by Wendy Orr
So she leaves the oysters, but picks up three shining shells from between the rocks, for no reason except that they’re beautiful. She knots them safely into her rag-pouch with her flint knife.
And once they’re in her sanctuary cave, no one can take them away from her. I’ll show them to Milli-Cat and remember when I ate Hall folk’s food. The Lady’s favourite.
The sun is high in the sky; her sunburnt face is glowing, but there’s no shade to rest in. She passes another oyster-covered rock: some have been chipped off.
A knife did that, thinks Aissa. People have been here.
Sure enough, when she clambers over a pile of boulders to round the point, she’s on the fishers’ pebbled beach. Their houses are built into the hill, close to the road winding up to town from the other end of the cove. The little boats are already in from their morning’s fishing, but no one is in sight. It’s siesta time.
Aissa can sneak past sleeping people, but not their dogs.
Do fishers have dogs?
So many things she doesn’t know.
On this side of the point, the cliff is more of a hill. Aissa scrambles up it to meet the chamomile path she ran down yesterday. She can follow that, around the edges of town to the river, where she can finally cool her hot face and drink . . .
She detours to the cliff top for one last look at the sea.
Nestled into the hollow of an ancient olive tree is a small stone statue. Carved wooden dolphins are laid out in front of her. This is the fishers’ goddess.
Aissa salutes her, hand on her heart in thanks: the sea has given her food and a knife, a day of safety and freedom.
A salute is not enough.
She picks a bunch of yellow chamomile daisies, and lays them out in a pattern in front of the goddess. It’s still not enough. Not till she takes the three shells from her pouch and places them in the middle of the circle.
What are you doing? says the mean voice in her head. This is the fishers’ shrine! You don’t belong here!
Her heart is beating hard.
Don’t be angry, she begs the stone figure. I only wanted to thank you.
It’s too late to take the offering back. The goddess might want to accept it.
Or she might throw you off the cliff instead, says the mean voice.
Aissa shudders and turns to see how close she is to the edge.
Far below, out in the sea, three dolphins are leaping.
9
THE ROCK SLINGER
Returning from the sea
her sanctuary cave is darker,
the rock floor colder,
the town more hate-filled –
but there is shelter
and water to drink
from river or well.
And though the sea goddess
welcomed her once,
when Aissa returns
her flowers and shells
have been scattered and smashed.
Nowhere is safe
but sometimes
she is too tired to run –
and sometimes
she is tired
of always running –
so she hides,
squatting behind
a rock or a tree,
her head tucked tight
between her knees,
her arms shielding
her defenceless neck.
Sitting small,
still as stone,
as invisible
as the nothing she feels.
From one full moon to the next, Aissa stays close to town, wandering in the loop of river, barley field and olive grove, sheltering under a tree or the stone bridge in the heat of the day, creeping back to her cave at night. The barley is being harvested, threshed and winnowed, the whole community working as one. Women move down the field in a slow dance of bent backs and small flashing sickles. Children and servants glean behind them to pick up fallen stalks.
Even here, Aissa is chased away. No one wants a curse on the year’s grain.
But with everyone else occupied, she can wander more freely, collecting greens from the grove and lush riverside. She explores the washing rocks; the river is clear and doesn’t taste of salt. Aissa drinks and washes, steals a rag left drying on a bush and winds it into a shepherd’s headscarf. She’s still sunburnt from her day at the sea.
The harvest ends, and the townfolk chase her away from their favourite picking spots again. She’ll have to go back to the hills.
Wolves can’t be much worse than Squint-Eye, she decides.
The further she gets from the town, the more she knows that’s not true. She’s twitchy as a hare as she snatches fennel stalks from between rocks. Their liquorice flavour doesn’t taste nearly as good when she’s wondering how she might taste to a wolf.
A group of families is collecting greens too. They sing as they pick, with the younger children safe in the middle, acting out the song.
Here comes rabbit, hippity hop
See his ears flap and flop;
Here comes hedgehog, curled up small
Roll him over like a ball;
Here comes deer, fast and fleet,
Give a shout and make him leap.
Here comes wolf, with her pup,
If you don’t run she’ll eat you up!
Behind the voices
Aissa hears a memory
of hillsides with Mama,
green in her fingers,
of Mama singing
and another voice,
a child’s song
as if, once upon a time,
Aissa had a voice.
She doesn’t slow
her green-gathering,
sweet-leaf nibbling,
but the song pulls her
towards these children
who still have time to play,
feeling the love that binds
the circle of singing
as it drifts across her
with morning warmth.
Then a mother sees
and screams,
‘Go away, you bad-luck child!
Keep your curse
from our precious ones!’
And one of the pretty, laughing girls
hurls a stone.
A small girl,
a small stone,
but its weight is heavy,
and Aissa runs.
Up the mountains to the woods
not stopping,
forgetting even to search
for life-giving greens,
till she hears more voices
and crouches to hide
behind a tree.
A goatherd girl,
two younger boys,
and all around them
the goats they guard.
The smaller boy holds a broken rope,
his shepherd’s sling, torn in two.
His sister drops it to the ground:
‘Time you learned to make your own,’
pointing up past Aissa’s tree,
‘Cedar bark is best.’
‘Stay with the goats,’
she tells the bigger boy
and leads her small brother
into the woods.
As if sent by the gods
to teach hidden Aissa,
she stops at a tree
with a dangling dead branch,
thick around as her arm.
With a knife of sharp flint
the girl slices the bark,
yanks it free:
‘What you want is underneath.’
Delicately now
she cuts again,
peeling pale inside skin
off the branch in long, clean strands
and takes the bundle
out from the woods
to the brother on his rock.
Aissa follows,
slipping from tree to tree
in time to see the girl
rolling the bark on her goatskinned thigh
ti
ll all the cords are rough and frayed.
Then she wraps and twists,
fingers flying so fast
that Aissa can’t see,
and neither can the little brother.
‘Slow down!’ he begs.
His sister laughs,
stops showing off,
and shows him slowly,
loop by patient loop.
Aissa’s fingers copy
without the cord,
learning movements
to remember later.
And when the goats roam west
and the goatherds follow,
Aissa returns to the tree,
to the other side
of the long dead branch;
cuts the bark with her flint,
peels the pale strings free
and carries them away.
10
THE BULL DANCERS
Aissa wakes early. It’s the start of summer, the longest day of the year. Tonight goat kids will be sacrificed. Their flesh will be cut small and roasted on skewers over open fires, so the gods can enjoy their fill of smoke, and the people their fill of meat. There will be jugs of wine, platters of the best food and dancing in the square. There might even be enough chaos that Aissa can eat too.
It’s not two full moons since she’s been outcast, but already Aissa can hardly remember the moment when she believed that she was going to be a bull dancer. Easier to remember the dream she’d had last night, of being a hare fleeing a fox: she can still feel the frantic animal’s heart pounding in her chest. She can’t feel anything of the bull-dancer dream.
That’s why she doesn’t care about the dancers, she tells herself.
It’s just that sometimes it’s impossible not to.
The young guard Tigo is rounding up a community of youths to race with Nasta and Luki, a long-distance run into the hills before breakfast. ‘Around the goat meadow to the old oak at the start of the path to the Source. First one back wins a honey cake.’
A honey cake! Aissa’s mouth waters. A whole honey cake, moist and sweet, after so long of nothing but greens . . . She edges out from her hollow in the wall.
At the same moment the boy Digger approaches from the kitchen gardens. He’s older than Aissa, and strong from his outdoor work.
‘Not you, Digger!’ Tigo roars. ‘Do you think the bull dancers are going to get stronger by racing with servants?’
Digger scurries back to the vegetables, his shoulders hunched against the jeers. Aissa shrinks back into her hollow, and Tigo’s eyes pass over her without seeing.
But Nasta’s don’t. ‘No-Name’s looking at me!’ she wails.
‘Get your bad luck away from the dancers!’ Tigo bellows.
Without warning, the mocking laughter against Digger turns to rage against Aissa, the crowd turning with fists raised and spit flying – and Aissa is running, fast as the hunted hare of her dreams, faster than any bull dancer has ever run, out the back gate and up to the hills.
Which is the trail that Tigo has set, so something changes as she runs. She’s not running to hide; she’s running because she can. She stops at the old oak; the sensible thing would be to go further, skirting the edge of the forest to collect food for her day.
Instead she climbs the tree.
Up and up, pulling and scrambling until she reaches a high branch that’s thick enough to lie on, and that’s what she does, like a lynx waiting for prey. Not that she’s going to pounce on the runners, who are coming up the trail now, puffing and panting. She’s not even going to spit. But she can imagine it.
She imagines it so clearly that when Nasta is below her she can’t stop the juicy gob leaving her mouth, shooting through the leaves onto the dancer’s head. The girl jerks as if she’s been slapped, and stops to stare at the tree.
Aissa lies still along the branch, hardly daring to breathe.
‘Keep running, Nasta!’ Tigo shouts. ‘It’s downhill now, back to the Hall.’
Luki’s a little way behind; he hasn’t reached the tree yet. He looks up into the branches as he runs, and for a moment Aissa thinks he’s smiling.
He’s just panting! she tells herself. He can’t possibly see me.
He mustn’t have, because he doesn’t call Tigo.
But as Aissa lies in her perch, waiting till the last stragglers have circled the oak and disappeared back down the track, she remembers something else. Luki has never spat at her.
Watching Nasta,
watching Luki,
nasty Nasta, named for a fish,
stings like a wasp
and watches for Aissa,
just to jeer.
Luki doesn’t
watch for Aissa
with hate or spit,
but sometimes it seems
that he sees –
which is the scariest of all.
Nasta glowing
with pride of her place,
walking through crowds,
with her god-luck touch,
as a dancer should.
Luki glows too –
pink and awkward in the crowd,
as if he needs
more room to breathe;
shares his god-luck
as if it hurts
and he’d rather be
anywhere than here,
so that sometimes Aissa thinks
he’s as alone as she is.
Then her mind scoffs
because Luki is never
ever
alone.
He always has Tigo
or Nasta
or even the chief,
and always the crowd
wanting to touch.
Luki has a bed of fleece,
the best of food,
as if he were
the Lady’s child;
nothing to trouble him
except being a dancer.
Luki is strong,
though not as quick on his feet
or agile as Nasta.
Luki’s mother is a farmer,
his father and grandparents too.
They belong to the land
in the island’s north –
as far up the mountain
as gardens will grow –
with olives and grapes,
vegetables, figs and barley.
They come to the market
one day in five,
first mother, then father,
a brother and a sister,
sometimes an aunt,
but the walk is too long
for grandparents
or a toddling brother.
Aissa hears him –
the dancer in his clean white tunic
and neat oiled hair –
asking for news of home,
not just baby and grandparents,
but dogs and goat,
and the fruiting trees.
The family answer
stiff words that say little
as if to a stranger
who doesn’t care how
the black dog barks at the wind
or the fig tree leans
over the spring.
Though sometimes
Aissa sees
tears in his mother’s eyes,
and in Luki’s.
Nasta’s family
shed no tears;
her mother glows as bright as Nasta,
so proud, so sure
her daughter will be the one
to save the island.
She comes each day from the fishers’ cove
with fish to trade
or pay the Lady,
but mostly so she can say,
‘My Nasta, the dancer,’
and touch hands for luck,
as if it were her.
Like her daughter,
she watches for the bad-luck girl,
as if Nasta’s glory
has been besmirched
by No-Name’s hopes.
She co
rners Aissa
against the town wall,
with spit on her lips,
hate in her eyes,
says, ‘No-Name,
bad-luck child,
twice abandoned,
I know that you
passed by our shrine,
cursing our holiest place
with your stink.
‘The goddess that watches
the fishers at sea
will toss you off the cliff
if she finds you there.
And if she doesn’t,
I will.’
Ever since he came to the Hall, Luki has been curious about the girl called No-Name. She’s short for her age, as thin and wary as a stray dog and fast as a hunted hare. Her hair is black, like most people’s, but curlier than most, a tangled frizz instead of plaits. She’s never with the other servants – in fact, he’s never seen her do any chores.
He’s almost sure she’s the girl he walked with on Firefly Night, except that girl looked free and happy. This girl is freer than he is, but she’s the only person in the Hall who’s more unhappy.
Maybe that’s why he wants to laugh when he sees her spit onto Nasta’s head. It’s certainly why he doesn’t give her away.
Because Luki knows that his fate is tied to Nasta’s. Luki’s worked with animals all his life, and he knows that surviving the bull dances will need teamwork. All Nasta cares about is beating everyone else – including him.
So that night at the solstice feast, he takes an extra honey cake from the platter. The party is nearly over before he spots the no-name girl skulking around the edges. Luki sidles into the shadows, and leaves the cake behind.
A honey cake
all for Aissa
as if she’s won
the race after all.
As sweet in her mouth,
moist in her throat,
warm in her belly
as she’s dreamed.
And as she licks
the last sweet crumbs
from every finger,
Aissa wonders how Luki
could leave it there
on a clean rock ledge
and walk away.
If she didn’t know
that no one would ever
do something kind for her,
she’d almost think
it was a gift.
11
MILLI-CAT AND THE SNAKE
Foraging further from town means worrying about wolves again. Aissa goes back to work on her rock-sling, but making rope isn’t as easy as the goatherd girl made it look. All she’s got from the bark she collected is fingers full of splinters.
The morning after the solstice festival she goes to the cedar trees and strips another bundle. Sitting on a rock till the day warms, sheltering in the forest shade when the sun is so hot that only the cicadas can sing, it takes nearly till sunset to tease out the bark and roll the prickly threads into strands. She tries to splice them in the dark of her cave that night, and ends up with a tangled mess.
