Dragonfly Song
Page 20
at a cat,
white like Milli
balancing on the balcony’s edge,
and wishes
she was under her sanctuary rock
with Milli-Cat and the kittens
and especially
Gold-Cat.
She wishes so hard,
that the cat leaps
from balcony to seats below
trots around them
to above the acrobats’ pen
and jumps down
to Aissa’s shoulder.
22
IN THE MOTHER’S ROOMS
The Mother comes to the arena three days later. She’s in a curtained litter chair carried by four men; two young priestesses walk behind twirling their sun parasols, their flounced skirts up over their ankles. The Mother isn’t wearing as much gold as she had at the bull dance, but she looks just as much a queen.
Aissa had been right when she’d thought The Lady of Ladies. Long ago, in a battle of the gods, the earthshaker bull defeated the earth mother. He destroyed her palaces so that invaders could come from over the sea and build their own kingdom. But only the goddess of the earth can bring new life and the crops in their seasons, so although the bull god’s king can make laws and armies, he can’t rule this land without the goddess’s priestesses.
There are many of them, but this woman is the matriarch of all – which is why she’s known as the Mother.
Now the Mother has come to see Aissa.
Her two attendants try to look as if they’re not as curious as everyone else when the Mother orders Mia, ‘I want the girl who called the cat.’
Mia pales as she salutes. Aissa is one of her best trainees, and she has a duty to defend her.
‘With respect, Mistress,’ says Mia, ‘the girl doesn’t speak.’
The Mother raises an eyebrow, intrigued. ‘Not at all?’
‘Not a sound.’
‘Interesting. But there’s more than one way to call a cat. That’s the girl I want.’
Mia salutes again and crosses the ring to where Aissa is practising one-handed handstands. She’s fallen over more than she’s stood; she’s sweaty, dusty, and her hair’s frizzing out of its plaits. She’s nowhere near fit to present to a priestess.
‘I don’t know what she wants,’ Mia murmurs, trying to wipe the worst of the dust off Aissa’s nose before leading her back to the Mother’s chair. ‘Remember: you haven’t done anything wrong.’
Aissa’s surprised at Mia’s distress. None of the acrobats believed that Mia even had a heart.
But she knows something that Mia doesn’t: it’s her fault that Zeta was gored. She deserves to be punished. She stands in front of the litter chair, head bowed.
The Mother pulls the curtains back to study her. ‘Open your mouth – and lift your head, girl . . . so you do have a tongue! You just choose not to use it.’
She snaps her fingers imperiously. Mia and Niko stand to attention.
‘I’m taking her. I’ll send you a slave as a replacement acrobat.’
‘But Mistress,’ Niko dares, ‘this girl has a real chance as a bull leaper. Would it not be possible to find another slave for your purpose?’
‘Slave?’ snorts the Mother. ‘A girl who can call beasts is no slave. She’s a priestess.’
And just like that, life changes again.
Life whirling
as if it’s done so many cartwheels
it doesn’t know which way is up.
A last look –
Luki saying words only Aissa can know:
‘Snake singer!’
The others shocked to silence
till Mia barks,
‘Do you think you’ll learn handstands
standing on your feet?’
She sounds like Mia again
and the acrobats leap to their hands.
While Aissa
in her dancer’s shorts
follows the girls in their flowing skirts
up the road to the palace
into another new life.
The Mother’s wing of the palace is a labyrinth of rooms. They’re all joined, leading from one to the other in complicated bends and twists, sometimes through corridors, sometimes up stairs. It takes Aissa weeks to learn her way around. She never does figure out how to reach the Mother’s chamber on her own; maybe she’s not meant to.
And she’s never sure just how many priestesses there are. Their order is as complicated as the rooms. The Mother is the head, with six Sisters under her. Each of the Sisters has assistants, and then there’s a cloud of young priestesses and trainees who float to wherever they’re needed. Aissa is one of the cloud.
Introducing her that first day, the Mother says, ‘Aissa doesn’t speak, but she’ll sing when she’s ready. She has a rare gift and the goddess has a use for her that I don’t yet know. Welcome her well.’
The giggles don’t start till the Mother leaves the room.
‘How can she not speak?’
‘What, never?’
‘I’d go crazy if I couldn’t talk!’
‘We’ll go crazy if you don’t stop!’
‘Why does the Mother say she can sing?’
‘What’s her gift?’
‘Didn’t you see the cat go to her yesterday?’
‘The Mother’s cat? Went to a bull dancer?’
‘Very strange.’
They find her a cot in a room with three other trainees, and show her how to wear the long skirt with a crossover blouse tucked in at the waist. Her dancer’s shorts and top disappear into the palace washing; her wolf cloak stays in the dancers’ dorm. She can’t imagine the cloak here. The girls would complain that it stinks. It does stink, just a little bit, but she’d like to smell it again.
Her room is simple by palace standards, and more luxurious than anything in the Lady’s Hall. Dolphins leap across the frescoed floor; the walls and ceiling are covered with flowers. There’s a soft fleece on the bed and a rug to cover herself with. And there’s a mirror, a bronze mirror, just for these four apprentices.
It doesn’t take long to work out how important that mirror is. The goddess of this land demands beauty: a priestess doesn’t leave her chamber until her face, body and clothes are all perfect.
‘Haven’t you ever worn make-up?’
The girls aren’t being cruel; they’re just curious. They were all born in the palace and have never thought about the very different lives around it, the peasants and slaves who don’t have time for beauty. How could Aissa be chosen as a priestess if she hasn’t worn make-up?
So Aissa learns
to dip a brush
into a pot of black kohl,
closing one eye
to outline and enhance
without too much smudging;
smearing lashes to make them thick,
not blinking till they’re dry.
She powders her face white
and paints her lips as red
as a mulberry thief’s –
though she doesn’t eat mulberries now
because they stain her fingers
and clean white blouse.
Make-up takes time
but hair is worse:
combing, brushing every morning
and night again;
different plaits on different days,
curls and twists
tied in bunches,
caught by a hair band
or cut in a fringe.
Her roommates
love to try something new,
combing out her thick curls,
but when Aissa combs theirs
her hands tremble –
the last hair she’d combed
was Zeta’s,
who was gored by a bull
just hours later –
and if that was Aissa’s fault,
she’d rather clean privies
than curse a priestess.
Which isn’t saying much
because
the palace privies
don’t stink or need buckets of earth –
just a servant waiting
outside the closed door
with a jug of water
to flush the pipes clean.
And though Aissa’s glad
she’s not doing the cleaning
or even the flushing
she squirms inside
at someone else
doing it for her –
until the day
she opens the door
and sees Zeta waiting
with the jug.
Zeta salutes, stiff and formal
but Aissa hugs,
laughing, crying,
till Zeta hugs back.
Aissa questions –
the dancers’ shrugging sign
that she can’t use
with the priestesses
who share a language
and have enough friends
to chat with
that they don’t need her.
‘The healers cared for me
till I was well.
I was lucky –
I’d rather clean
than face a bull.’
Zeta lifts her blouse
to show the wound,
still a red and angry scar
that Aissa touches
gently
with the love that Kelya
and the wise-women taught.
‘Thank you,’ says Zeta,
kissing Aissa’s hand,
not understanding
that Aissa would rather
thank her
for being alive.
In the weeks that follow
she sees other dancers
who’ve become slaves.
They’d been afraid to meet the eye
of the dancer
becoming a priestess.
Once, going back to the chamber
to return her jacket
as the day warms,
she sees the potter’s daughter.
Aissa’s stomach clenches,
remembering
spit and hate –
until
the girl comes closer:
not such a big girl,
not a kind girl
or a mean girl,
just a girl
dragging a leg
from her dance with the bull,
sweeping Aissa’s floor –
but alive.
Tears welling,
Aissa reaches to hug her
as she had Zeta
but the potter’s daughter
jumps back in fear:
she can’t see No-Name
in this painted priestess
and waits for a blow
that must come with this trick –
so Aissa smiles
and waves, ‘Never mind,’
and the potter’s daughter decides
she reminds the priestess
of someone else
from long ago
but even so,
there’s something
that makes her feel strange,
and after that
she trades her chores
rather than sweep that room again.
But this year’s cast-outs
call her ‘Lucky Aissa’
behind their hands
and are glad to see her,
so that Aissa wishes
Squint-Eye and the twins
and most of all,
the Lady,
could see her being so lucky,
living like a priestess’s daughter
with only those two tiny scars
to tell of the journey
that’s brought her here.
Maybe the goddess doesn’t care
as much about scars
or strange little thumbs
as the Lady thought.
Life as a priestess isn’t all hair and make-up. The goddess demands beauty, but it’s simply the background to the true rituals. And the true rituals aren’t so different from the ones at Aissa’s home. The bull god rules in public, but the Mother still talks to the house snake to read the future, and in a room on the top floor, sings the sun to rise each morning.
It’s still dark when a servant lights the way from their chamber with a flaming torch. Aissa follows up the stairs with the other apprentice priestesses, and stands at the back of the room. She can just make out the shadowy figure of a woman in front of the windows.
The first morning everything is so strange and different that when the Mother starts to sing, Aissa still doesn’t understand. How can she call from inside the palace? Then the first rays of sun hit the eastern window. A snake slithers from a pot to the Mother’s arms, and the room begins to brighten. Aissa gazes past the dark figure into the pink and gold sunrise, and feels the song thrill through her body. This is one familiar thing.
As the song ends and the room fills with soft morning light, she studies the people around her – she’s not going to stop a lifetime of spying just because she’s safe for a moment. Apart from a few well-dressed women and children, most are priestesses, but there’s a sprinkling of men. One tall man with hair as red as a fox and an aura of kingship stands apart. He speaks to the Mother once the snake is safely back in its pot, and something in the way they stand together reminds Aissa of the Lady and the chief.
‘Lord,’ she hears a younger man say, and finally Aissa understands. This is the Bull King. When he puts on the god’s mask and speaks with the god’s voice, he’s a priest and almost a god; even without it he’s the most powerful chief in the world. But he is a man, and needs the sun to rise like any other.
As if to prove it, he sends the younger man – his son, Aissa guesses – to call a servant for breakfast. Small tables appear, fresh cheese and figs, small fried fish and soft breads ... and Aissa, who has never eaten in the Hall except to scavenge under the tables for other people’s leftovers, is sharing breakfast with the Bull King.
He even notices her once. The Mother points at her, obviously telling her story, and he looks over and nods. Aissa scrambles to her feet to salute, stumbling in her new long skirt. Her stool tips and clatters on the tiles. The king looks amused and a few girls giggle.
‘Sit down!’ one of her roommates hisses. ‘You don’t have to do that at breakfast.’
One of the others picks up the stool for her.
Aissa blushes and sits.
A perfumed young man says something that makes everyone around him laugh. Clumsy and bull dancer are the only words Aissa understands – but they’re enough.
It’s just words, not rocks, she reminds herself, which doesn’t help nearly as much as she would have thought a year ago.
But my roommate picked up the stool for me.
That does help.
That first morning
is already a memory
and Aissa now
moves gracefully in flowing skirts,
though she and her friends
are dressed in short shifts
on a hot and moonless night
when a sleepy maid
is sent to wake them –
for the round-bellied priestess
who’d washed the bull dancers’ hands
is labouring now
to birth her babe,
and the trainees must watch
and learn
the goddess’s work.
The birth room is dark,
like Aissa’s cave home
under the rock
where Milli-Cat’s
kittens were born;
torches flicker
with just enough light
to see the ring of Sisters
against the walls,
crooning softly
a song without words,
calling the baby
to come out to the love
of this flower-scented room.
The priestess paces like Milli-C
at
and when she stops
to rock on her knees,
her cries are louder
but mean the same
as the cat’s.
A wise-woman, old as Kelya
offers sips
of honeyed herbs
to ease her pain,
while the Mother
wipes sweat from her face
with a cooling sponge,
and calls the goddess.
Aissa’s friends
join in the singing
and Aissa feels
the song of new life
flow through her heart –
though not her mouth.
The priestess cries loud
and the wise-woman
and the Mother
echo in triumph,
as a small and bloodied,
squalling baby girl
is welcomed to the world.
The Mother is still waiting
for Aissa to find her song
but she is right
that Aissa can dance.
It’s a wonderful thing
that the goddess loves
to be worshipped in dance
because Aissa
loves to whirl and stamp,
shake her hair and arms,
spinning wild,
or circling with the others
as she did with the wise-women
in the hills above her home.
So when the bull dance comes
on the autumn day
that light and dark balance
before the nights lengthen
into winter,
Aissa will be
one of the dancers
to praise the goddess
for the bull.
Except
when the day comes
Aissa’s belly
begins to cramp
as if she’s eaten
unripe berries;
her body
begins to bleed
and she doesn’t know why –
and wonders
how much blood
can leak out before she dies.
But her roommates,
seeing her face so pale,
hug her
and give her clean rags
to soak up the blood.
‘It happens to all of us,’
they say.
Then wise-women lead her
to the goddess’s cave,
dark and silent,
to learn the mysteries
of changing from girl
to woman.
Aissa feels so much older and wiser when she returns after her first period that she can’t help hoping she’ll regain her voice. She doesn’t. The only change is that her roommates have become her friends.
Maybe she’s had so many changes in the last year that one more can’t make any difference. The only thing that’s the same as her life under the sanctuary rock, is the comfort of a cat curled against her in the evenings. And knowing that the Mother’s cat, like the Lady’s, has chosen her, is a very big comfort.