Dragonfly Song (9 page)
Authors: Wendy Orr
No one on the island has seen the bull dances, but they've all heard the stories.
Minstrels describe the excitement, the drama, the emotions of the crowd, the betting. Traders are surer of the details: the first day of spring, in a courtyard of the Bull King's palace. There might be others during the year, but they're not important. The palace is huge, bigger than the Lady's town, but that's not important either. What's important is what happens. What's important is the bulls.
The tall guard who speaks the Bull King's language saw the bulls when he sailed on a trading ship; he says their shoulders are taller than he is, and their hooves as big around as his head. Their bodies are thick and as solidly muscled as wild boars, their horns long and curved, and when they gallop the ground thunders.
It's a long time since the tall guard's been at sea, so maybe the bulls have grown in his memory. Nothing could be as big as he claims.
But little by little, the Lady and the chief have worked out a picture. The dancers are highly skilled.
âThey're fast,' say the traders.
âBest tumblers I've ever seen.'
âAnd strong.'
âHandsprings, somersaults, backflips . . .'
âAll across a bull's back.'
âNo wonder half of them die while they're training.'
âThen we'll start their training here,' says the Lady. She tries to convince a troupe of tumblers to stay and teach, but tumblers are used to moving, island to island, audience to audience. They're gone before
first light, afraid that the islanders might not take no for an answer.
The Lady and the chief replay the acrobats' act in their minds. The Lady can't discuss it with anyone else in case they realise there are things she doesn't know, but the chief talks it over with the guards. Tigo, the youngest guard, can walk on his hands. He's never managed to do a backflip, but he thinks he can work it out. He's put in charge of training.
Every year something is added to the training; every year Tigo is a little better at teaching it. The year that Nasta and Luki are chosen is the sixth year. The chief, the Lady and the guards are all determined that this time it will make a difference.
Aissa doesn't care. She doesn't want to watch them training for something that she knows in her heart is hers. She doesn't care if the new dancers live out their year in the bullring, or if the island has to pay tribute forever. She can't worry about anything now except how to survive.
Though it turns out that their training is very useful for her survival. Later on, in the heat of summer or chill of winter, no one will be nearly as keen to join in, but in this restless spring weather, runners want to race them and wrestlers want to wrestle. Everyone wants to see how the new dancers perform. The other twelve year olds watch especially jealously, jostling around, showing off their own handstands and roaring with laughter every time Nasta or Luki falls over.
âShoo!' Tigo shouts, flapping them away like stray dogs.
The families of the dancers who haven't returned are watching just as closely. They desperately want these two to survive, and they just as desperately want them not to be as good as their own children. They can't decide which one they want more, and they can't stop watching.
And while they're watching Nasta and Luki, Aissa's watching their market stalls. She's finally discovered what's worse than the thin end of the servants' gruel: nothing. Even when all that was left of the meat was a hint of its flavour, and the vegetables were a shredded mush, there were still bits of barley to roll on her tongue and suck through her teeth. And it was always there. She misses that twice-a-day stomach-filling warmth.
Aissa is very, very hungry.
Silent as stone,
soft as a ghost,
Aissa slips through the Hall
because the Hall folk don't know
she doesn't exist
and see only a servant girl
clearing scraps from tables,
the remains of platters
laden with food â
barley cakes and honey,
the last dried figs,
soft curds of goat cheese â
taking them back
for the servants' meal.
They don't see that the girl
with her head bowed low,
moves the platters,
but never takes them to the kitchen.
They see her reach under a table,
as a good servant should,
for the dropped fig
and broken barley cake
but don't see her swallow both
before she stands.
But Aissa, gulping hard,
sees a twin head â
the rightful clearer of platters â
approaching the door from the kitchen,
and Aissa steps
behind a pillar
out to the square
as Half-One walks in.
In the square Half-Two,
forgetting she can't see
the one who doesn't exist,
spits hard â
a slimy glob of hate
on Aissa's face.
Aissa wipes with a finger
and flicks it back.
So all these days
the rest of the town
watches bull dancers
and Aissa watches
the rest of the town.
Drifting on the edges
like a shadow,
scurrying through hidey holes
like a rat
chased and despised,
racing the dogs
for a bone
thrown from a feast,
sweeping spilled grains
from the stone grinder in the square,
where lucky people
with barley to crush
smash it from grains to flour.
Because after the first morning
the servants are quicker
to guard their share
from meals from the Hall
and there's nothing left
to feed compost worms
or Aissa.
Half-One and Half-Two
would eat till they sicked it back up
before they left something
that Aissa could eat.
The third day without food
her weakened body sleeps through morning
and she slides out from her cave
while the world rests
in the warmth of noon.
At the door of the sanctuary
the table's been cleared
of morning offerings,
but unseen, underneath,
is a bouquet of pigweed
and twelve dried raisins â
a gift from the goddess
telling Aissa to live.
So sometimes
in the busy market,
an olive stored from autumn,
a chunk of octopus leg,
a roasted snail
slides from the stall
to Aissa's hand
and mouth.
Till the day she sees
thin spears of asparagus
fresh and juicy,
heaped to tempt.
The watching woman
spits, âGet out of here!'
and Aissa flees.
But a voice in her head says,
âYou found asparagus
long ago
in the hills with Kelya,
and just last year
for Half-One and Half-Two.
You can find it again
for you.'
The world is new and different â or maybe Aissa is. She's only a shadow in town, but when she's out in the hills she's alive. It's as if she's just learned to breathe.
Of course she's not the only one out foraging. It's springtime, and after a long winter of dried food, everyone's hungry for fresh green plants. Fat-leafed pigweed and feathery fennel, nettles that don't sting once they're cooked, the unfurling new leaves of wild grapes, mallow and thistle and wispy ram's beard . . . they're all begging to be picked, and most mornings, someone from nearly every family on the island will be wandering the meadows and forests to do it. Only the Hall folk and their servants wait in town for other people to gather food for them.
Baby animals appear too, as if the sun's warmth has magicked them out of the rocks and shadows. Young hares, rabbits, hedgehogs, deer and ibex are easy prey for slings or arrows. Trees hold eggs in nests, and there
are strange birds that land for only a few days, in spring and again in autumn. Sometimes they crash to the ground in high winds and are too exhausted to escape a hungry hunter.
The only problem is the other hungry hunters. The chief killed the last lion for his cloak when he married the Lady, but there are still bears, boars, lynx and wolves and now they all have young to feed. They like the same meats that people do, but they don't mind adding humans to their menu.
So nobody walks the hills alone, unless they're a hunter or a goatherd with a good sling for rocks. Half-One and Half-Two, before they thought of making Aissa go, always went with girls from the town. Even the wise-women, if they're going far from other gatherers, take a hunter with them.
But for Aissa, a wild-haired, fur-cloaked hunter is just one more thing to run from.
Aissa doesn't have
a bow with arrows,
a spear,
or even
a sling like Zufi's
when he guarded the goats â
though it didn't save him
from the raiders.
She could make a sling
if she only had
a knife to cut cord,
a spindle to make it,
something to spin â
and a basket to collect it â
but she doesn't know how
to make any of those
because a privy-cleaner
doesn't learn much else â
just knows she needs them
to survive as more
than a hunted rat.
Needs to learn
what the tiniest children know
if they have mamas or dadas,
gaggies or poppas,
or anyone
who loves them.
Like a song,
at the back of her mind
is an almost-memory:
a child warm on her grandmother's knee,
Gaggie's old hands
guiding Aissa's young ones
to whirl the spindle
that spins Spot Goat's hair
into yarn.
If Aissa can learn
to spin again
it means she can learn
to be a little
like everyone else â
but all her memory gives her
is that glimpse of love
and sometimes
it hurts too much
to remember that.
So when she sees
a spindle winding wool,
up the spike in its round clay disc,
that disc might as well be gold
for all the chance
Aissa has to own it.
Because the grieving potter
is still so sure
that Aissa's curse
killed her daughter,
that she would smash
every spindle in town
before she let
Aissa own one.
The morning is hot and windy. Aissa is plucking juicy pigweed leaves, heading further and further towards the forest, nibbling as she gathers. She stoops again â and touches a brown and bloody bit of something that might once have been a deer.
Prickles run down her spine. She hears a rustling in the trees and pictures the wolf. Or the bear or boar â whatever it is, it has killing teeth and ripping claws, and it probably doesn't care if its next meal is an ibex or a girl.
Aissa turns and runs. She doesn't stop till she meets the path to the goat meadow, where she can see people, and the wall of the town.
Nothing's following her. Maybe it was just wind rustling the leaves.
But the mountain suddenly seems dark and forbidding. At least when she lived with the servants she was only slapped and spat at. Nobody tried to eat her.
Outcast days are busy
with no cleaning or sweeping
but full of learning,
because now her ankle is healed
and her privy-stink
gone with the rain,
she can creep close
to watch and learn.
Spying a goatherd
dozing in the sun,
his staff in his hand
and beside it his sling â
a rope looped in the middle
to hold a rock â
so simple to make,
impossible for her.
Aissa's hand twitches,
wanting that sling â
not far down the hill
to snatch it and run â
but already his dog,
head up and alert,
has caught her scent.
Softly and quietly,
Aissa slips away.
Gathering food
fills the rest of her days â
evading slaps and kicks
when she passes too close
to a market stall,
but not any lonelier
than when she was part of
the servant tribe.
But outcast nights
are long and empty
though full sometimes
of terror,
fear that's worse
for not knowing why.
Her cave under the rock is safe
but in the night
Aissa doesn't always
feel it,
because it's dark
cold,
and lonely
with owls screeching
as if they're crying
when Aissa can't.
Dark long before nightfall
and no morning light
till the sun has risen
high over the mountain,
so that Aissa might sleep,
not knowing it's day
and slither out
when the square is busy
with people to see her.
Her cave is cold,
even now in sun-warm spring
of longer days and gentler air,
the rock is chill,
and so is Aissa.
Most of all
her cave is empty,
full of nothing
just like Aissa.
Empty of light,
empty of warmth,
empty of food,
empty of hearth fire
and glowing embers;
empty of pots and platters,
goblets and baskets,
jugs of oil and wine,
empty of sound,
the murmur of voices,
the shushing of Squint-Eye,
sleepy groans and snores,
empty even of smell
of goatskin fleeces for lucky sleepers,
of tired bodies
and a fug of farts.
But in the mornings, in the dark before dawn,
before the Lady greets her snakes,
Aissa's cave has Milli-Cat
rubbing her nose
against Aissa's cheek,
butting her head
under Aissa's chin,
curling heavy and purring on Aissa's chest â
and Milli-Cat is more
than all the emptiness.
