There was a torch-lit herb garden and a courtyard behind the building. The garden was almost as large as the entire village of Singen. When we passed a window I breathed in, expecting the same perfume as there had been at the docks, and choked. The herbs smelled sharp and bitter. I guessed that most of them were not meant to be eaten.
After the courtyard I saw several low-slung buildings made of stone and cement. They were workshops, as I found out later. They had wide chimneys and huge piles of firewood stacked around them to feed the furnaces inside. The buildings stretched back as far as the orchards. After that, there were storehouses, dormitories and a brewery which we were not allowed to visit.
It would have been dangerous to build beyond the orchards. The smoke might have been visible from the pier. The village was encircled by a wall which followed the road until it met the marble paving stones.
The furthest place we were allowed to visit was a small shrine. There were no gods carved into the walls. Like many things on the island, the building was an illusion. If someone went to worship at the temple they would find themselves in a long tunnel which led to the bathhouse.
That enormous tiled confection was the only part of the island we shared with the Siren. The expense of building and maintaining the lead pipes which brought water to the pools was too much to waste on servants and children. The building was divided in two by a tiled wall. On our side it was plain. On the other side it was adorned with glorious murals of sea serpents and bare-breasted women. We had to bathe in silence, but afterwards we giggled and joked about how the Siren couldn’t even empty their bladders without using jewel-encrusted chamber pots.
Emma left me in one of the empty classrooms. I was alone for a very long time. I curled up in a corner. The room was warm, and quiet, and after so much excitement I felt exhausted. All I wanted to do was eat and sleep. I heard Emma speaking to somebody in the corridor. I hoped that she was asking them for something to eat. When the door opened I looked up with a hopeful smile and felt it freeze onto my face.
Emma had been lovely. The woman who followed her into the room was breath-taking. She was dressed in swathes of blue silk. The fabric was cut in long panels which splayed out around her feet in soft points, like the petals of a flower. Her eyes were a remarkable green, outlined by long black lashes and dark brown, lustrous skin. When they fixed on me they were flat and cold, and I couldn’t help thinking of the snakes I had chased in Singen. The woman looked at Emma and folded her arms.
“This is Clay.” Emma said. Her musical voice was a little stilted. I wondered if she had changed her mind about me. My heart leapt into my mouth.
“Clay.” The beautiful woman’s face twisted in distaste. The first words she ever said to me were as cruel as the next five hundred. Dahra did not have a tender bone in her body, “Why are you called that? Your parents must have hated you. Is that why they sold you?”
“Strangers sold me. If your parents sold you then I can see why!” I retorted, stung. The woman’s eyes widened. She reached back and then slapped me so hard that my ears rung. My lip bled where I had bitten it, and I spat the foul liquid at the woman’s dainty shoes.
Emma laughed. She patted me on the head like a dog.
“What a warm welcome, Dahra. Don’t you like her?”
“I think her charming manners are better suited to you, my dear.” The words were spoken with such a lyrical cadence that they sounded delightful. It took me a dazed moment to realise that the women were insulting each other. Why didn’t they scream at each other, like the women in Singen? I half expected them to start pinching each other’s ears, but Dahra’s ears were so thick with ornaments that she would have withstood even Petra’s claws.
“She’s ugly.” Dahra said.
“She’s a peasant’s bastard.” Emma’s nose crinkled in distaste. “They left her out in the sun. Look between her fingers – see how soft the skin is? And her hair is as red as copper. One day she will be a beauty.”
“Soft skin and hope.” Dahra scoffed. She took my hand and scowled, “You bite your nails, you pig.”
“They tore off when I scrubbed floors.” I lied, hoping I could make the woman pity me, “Sometimes they bled and bled.”
Dahra pursed her red lips and shook her head. “Sweetwater told me I had to adopt an outsider. She said nothing about a wild animal.”
“You’ve forgotten what a real girl looks like.” Emma’s voice turned cold. “It’s getting so that all the children on this island have the same nose. She looks different, at least.”
“Very different!”
“She will be beautiful. You can see it as well as I can. Did you look any better when they bought you from that whore?”
Dahra paled with anger, and her hand curled into a fist. Her nails were so long that I could see the skin pucker in her palm.
“Very well.” she growled, “but if it bites me I’m throwing it back into the sea.”
“Clay?” Emma looked at me, raising an eyebrow. “Are you going to bite Mistress Dahra?”
“I don’t know yet.” I muttered sulkily. Emma laughed and pulled a face at the other woman. It was the last time I ever saw her: a beautiful woman with her face twisted into an ugly leer.
CHAPTER 7
Dahra was silent after Emma left. She did not lead me, but rather dragged me to another building by my shirt collar. She woke up half of the women in the kitchen when she shoved the door open and pushed me through. One of the cooks tumbled down from her warm bed by the stove and caught me. Before any of us had drawn a breath, the beautiful bitch had disappeared.
The cook yawned, knelt down and looked into my eyes. Her breath smelled like sour milk, but her clothes smelled like bread. I was too tired to wait for another islander to call me ugly or rude. I wrapped my arms around her waist and closed my eyes. She tucked me into bed beside her and let me cuddle into her soft, fat stomach.
Nara, my new bed-mate, let me sleep for as long as I wanted to. When I woke up she brought me porridge with fresh fruit mixed into it. When I had eaten my fill the cook beckoned me into the pantry. I sneezed at the smell of dried lavender and spices, and then caught sight of the mattress which had been tucked under the shelves.
“Is this my room?”
“For now.” Nara smiled and kissed my forehead, “We want to keep an eye on you before you join the other girls.”
“Other girls? There are more like me?”
“They’ve been here for longer than you, but yes. Would you like to meet them?”
I nodded eagerly. The woman laughed and handed me a clean cotton dress. Together, we heated up huge kettles of water so that I might have a bath. When I was clean the cook gave me a cup of honey tea. It had tiny yellow flowers floating on the surface. After I drank the tea I felt full, sleepy and warm. I crawled into my new bed. The cook dug me out of it like a tic.
“I know you’re tired,” Nara told me with a smile, “but some of the other ladies have come to look at you.”
I peered over her shoulder and saw two very serious looking women. I had seen that kind of seriousness before.
“Black marks?” I asked in a sleepy mumble. The women exchanged looks and shook their heads.
“We just want to make sure you’re not sick.”
First, they checked my hair for lice. The women asked me what I meant by ‘black marks’. I was shocked by their ignorance, “The villagers looked at my skin. They said the demons bit me and left black marks.”
“Did they ever find any?” the oldest woman asked. I shook my head, and she smiled, “I hope you told those silly villagers that you weren’t a witch, then!”
“I tried.” my sleepiness made me blunt, “They still tried to drown me. I think they had demons living inside their fat heads.”
The old woman sighed and brushed my hair away from my forehead. Now that it was clean the silky strands were almost scarlet. “Mainlanders don’t understand magic, little girl. Their stories are far more dangerous than any potion we
could mix up.”
“Do you have magic?” I asked, forcing my eyes to stay open for a moment longer. Nara smiled, and her face creased into a beautiful tumble of curving lines.
“I made you sleepy, didn’t I?” she showed me the bottom of my tea beaker, where some of the yellow petals were still sticking to the base. “Here’s real magic. The rest of it is all in here.” she touched my forehead with her hard fingertips and shook her head. “If you can make people believe that you can enchant them, then why do you need to cast a spell? They’re already in your power.”
I didn’t understand. It was growing unbearably painful to keep my eyes open. Did she have magic or not? Her tea had made me sleepy, but it wasn’t a potion! I managed to pin a few thoughts together before I tumbled into the darkness. The petals made me sleep, so she had mixed them into my tea. Did that mean the petals were magic?
I dreamed of a flower waving her leaves in a mystical dance, casting magic so strong that all of the forest snored around her. While I slept, the women undressed me and examined every inch of my body. They looked for any signs of sickness, scars, moles, and weak joints. They wrote down the colours of my eyes and hair, and made a note about the birth mark on my right hipbone. They tapped at my baby teeth and even recorded the colour of my tongue.
When they were satisfied that the scrapes and bruises of my peasant life would fade, they angled a mirror so that the light would shine down my throat. They did the same to my dilated pupils, my ears and finally between my legs. They hauled me upright and then asked me to walk, made me stretch out my arms as far as they would go, and then let me lie down again. I have no idea what they expected to find out. I was as limp as a rag doll.
The women pulled a blanket over me and pulled the shutters closed, then trailed out. I slept for a long time, but not so deeply that the sounds of their voices didn’t creep into my dreams. They argued in the low, melodious tones that Dahra had used. When they had all said their piece an old woman opened the door and sat beside me, groaning as her ancient limbs creaked. For a long time she watched me drifting in and out of sleep, and then her hand cupped the nape of my neck and turned my head to look at her.
“What is your name?” she asked.
“Clay.” I had to think about it, but it was the name that had followed me here, so I might as well claim it. The woman nodded and her fingers moved gently through my cropped hair.
“Clay. I know you’re sleepy, but you need to listen to me now. It’s important.”
I wrenched my eyes open and tried to make them focus. She was smiling, so I smiled back, and watched her brightness fade a little. She bit her lip.
“Clay, I know you don’t know what’s going on. Until we looked at you, there was no point explaining anything to you. If you were imperfect then we would have sent you back to the Mainland. You’re flawless.” she sounded as if she was congratulating me. A scornful voice in my mind wanted to know why I had to prove that I was normal. Wasn’t it obvious? The woman must have seen some of the anger in my eyes, because she leaned closer and stroked my cheek.
“Listen. You have to make a choice. If you want to go back to the Mainland then you can. No-one will think badly of you. Mistress Emma will take you back with her. She will foster you with a good family. All you have to do is promise not to tell anyone what you saw here.”
“I didn’t see anything.” I mumbled. The old woman hooted out a laugh.
“Then you’ll be convincing! Does that mean you want to leave?”
I looked at her blankly, and she kept speaking. “If you stay here, you’ll learn how to be a Siren. You’ll have a home here until you die, and more riches and freedom than most of the Mainlanders dream of. It sounds wonderful, but please believe me when I say it is a difficult path. You will not be allowed to leave the island, and your training will be more painful than you can imagine. You must think carefully about your choice. It’s the last one we’ll give you.”
I rubbed my eyes clumsily, “Why do I have to choose now? I’m sleepy.”
Her voice grew a little softer. “I’m here to make sure you cannot change your mind. If you want to leave, I’ll give you some more tea and this time it will make you sleep so deeply you’ll forget you were ever here.”
I shivered at the thought of forgetting so much. How could a little cup of tea erase a part of a person’s life? I saw the tea cup steaming on the shelf and flinched away from it.
The old woman cleared her throat and then told me what she would do if I decided to stay. The sleeping tea was used for that, too – but only a little of it.
I closed my eyes and thought about the island. I knew nothing about it. I knew nothing about anything! I had forgotten my mother’s home, and had been an unwelcome intruder for as long as I could remember. I hated the thought of meeting another household and having to convince them that I deserved to be there. At least the Siren wanted me. They had found me, and paid for me, and I had passed their tests.
I have to admit that I was flattered by the choice they had given me. I did not care about what I could win or lose. I was seduced by the thought of these women bowing to my will.
When I look back on my decision I don’t regret it. There are many things in a Siren’s life which she wishes she could take back, but that first choice is sacred for all of us. Even the Siren who are born on the island are given permission to leave, for one blessed moment. Or, at least, they used to be.
I could not have been more ignorant about the islanders, but they spoke to me as if I was worth something. It was the thought of being listened to that made me choose to stay.
The old woman kissed my forehead when I finally spoke aloud, and then she reached for the tea. I sipped it willingly and fell asleep so quickly that she had to snatch the beaker from my hand.
I am in danger of making the islanders sound enlightened, so perhaps describing what she did next will allay some of that. The Siren were utterly animal, and their mythical powers were base, visceral rituals. They followed idiotic habits which were so wrapped up in the minds of men that they shied away from the modesties of their own gender.
Women on the Mainland were cherished and protected until they were married, preserving their maidenheads like trophies for their husbands to claim. A Siren married her life to the island, not to a man. She began her service by cutting through her useless hymen with a knife. It was symbolic – she had no more use for it, and no sympathy for the Mainlanders’ customs – but also practical. From the beginning of their training, Siren were not allowed to feel any shame about their bodies.
So it was that the old woman told me what she was going to do, and showed me the knife before I drank her tea, and when I woke up it was all forgotten.
Years later, when I told an outsider about the practice, she paled and told me it was barbaric. I asked her what it was like to bleed on her wedding day. To me, that fetid filth was far worse. She argued that the custom trapped the young women on the island more efficiently than our incorruptible oarsmen. The apprentices were ruined from the start. The rare ones who could fit in with Mainlanders after their years of training would be lucky to find a husband who wouldn’t cast them out on their wedding night. It sounded absurd to me, but years later, when I had reason to disguise myself as a Mainlander, I saw exactly how wrong I was.
But that came later. The next morning, I woke up with a headache and a dull pain between my legs, but both of them faded by lunch time. I spent the morning peeling apples with the servants. They looked ancient to my young eyes, but in fact many of them were barely out of their teens.
Some of them used to be Siren. They were called ‘old ladies’ after they retired, even if they were only thirty years old. It was a mark of respect, but also a snide reference to their faded loveliness. Accidents or illness had forced them to slide into the shadows. Those women knew the secrets of the island better than anyone else, and worked as messengers and guards for the miraculous creatures who lured men onto the shore. They had their own resid
ence, but they worked as hard as every other servant.
Some of the old women were bitter and twisted, hating the youth and beauty of the women who had replaced them and resenting the children for their blossoming future. Others had never wanted to be Siren in the first place. The training and early years of a Siren’s life were appalling, for good reason. Many apprentices spent their entire childhoods learning that they should have chosen to leave.
My closest childhood friend was one such. Like many others, she worked obediently until her apprenticeship was finished, and then quietly disappeared into the servant’s wing and dragged a veil over her luminous beauty. She was happier after one day of servitude than she had been in all her years as a goddess.
Out of all of the old women, I preferred the ones who were truly ancient. There is a kind of gentle sadism that comes from age – a wicked sense of humour nurtured by years of experience. I could not trust anyone who was unconditionally pleasant, and so I sought out the people who made snide comments, mocked their friends, and laughed at their own misfortunes. I found plenty of women like that in the kitchen, and for my first few weeks on the island I spent every waking hour paring apples and making cider with women whose voices cackled like geese.
I did not need to work. The old women let me do whatever I wanted. They weighed me every day and fed me such large portions of food that my stomach stood out like a gourd. They fussed over me like a pet cat. I would be mulching the bruised apples into a bowl and suddenly feel my hair being pulled away from my neck and twisted into a new style. I would go to scratch my nose only to have my hand captured by a cook. I had to clean my nails and rub goose fat into my skin every time the clock chimed. If I went barefoot I risked a scolding so fierce that my ears would ring for hours.
Mire Page 5