by Wendy Orr
a bad-luck child.
So she watches
as one by one
the girls step up
with their mothers
or a father or an aunt,
with their neat plaited hair
and their line of names.
She watches the Lady
stare at their faces
as if searching for a sign.
Too late for Aissa
to step up now,
as the last girl
charcoals her name
on her scrap of clay.
Then Milli-Cat comes,
twining round Aissa’s feet,
and as the girl
drops her name in the urn,
Milli-Cat nudges
behind Aissa’s knees
with love and purrs,
till Aissa steps out.
She holds her head high,
step by slow step.
The square seems to grow.
She never thought it could be so far –
these twelve paces to the Lady.
‘Who names this girl?’
the Lady demands.
Blind Kelya does not see
the child she loves
standing alone.
‘It’s the girl called No-Name,’
says the tall guard
and in the audience
someone laughs.
‘She has no voice,’ adds the guard.
‘She doesn’t need a voice to dance,’
says the Lady,
filling Aissa with warmth
as if the sun
is shining on her.
‘Has she lived twelve springs?’ asks the Lady,
and from the Hall,
Kelya’s voice, growly with grief,
calls yes,
so that now the sun
glows right through Aissa.
But the Lady startles
at Kelya’s voice.
Just for a moment
she looks into Aissa’s eyes –
then shakes her head,
as if she’s seen something
that can’t be true.
‘Make your mark,’ says the Lady,
so quietly,
it seems her voice doesn’t work,
and Aissa knows
that the gods have chosen
and this is the sign.
The guard holds out the basket of shards.
Aissa chooses:
a piece long and thin,
tapering down to a point
like a dragonfly tail.
She takes the charcoal,
draws the sign of her name,
and drops it in.
The guard rolls the urn;
the Lady’s hand dips inside,
slowly, slowly,
as if touching and choosing,
and pulls out a shard.
Aissa feels a light
burn strong within her,
and holds her breath to hear
the no-name girl
named and claimed
as the Lady speaks out loud
the choice of the gods.
‘Nasta,’ says the Lady
and shows the mark
of a swimming fish.
Nasta, the eighth girl,
daughter of fishers,
chosen by the gods,
holds herself proud,
salutes the Lady.
Her mother wipes a tear;
Nasta turns
and spits at Aissa.
5
DRAGONFLY BANISHED
The kitchen garden sprawls between the Hall and the houses of the inner town. Its back wall is the solid rock of the mountain. Nothing grows against it, but it’s a good place to dump garbage. Aissa dumped dog droppings onto the pile this morning, and the lottery’s name shards will end up there too.
That’s where mine belongs! Aissa thinks bitterly. Buried in filth.
There are also piles of compost: rotting kitchen scraps, weeds and manure from the dovecotes. The waste shrinks as it turns into rich soil ready to dig into the garden. The three oldest heaps have shrunk so much there’s a gap between them and the cliff – a big enough space for Aissa to crawl through and hide. But she can’t hide from the voices in her own mind, and those are even crueller than the jeers and curses of the audience.
How did I dare?
I wish I’d never learned my name.
It’s a punishment for trespassing into the Lady’s bathroom.
Milli-Cat pushed me out there as if she knew. Is she laughing too?
She can’t bear to think of her only friend betraying her. It’s nearly as bad as wondering what’s going to happen next. Because she knows that Half-One and Half-Two, and every other servant right up to old Squint-Eye, will punish her for standing up as if she were a twelve-year-old girl like any other. She just doesn’t know what the punishment will be.
She waits till dark before she creeps into the servants’ kitchen. The floor is already covered with sleeping bodies, and she’s not brave enough to pick her way across them to find her cloak. She curls up on the bare stones just inside the door, where she can get out before anyone sees her.
But her stubborn name whispers around her head as she sleeps, and she dreams of dragonflies.
She wakes to the hiss of whispers. Swift as an eagle plummeting onto a rabbit, Aissa crashes from her dream into her body.
The kitchen is grey with the first light of dawn. The whispers get louder, like a venom-filled hiss. She huddles on the floor while the poisonous words flood over her.
‘She’s worse than cursed – she’s a demon!’
‘It’s the gods’ answer for letting her attempt the lottery.’
‘She should have been thrown out for the wolves when the raiders left her at the gates.’
‘The raiders didn’t leave her at the gates, idiot.’
‘Someone did. And they should have left her for the wolves.’
‘It’s not too late. We’ll go to the Lady, tell her we can’t spend another night with her here.’
‘Who knows what she’ll call in on us next?’
Aissa gives up trying to pretend she’s asleep. She opens her eyes.
A cloud of dragonflies is hovering over her.
She flees to the garden, and the dragonflies follow. When they disappear she feels more alone than she’s ever been.
Aissa’s always hated being small, but today she wishes she were smaller. Even more, she wishes she could have turned into a dragonfly and flown away with the cloud.
‘Keep away from us, insect demon!’ Half-One snarls when Aissa tries to snatch a barley cake from the kitchen waste.
‘Go and eat gnats!’ Half-Two adds.
‘We should tell Kelya that she’s a demon.’
‘And when Kelya tells the Lady, No-Name will be thrown off the cliffs.’
‘Or left out to feed the wolves,’ Half-One finishes. She licks her lips, which makes her look even more wolfish than she means to.
They turn together to Squint-Eye. Squint-Eye is so old she spends most of her life in the kitchens now, organising the others – with her stick if she needs to. She’s older even than Kelya, and the girls know that she is the only one who could approach the wise-woman.
‘Stupid girls!’ Squint-Eye snaps. ‘You don’t know anything!’
‘But . . .’
The long walking stick slashes at twin legs. ‘Anyone who talks to Kelya will feel this stick across their back.’
Half-Two squeals. Aissa almost smiles to see the red welt across her enemy’s calves.
‘I’ll decide what to do with No-Name,’ says Squint-Eye.
All that day Aissa sweeps and scrubs, grinds barley in the heavy stone querns, and even hauls extra water, because if she does everything as perfectly as she can, maybe Squint-Eye will forget that for two nights in a row, she’s filled the room with insects.
Maybe.
It’s nearly time t
o fill her bucket again and sponge the tables clean for the Hall folk’s dinner. Her stomach rumbles emptily; she’s had nothing since breakfast yesterday – she’ll be glad of the barley soup and leftovers when it’s her turn to eat.
She leans over the well to haul up her bucket. Someone pinches the back of her neck, so hard that Aissa jumps and nearly falls in.
Half-One. Of course. Half-One with a smug, malicious smile saying, ‘Squint-Eye wants you. Now.’
All the servants are in the kitchen. Every one of them is watching her.
‘Here, girl!’ Squint-Eye beckons. ‘In front of me: I need to see that you understand.’
There’s not a sound. The room seems to be holding its breath.
‘No-Name child,’ Squint-Eye says solemnly, ‘you brought a curse to this town the day you were abandoned at the gates. The Lady in her goodness allows you to live. But now you’ve shown yourself for the demon you are, calling up creatures in the night, I cast you out from the fellowship of servants. You will not sleep in the kitchen; you will not eat when we do. You will live as a rat in the night: you are no longer one of us. Now go.’
The words hit Aissa like stones, numbing her brain; she can’t understand what they mean.
She stares at the mass of hating faces.
‘Go!’ they shriek. ‘Get out of here! Go!’
‘Go!’ they say,
and Aissa goes
but her knees are weak,
her breath is gone
knocked from her chest
with the weight of words.
Creeping, broken, to the garden
to hide behind the heaps of waste,
because Aissa
is garbage too,
discarded like
a sucked-clean bone,
as if the gods hate her;
the earth rejects her.
Squint-Eye’s not a god
or Mother Earth,
but she is the keeper
of food and warmth
for Aissa.
She always thought
there was nothing worse
than being No-Name
the bad-luck girl,
but she was wrong.
No-Name was small,
but she was something –
if only to be
beaten and spat at.
Now she has a name
but she is nothing.
Huddled alone
through the night,
hearing the cries
of creatures in the dark
that she’s never heard
from the servants’ kitchen;
no cloak or roof,
cold teeth chattering,
stomach rumbling
because there’ll be no soup,
not for Aissa,
not tonight,
or ever again.
But worse than cold,
worse than hunger,
is being outside:
outside the kitchen,
outside the group,
outside life.
Because Squint-Eye’s curse:
cast out,
not one of us,
banished,
are just other words
for death.
Aissa wakes up colder, hungrier, and more confused than she’s ever been.
Squint-Eye will beat me if I don’t do my chores.
She’ll beat me if I’m found.
I’ll die if I don’t find something to eat.
I’ll die if they see me.
So she’s still hiding behind the furthest compost heaps when Half-One and Half-Two come to empty the slops onto the freshest pile. They’re talking so hard they don’t see her cowering there.
‘It can’t be true.’
‘But remember how Kelya used to feed her treats?’
‘She never did that for us.’
‘Tried to get her to talk.’
‘Ha! That was a waste of time!’
‘Did you see the Lady’s face?’
‘Horrified!’
‘Disgusted.’
‘Not—’
‘No, not that.’
‘Can you imagine?’
‘The gods wouldn’t be so cruel. No-Name in the Hall?’
‘The bulls would have died of fright.’
‘We’d have had to serve her for a year first.’
Their faces twist into identical expressions of horror and they burst out laughing.
‘But I still don’t understand. The firstborn daughter died.’
‘Squint-Eye says she didn’t.’
‘Squint-Eye told you that?’
‘She told Wormbreath and Wormbreath told Yogo.’
‘And Yogo told you. Of course he did: darling Yogo.’
Aissa hears a soft slap, and a giggle.
‘So if she didn’t die, what happened?’
‘Squint-Eye saw Kelya leave the Hall in the middle of the night with something under her cloak.’
‘When the first chief died?’
‘Twelve springs ago.’
‘Kelya took her to the farm that was raided?’
‘We always knew she was cursed.’
‘But still . . . how could No-Name be the Lady’s daughter?’
They laugh again. Which is lucky, because they can’t hear Aissa gasp.
The Lady’s daughter? The Lady’s firstborn, the one who died?
It can’t be.
They know she’s there. The twins would do anything to hurt her, that’s one thing she knows for sure. The other thing she knows is that Mama is her mother, and Mama loves her, wherever she is. That’s what mothers do. They don’t let other people steal them away in the night. They don’t look at them and not see them.
Her head is spinning so fast it might come right off her shoulders. The only thing to do is run.
Words like arrows
chasing her through the garden
out the gate and up the lane,
sobbing, panting,
on the path to the hills,
past the Source
with its dragonflies
mocking her name.
Beyond the path
to the wild hills,
far from town
with its spit and jeers
and the kitchen
no longer her home.
Running fleet as a hunted hare
she can’t outrun
what’s in her mind,
the hating eyes,
Squint-Eye’s words,
the twins’ story.
A story that can’t be true,
a story against nature,
against the gods
because the Lady is everything
and Aissa is nothing.
‘Aissa called fireflies,’
says a whisper in her mind,
‘and the dragonflies of her name
like the Lady calling snakes.’
But the Lady calls snakes
when she wants to,
singing in her big voice
borrowed from the gods.
Aissa doesn’t know
why the fireflies came to her
or the crickets
or dragonflies either
when she didn’t mean to call.
She doesn’t know how they heard
the tiny voice of her dreams.
All she knows
is that the question is too big
and she is too small
to even ask.
But now she’s heard it
she can’t stop.
If the Lady is her mother
then Mama is not.
But Mama is love,
and the Lady is not.
To have a mother
who is not a mother,
a sister
who doesn’t know her,
a father
dead like Papa –
both dead by her curse –
these are more fearful thoughts
&n
bsp; than being cast out
from the life she knows.
Aissa runs
till she hears nothing
but the blood in her ears
her heart leaping
as if it would jump from her chest
and run on alone.
Foot hitting a stone,
the stone skidding,
ankle turning;
legs limp as dead octopus,
crumple and fold.
Aissa crashing down
face-first through
a sharp-scented grey-green bush.
The world is black,
quiet and still,
a moment with no seeing,
no hearing or feeling
thinking or knowing.
Then her breath returns,
gasping, rasping
through her scratchy throat.
Salt blood in her mouth,
bitten tongue tender,
pain jolting from her ankle,
smarting hands and knees,
skinned and bloody.
Dust in her nose –
ribs hurt with the sneeze,
hurt more when she cries.
Aissa never cries,
not for eight years.
Has sniffled with loneliness,
had pain tears on her cheeks,
but not like this,
gulping and choking,
chest heaving,
throat raw,
curled like a hedgehog
under the bush,
rocking, thumping
forehead to ground,
back on her heels,
thumping again,
till the pain in her head
blots the pain in her mind.
But now she hears
an unearthly cry,
a terrible howling,
and Aissa’s alone
and undefended –
the grey-green needles
are not sharp enough
to stop a wolf.
Aissa is empty,
a hollow nothing;
no one will care
if the wolf eats her.
Not even Aissa.
But her body cares
about crunching and tearing,
blood and pain.
It does not want to die.
Sliding out from the bush,
grabbing a rock,
then a bigger one,
another and another:
a heap of stones,
because Aissa can throw
rocks that find their mark
and the wolf won’t like it
any more than bullying boys.
She is still alone
but not undefended.
Listening again:
to birds singing,
crickets chirping,
no wolf crying.
No grey shape crouches
in the grass
or stands vigil
on the high rock.
The howling was Aissa,
making noise
all by herself,