by Wendy Orr
It’s also their business to know what’s going on with the islanders. People tell secrets when they’re worried or in pain, and healers hear them. Women gathering greens in the sunshine sometimes forget who they’re talking to, and say more than they intend. They gossip about mean-spirited neighbours and loving relatives; about a fisher who’s lost his luck or a herder her goats.
The wise-women’s real wisdom is that they’ll listen to anyone, even the servants. Servants not only spill their masters’ secrets – sometimes their own are worth listening to.
Yet the wise-women are also the only people the Lady truly trusts. It’s their knowledge that lets her judge exactly what each islander owes the goddess. It’s their wisdom that guides her on the dates for sowing and harvesting.
Until twelve years ago, the Lady went out into the fields and hills herself. She observed the birds and took what she saw back to the sanctuary to tell the snakes. She danced in the sacred mountain spaces until she felt the goddess speak.
But the goddess hasn’t spoken to the Lady since the night she sent her baby daughter to be killed. She lives in fear of displeasing the gods again, and goes out only for the ceremonies that demand it. And although she still reads the oracle, she always sends for Kelya before she starts. Her maid is sent out, the door is closed, and voices murmur for an hour or two until finally the Lady goes to the snakes’ cave to read the future.
Now that Kelya is blind, she relies on the younger wise-women’s sightings, and decides not only what is significant enough to be passed on to the Lady, but the best way to describe it. If a hawk carrying a dead dove is attacked by an eagle, is it more important that the hawk has lost its prey, or that it survived the eagle’s attack? Or is the significance in the death of the dove? The signs are often so clear to Kelya that she can’t help hinting how the oracle might interpret them.
So there are many reasons why Aissa can never become an apprentice. People aren’t going to share their news with her, and she certainly can’t be a midwife – no woman wants a cursed child delivering her baby. Even her spying skill is useless if she can’t pass on what she’s learned.
But Aissa’s never dreamed of being an apprentice to anyone, let alone the wise-women. A full belly and not being spat at – those had been her dreams. Now she has food at every meal, even if she eats alone. The constant pain in her stomach disappears. Her arms and legs are filling out and she must even be getting taller, because in just one turning of the moon, her tunic has got shorter. Now it’s a spare, for when her new one is being washed. She’s safe, warm and fed; she’s learning, listening and not being beaten – and as long as she sticks close to the wise-women, no one dares spit at her.
One cool, cloudy morning, out helping Roula dig up nettle roots for the winter, her hands stinging and her back aching, Aissa is suddenly so full of joy she feels she’s going to burst. Roula stops to stretch and groan, but Aissa throws herself into a cartwheel – awkward at first, then whirling free, over and over down the hill.
She can’t imagine she could ever ask for more.
Roula is glad
to have a servant under her
though she wishes that Aissa
could eat in the kitchen
and that she, Roula,
wise-women’s apprentice,
didn’t have to serve food
to her servant.
And sometimes
when she sees Gold-Cat purring
on Aissa’s chest
she wonders how a servant
can have a cat
when the cats belong to the Lady
and Roula can’t have one.
But Kelya says
to bring the food,
don’t ask about the cat,
and Roula knows better
than to disobey.
Not because of fear,
but because Kelya
is usually right –
and besides,
when she brings a meal
Aissa thanks her
with hand on heart and light in her eyes,
as grateful as if Roula
were the Lady herself.
Aissa knows
that Roula doesn’t like her,
but she likes that Roula
is kind anyway,
or at least, not unkind.
She feels Lyra and Lena watching
to see what she does wrong
as if they haven’t decided yet
what they think of her.
But now that Kelya doesn’t care
what the world thinks,
now that Aissa is finally
under her protection
in the wise-women’s chamber,
the gentleness of her hands
on Aissa’s face
sometimes feels
like the licking of Milli-Cat’s tongue
on her precious kittens.
But there’s still fear
in the pit of her belly
when she leaves the warm room
to pass the kitchen
or the market square.
She’d thought she’d be glad
to imagine the rage
of the twins or Squint-Eye,
at knowing she’s safe –
but when she sees
Half-One pale on a bench
or Half-Two strutting her hate
her body doesn’t know it’s safe
and shivers.
And now
on her way back from the servants’ privy –
the path clear, no one around –
the servants are all
in front of the kitchen
laughing
at Half-Two in a frenzy,
furious because
her sister’s still not quite her sister.
She blames Aissa
but can’t touch her,
so she’s thrashing Pigeon-Toe,
screaming that the floor’s not clean,
lashing out with feet and hands.
The little boy’s cries
go to Aissa’s heart,
and white rage rises
from her belly
to her burning eyes.
No time for fear,
she shoves through the crowd –
servants or townfolk, she doesn’t care –
grabbing raging Half-Two
by the shoulders,
so they both fall backwards
with the twin on top
and Pigeon-Toe free,
running as fast as he can
away from the fight.
The crowd laughing harder,
shouting and jeering
as Half-Two scrambles up,
sees her attacker,
howls in horror
and jumps with both feet
at Aissa’s belly.
Aissa rolls
just in time –
but Half-Two swoops
and yanks her upright
by her hair –
Aissa has grown,
but Half-Two is still bigger.
Time goes slow;
Aissa can hear the whistle
of the twin’s raging breath
above the shouts of the crowd,
the barking of dogs;
can see Half-Two’s fist
pulling back for power,
flying towards her
like a charging ram,
and knows that at last
Half-Two is triumphant.
Time slower still,
waiting for the pain
that doesn’t come
as Roula bellows, ‘Stop!’,
grabbing Half-Two’s arm
so the punch never lands
and Aissa’s hair is let go,
her head so loose
it might fall off.
The crowd disappears
as if they were never there,
and a guard arrives,
asking Roula
if sh
e needs some help.
Roula doesn’t say
he could have come sooner
but looks at him hard
till he stares at the ground,
and she says loud,
‘In case you’ve forgotten,
I am Roula,
daughter of the wise-woman Lena,
apprentice to the wise-women
who care for you
when you’re ill –
as your sister is now;
who advise you
in times of trouble –
and I advise you now:
this girl is the server
to the wise-women and me,
under their protection
and mine.’
That night
Roula tells the story
and the wise-women smile.
Roula was right
to protect Aissa, they say,
and Aissa was right
to follow her heart
and protect someone smaller.
Aissa hadn’t known
she was strong enough
to do it
or that someone could care enough
to do it for her –
or that both those things
could feel so good.
And in the next days
though little Pigeon-Toe
runs from Aissa
and Roula
as well as Half-Two,
Aissa becomes
not so much Roula’s servant
but an almost-apprentice
as if Roula is teaching her
all that she can.
Winter comes with its icy winds and running noses, and a frightened young swineherd comes to the Hall.
‘My dada fell from a rock yesterday,’ he tells Lyra. ‘His leg’s broke, and now he’s raging as if the gods are after him.’
Cold or not, the wise-women still visit anyone who needs them. Lyra packs a basket with herbs and cloths, checking she has everything she might need.
Roula and Lena are out seeing a family of coughing fishers. ‘You can carry the basket,’ Lyra says.
It’s the first time Aissa’s been allowed on a house call. She tries not to grin as they leave the coolroom.
She wonders if the boy’s father could be the swineherd whose boar Luki tried to leap, but the boy turns east at the ancient oak and leads them on a rough trail through the hills. It’s well past noon when they reach a round stone house with a thatched roof, a sty with a sow and four half-grown piglets, and a stone wall encircling it all.
Dogs erupt into barking, teeth bared at the visitors till the boy calls them off. He lifts the gate and the dogs let them pass, watching balefully, as if they think Lyra and Aissa are just waiting for a chance to steal a piglet.
In the house that smells
of smoke and pig,
the swineherd rages nonsense,
forehead burning,
leg red-swollen,
the fleece he lies on soaked with sweat.
The mother has three small
runny-nosed boys
and a round belly ready
to give birth,
a dozing grandfather
and a sad-eyed aunt with a lump in her neck
as if she’s swallowed an eagle’s egg.
The farm remote enough
they don’t know that Aissa
is the bad-luck child,
and they’re all too ill
or worried
to notice that she doesn’t speak.
Lyra has herbs for the fever,
poultice for the leg,
cloths to strap it
straight to a board.
She feels the mother’s belly
with encouraging words,
and the aunt’s throat
with a promise to return
with herbs for the lump.
The mother offers hot soup:
a bowl for Lyra
and one for Aissa
to drink like anyone else.
The day is darkening
as they leave;
the sad-eyed aunt
pokes a pine branch into the fire
and gives it to Aissa
when it starts to smoulder,
in case they are still in the hills
at dark.
The boy goes
to see them on their way,
but he is young –
Lyra sends him back,
and the dogs with him.
Then Lyra turns across the hills,
not the way they came:
‘It’s a little further,’ she says,
‘But we’ll meet a trail,
then the road from the fishers –
safer in the dark.’
The hills are rugged
but there will still be light
for a little longer,
and Aissa,
twirling her branch to keep its fire,
feels a strange sort of joy,
a song inside her
though she can’t quite hear the words,
so that Lyra stops in her telling
of herbs and illness
and smiles.
‘Happiness in the hills,’ she says,
‘is a gift from the goddess.
Every wise-woman feels it.’
Then,
over the next hill,
where sharp-scented bushes
grow grey and thick,
terror strikes –
swooping on Aissa
like a fox on a mouse,
knocking out her breath
like a punch from a twin.
She wants to fall to the ground,
to crawl under
a grey-green bush
but she’s frozen,
still as stone.
Lyra staring all around,
grabbing the torch in defiance
of whatever might come –
but nothing is there,
nothing but
a house on the hill,
long deserted,
roof missing
stone walls crumbling.
‘Ah,’ says Lyra, slowly guessing.
‘The farm the raiders burned –
and this the place, maybe,
where you lay that night.’
She lays the pine torch across a rock,
and hugs Aissa,
tight as a mother.
‘I will ask Kelya what to do
to cleanse this place,
and you.’
She takes Aissa’s hand
and they go on,
making it safely home
before night falls.
In the morning
the wise-women send Aissa
alone
to gather seaweed and mussel shells
for the egg-lump in
the sad aunt’s throat.
Aissa has seen
the pile of dried seaweed in the stores
and she knows they want her
out of the way
while they talk about
her terror on the hill.
And if it means
the goddess doesn’t want her
even to serve,
then Aissa will be
nothing
again.
Climbing down to the beach –
the far path
where the fishers don’t go –
she finds mussel shells first:
‘Not the mussels, just the shells,’
said Lyra,
‘they don’t have to be perfect
to be useful:
we’ll crush and burn them
into a powder.’
But Aissa chooses the freshest
long-haired kelp
and bright green seaweed,
laying them clean and pure
on top of her shells –
carefully, carefully,
doing everything right
and the wise-women.
The salt sea air blows through her fears
so when she climbs the cliffs again
Aissa stops at the shrine
to offer the goddess
a bright whorled shell.
Lost in her prayer,
she doesn’t hear
Nasta’s mother
come up from behind
pushing her hard
towards the edge,
knocking her down
and spilling her basket.
‘Next time,’
Nasta’s mother snarls,
‘I’ll push you right off.
This shrine is for fishers;
you might serve the wise-women
but you’re still a slave.’
With a final spit
Nasta’s mother stomps away,
and Aissa, trembling,
picks herself up,
packs up her basket
and replaces
her shell on the shrine.
Now she hardly ever
gets spat at,
she hates it more.
That night Kelya gives her
bitter herbs to drink
before she sleeps.
Aissa dreams of her home
with Mama and Dada,
the house on the hill
when it had a roof
and life.
She dreams of the bush –
the sharp-scented, grey-green bush –
where Mama hid her,
saying, ‘Stay quiet,
still as stone till I come back.’
When she wakes,
blind Kelya looks in her eyes
and sees her dream.
‘You must go back once more,’
she says.
‘It should be me to take you there
as I did before,
but I can’t walk so far.
Cut a lock of my hair,
and know I go with you.’
Aissa wonders
how she can ever be brave enough
to go alone
and what it is she must do,
but Lyra
and Lena and Roula,
are ready
with baskets of herbs and wine
and the mussel shells
ground and burned for the sad-eyed aunt.
They bathe at the Source,
come steaming out
into the bright cool day,
to follow the creek
across the hills
just as Kelya carried the baby
twelve years ago.
At the ruined house
Lena and Roula
scatter herbs to cleanse.
Lyra pours wine for the goddess
and Aissa offers tears
for dead Dada,
Gaggie, Poppa and Brown Dog,
and for stolen Mama,
Tattie and Zufi.
Her tears are still flowing
when Lyra leads her
to the fear-soaked bush
for another offering