Dragonfly Song (18 page)
Authors: Wendy Orr
Winter comes with its icy winds and running noses, and a frightened young swineherd comes to the Hall.
âMy dada fell from a rock yesterday,' he tells Lyra. âHis 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. âYou 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 â
Lyra sends him back,
and the dogs with him.
Then Lyra turns across the hills,
not the way they came:
âIt's a little further,' she says,
âBut we'll meet a trail,
then the road from the fishers â
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.
âHappiness in the hills,' she says,
âis 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 â
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 â
but nothing is there,
nothing but
a house on the hill,
long deserted,
roof missing
stone walls crumbling.
âAh,' says Lyra, slowly guessing.
âThe farm the raiders burned â
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.
âI 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 â
the far path
where the fishers don't go â
she finds mussel shells first:
âNot the mussels, just the shells,'
said Lyra,
âthey 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 â
carefully, carefully,
doing everything right
to please the goddess
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.
âNext time,'
Nasta's mother snarls,
âI'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 â
the sharp-scented, grey-green bush â
where Mama hid her,
saying, âStay quiet,
still as stone till I come back.'
When she wakes,
blind Kelya looks in her eyes
and sees her dream.
âYou must go back once more,'
she says.
âIt 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
of herbs and wine,
and Aissa buries
the lock of Kelya's hair,
and a curl of her own,
where she'd lain
that long cruel night.
Then in a circle, joining hands
they dance fast and wild
around the bush
and the wise-women sing
praise and thanks
for lifting the curse.
And then Aissa does too.
No words to her song,
a wild high keening
not the
lu-lu-lu
-ing of grieving mourners
but as if the Lady herself
was singing
the curse to rise
and be gone,
so the others stop
and Aissa sings alone
until she hears it
and sees her own wonder
on their faces â
she'd never quite believed
that it was her
who'd sung the snake
away from Luki,
but this time
she knows.
They lie in the grass,
panting,
wondering,
wrapped in their cloaks,
Aissa's wolf fur like a hunter's,
until Lyra and Roula
turn one way
with the healing herbs for the swineherd family
and Lena takes Aissa
back to Kelya,
who holds Aissa's face in her hands,
saying,
âTell me.'
And just for a moment,
Aissa thinks that she can,
but when she opens her mouth
Mama's voice is still in her head
and no sound comes out.
As the days grow shorter, the wise-women spend more time together in their chamber and storerooms, checking that seeds and herbs aren't going mouldy, grinding and mixing preparations. They sing and tell stories as they work. Some of the stories are about healing and some about history, knowledge passed on from wise-woman to wise-woman through the ages.
One night Kelya tells the tale of a hunter trying to catch the moon. âOn a night when the gods were young,' she begins solemnly, as if it's sacred lore they need to learn, and goes on to tell the rudest, funniest story Aissa has ever heard.
Lyra and Lena gasp with laughter; Roula actually falls off her stool. Aissa is too shocked to breathe.
âAren't you listening, little one?' Kelya asks, and tells the whole story again.
This time, when Kelya describes the hunter tumbling off the moon with his tunic around his ears, Aissa sees the whole crazy, ridiculous picture in her head. Warmth bubbles up inside her till it explodes out through her mouth, and she falls off her stool too, rolling on the ground beside Roula, which makes everyone else laugh even harder.
Everyone except Kelya. She is simply beaming, tears in her blind eyes: Aissa is laughing.
But she still can't make a sound when she tries. And she does try, even against Mama's voice in her head, because the wise-women tried to lift the curse and it's her fault that they failed. She's failed them.
One afternoon when the others are out â winter is a busy season for seeing the sick â Kelya calls Aissa to come and sit by her knee.
âIt's time for you to know your story. It's not an easy one, but it's yours. The servants banned you for calling the dragonflies; we've all seen how the cats come to you, and Lena and Lyra have told me of your singing. You must have guessed enough that it's best to know.'
She reaches for Aissa's hands and gently rubs the tiny scars on the wrists.
âSometimes in the Lady's family, a baby is born with an extra thumb. For a boy or younger girl, it's not a problem. But for a firstborn daughter: does it mean that she's not perfect? How can we know what is perfect in the eyes of the gods? If a Lady grows up to have a crooked nose, or walks with a limp, is she still fit to rule?
âNo one knows the answers. This time the Lady thought one thing and the chief another. The Lady wanted the chief to be right, you must remember that. So the chief cut off the baby's extra thumbs, thinking to please the goddess â and the sea gods took him the next day. It seemed a sign that the baby must go.'
âBut the midwife whose job it was couldn't take the baby to the cliff. What if the gods weren't angry
because the chief had tried to trick them â but because he had wounded a child who was perfect as she was?
âSo the midwife took the baby to a good woman to raise as her own. That woman had been grieving for a baby; now she was happy, though the Lady grieved so hard for the girl she believed had died that the midwife feared she might die too. But she could never tell her the truth.
âThen the raiders took that family.' Kelya strokes Aissa's shoulder, trying to soften the words. âBut the goddess spared you â and you ended up back at the Hall. Humans can never outrun the fate the gods have planned.
âI hoped that your voice would return when the curse was lifted from the place of those terrors â but I was wrong. All I know is that the goddess has her reasons. I just hope I live long enough to see them.'
Stories aren't only for the wise-women's chamber. The year wheels around to midwinter and the celebration of the shortest day. The Lady offers the goddess wine and a goat to ensure that she'll bring sun and spring again â gods love nothing better than the smoke of barbecued meat. The feasting in the Hall goes late into that long dark night, as people offer their songs or the endless, chanted stories of their ancestors. One of the fishers can make his harp sing as if it were alive. A farmer has such a fine clear voice that no one cares if her songs are clumsy. The oldest guard tells stories as so many different characters it's hard to believe he's only one person. And Kelya adds hers â a
wise one and two funny ones, but not the rude one that made Aissa laugh. That's just for them.
