Snakehead

by Ann Halam

  She wanted to cry out, I don’t deserve this! She set down her bundle and stared at this immeasurable gift. A room of her own, no attendants, no staring eyes, a place where she could be herself.

  “It’s not much, I know,” said the tall boy with the chestnut hair, a little stiffly. “I’m only glad the cat hasn’t left any fish entrails up here, to add to the glory of the scene.”

  Down in the yard someone was singing and crashing things about. A woman’s voice could be heard, loud and furious. She seemed to be berating a kitchen maid.

  Andromeda remembered that she was Kore, traveling to see the world. Ordinary hired girls probably had rooms of their own all the time. She tried to recover. “The master is your grandfather? He called the lady Danae ‘daughter.’”

  “Not by birth. It’s a long story. My mother was on her own, with a baby, in … in bad circumstances. Dicty took us in. We’ve been with him ever since.”

  “I’m sorry. I apologize for touching on a painful subject.”

  He smiled. “You speak our language very beautifully. Don’t be sorry, we’ve been very happy. Serifos is a good place. We have a happy life.”

  “I’m sure I’ll be happy here too.”

  She was lying. They were both lying, as it happened, though Andromeda would not understand that until later. But they were brave lies, and brave lies, strangely enough, have a habit of becoming the truth.

  The taverna had a busy night, and it started early. I took a quick bath in the wellhouse and went straight to work, in my usual place at the front of the house—seating people, explaining specials, pointing out the delights of the regular dishes (depicted in full color on the menu board above the bar). Anthe and the boss were in the kitchen, making their undercooks fly. Palikari, our dashing cocktail waiter and my best friend, ran the bar and the waiting staff. Moumi was everywhere, making sure there were fresh towels and scented water to wash people’s feet and hands, supervising the juniors, chatting easily with our customers: both the friends, and those who were not our friends at all.

  The tale-tellers had arrived in force, eager to get the latest from Naxos, and the big world beyond. They’d spotted the refugees on their way to the Enclosure: they wanted to know all about the “Libyan earthquake.” The reports we gave them would be carried to every street corner in Seatown, and every village on the island. We were happy to provide this service, because it put us in charge of the news (though Pali sometimes muttered that information is gold, and we should make them pay). I hardly had time to think about my beautiful stranger, though I had to duck and dive to avoid gossiping about her. Anything’s an event to tale-tellers. I told them they’d meet our stylish new waitress tomorrow, and they’d better not harass her.

  Very late, when the crowd thinned out, Moumi took over the front desk and I went out for a breath of air. It was early summer, so the night was cool. Our fine sheltered harbor was calm as a bowl of dark milk. Stars shimmered through the quiet ripples; a breeze whispered. Sailors sat on the decks of the boats at their moorings, playing dice by lamplight. Voices called to me, “Hey, Perseus, all’s well?” and I called back, “All’s well.” But all was not well. The lights of the High Place (the king’s fortress never slept) glittered like wicked jeweled eyes, peering over the shoulder of the hill above Seatown.

  I must have been about seven years old when I first found out that Papa Dicty was the king’s older brother. I don’t remember if someone told me. Maybe I just realized the truth, the way children do: suddenly hearing what they’ve often been told, seeing what’s always been in front of them. But I remember how shocked and bewildered I felt. It wasn’t as if Polydectes was a good king. For an older brother to step down and let the better man rule was just what a true prince ought to do. But Polydectes kidnapped little boys hardly older than me, and made them work in his metal mines. He forced bigger boys to be his soldiers, and never let them come home. The soldiers took anything the king wanted from the farms and villages, without giving anything in return….

  I thought about it, by myself, then I asked the boss what was going on. Maybe he had thought Polydectes would be a better king, but it had turned out to be a mistake? So why didn’t he take the kingship back, by force if he had to? “I would fight for you!” I said. “Everyone loves you, except the king’s bad men. We would all fight for you, and then everything would be all right!”

  The boss said nothing. He took me down to the seashore, and built a little Serifos of sand right by the rising tide. He took his time, marking the harbors and the villages with shells, and building the hills in the middle. Beside it he laid a stem of dry grass, and a much bigger stick. “Now, Perseus,” he said. “In our islands, women have always ruled in everything except war. Do you know why that is?”

  “Because the things women do, cooking and farming and buying and selling, dancing and singing, and making things, are what people do all the time? So they know best? And war is rare, but men are naturally good at it, so they should be in charge?”

  This wasn’t purely my own reasoning. I was only a kid. But it made sense to me.

  He nodded. “That’s the way we have always seen it. But times have changed, and the rule of women is passing away. Now, watch this.” He took the stem of grass, and used the end of it to make gentle strokes across his model of Serifos. “Did I do much damage?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t see what he was getting at.

  “When women ruled, and war was a small part of life, it was safe to settle disputes by force of arms. But now war is a big part of life, throughout the Middle Sea.”

  “I know,” I said, proud of myself. “The Achaeans and the Trojans!” I knew the difference between Achaeans and Greeks, because of my mother. There were lots of nations on the Mainland. The Achaeans were special: they were the proud, cruel war leaders.

  “And others,” said Dicty, as if talking to himself. “Smaller fry, but no less dangerous. It’s the disease of our times.” Then he gave me the grass stem, took up the stick and drew deep jagged grooves through the island made of sand. At once the sea came swooping in along the wounds he had carved. Swiftly the grooves became chasms, and the island started to fall apart.

  “I stepped down from the kingship because my brother challenged me, Perseus. I knew he had friends on the Mainland, and they would come to his support. Then I would be beaten, and my supporters killed or enslaved; or I would have to seek for powerful allies of my own. Either way, Serifos would be destroyed. Do you understand that?”

  “I think so.”

  “My brother is not a good king, Perseus, but a civil war would be worse. Our matriarchs understand that, and so do I. That’s why I will keep the truce I have agreed with my brother as long as I possibly, possibly can. I shall not leave. I shall look after my people, and my beloved Serifos, but I won’t fight him.”

  We squatted there on the beach, just a grandfather playing with a child, and watched the fragile island of sand disappear. Maybe I only understood his lesson the way a child understands, but I would never forget that swift, deadly onrush of darkness.

  Now I picked a stem of dry grass and sat on the dock with my legs dangling, swishing my harmless weapon through the air. Papa Dicty was still keeping the truce. Polydectes was still up there in the High Place, lording it over us. But something had changed.

  Our so-called king had been unpleasantly interested in my mother, ever since he’d found out that the castaway with the baby was actually a princess. Polydectes thought our peaceful island ways were weak and backward. He wanted to be a Greek, and best of all, an Achaean! Dicty had never regarded that threat as serious. The king treated his own people brutally, but he wouldn’t risk taking Danae as his “wife” against her will. That might not have gone down well with his Mainland friends. But now I was nearly a man and Papa Dicty’s adopted grandson, and that was different. Polydectes had a right to see me as his direct rival for the throne.

  The calm of the night was an illusion. Serifos was full of turmoil under
the surface, and so was I. Things I didn’t understand about myself (what does it mean to be the son of a Supernatural?) churned and swirled in my head, along with the threat of war, the portent of a great earthquake and—above all—the beautiful stranger who called herself Girl. I relived the dreadful embarrassment of showing that poky little room to the girl who wore solid gold. I wanted to die of shame because our kitchen yard smelled of fish. I was a rebellious seven-year-old again. I felt the whole world was against me. I wanted to yell out, She’s mine! You can’t take her! Who was I shouting at? I didn’t know. I wanted to know what Kore was thinking. What did she think of me? I wanted to touch her; I wanted to fight battles for her, be a hero for her: make her a queen. But she was cold and proud; she had let me know I was not wanted. I would never, never dare to let her know how I felt.

  Back at Dicty’s the yard geese gargled and muttered as the kitchen gate opened, but they knew me. The restaurant was empty except for a couple of quietly incapable sailors, and a lingering party of swells from the High Place (we were the enemy, but we were also the best taverna on the island). Dicty and my mother were sitting at our family table with Anthe and the local resident Egyptian, a friend of ours. They were showing him the Egyptian “red carrots” that Moumi and I had brought back from Naxos.

  Our local Egyptian was a strange man who claimed he came from a country nobody had heard of, on the other side of an ocean that was not the River Ocean beyond the Pillars of the West, and not the fabled Eastern Ocean either. He said he’d been shipwrecked on the southern tip of Africa on a giant raft, as a young boy. His companions had stayed down there, but he had made his way north, through many adventures and many strange nations, to the Middle Sea.

  His personal name was unpronounceable. We called him Aten, because he was blatantly an Egyptian, in spite of the tall stories (which we enjoyed). He had that hairless brown skin, same color all year; and the slick black hair. Also, a clinching point, he never wore a cloak or a tunic, but always just a white linen kilt. Which everyone knows is the way Egyptians dress.

  He was married to a Naxian woman who’d moved here after some political trouble at home. They had a farm in the valley behind Seatown, and were famous as growers of the exotic yellow-fleshed tubers called “opotatos,” which Aten had brought (he claimed) all the way from the land where he was born. Opotatos are poisonous. The green part of the plant, even when carefully prepared, makes some people very sick. At Dicty’s we served the roots soaked, sliced and fried, with salt and sharp wine, and the High Town swells loved it. They got a kick out of the risk—and the staggering price.

  “I have no idea what your strange vegetables are,” Aten was saying as I joined them. “I am not an Egyptian. I am Peruvian. They’re the wrong color, so I expect the flavor is poor. Carrots are supposed to be greenish yellow, Dicty.”

  “Our carrots are greenish yellow,” agreed Dicty patiently. “I just told you, these red fellows are from Egypt. When you meet a new foodstuff, it’s like welcoming a guest: you have to get acquainted with the thing’s spirit, treat it as it wants to be treated. They’re very sweet. Perhaps they should only be used for desserts. Go on, try one.”

  “Hmm. That is actually tasty. What are the growing conditions?”

  At last the High Place party left. Palikari and Anthe kicked out the drunken sailors, and we stopped talking about vegetables.

  Papa Dicty had told Anthe his kitchen was not a theater show, but sometimes we were like actors, changing masks as the drama unfolded. Aten and his wife were our allies. As resident foreigners they had less to fear from the king, and Aten’s wife, Moni the Naxian, was a woman who believed fiercely in the old ways, the way of life Papa Dicty was fighting to preserve. Aten was in town to consult with Papa Dicty about the state of affairs inland, in the villages, and to hear the news Moumi and I had picked up on Naxos. When we went across to the Big Island, we met other Serifiotes, secretly: people who would not dare to talk to us at home….

  There wasn’t much to report this time, only more of the bad tidings we knew already. The truce was wearing thin; Polydectes was plotting something. But there was an unexpected new factor: a mysterious and wealthy young lady, somehow connected with the earthquake victims, who was traveling under a false name, and clearly looking for a place to hide. Could we afford to give her our protection?

  “She gave Taki gold. I wonder what else she has hidden in that bundle of hers,” mused Dicty. “A queen’s diadem?”

  “But the refugees didn’t show any sign of knowing her,” protested Anthe. “None at all,” agreed my mother.

  “So she can’t be their queen. Maybe she’s just noble and generous. She saw those earthquake victims, her heart opened and she couldn’t help it. Gold might be common as clay where she comes from. Aten says there are places like that in Africa.”

  “True,” admitted our Egyptian. “But, Anthe, she may be everything you say, and still have powerful enemies who may descend upon us. My lord”—he turned to Papa Dicty—“if you protect her, the king could use that against you.”

  “If she’s of high enough rank,” put in my mother reluctantly, “her people might never have seen her face. How many Achaean princesses run around in the street? But on Naxos, when she had to risk being discovered, or else abandon them, she didn’t hesitate.”

  “What about you, Perseus?” asked Palikari. “The women are on Kore’s side. You’re being unusually quiet.

  What do you think?”

  “Dunno,” I muttered, glowering at my best friend for no reason at all.

  “Hmm …” The boss was making up his mind. “She’s a young woman of few words, and proud deeds, and I watched her in my kitchen this afternoon. She’s well trained; she can hold her tongue.” Dicty passed a hand over his bald head, a habit of his when puzzled. “I see the danger, Aten, and it should be discussed, but I won’t call a Town Meeting. I’ll take advice, quietly: see what our matriarchs think.”

  We didn’t hold Town Meetings often. People hadn’t much heart for discussing minor problems when the real problem was the king, and we’d all agreed there was nothing to be done about him…. Silence fell. There was something about Kore that nobody wanted to bring up—not even the boss, who was never superstitious. Somewhere far away, on the coast of Africa, there had been a major earthquake. A fearful portent, an ominous sign of Supernatural meddling in human affairs … She had come to us like smoke blown from a distant fire. What could she tell us, if she dared?

  The last lamp was guttering. We decided to spare the oil and go to bed.

  Whatever she was hiding, our new waitress had told the truth about her skills. She didn’t know a thing about cooking, serving food or attending to guests. But she was a thorough housemaid, and a speedy learner. The only half-truth was when she’d said she could weave “a little.” Her weaving was superb. She’d brought a frame loom dismantled in her pack, along with a finely carved shuttle, hanks of dyed yarn and some outlandish loom weights of carved stone (not solid gold!). Word quickly got about. Over the next few days a procession of the finest weavers in Seatown came to visit the little room on the flat roof. Our matriarchs were impressed by the quality of her work, her knowledge of dyes and yarns, her daring use of color. They also liked her respectful manners; and they liked her silence. “The more a young woman thinks, the less she speaks,” said the great Balba (our chief weaver) to Papa Dicty. “She seems to me a sensible girl. Let her stay.”

  She tried not to show her interest in the refugees. But we noticed that when someone raised the subject in the taverna (and of course people were talking about them), our new waitress would drift over, trying to make it casual, and listen to the conversation. We made up errands for her so she could go out and explore, and check up on her people on the quiet. This trick—it was Anthe’s idea—didn’t work. Kore didn’t say no, but she always found some reason why she couldn’t go out just then.

  We introduced her to our household gods, Mémé the cat and Brébré the ferret (that�
�s gods with a small g; in our language it means “pets”); and she was approved. We introduced her to the poultry. Our yard geese grudgingly agreed not to yell blue murder at her, after a few days…. I showed her the forge and the little furnace yard, where Dicty worked on gadgets like his wheat-ribbon press. “In my country,” she said, giving me a thoughtful look, “metal-working is a craft reserved for princes.” … I didn’t comment on that.

  When we realized that our fugitive would not leave the house alone, Papa Dicty arranged things so that the four of us young people had time off together—and Pali and Anthe and I pretended this happened all the time, which it certainly did not!

  We showed her the glories of Seatown, which was a short tour. The only place worth seeing was the Enclosure, and we knew she didn’t want to go there. We took her up into the hills west of the town so that she could see, across the ripening terraces of hard wheat, the forest-clothed “mountains” (rather small mountains) of our island’s heart. In hard winters we have snow and ice up there. We go and cut the ice and bury it in a deep cave, then bring it down in summer—so that we can have iced desserts and fresh meat at Dicty’s through the hottest weather. Just the way people did before the Disaster, when our taverna was a seaside mansion. Pali and I said we’d show her the cave one day. She said thank you, in her quiet way; but her eyes shone. (Anthe hated the idea of being underground!) We took her sea bathing in our favorite cove, north of the harbor. She could swim, but she’d never been in the sea before. We took her to visit Aten and his wife.

  Moni the Naxian was a skilled herbalist. She showed Kore the leaves and flowers of the opotato, and they were soon deep in conversation about the curious qualities of that rare plant. They went off for a study-walk around Moni’s garden while we stayed with Aten and played with the children. It was the same story as with the matriarchs of Seatown: Moni was impressed, and mystified.

  “This girl is extremely learned,” she said. “And so young. Who can she be?”