by Wendy Orr
After all, Fila is the Lady’s firstborn daughter, despite the stories of an earlier one that died, and one day Fila will become the Lady. She is loved by all.
Aissa, as far as she knows, is loved by no one. Kelya has gone blind and knows that if she can’t protect the child, favouring her will make things worse. So Aissa has sunk to the bottom of the heap; spoken to only in anger, the last to eat, the coldest bed place in winter, the stuffiest in summer, the lowest, filthiest, stinkiest chores. She doesn’t even have a nickname like the other servants: ‘No-Name’, they call her. ‘Cursed child; the girl even the raiders didn’t want.’
Fila’s only problem is that she has a voice to scare toads. The snakes do not come to her; they are agitated and hiss, and if the Lady didn’t sing them away, her treasured daughter would die a swollen, painful death twenty times over.
Aissa still has no voice at all and has never been near enough to the snakes to bother them.
Luckily, Fila doesn’t have to sing this morning: her only task is to take a cricket from a small wicker cage and drop it into a pot for the chosen snake. She can just about manage a cricket without crying, though Aissa can see her cringe. A few days ago, Fila cried so much that she dropped a wriggling mouse onto the floor. The mouse quickly disappeared. The Lady replaced the snake’s pot in the cave and brought out the one she’d used the day before. She didn’t say anything, but Aissa could hear the sharp anger in her song.
Aissa doesn’t enjoy seeing the mice being dropped to their death, but she doesn’t feel sorry for them. The snakes have to eat, and it’s a mouse’s fate to be eaten. The same with the crickets – besides, she likes eating crickets herself, crispy and fried and swiped off a market stall.
When the Lady steps outside, Aissa inches forward till she can look right out through the open sanctuary doors. Watching from behind the scenes, she can’t see the crowds staring in through the gate, but she can imagine what they’re seeing. She knows how they’ll be blinded by the rising sun and how tall and dark and magnificent the Lady will seem against it. When the song begins again, calling the snake up to the Lady’s arms and the sun to the skies, the sound lifts Aissa right up out of her body so that it is worth all the risks to be hidden on a rock and hear it, secret and alone. And when she goes back into her body, the song goes with her, so that sometimes, when she needs it, she can hear it again.
The song ends. The square will soon start filling up with people; Aissa needs to leave now – she can’t risk someone seeing her sliding out from under the boulder. That could be worse than the beating Squint-Eye has promised her if she doesn’t sweep up the dog droppings.
But something is different this morning. After the Lady steps back into the sanctuary and releases the snake to its cave, she turns to the altar. It is crowded with small statues in wood, stone and bronze, amber beads and gold jewellery. The Lady picks them up and rearranges them into a new pattern, talking softly all the while, reminding the goddess of what they’ve given her. Finally she places the raiders’ bronze dagger right in the centre, surrounded by all the other riches.
‘Use this symbol of the Bull King’s power to strengthen your people,’ she says, loud enough for Aissa to hear.
Then she adds something that makes no sense at all. ‘I gave you my own. Will you let the bull take more?’
The goddess doesn’t answer, but the secret door from the Lady’s rooms opens. Fila leads Kelya in.
‘What are the signs?’ the Lady asks abruptly.
‘My wise-women have seen two,’ says blind Kelya. ‘A skylark escaping from an eagle to rise again singing. Later they found an eagle’s feather woven into its nest. And on the same day, a dragonfly such as they had never seen, wondrously large and blue, hovering above the Source.’
‘A dragonfly?’ the Lady repeats.
‘Dragonfly?’ Aissa echoes in her mind, the word nudging at her from some long-ago memory.
‘That’s what they saw,’ says Kelya.
‘That was the name of my mother’s grandmother. Could it be her spirit returning to save us from the bull?’
‘Only the goddess knows,’ says Kelya.
So the Lady sprinkles white barley meal on the floor of the snakes’ cave, calls the great house snake out with an offering of milk, and tries to find the goddess’s answer in the pattern that he draws.
There are two ways of looking at Aissa’s story. The searcher who found her under the bush still believes that she’s the miracle girl who escaped the raiders. Everyone else thinks she’s the cursed child who called the Bull King’s ship to the island.
Spit the bad luck away when you see her; pinch or slap her to make her understand. Why bother talking to a girl who doesn’t speak?
The worst time is the spring, when wobbly-legged kids are born to the goats in the warming air and the hills are fragrant with flowers. Now it’s not only swallows and herons that return, but the Bull King’s ship.
So that afternoon, when a sweet south wind blows and a smudge of colour glows on the waves, Aissa knows exactly what it is, long before she can see the red sails or great black horns on the bow.
She presses herself against a nook in the wall, trying to be invisible as the market square erupts, people crowding in through the gates for protection or out for news, running jostling and breathless down the road, the fisherfolk joining them as their little boats sail in too.
The ship nears the cove, below the town. The red sails drop and twenty-seven rows of oars flash from the black hull. Aissa can see the bronze glint of the battleaxes and spears of the men standing in the bow. The oars lift; some of the rowers jump in and tow the ship towards the shore.
But the beach is out of view from here, and now the ship is too. The square hushes: the traders stop their bustle. No children run or dogs bark. For an instant even the air seems to stand still.
Then the wailing starts, rising from the beach to the Hall, gathering volume as it picks up mourners on its way.
Last year’s bull dancers have not returned.
Grief and fear all around
but fear can turn to anger
and slaps for Aissa
because what can’t be fixed
must be her fault.
The hollow in the wall
too small to hide her now
but Aissa so quiet and still
barely a breath to betray her,
invisible as a lizard
while the wailing swirls
and the fear-snake
curls in her belly.
Wailing people see only what they need.
No one wants to see
the privy-cleaner now
though some run to privies
with terror in their guts.
The new bull dancers race
out the gate to their homes,
a last visit and goodbye.
No time to spit
at the girl who will never dance,
and part of Aissa would be happy
to see them panicked always.
She hates the spitting,
wet on her face
muck on her hair,
her clothes, her feet.
She hates the spitting
and sometimes the spitters
but if she hates them all
she has no one.
So another part of Aissa
is wailing too
in chorus with her people,
echoing fears of long ago
of Zufi shouting,
Mama running,
of screams and fires in the night,
smoke stench and sadness in the morning.
The fear is a dark deep pit –
heart warns, ‘Keep away! Don’t look!’
But the Mama longing is sharp
and her heart calls loud
till Milli-Cat comes running
from the Lady’s rooms
out through the Hall
across the square to Aissa.
Milli-Cat is white a
s the snow
on winter mountains
and she can’t hear.
‘Deaf as a rock,’ people say.
So Milli-Cat doesn’t care that Aissa
is quiet as stone.
Milli-Cat belongs to the Lady
and to Fila
so Aissa mustn’t touch her,
but they stand together against the wall
as sorrow swirls around them.
The wailing rises in waves. People are sobbing, wandering aimlessly or dropping to their knees, pounding their foreheads on the ground. The potter has torn out a great hank of her own hair; a baker has slashed the sleeves of his tunic. The grief is for the boy and girl who haven’t returned; the fear is for the ones who will take their places. Every year it’s harder to hope that the bull dancers will survive and return, covered in glory.
The chief strides out from the Hall. His hair is oiled and his beard trimmed square, his lion-skin cloak is flung over his shoulders, and a dagger gleams at his belt.
‘Close the gates!’ he orders.
‘What’s the point?’ a guard mutters. ‘It’s not as if we’re going to fight.’
No one cares what they say in front of the girl who doesn’t speak. Aissa learns a lot that way.
The gates’ bronze latch clangs shut. The guard bangs his spear on the ground.
‘Listen to your chief!’ he bellows.
The chief waits until every eye is focused on him. ‘The Lady has read the oracle, and the signs are clear: the skylark that escapes the eagle will rise again singing. Rebirth is a greater strength than force.’
Rebirth? thinks Aissa. The word dances in her mind. It’s never easy to understand exactly what the oracle means.
‘Don’t let them think they’ve beaten us!’ a guard shouts. The chief nods.
‘They’ve taken our children,’ the potter sobs. ‘Of course they’ve beaten us!’
The potter’s daughter
a big girl, a kind girl,
with Aissa in the dust
long, long ago,
making circles of flowers
in a ring of stones.
The potter’s daughter
a big girl, a kind girl
but not as big
as the girls that spat,
‘Stay away from us
with the curses you’ve caught
from the bad-luck brat!’
The potter’s daughter
a big girl, a wild girl
pinching Aissa,
scratching, kicking,
slapping hard
till the bigger girls laughed
and said she could play.
The potter’s daughter
gone last year on the Bull King’s ship
is dead now.
The ship’s captain and his warriors are marching up the road. Islanders draggle after them, a safe twenty paces behind.
‘Welcome,’ says the chief, as if he had a choice.
The guards fling the gates open, and the men enter. They crowd the market square more than any nine men should; their weapons and mission fill the air. Strangest of all, an animal has followed them. It looks like Milli-Cat except that its fur is black and its ears twitch as if it can hear.
Milli-Cat comes from a land where cats are worshipped. She was a gift to the Lady from a trader two springs ago, and is the only one on the island. Now everyone’s wondering if this new beast will stay small like her or grow into a lion – it’s hard to imagine that anything good could come with the bull ship. Aissa isn’t the only one trying to be invisible against a wall.
The Lady, says the chief, is serving the goddess and can’t be disturbed. The tall guard translates into the Bull King’s harsh tongue.
He’s lying! Aissa thinks. She’d seen the Lady rush through the Hall to her private chambers when everyone else was running to the gate.
Then the Lady appears, and Aissa understands.
Sometimes the best way to serve is to look magnificent. The Lady’s face is powdered white and her eyes painted dark. Her black curls are piled into an eagle feather headdress; a gold snake belts her red robe, and two twine up each arm. Power shimmers around her like her rose perfume.
The Bull King’s men shrink a little closer to human size.
‘You will feast with us today,’ the Lady announces, ‘and leave in the morning with those who are honoured to serve.’
Why doesn’t she make them leave right away? Aissa thinks. We don’t want them around stinking out our town!
They do stink, too. Stale sweat mostly, but also a whiff of fear. Only nine of them, after all, enclosed in this courtyard with a hundred people wishing them dead. Their shipmates would avenge them, sure as a rock smashing an egg, but it would be too late to bring these warriors back to life.
‘We wouldn’t wish to dishonour your gods with a hasty choice of tribute,’ the Lady is saying.
Another lie! The two new bull dancers have lived in the Hall for the past year, training and preparing. It would be easier to prepare if there were bulls on the island, but the rocky soil is too harsh for cattle, and the calves so carefully, expensively brought in by boat have always sickened and died. It would also be easier if they knew exactly what they were training for, but no one on the island has seen the dances that the Bull King loves so much.
In fact the only thing they know for sure is the promise: if a dancer survives the year, they will be free to return home, and their island will be free of tribute forever.
And, of course, the other fact – that so far no one’s ever survived the year.
Then, as if the Lady has put the thought straight into her mind, Aissa understands. Her mouth twitches into an almost-smile, and Milli-Cat purrs at her feet as if she’s understood too.
Though the tribute is a heavy load for this poor, rocky island, they’d pay four times that to keep their children safe at home. They don’t have that choice. All they have is the small secret of knowing that the new bull dancers, gone now for one last day with their families, have been given the best chance possible.
Aissa understands small silent victories. Things like knowing that a rat is nesting in the corner of the kitchen where Half-One and Half-Two sleep, even if it never bites those wasp-tongued twins . . . she knows how that is.
But she’s never thought of how the bull dancers feel, or that they could be afraid. Even though they’re only a year older than she is, and have been living just a wall away from the servants’ kitchen, they’re as distant as the eagles soaring over the mountain crags. The differences are so complete she can’t even be jealous. Except for one thing: No one spits at the sight of them. If the gods gave her one wish, that would be it: to have a day when no one spat at her. One full day. She sees it like a smooth pebble to hold in her hand, a jewel that would make the rest of her life bearable.
Suddenly, like a chasm opening beneath her feet, a thought cracks her world.
The dancers will leave tomorrow morning. Eight days after that, next year’s dancers will be chosen. Every twelve year old on the island has a chance.
Even me, she thinks. The voice in her head, that no one else has ever heard, is full of doubt and wonder, almost awe. Even me.
Bull King’s men are tall
strong
big in every way.
They eat like giants
leaving little for servants;
nothing for Aissa.
Dreams of hunger
crying to Mama
for soft white cheese
salty dried fish
crunchy hot crickets.
Waking to no Mama
no soft white cheese
no salty dried fish
but her sleeping pallet
black with crickets.
Aissa is a quick cricket-catcher
hungry enough to eat them raw.
‘No!’ says a voice,
loud in her head.
‘They’ve come to the call!’
A voice she doesn�
�t know.
Words like the oracle.
Oracles don’t speak through a No-Name child;
gods don’t talk to bad-luck girls.
But hungry Aissa
leaves the crickets alone.
Maybe that’s why
the gods let her see
what no one else does:
Milli-Cat and the ship beast
dancing in the dawn,
rubbing heads and yowling.
Aissa is glad
that Milli-Cat has a friend
and wonders
what that would be like.
Aissa doesn’t go to her spying place that morning. Already the world is busy and awake; she can see the captain and his men through the open door of the Hall. They’re yawning and stretching just like normal people. One of them passes on his way to the privy. Aissa shrinks against the wall, waiting for the first-sight-of-the-day spit to keep her evil luck away from him.
He doesn’t spit. His eyes glance over and ignore her, as if she was any other servant girl.
The crack in Aissa’s world opens wider.
She should be cleaning; she should have already swept out the Great Room where the Bull King’s men slept, and hauled buckets from the well for scrubbing tables. But she hasn’t even started. She’s back in her nook against the wall, watching the Lady call the sun to rise.
Everyone on the island seems to be there: townsfolk packed tight in the square, children in front, toddlers on shoulders; fishers, herders and farmers crowded outside the gate, where Fox Lady left Aissa so long ago. Maybe she’s there now; Aissa doesn’t know. And tells herself she doesn’t care.
Even the Bull King’s men, watchful as wolves, shiver when they hear the Lady’s strange, high notes and see the snake coiling up to her neck. Gold streaks appear in the sky behind the mountain, blinding the watchers. The singing Lady, the sanctuary and the mountain behind it, all disappear in the sun’s slanting rays.
But the instant that the sun appears and the song stops, the captain strides impatiently to the gate.
The olive oil, wine, grain, dried fish and cloth have been stored for weeks now, ready for this day. Now twelve goat kids are led in through the garden gate, bleating for their mothers.
