Swallow’s Dance

It’s the news I’ve been dreading. This long winter is ending, and the coming full moon will be the spring festival and the start of the sailing season.

Pellie’s mother will celebrate it as the new Lady; Pellie’s older sister is the new Kora. The chief announced them after the burials, when our faces were still streaked with the mud of mourning and the blood of the lamb, but the Swallow Clan had decided it together. Pellie and I held hands as we listened with our sister Learners.

There wasn’t much discussion. As the wise-woman told Nunu when we returned, ‘By the lines of birth and breeding it would be your mistress, but…’ She gestures at my mother, sleeping curled like a baby on her bed, and is kind enough not to go on.

‘Leaving,’ says Dada, and I can’t hear more,

as if the sea that will take him

is already roaring between us.

To be alone with Nunu and Mama

in this house of strangers –

because though Rika is kind,

grateful for my help

and lets me hold her baby,

she’s too conscious of my status

to remember I’m a girl,

and the wise-women,

only one rung down

and known in my life before,

have time for nothing but illness

and exhausted sleep.

‘Do you hear me?’ asks Dada.

‘We will take your mother

from this place of illness and death

to the palace of Tarmara

in the Great Island where Glaucus stays.

The wise-women there will heal her

if the goddess wills it.’

‘What about me?’ I wail,

like a child afraid to be alone.

‘Will I go to Pellie and the Lady?’

Because the coming of spring

will be the next season of Learning

and I still haven’t learned

the rites of midwinter.

A sudden comfort –

no matter how crowded the house,

how ill the servants

or how strange it will be

to call her sister Kora,

being with my friend

is like a wish from another life

that will make this one

easier to bear.

‘Stay with Pellie?’ my father roars,

with his voice from the sea,

‘Desert your mama?

You’ll come with us,

and watching over her,

you’ll grow strong

and beautiful again –

better to wait for womanhood

than to die learning.’

This house has no mirrors

but in my father’s voice I see

how thin I’ve grown,

broken-nailed and grimed,

smelling like a slave.

His voice changes, and as if in a song,

he tells of the town,

near in beauty to our own

with wise-women as skilled as ours

in rooms of comfort,

food and herbs to spare,

as we once had.

The same gods reign –

their earthmother a sister to our own,

the small gods of rivers and trees

are cousin-kin;

we speak the same tongue,

worship the same way,

and most of all –

my brother will be there,

wise in the ways of the court.

‘And you,’ I say, but Dada smiles sadly,

‘The land needs its trade.

We must go on around the sea,

buying what we can

with what we’ve sold,

to return in autumn

with wealth to rebuild.’

But he has no answer

to how I will complete my Learning

or become a woman,

except to say again

that if the goddess wants me to serve

and bear children to serve in their turn

she needs me to live.

‘Sometimes,’ says Dada,

‘even the gods have to change to survive.’

Part of me thinks

that it’s easy for him to say

because he’s already a man

and so are his sons

but another part is filled

with excitement and hope

that Mama will be well

and we will live as we ought:

safe, comfortable

and even happy.

My heart sings of its love

for my land of steep cliffs,

grey, brown and red;

rocky hills where wild goats leap

and swallows fly home to nest;

snug, safe harbours

and the small steaming islet

where the great mother

meets the god of the sea.

How I fear to leave

and already long to return.

I sing

to the rock god who stands

overlooking the town,

the goddess of the stream

that never runs dry,

the god of winds at the narrow rock path

and the goddess of childbirth

in the wishing tree –

I understand much

that I didn’t before,

and by Tiny’s blushes

know she’s prayed at this tree

and understand why she must stay.