by Wendy Orr
Also by Wendy Orr
Nim’s Island
Nim at Sea
Rescue on Nim’s Island
Rainbow Street Pets
Raven’s Mountain
Mokie & Bik
Spook’s Shack
Peeling the Onion
First published by Allen & Unwin in 2016
Copyright © Wendy Orr 2016
The moral right of Wendy Orr to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the United Kingdom’s Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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ISBN (AUS) 9781760290023
ISBN (UK) 9781743369029
eISBN 9781952534362
Teachers’ notes available from www.allenandunwin.com
Cover & text design by Design by Committee
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CONTENTS
Author’s Note
The Firstborn Daughter
1 Another Spring, Four Years Later
2 After Eight Springs in the Servants’ Kitchen
3 The Fireflies of Rebirth
4 The Light of the Fireflies
5 Dragonfly Banished
6 The Sanctuary Cave
7 The Hills
8 The Sea
9 The Rock Slinger
10 The Bull Dancers
11 Milli-Cat and the Snake
12 The Goats and the Wolf
13 The Bull Dancer and the Boar
14 Dragonfly at the Source
15 The Cold North Wind
16 The Wise-Women
17 The Herb Gatherer
18 The Ship in Spring
19 The Bull King’s Ship
20 Spring Training
21 The Dance of Summer Solstice
22 In the Mother’s Rooms
23 The Bull Dance in Midwinter
24 Meeting the Bulls
25 The Great Spring Dances
26 From the Grey-Green Bush
27 The Bull King’s Promise
28 The Lady of the Bulls
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Around four thousand years ago, on the Mediterranean island of Crete, a great Bronze Age civilisation grew up. Its palaces had grand courtyards and stairways, flushing toilets, lightwells, and painted frescoes on walls, ceilings and floors. They were filled with beautiful art, gold and jewellery; images of priestesses holding snakes and of young men and women leaping over the backs of giant bulls. Archaeologists call it the Minoan civilisation, in honour of the legends of King Minos of Crete.
One of the most famous legends is of the half-man, half-bull Minotaur that lived in Minos’s palace. This monster ate human flesh, and every nine years – or every year, depending on who’s telling the story – the town of Athens was forced to send seven youths and seven maidens for the Minotaur to catch and devour.
But do those bull-leaping paintings tell us how the legend truly began? What if the youths weren’t sent to be eaten by a monster, but to gamble with their lives in a thrilling, dangerous spectacle? And perhaps tribute didn’t come only from Athens, but from anywhere that the powerful Minoan navy could threaten. Maybe even from a small, distant island where a snake priestess still ruled . . .
For my parents, who encouraged my love
of mythology and archaeology as well as
literature; my children and siblings,
who cheer me on; and Tom, who listens
with patience and love.
THE FIRSTBORN DAUGHTER
In her dreams, Aissa feels
memory before memory,
before thought or words,
when she is still soft and small
and warm in her mother’s arms.
A dada face leans,
squeezing her arms tight.
A flash of silver –
pain,
blood dripping from her hands
and the dada face dripping tears.
Slippery as snakes, the whispers slide from the Hall to the town and across the island, up hills and through valleys, from the fishers’ cove to the furthest mountain farm.
The whispers say it’s not true that the Lady’s firstborn died at birth. They say it’s worse – the baby was born with an extra thumb dangling from each wrist.
If she’s not perfect, she can never follow in her mother’s footsteps.
The whispers grow: ‘Is the Lady fit to rule us, if she can’t have a perfect child?’
But the chief looks down at his newborn daughter and thinks she is the loveliest thing he’s ever seen. ‘What does it matter if she’s got an extra thumb? They’re barely thumbs anyway, just wiggly lumps.’
‘Wiggly lumps!’ shrieks the Lady, as if he’s said ‘boar’s tusks’. ‘Whatever you call them – she shouldn’t have them, and I shouldn’t have her.’
‘What do you mean?’ asks the chief.
The Lady cries, and doesn’t answer.
And so, in a moment of madness, the chief defies the Lady, and the gods. He will make his daughter perfect himself. First left, then right: he holds the tiny arms and with his sharp bronze knife, slices away the useless thumbs. He pinches the wounds shut till the bleeding stops and rocks his baby till her crying stops, too.
The very next day, as he fishes on a peaceful sea, a high, curling wave comes from nowhere. It swerves and chases him; it towers over his boat, swamps and sinks it. In seconds, the chief – the baby’s father, the Lady’s husband, leader of the guards, hunters and fishers, ruler over land disputes and village squabbles – is gone. The gods have spoken: the baby’s fate can’t be changed with the cut of a knife.
Her mother wailing
louder than baby Aissa,
more weeping all around
as if the walls have tongues and tears.
Aissa, too young for words,
old enough for nightmares.
In the dark of almost-morning
lifted from her mother’s bed,
cradled on a bony chest –
smelling kindness
and fear,
but no milk –
the baby sleeps again
rocking, jolting
through cool night air,
up the hill
and across a mountain.
Kelya is the wise-woman who takes the baby from the Lady’s bed. Cradling her in a sling across her chest, she wraps her cloak around them both. It’s too early for even the lowliest servants to be up; no one sees her slip through the darkened Hall and across the square to
the kitchen gate.
The mountain lane is steep and narrow, but Kelya’s feet know it well. She hurries as fast as she can in the darkness. She is old and stiff; she’s carrying a heavy basket of gifts as well as the baby, and she has a long way to go. If she could have asked for help she would, but she can’t burden even the other wise-women with this knowledge. Not when she’s keeping the truth from the Lady herself.
She’s happy to see the sky lightening by the time she reaches the Source.
The cave sheltering the spring is white, and so are the pebbles leading down to its shore, but the pool itself is bottomless and blue, bubbling up from the heart of the earth. Steam rises from it, mixing and swirling with the cool morning mist.
Kelya leaves her cloak and basket at the start of the rocky slope. There are flowers on top of the gifts: white and yellow daisies, bluebells and blood-red anemones; clutching them in one hand, she picks her way carefully down to the edge of the water.
‘Great Mother, accept my offering!’ she calls, and throws the flowers into the pool.
They drift on the surface, twirling and bobbing. Kelya stands with her hand on her heart, watching and praying.
As the bluebells start to sink, a dragonfly hovers over them, iridescent blue in the dawn light. The wise-woman sighs with relief. Her gift is acceptable. She’s betraying the Lady, but not the goddess.
She lifts the baby from the sling and unwraps her swaddling blanket.
No one knows all the secrets of the Source, but Kelya knows more than most. Hoisting her tunic up over her knees, she squats on the pebbles at the edge of a small, shallow inlet where the water is cooler. Further in, the pool is hot enough to boil pork.
She dips the baby in the water.
‘Keep this little one safe,’ Kelya begs. Once, twice, three times, dunking the tiny body under the warm blue surface. The child doesn’t cry until she’s lifted out and dried.
Kelya tucks her back into the sling, scrambles up the slope and picks up her cloak and basket again. It’s not far from here to the steep western cliffs, the final jumping spot of those who offend the gods – the place the Lady expects her imperfect baby to be taken.
But the sun is rising, birds are singing of new life, and the goddess has accepted the wise-woman’s prayer. Turning the other way, Kelya follows the stream that winds down the mountain from the Source, carrying the baby through wildflowered hills to a farm on the rocky east coast.
Because whispers can work their way up from the island to the Hall, as well as down. It is Kelya’s business to know who’s had babies, and who has lost them. She knows a baby girl was born on this lonely farm the night that this child was born to the Lady. She also knows that the farm’s baby died the same day the sea god took the chief. So she hopes the grieving parents will have room in their hearts for this rejected girl.
She’s right. It’s a small family: the woman who owns the farm, her parents and sister, her husband and seven-year-old son. No one else will know that Aissa wasn’t born here. After all, there are few mountain goatherds without scars of one sort or another – no one is ever going to notice a girl with a small half-moon mark at each wrist.
The only thing Kelya forgets, as she starts on the long trail back to the town, is to remove the amulet the Lady had placed around her daughter’s neck the day she was born.
The baby hungry,
fretful and crying,
delivered to new arms,
to rough-skinned hands
gentle with love,
rubbing the wise-woman’s salve
onto the wounds
where floppy thumbs used to be.
Waking to a new home:
a goat smell,
a hearth-smoke smell,
but a smell of milk
and comfort.
The arms are Mama’s,
and the home is her home,
but in nightmare dreams
they are new
and strange.
1
ANOTHER SPRING, FOUR YEARS LATER
Night is warmth of Mama
snores of Dada
goat-rug softness
hearth-smoke smell
glowing coals.
Now night is screaming
Zufi bursting through door
gasping, ‘Raiders!’
Aissa waking,
and the nightmare staying.
Brave Zufi out watching the goats,
guarding against wolves
and lions
with his slingshot and rocks,
all by himself, the very first time.
When Aissa is big
she can do that too,
brave like Zufi.
Now Zufi has left goats to run,
has forgotten wolves waiting
to eat young kids.
‘I heard a noise, up from the sea
and the moon showed me:
a band of men
climbing the cliffs.’
‘Hide!’ cries Mama, fear-eyes staring
at her home,
her family,
her Aissa.
‘Fight!’ says Dada. ‘They’ll not take what’s ours.’
‘Fight!’ says Gaggie. ‘I’m too old to run.’
Poppa grabs his wood-cutting axe
with the heavy stone head
and Tattie picks up her knife,
the sharp shining blade
that Aissa mustn’t touch.
But Mama wraps Aissa tight in her rug
and runs,
panting up the hill
far from the house
to tuck Aissa in a hollow
under the sharp-scented, grey-green bush
where Spot Goat’s kid
was born yesterday.
‘Don’t make a sound,’ says Mama,
brushing her fingers over Aissa’s lips.
‘No matter what you see,
no matter what you hear,
you stay quiet,
still as stone till I come back.’
Mama makes her sign that keeps Aissa safe
and runs
back down to home.
Aissa sees her
because the moon is shining
bright and round
and Aissa’s eyes are open –
a tiny seeing slit –
even though Mama said, ‘Close them.’
Then the screaming starts.
Aissa wiggles further
under the sharp-scented bush,
curls tight as a finger-poked bug,
squeezes her eyes good-girl shut
and tries not to hear.
Still as stone while the goats bleat and run
up the mountain, in the night
away from fire,
away from screams.
Flames lighting the sky,
higher than home;
screams tearing the night,
screams in Aissa’s head.
Aissa’s legs want to run with the goats
but Mama’s sleeping spell
holds them tight to the ground
through the long red night,
Aissa cold
and all, all alone.
When the screaming stops
Aissa’s heart cries loud for Mama
though her voice stays quiet, still as stone.
Mama doesn’t come
but Spot Goat does.
Spot Goat bleats and nuzzles
at cold toes in morning dew
till Aissa wriggles, snake-silent,
drinks from Spot Goat like a baby kid
because Spot Goat’s kid is gone,
like Mama.
Morning, not morning, with no warm Mama bed
smoke in the sky
stinking stronger than the grey-green bush
and her rug piss-wet and cold.
Waiting through that long fear-morning,
waiting quiet and still as stone.
Spot Goat waits too –
but Spot Goat doesn’t know what Mama said
so she bleats
till the man finds them.
It’s the third time this year that raiders have attacked the island. When the flames of the burning homestead light the sky, distant goatherds call the alarm. Twelve men gather from the farms, but long before they get there, the silence tells them that they’re too late.
They trudge on, dreading what they might find. It’s as bad as they could have imagined.
The house and farm buildings were made of stone, but their roofs were thatched straw. The thatch flamed quickly when the raiders lit it, and the burning roofs collapsed, destroying everything underneath. The rock walls stand like chimneys, smoke pouring from the smouldering mess inside. The husband, grandparents and dog lie dead in front of the door.
There’s no sign of the two women or children.
The men search hopelessly. All they find is a pool of blood at the gate.
‘Let’s hope that’s a raider’s,’ one man says viciously.
It probably is, because a bronze dagger is lying under a bush nearby. The owner wouldn’t have left it unless he was too wounded to notice.
It’s a small sort of payment for the dead, and the women and children taken into slavery.
The dagger is a murdering weapon and it needs to be cleaned of blood and cleansed of evil, but the boy who picks it up can’t help coveting it. Metal is expensive. His grandmother loves reminding the family that she’d paid six kids and a vat of olives for their one short and plain bronze knife. This one is very fine. Its blade is engraved, and the hilt is carved with the head of a horned beast.
‘It’s the sign of the Bull King,’ says the oldest man. ‘If he’s behind these raids, the island is in big trouble.’
‘I’ll take the dagger to the Lady,’ the boy decides. If he can’t keep it, at least he can be first with the news. He whistles his dog and starts across the hills to town.
Three men stay to sing the dead to peace before their burial; the others go out with their own dogs and whistles to round up the straying flock. Which is how one man discovers Aissa, cold, wet and terrified, sheltering under a nanny goat.
‘What’s your name, little one?’ he asks.
She doesn’t answer.
He calls the others; they’re so relieved to find one survivor that for a moment they’re almost happy. The man who finds her is a hero.
Except that now he has to go to the orphaned child’s aunt, the husband’s sister, and tell her that her brother is dead, and that she has a new child to care for.
