Trust Me Too

by Paul Collins

  Her favourite place is in the window alcove of the temple, sitting still as stone in the shadows behind the screen, while her mother sings to the snakes. The halls are cleared and hushed just before the priest ess enters: it only takes a moment to jump, grab the ledge and swing herself onto it. There’s a split second of fear as she balances and pulls herself up to the window, then an easy wriggle through the gap between the latticework screen and the edge of the windowsill.

  Her head resting on her knees, she crouches on the cool stone watching the asps slither from their pots. One by one, they come to the priestess’s call, twining around her arms as she dances the secret, sacred rites. Watching and listening, as mesmerised as the snakes themselves, Aysha used to pretend that her mother knew she was there, and was singing for her, too.

  She can’t pretend any longer, because at the last new moon, the priestess began initiating Fila into the mysteries. Aysha should have been struck deaf already for listening. But Fila, Aysha’s beautiful, sweet-natured younger sister, has a voice to scare toads. The snakes do not come to her; they become agitated and hiss, and if the priestess didn’t sing them away, her favoured daughter would die a swollen, painful death twenty times over.

  Aysha is the unfavoured daughter, the dark and bony girl with a twist to her mouth, the baby who should have been abandoned at birth if her father, with tears in his eyes and a sharp knife in his hand, had not sliced off the limp sixth finger budding from the little finger of each hand.

  The gods were not pleased. Aysha’s father, the strongest diver on the island, was swept off his boat and swallowed by the sea the very next day. The priestess gave the baby to a temple maid to rear, and never spoke to her again.

  Now all that remains of those unlucky digits are their two silver snips of scar - but the islanders have long memories. At the sight of Aysha they turn their heads to spit her evil luck over their left shoulder. She’d never thought it could be any other way until Luki stopped doing it. Maybe that’s why she’s curi ous when she notices him now. He’s slipping out a side door as she returns from the woods with her basket full of dew-wet herbs. He doesn’t see her, and she can tell by the hunch of his shoulders and the softness of his step that he doesn’t want to be seen.

  Luki is not an outcast. Luki is loved and adored, because his life and death will keep the island safe. He is one of the two boys and two girls, born the same year as Aysha, who will leave to dance for the Bull King in the spring.

  The deal is simple: the King in his distant palace needs fresh blood for his bulls; Aysha’s small island needs the protection of his ships. So four youths are sent every two years, and four thousand islanders are kept safe from being invaded and sold into slavery.

  That’s the promise, and it’s held true for genera tions. The other promise is that anyone who survives the bull dancing for two full years will be free to return to their own home. No one alive has seen that promise tested, but the grandmothers remember a man who was old when they were young, who was said to have come home at the end of his two years covered in gold.

  So the bull dancers leave their families at seven summers to live in the Temple compound and learn all they can about dancing with the bulls. Maybe, just maybe, each of them thinks, I’ll be the one to

  SUrviVe.

  But sometimes Aysha thinks that being worshipped isn’t so different from being outcast. Girls giggle and call out to Luki as he passes, boys mimic the way he tosses his hair out of his eyes, but he has no more true friends than she does.

  She goes on into the kitchen, carrying her basket through to the cool cellar of the wise women’s larder. The cooks are clattering and calling, but she is, as usual, invisible. No one asks where she’s going as she heads down the winding lane in the direction Luki’s gone. More importantly, no one else has seen him leave. As the lane ends in a field of sprouting corn, she spots a lone figure, already far in the distance, heading into the woods.

  Aysha skirts wide and follows. She has to remind herself not to hum. Whenever she’s alone, she sings, as naturally as breathing. Sometimes it takes her by surprise when she hears it in a sudden silence, when the flight of a hawk stills the small birds’ chirping, so that only Aysha’s throbbing hum rises into the still air. If she didn’t keep her mouth against her knees when she hid in the temple, she’s afraid she could commit the greatest sacrilege of all and sing for the snakes.

  The path climbs steadily up a hill; Aysha picks her way through the undergrowth beside it until suddenly she comes out blinking into sunshine. She’s at the top of a steep, rocky slope. At the bottom of the slope is a wide green field. Even before she sees him, Aysha understands immediately why Luki has come here so secretly.

  Powerless to stop him, Aysha slips silently across to a thicket of wild roses and huddles behind their prickly screen.

  Luki is not alone in the field: he’s facing a large, angry billy goat. The boy is bouncing on his toes and raising his arms to the sky; the goat is rearing, dancing on its hind legs.

  The goat lowers its head and charges. Luki grabs the horns, flips into a handstand, and throws himself over its back.

  Aysha holds her breath. This is exactly why bull dancers are forbidden to leave the temple compound on their own: they need to be alive and healthy when the ships arrive.

  Luki lands on his feet. He claps his hands above his head, taunting the big goat. The animal is only confused for a moment; it spins around and charges again. The boy grabs the horns - but his timing is out. He starts to leap too soon, the goat swerves as Luki starts to pull himself up.

  Suddenly the bull dancer is on the ground with the goat above him.

  Aysha bites her fist to stop from screaming. Luki doesn’t move.

  Aysha scrambles out from behind the roses, thorns tearing at her skirt and arms. Rage fills her; she’s ready to punch the goat between its horns, chase it through the field all the way down to the sea.

  The goat, however, has lost interest now that its enemy is fiat on the ground. It butts the bull dancer’s thighs half-heartedly, then trots away.

  Luki still doesn’t stir.

  Aysha hesitates. A moment ago she’d been afraid he’d know she was spying - now her heart is clench ing with true, white terror. She wants to run for help; she can’t, won’t, be the one to find him dead.

  Blood dripping from her scratches, she runs, leap ing, skidding, down the rocks towards him. ‘Luki!’ His name freezes on her lips. Slithering towards the fallen boy is an asp, quick and lively in the noon warmth. Full of venom after its winter sleep.

  Time stops. Blues of sea and sky, greens of grass and shrubs, shadows of forests, sharpen and then blur into background; Aysha can see nothing but the boy lying on his back, one arm thrown above his head, and the snake sliding closer to that outstretched hand.

  It’s nearly there. She can’t rage or chase or sacri fice herself; anything she does now will only drive the serpent faster towards the bull dancer’s death.

  Then the fluting Snake Song of the high priestess wafts through the air. It’s high and pure: a new song especially for this snake, on this day in this field.

  The asp raises its head. Aysha’s vision is so sharp now she can see its long tongue flickering.

  The song continues.

  The snake veers away from the boy’s hand. It curves and slithers back the way it came, movmg steadily and calmly towards Aysha.

  Luki sits up, rubbing his eyes. He stares at Aysha, at the snake, and back at her.

  The singing stops. Time moves again; the air blows fresh against her cheek. The snake disappears under a rock. Aysha looks around but the priestess is nowhere to be seen.

  ‘It was you,’ Luki says.

  ‘But I can’t! I couldn’t ...’

  ‘You did,’ says Luki, walking towards her. ‘You’re the snake singer.’

  ‘I’m
forbidden!’ Aysha holds up her hands, as if the bull dancer might be the only person on the island not to know their history.

  ‘Forbidden by priests, not the gods,’ says the bull dancer. ‘Like my practising today.’ He takes her imperfect hands in his, rubbing his thumbs along the silvery scars. Aysha can hardly breathe for the song rising in her heart.

  Luki looks away awkwardly. ‘I have no right to ask, but ...’

  ‘You can trust me to keep your stupidity secret!’ she snaps, jerking her hands free.

  ‘How could I not trust you?’ he asks. ‘I owe you my life. But while I’m away, would you sing for me sometimes, so I can think of you out here, where your song can carry across the sea?’

  ‘I swear by all the gods,’ says Aysha. ‘I’ll sing here at dawn every morning until you return.’

  ‘I swear by all the gods,’ he replies, taking her hands again, ‘that I will return.’

  The walls of the maze were made of rough hewn yellow stone. The floors and ceilings, too. Occasional gleams of quartz threw Ros’s clear yellow light back at him, like the eyes of spiders at night, as he faced another difficult choice.

  The tunnel he had been following terminated at a crossroads. There were no scratch marks on any of the walls, indicating that he hadn’t come this way before. Of the three paths ahead of him, two of them likely went nowhere, since there was only ever one way into the centre of a maze. Possibly all three were dead ends.

  Ros played with the scant wisps of hair on his chin and thought hard.

  He wasn’t afraid of mazes per se. He had escaped from several over the years, all of them set by his teacher, Master Pukje, as tests of his ability to navigate, to reason, or to run. This maze, however, contained no swirling, tantalising lights to distract him, no puzzles to solve - apart from the maze itself - and no sharp-toothed creatures snapping at his backside to make him hurry. This maze was something entirely different.

  He considered his options. The air from each of the tunnels smelt and felt the same. Each path seemed equally curved as far as his eye could see. None of them gave any sign that it would lead to the centre of the maze.

  Giving up on reason, Ros tried chance instead. He gritted his teeth, gripped his chin-hairs tightly, and pulled.

  Two came loose. By a code he had determined earlier, that meant he should take the second en trance on his left. Straight ahead, in other words.

  It had better be the right one, he told himself, or he would soon run out of bum-fluff

  That was the least of his worries.

  He scored a notch in the yellow wall and set off down the new tunnel. It wound left, then right, then left again. No junctions, no tempting passageways to either side. Was he imagining it, or did the air smell fresher? He put on speed, beginning to hope that this time he had found the one, that he was at last about to reach the centre ...

  Ros ran around the third bend and skidded to a halt.

  Ahead of him was nothing but yellow stone and gleaming quartz.

  Another dead end.

  He took a deep breath, telling himself that he wasn’t scared - not of a maze, no matter how strange it might seem. No matter how deadly.

  The floor vibrated underfoot. Dust rained from the ceiling above. The candle burning in his palm began to dance as though in a fitful breeze.

  Instinctively, Ros crouched down as the maze contracted around him, growing fractionally smaller in less time than it took to turn in a circle, twice.

  When he stood up again, the tips of his dusty hair brushed the ceiling of the maze.

  He dusted himself down, resolved not to think of how many more dead ends he could afford, and turned back the way he had come.

  It had started innocently enough, with quite under standable curiosity.

  ‘What happened to your last apprentice, Master

  Pukje?’

  ‘You don’t need to know.’

  He had been twelve years old the first time he had asked and, unsatisfied with his teacher’s dismissive answer, he had repeated the question at every opportunity. Now he was fourteen and in all the time between, Master Pukje had never once mentioned another student. Not specifically, although Ros knew he wasn’t the first. It was only natural that he wanted to know more about the ones who had come before him.

  ‘I don’t understand why you won’t tell me about them. Did they grow up to be famous Change workers, or did something horrible happen to them?’

  ‘I told you. You don’t need to know. Something horrible will happen to you if you keep asking.’

  Ros wouldn’t take no for an answer. If he asked once, he asked a thousand times - in hope of a reward when he did well, and when he did badly because he knew he couldn’t get in any more trouble.

  And then, just a week ago, while setting camp in the hollow of a stony outcrop, his back carefully turned while his teacher changed from dragon to imp form, ‘Please, Master Pukje. Won’t you tell me what happened to your last apprentice?’

  ‘You don’t want to know.’

  The slight difference in wording caught Ros’s ear immediately.

  ‘I do want to know, Master Pukje. Why would I ask you so often if I didn’t?’

  His teacher came around to face him. There was no mistaking the mischievousness in his tilted, glit tering eyes.

  ‘You only think you want to know,’ he said, ‘because you don’t know anything, really.’

  ‘That’s true, Master Pukje,’ said Ros, trying humility where all else had failed. ‘But if you won’t tell me, how will I ever learn?’

  The imp barked a laugh.

  ‘All right, but I need you to fetch some things first. There are particular plants that grow in the shadows around here, deep in the cracks where the sun never shines. We’ll want water, too, and a fire.’

  Ros wondered why all this was necessary just to learn a little history, but he did as he was told and, come nightfall, as the fat moon rose up in a bright starry sky, he got his answer.

  ‘You want to know what happened to my last apprentice?’ Master Pukje held out a stone beaker containing the potion he had made. ‘Drink this.’

  Ros took the beaker and studied its contents. The potion was thick and greenish, with numerous black dots floating on its surface like pimples. As he stared, one of the dots popped, emitting a puff of mist that stank of ancient swamps and underpants.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘You see what it is.’

  ‘I mean, what does it do?’

  ‘It does what it does.’

  Ros rolled his eyes. Sometimes having a conversa tion with his teacher was like being tied up in knots.

  ‘I mean, what does this have to do with your last apprentice?’

  ‘Drink and find out.’

  ‘It smells like poison.’

  Master Pukje squatted in front of Ros so the fire was at his back. A falling log sent out a spray of golden sparks that rose up above his head like a halo. He folded his hands and settled down, as though to watch Ros’s internal struggle play out.

  ‘Don’t you trust me, Ros?’

  Ros didn’t know how to answer that question. He had entered his apprenticeship willingly, even though he knew next to nothing about the creature who would be teaching him. Sometimes he felt as though he were learning matters of great profundity, but other times he felt that Master Pukje was toying with him, keeping him busy so he wouldn’t learn anything important on his own. He didn’t know if this was one time or the other.

  ‘Should I trust you, Master Pukje?’

  ‘I don’t know. Can you?’

  Ros agonised for a dozen breaths. If he didn’t drink the potion, he would always wonder ...

  Raising the beaker, he knocked back its contents in three gulps, willing himself not to taste the potion as i
t slid down his throat.

  ‘There,’ he gagged, handing his teacher the empty beaker. ‘So what’s the big secret?’

  ‘Wait and see.’

  Master Pukje leaned close to catch him as the fire went out and the world fled.

  When Ros woke, he was in darkness, lying limp on his side with his mouth full of dust. It took four at tempts to get to his feet and two to conjure a small amount of light. Only then did he learn that he was in a vaulted hall, the ceiling of which hung far above his head, just out of reach of his tiny flame.

  He didn’t know about the maze until he followed the hall to the first intersection and learned that it was just one of many such tunnels, wending and winding through unknown depths. He knew all about mazes - specifically, that they had centres. Hard experience had taught him that if he could find the centre, Master Pukje would let him out, and not before. He had no reason to believe that this maze was different to any other.

  Then he took a wrong turn and met his first dead end.

  With a shudder like one of his teacher’s dragon ish late-night shivers, the maze shrunk around him and suddenly, where once had been only shadow, he could see the yellow ceiling.

  That was weird.

  Two more dead ends and the ceiling came within reach of his questing fingers.

  That was worrying, given he still had no gut feel ing on how to navigate the maze. The skills Master Pukje had taught him were no use to him in here: he had tried to get his bearings that way and failed many times. He might wander at random for days, hoping for a lucky break but never finding one.

  He didn’t let that deter him. If anything, Ros’s determination grew stronger. He would find the centre somehow and make the maze his own, and show Master Pukje that he wasn’t so easily cowed.

  Two more dead ends and two more grinding, unstoppable contractions crushed his certainty somewhat.

  Using his bare hands, he tried digging his way out through the ceiling and nearly brought a landslide down upon him.