by Wendy Orr
but the Lady
is still not there.
Luki stands,
shakes his head,
rubs his back,
‘That was stupid,’ he says,
‘but I wanted to know
what it would be like
to leap an animal
instead of a wall.
The boar was the biggest
one I could think of,
and I’ve known this one
since he was a porker.
You won’t tell?’
Then he remembers
that Aissa can’t.
‘But you sang!
You’re the snake singer,
the one to follow the Lady.
People say it’s Fila,
but I’ve heard her voice –
it must be you.
How can you sing
when you can’t talk?’
Aissa doesn’t know,
though she would like to understand.
Doesn’t quite believe
that she was the singer
except that her throat
feels raw and open,
as if something great
has passed through it.
And no one else was there to sing.
There’s a lot she doesn’t know
and a lot Luki wants to.
‘I won’t call you No-Name –
you must have a name,
you marked it at the ballot.’
Aissa holds out
the mama stone around her neck
to let him read the dragonfly mark.
‘Aissa,’ says Luki,
the first person since Mama
to call her by name,
and she never knew
how perfect it could sound.
‘Aissa the snake singer,
who lives under the sanctuary rock –
you’re not the only one who watches.’
Luki’s head hurts, but he is walking straight and tall; it’s Aissa who’s trembling as they turn into the shelter of the oaks. The world has shaken and changed – and yet leaves flutter, birds hop from branch to branch, and a pair of eagles soar overhead, just like any other day. When they pass the swineherd’s hut, the herder and his dog are still asleep. The sun has barely moved in the sky.
‘It feels like days since I left,’ says Luki. ‘I can’t believe we’ll be back before the end of siesta.’
Aissa shakes her head violently, No! The servants will be up and bustling soon. She can’t go back to town till dark.
‘Where do you go?’
Wherever’s safest! Aissa thinks, gesturing widely out to the hills.
‘I’m going to tell the Lady what happened, and how you saved me. The worst that can happen to me is a lecture – but she’ll have to treat you better!’
A chill runs through Aissa’s body. Tell the Lady that No-Name has sung a snake! It’s like asking for the end of the world.
She feels Luki’s eyes on her, and forces herself to meet them. Finally he seems to hear her silent scream.
‘I won’t tell if it scares you,’ he says more quietly.
They walk on quickly.
At the stone bridge. Luki makes the thank-you sign again and runs the rest of the way back to town. He’s hoping to be back on his bed before anyone knows he’s gone.
Aissa huddles under the bridge all afternoon. If it weren’t for the cats waiting in the cave, she’d stay there all night.
The fear
is bigger than Aissa
and her mind flees.
She looks down
at her hollow self,
her body as sheer
as a black dragonfly wing
and where her belly
and heart should be,
there is nothing.
‘Snake singer, snake singer,’
she hears in her head,
more terrifying
than any other chant
she’s heard.
It was easy to lock
the story of the Lady’s dead daughter
in a secret box in her mind,
because it was impossible
that it could be her.
Only the Lady can sing snakes,
and only the Lady’s daughter,
the Lady-to-come,
can learn.
Yet Aissa has done it –
without learning,
without voice.
And though she could never
be the Lady-to-come
could it be
that she’s the daughter
who should have died
and didn’t?
Death might have been easier
than bearing the gods’ anger
for living.
Only the gods’ rage can explain
why the Lady’s daughter
is hiding alone in a cave
cast out even
by the servants.
If she is the Lady’s daughter
then who is Mama?
And Papa
and all who loved her –
she knows they did
though she remembers
not much else
and now she’s not even sure
of that.
Her thoughts spin
in jagged circles,
till she feels
sick and dizzy.
It’s impossible
that the Lady could have borne Aissa –
Aissa is nothing
and the Lady is everything.
If she is the Lady’s daughter
why did the Lady want her dead
and not love her as she loves Fila
and the little boys
and as Milli-Cat
loves her kittens?
But if she is not
the Lady’s daughter
then how
did she sing the snake?
She knows in her heart
that it was her,
that wild strange music,
high as a flute,
a song with no words
and powerful magic.
She just doesn’t know how –
and that’s a very big thing
not to know.
‘And what about
the fireflies above your bed
when you dreamed them,
the dragonflies
when you learned your name,
and the crickets
the goddess told you not to eat?’
asks the voice in her head
that isn’t silent at all.
‘Or Parsley the goat
that came to you
when you held Spot Goat
in your mind?’
Hands over ears
can’t block the thoughts
till another voice –
a new, small voice –
says, ‘Maybe I could try.’
She doesn’t know
what she could try,
but knows that if it’s true
the gods will send a sign.
And they do.
The very next day,
foraging wild grapes –
leathery sweetness to pop in her mouth –
she watches a bee
hunting its own sweetness
in fading flowers;
sees it leave the plant,
bumbling no longer,
to fly a straight line
back to its home.
So Aissa follows.
In her spying,
she’s watched beekeepers
rob a hive
with smoke and masks.
Further back,
there’s a memory of Kelya,
the old woman holding
tiny Aissa on her knee,
coaxing her tongue
with honey dripping from a spoon,
though failing to make the mute child talk.
‘That was kindness!’
&nb
sp; Aissa thinks in surprise,
and knows there are more
questions of Kelya,
but now she must think
only of the bee.
It’s hard to see as it crosses a rock
and she doesn’t want
to lose it now.
Flying to a rocky cliff,
a small outcrop on the mountain’s face,
the bee disappears
into a hole –
a buzzing, humming hive.
Aissa stops,
watches
and thinks.
If she can sing out the bees
and rob their hive,
it could mean
that what Luki says is true –
but if she fails,
is covered with stings
from an angry swarm
she’ll never have to
think of this again.
And of course she’ll fail,
because when she opens her mouth
she hears Mama say,
‘Don’t make a sound,
stay quiet,
still as stone, till I come back,’
and no song comes out.
But she can’t help
a silent song within her mind
of flowers and nectar,
bees in flight,
and one by one
then in a cloud,
the bees fly past her
till the buzzing hive
is silent.
No choice now but to climb the rock
to the sweet-scented hole
and dip her arm into the darkness,
waiting for the sting
that never comes.
The hive is full
of waxy cells
dripping with honey,
a gift from the gods –
and even though she’d wanted to fail
Aissa is grateful.
She throws the first comb
to the goddess.
And then she tastes
and knows that even the Lady
could never have anything
better than this;
crams her mouth
and the pouch on her belt
with honeycomb to store in her cave
for the hungry winter.
But even sliding to the ground,
chewing the last sweetness
from her ball of wax,
thanking the bees with her mind
as she’d thanked the goddess with the comb,
she wishes she was running
from angry bees.
Easier to be No-Name
and have no mother at all
than be a maybe daughter
to both Mama and the Lady.
Even though she passes the sanctuary window every morning as she leaves the cave, Aissa doesn’t spy into it anymore. It’s been too frightening since she’d heard the twins’ crazy story of who she might be; too painful to watch and wonder.
Now she has to.
She crouches in the hollow in the rock, waiting for the Lady to come. Every cell of her body is alert, as if this morning the Lady will read an oracle just for her, and Aissa will understand. With her sharpest spying eyes, she watches the Lady choose a pot from the snakes’ cool cave to carry into the sanctuary.
Watching as Fila
drops a mouse from her basket to the snakes,
seeing that Fila
still wants to cry.
‘She could never
kill a wolf,’ thinks Aissa,
with a thrill of almost-pride,
even though
it’s hard to believe
she’s done it herself.
The Lady’s song begins;
the snake begins to rise –
a hugging snake,
not a deadly biting viper
which is good
because when Fila starts to sing
her voice is still as sharp
as Milli-Cat’s claws
and when she leans
over the pot
the snake rears and bites her hand.
Now Fila does cry,
for hurt and shame
as she sucks off the blood
but no real harm.
And Aissa knows –
the Lady knows –
Fila knows –
that if it had been a viper
her tears would be only
the start of her dying.
So the Lady will always choose
the hugging snakes
for Fila to sing
and not think of the day
when her daughter must call
a deadly viper.
The Lady singing again
till the snake is calm
and she can carry it out
to raise the sun.
And all the while,
through the snake song,
through the tears and calming
and the tune for the sun,
Aissa feels her own song
rise in her heart,
swirling, rushing,
flowing through her
like the river
from the Source to the sea –
and her only fear
is that it will burst out
as it did for Luki.
So the Lady doesn’t need
to read an oracle
because that inside song
tells Aissa who she is
though it doesn’t say why
she doesn’t belong.
14
DRAGONFLY AT THE SOURCE
The night-time cave is too dark for Aissa to work on her dragonfly carving, but she keeps it in her pouch to whittle when she can. It takes days to lick off all the honey after she crams the honeycomb in with it.
The olive wood feels good in her pouch, a solid reminder of who she is. Every afternoon she thinks the dragonfly’s finished and that she’ll offer it to the goddess in the morning, and every morning she sees a reason to work on it another day. If she doesn’t stop soon there’ll be nothing left.
She’ll take it to the Source early in the morning, as soon as the sun is safely risen, like she did the first time she saw the carved offerings.
The mornings are cool again. It’s grape-picking time out in the hills; days are warm and bright, but the nights are cold. Aissa and Gold-Cat sleep folded in the wolf fur, warmth over and softness under. She’ll need the fur when she gets out of the water at the Source.
Servants don’t wear furs. Outcasts definitely don’t.
But servants catch cold and sometimes die if they’re wet and can’t get warm again. Squint-Eye gives them extra hot soup to make them better because she can’t boss them if they’re dead.
Outcasts never get hot soup. Aissa figures that’s why she’s never met another one – they die even faster than servants.
She’ll wear her wolf cloak. Inside out, so it looks like goatskin, fastened tight at the neck with her bone pin.
Her dragonfly,
carved bit by bit
over long summer days
and cooler autumn,
chipped and scratched,
wings ragged
where she pushed too hard
with her small flint knife,
maybe not much like
a dragonfly at all,
but it’s part of her
and she hopes the goddess accepts it
as her gift.
Not safe to let
anyone else see
because if they guess
the dragonfly is hers
they might destroy it
hoping they’ll kill
Aissa too.
So she hesitates
on the slope to the Source,
steam rising in cool morning air;
she can’t tuck her dragonfly
under the rocks at the edge
like the other offerings
anyone can see.
She strips off her cloak,
her rope sling and tunic,
folds them neatly on the rock
and slides in,
not where the water’s coolest,
but where she can see
an islet of rock
poking through the blue water.
The water hotter
than she thinks she can bear
and deeper;
but she’s in too far
to turn around.
Toes clinging
to the end of a ledge
where the floor drops to nothing,
the heart of the earth,
the source of life;
she stretches to the islet,
face in the water,
feeling the dragonfly land,
letting it go
with a silent ‘please’
not sure exactly
what the please is for –
and throws herself backwards,
arms flailing,
hot deep water over her head,
but her feet still touching
as she splashes to the edge,
safe,
her dragonfly prayer safe on the rock,
while a dragonfly,
real and blue,
hovering over her as she drips,
accepts the goddess gift.
The grape harvest is good this year. Luki’s mother and brother arrive at the Hall leading two goats with panniers of grapes: one for the Lady and three for the market. The rest will be dried into raisins or stomped into wine. It’s a busy time.
‘I’ll ask the chief if I can go home to help,’ Luki says. ‘A few days without training won’t make any difference.’
‘Luki!’ His mother looks around furtively. ‘Your life is in the Hall.’
For now, Luki thinks gloomily.
‘Why would you even want to work if you don’t have to?’ asks his brother. ‘Are you crazy?’
‘Don’t call the bull dancer crazy!’ his mother snaps.
‘I don’t care,’ says Luki.
A few months ago he would have punched his brother and they would have wrestled until they were pulled apart. Now he could kiss him for it. His brother is the only one who sometimes remembers that he’s still himself.
He can’t explain that to his mother. He can’t tell anyone how much he misses the farm; how he’d rather be worn out from a day of picking grapes than be pampered in the Hall. Tomorrow is the autumn festival, when night and day are the same length and farmers bring in the baskets of grapes they owe the Lady. They’ll pour them into huge tubs, and everyone will have a turn at climbing in to tread them into juice: the Lady and her family, and Luki and Nasta right after them, stamping their god-luck into the wine. He’ll feel the juice and the slippery skins squishing between his toes, but he won’t do it long enough for his calves to ache, and he won’t haul the juice out into barrels to make the wine – and it won’t be his family’s grapes or his family’s wine.
And he won’t ever grow up to harvest his own grapes or olives or barley ... But I’m a bull dancer! he reminds himself. What an honour!
Some days he almost believes it. Just not today.