Dragonfly Song (5 page)

The gates swing open, and the two dancers fall in behind the captain to lead the long procession of bearers and tribute down the road. People throng around them, touching their arms, tossing flowers and gifts of dried figs or honey cakes for the voyage. The black cat weaves between their legs, his tail high.

The ship's warriors bring up the rear, their eyes darting anxiously and spears at the ready. The chief marches beside the captain, but the Lady stays at the sanctuary, because she's wearing such tall shoes that she can't walk.

Aissa follows the crowd. They're mostly so busy trying to trick the gods that they forget to spit at her.
But she knows how fast the mood can change; she stops at the first bend, where she can look down at the cove.

‘So lucky to serve the gods!' she hears, as she watches the sailors haul the tribute up onto their black-decked ship. The goat kids' bleating carries over the noise of the crowd.

The two youths are hoisted aboard. Aissa can see the fear on their faces from here.

‘What joy, to go across the sea!'

Aissa doesn't have to worry about lying to the gods. If they can hear her thoughts, they know that she'd trade places with the dancers in the blink of an eye.

3

THE FIREFLIES OF REBIRTH

Pretending to be happy only lasts while the ship is in sight. When not even the sharpest eye can see a smudge on the waves, the weeping begins.

The last quarter of the late spring moon has always been the time of mourning – the farewell for all the souls who have died during the year. Now, if two families are crying for the new bull dancers, who are still alive, not even the gods need to know.

Grieving is the only way to make sure that the dead don't come back to haunt the living. They need a lot of tears, a lot of wailing, and the people they've left behind need it too. Families tear their hair and rip their clothes because that's better than feeling as if their souls have been ripped from their bodies. The potter takes her pots, one by one, and smashes them in front of the sanctuary. Sharp shards litter the square and bare feet bleed, but the potter still can't stop crying.

Aissa thinks of the dead she knows: the bull dancers,
the old gardener who just didn't wake up one morning, the tanner's little girl who fell into the pits with the hides, the guard who broke his leg on a mountain trail and died painfully as it rotted.
I could cry for the tanner's daughter
, Aissa thinks.
She was too young to know that I was cursed
.

It doesn't work: her tears are as blocked as her throat.

But now seven days and seven nights have passed, and the moon is full. Tonight is Firefly Night, when the dead souls fly free, ready to be reborn. Today is a time of cleansing and new clothes, to make everything fresh for the rebirth. Servants are given their freshly washed, handed-down tunics for the next year. Aissa's is neatly folded in a corner of the kitchen; she's not going to put it on till she's finished her chores, but her mind keeps going back to it: clean and almost white, with all the tears mended.

The sun is sinking low into the western sea. The square is starting to hum with excitement: farmers and fishers are arriving, hunters are swaggering in their finest skins and townfolk are parading their finery.

Aissa is scrubbing the servants' privy.

She'd filled two buckets at the well before this morning's dawn ceremony, and she hasn't stopped sweeping, scrubbing and hauling soil and water ever since. Even this privy, which is really just a shelter around a hole behind the vegetable garden, needs to be spotless by sunset.

It stinks. All the privies stink.

So does Aissa – which is why she'll never see the celebration.

There's a roar from the square. The Lady and her family have appeared.

This time I'm not going to miss it!

It won't take long to finish here. If she rushes into the servants' washhouse the instant everyone else is done, she can scrub herself clean enough for that fresh new tunic—

‘Did you check the privy hole before you threw new earth in?'

Aissa jumps. Standing behind her, laughing, are the sharp-tongued kitchen twins, Half-One and Half-Two.

It's never good when the twins are laughing.

‘Your new tunic didn't stink the way you like it.'

‘So we threw it down the hole this morning. You can get it out now.' Giggling gleefully, they run hand in hand to the washhouse.

The world blackens. For an instant Aissa can't see or hear. Then the blackness turns red and rage fills her, even deeper and stronger than the despair.

Before she can think twice, she hurls her filthy rag down the hole and marches back out into the sunlight. She knows exactly what she smells like. But for once, it's not going to stop her.

As the last of the Hall folk turn onto the road, the crowd surges behind them. They've come from every house in the town and every outlying farm. Old men and women walk with sticks; babies and children ride on their parents' backs. The servants, once they're finally clean, will trail at the end of the long, long line.

Aissa quickly breaks a few twigs off the birch tree beside the privy, and twists them into a new brush. She refills her empty buckets at the well.

Half-One and Half-Two are still waiting outside the servants' washhouse.

They turn when they see her, and like girls in a mirror, each spit over their shoulder.

‘You better not come in here till we're finished!' Half-One shouts. ‘We don't want to be polluted!'

‘You better not follow the procession: your stink will kill the fireflies!'

The curse hits Aissa like a slap. The fireflies are the souls of the dead – kill them, and there'll be no rebirth.

But what if Half-Two's right?

It's too late to stop. Her plan is clear now, and she has to follow it.

Something Aissa's never felt before surges through her, up from the soles of her feet and out through the top of her head. Excitement. It's hard to make herself hide it and slump dejectedly, as if their words have wounded her.

‘Scrub well!' Half-Two mocks.

I will
, says the voice in Aissa's head, and she steps into the Hall folk's washhouse.

She blocks the door shut with her buckets.

There are benches on the two side walls and a door at each end, with a long stone tub in the middle of the room. Hot water runs through it, straight from the bubbling hot springs, and drains away at the other end. Aissa has been in this washhouse every day since she was old enough to scrub. She'd been in it only this morning. But this time is different.

Fear floods over her. What she's planning is even more blasphemous than a joke about dead fireflies.

Not that anyone has ever said, ‘You mustn't use any washhouse or privy except the one for your class.'

No one's ever ordered, ‘Keep out of here except when you're cleaning.'

They don't need to. It's too powerful a law to need saying.

She can't break it. She can't believe that she'd thought of it, even for a moment. No-Name is the lowest of the low, the filthiest of the filth – how could she even think of polluting the Hall folk's washing place?

And what if a woman from the Hall is slow, is late, is coming in even now? She doesn't dare imagine what will happen if she's caught. She has to get out before it's too late.

Aissa grabs her buckets. She shoves her shoulder against the door.

Her stink hits her. The twins' voices ring again in her head.

She turns around and rushes back through the long washroom to the door at the other end. She's never seen through it to the room beyond, but she knows for sure that the only people who use it have already gone. The Lady and her family are at the very head of the procession.

The Lady's bathroom is a smaller version of the outer one, though the bath is just as long, and the fountain that pours into it is richer, taller and bubblier. On one side of the bath there's a table with oils, combs and a bronze mirror, and on the other a carved wooden bench. Something is lying under the bench. Automatically, Aissa crosses to pick it up.

It's a cream-coloured tunic, shredded under the left arm along an already mended seam. She pictures Fila pulling it off, rumpling it into a ball and tossing it
away in disgust. It needs to be taken to the washer girls, who'll clean it and take it to the tailors for mending, and then it'll be given to a servant the right size. One year, when it can't be mended any more, it may even go to Aissa. If she can keep it away from the twins.

She lays the tunic out on the edge of the fountain and lets it catch the steam.

For a long moment, she feels herself teetering on the edge of the chasm that's opened in her world. It's not too late to change her mind; she could still make some sort of excuse if she were caught.

She takes a deep breath. Then she slips out of her filthy rags and into the tub.

Aissa has felt warm water on the back of her hands when she's scrubbed the Hall folk's bath, but she's never so much as cupped her palms into it to splash her grimy face. Never dipped her tough, blackened toes below its surface.

Servants wash in cold water, squatting in a bowl with someone else pouring the water over their hair. The Hall folk must do it in the same way, except with more comfort and warmth, because there are four seats in their stone tub.

But this bath is long and smooth, with no seats, and as Aissa steps into it she slips and falls.