hand. “You make a better Mercury than you would a Diana, I think."

  I must be scowling, because Father laughs again. “Is your mother's company wearing on you?"

  "No,” I say. I pour the last of the wine into my cup. “I only miss you, that's all."

  "And you don't think my company would wear on you, too?” Father asks.

  "No,” I say again, cutting my eyes down to the table. I can see he doesn't mean to answer me. I open my mouth to speak again, then change my mind and snap my jaw shut instead.

  Father lifts an eyebrow. “Is there something else you wanted to ask, Ourania?"

  I duck my head and feel my face fill with heat. “No,” I say in a small voice.

  "You know I'll tell you anything you want to know,” Father says. “You only have to ask."

  I hesitate, and raise my eyes to him. “Do you know what a locomotive is?"

  Father's eyes narrow. “Where did you hear that word?” His voice has a tang of metal in it. I am suddenly aware of all the beasts he has felled.

  "Nowhere,” I say, dropping my eyes again quickly. My heart speeds up and I can feel the bread and lentils in my stomach curdle. “Nowhere. I mean, I read it. There was a book Mother had me read.” I bite the sides of my tongue and widen my eyes at the empty space on the table between us. He can't know all I've been reading. I might very well have seen the word written. I chance a look up to see if he'll take in what I've fed him. He stares back at me with that same hard look in his eyes. His usual, easy smile is gone, and I catch a glimpse of something dangerous coiled in its place.

  I rise to clear the bowls from the table. Father remains, watching me move about. I keep my back to him and push my hands beneath the water in our kitchen basin so he won't see them shaking. After a moment, I hear the scrape of his chair as he rises, and then the low tumble of wood as he kneels to build up the hearth fire. I stay at the dishes longer than I need, wiping them dry with extra care so I won't have to turn around and see the awful power in my father's face again.

  "Would you like to hear a story, Ourania?” Father asks, his voice softened and friendly again. He stands i
n the doorway, but I can barely hear him over the pop of burning logs.

  I sigh, slipping back into the comfort of our routine. “Please,” I say.

  Father has told me about Diana springing forth from father Zeus's head, Lord Rama, and the hero Sunjata's sister, who married the spirit beneath the hill, and later betrayed her husband to save her brother. Tonight he will tell me of the god Osiris, whose brother murdered him and scattered his flesh over the Nile, and of faithful Isis, who gathered together the body of her husband, and restored him to a throne in the underworld.

  * * * *

  But down on the earth, the sun halted its course at the edge of the sky. Dark did not fall, and all the beasts were trapped in a terrible half-light.

  "Why has Day stopped her course? Where is Night?” the animals cried. They cowered and trembled in the stillness.

  One of the beasts, the one called Man, stood upright. He held aloft a burning branch that tempered the darkness. “Don't be afraid,” he said. “I will go and find them. I will set them back on their paths and restore order to the world."

  Man ranged over hill and valley. He scoured the salt oceans. At last, he scaled the summit of the highest mountain. There he came upon the two of them, cradled together in a bed of stars.

  A hot anger flared in Man's breast to see them so reposed.

  "You, faithless ones,” Man said, and his voice sparked like new-caught fire. “How could you forsake us?” He reached up into the abyss of heaven and called down a terrible beast. It snaked across the sky like a serpent, and shook the earth as it passed. Thick scarab metal covered the length of its body, and it hissed and growled foul smoke that poisoned the air. Man set it on the lovers. So Night and Day were forced to flee from it, always, or be devoured.

  * * * *

  I am careful to rise early the next seven days. I milk the nanny goats in the chill, predawn mist, make cheese from what they give, practice my Latin and geometry, and watch the grain grow. At night, I hold Aaron's book open inside the copy of Darwin. Father asks me to read to him sometimes, but then shakes his head after only a few paragraphs of Mr. Darwin's prose and says he'll tell me a story instead. It suits us both better. By the way the wheat bows and the twinge of cold in the air at dawn, I know the harvest isn't far off.