Men armed with clubs and scythes patrol the outskirts of the town. They let us through to the gate, where the captain has a dagger and breath like a dog’s.
‘No one enters after dusk – get back to the camp!’ he orders, pointing at a smelly, noisy confusion of people on the west of the town, small campfires the only sign of comfort.
But finally, it’s safe to tell the truth. My shoulders sag with relief.
‘We’re women of the Swallow Clan – kin to your priest-folk.’
‘Welcome!’ he’ll say, apologising for his confusion and sending a runner to prepare for us. To prepare food, a drink and a bath before we’re presented…
Dogbreath looks at us and laughs. ‘I don’t know what it’s like where you come from, but our leaders don’t wander around like lost goats in the night. It’s the camp for the likes of you – and they’ll be glad to see you’ve brought your own dinner.’
He means Chance! No one’s going to eat my dog!
The guard stops laughing and waves us away with his dagger. ‘I don’t care where you sleep, but no one gets into the town tonight, and no strangers get into the palace until day and night are as they should be. Our Lady and her clan are working to appease the moon goddess and her brother the sun. They have no time for visitors or beggars. If you want help, go back where you came from. We have enough trouble of our own.’
It’s like being punched in the stomach. Thoughts whirl in my head, and I can’t breathe.
Where else can we go?
But I saw the swallows! They were an omen.
What are we going to do?
Mama’s face crumples. She doesn’t have to understand all the words to feel their meaning from gesture and tone. Nunu’s face is blank, but her body looks as if it’s shrunk. She’s only as big as a ten-year-old child at her fiercest – if she gets any smaller she’ll disappear.
So it’s not what are we going to do? It’s what am I going to do?
What am I going to do? What am I going to do? What am I going to do?
Have I said it out loud? Does it matter if I have? No one cares.
I take Mama’s hand. ‘Come. We’ll find somewhere safe for the night.’
‘She won’t like the camp,’ Nunu mutters.
‘We’re not going there!’ Not even if eating Chance was a joke. We can hear the sounds of too many people in too small a space: babies wailing, adults shouting in anger or frustration. Too much noise for Mama to bear – and her screeching might be too much for everyone else. We would not be safe.
I turn as if I know where I’m going – as if there is somewhere to go when it’s nearly dark and we’ve been turned away from the town we’ve been walking to for five days. The place we’ve lost everything to get to.
There’s a tap on my shoulder. I jump, shudder – and reach for the dagger tucked into my skirt. Nobody is ever going to beat and rob me again.
It’s one of the young guards; he has a stick, but uses it only to point in different directions. ‘The purple works are over to the right of the bay – your nose will tell you soon enough if you get too close. The fisher-folk live on the left side; they’ve lost everything, but they won’t bother you if you camp close by.’
The words filter through slowly – this is the best we can hope for.
He’s being kind, even though he’s not supposed to.
So I salute him as an equal, just like I did the goatherd. And just like the goatherd’s, his face is kind.
He’s better looking, though.
We walk towards the left of the bay, quick as we can because it will be dark soon, though we’re twice as slow as when we still had hope.
The purple works smell just like the purple village at home – turning the other way is easy. We bypass the small fires of the fisher-folk who’ve lost everything, and find a rock wall, a ruin from the days when giants lived on the land; it’s close enough to the sea that we can hear the waves shushing below us, but too high on the cliff for them to come up to drown us.
In the corner of broken walls
built when the gods were young,
we huddle under cloaks –
Mama in the middle for warmth,
and to make sure she doesn’t wander –
but even with Chance at my side
I am more alone,
colder than I’ve ever been
because I was searching for safety
and I failed.
I am not good enough
to save my Mama,
to help my homeland
or even myself.
I will never get home,
never finish my Learning
or become a woman.
But in the morning
the sun rises, though my song is weak –
I don’t know the custom here
or who is listening,
I just know the dawn needs
all the help she can get –
and when I finish
and so do I.
The guard last night was confused
because of our filth.
We will wash in the sea;
Nunu will do our hair as best she can
and I will offer a gift
that will buy us shelter.
The sea is cold and salt;
we have no oil to smooth our skin
or kohl or rouge to paint it,
not a grain of saffron,
but Nunu’s fingers are wise,
combing out Mama’s thick plait
and my thin tail in its fuzz of curls.
And though our tops are nightshifts,
filthy from hem to neck,
she tucks them so smooth
and ties our skirts so straight,
no one could possibly think
we were runaway slaves.
Mama’s golden chain
is around her neck where it belongs
and the bronze dagger
is back at my waist.
The guard at the gate
is older than Dogbreath
and his face is kinder.
Hope rises as I tell him,
‘I am Leira of the Isle of Swallows,
daughter of Lally,
when the gods shook the earth.
My father the captain
left me in good faith at Tarmara
to care for our land’s trade
but he told us of your great town,
and when we fled the riots and the sea
we remembered his words –
though bandits robbed us on our way.’
The guard’s eyes widen,
his face pales in shock –
though he must have heard
of riots and bandits before –
so I rush on before he can speak,
and hand him my dagger,
gold hilt first.
‘We carry this gift to your goddess
and ask sanctuary of your Lady and chief
as priest-folk kin.’
I have never heard
a guard whisper before,
taking the dagger
with a muttered, ‘Wait here,’
as if his speech is as lost as Mama’s.
We wait so long –
standing straight though bellies rumble –
that the sun’s shadow leaves the gate.
But the guard, when he returns,
moves slowly
and his eyes do not meet mine.
‘The Lady has offered your gift;
the goddess has spoken.
The land you name,
where the gods of sky and sea
fought the earth’s great mother,
is no more.
‘The ashes of its death
are blighting our land
just as its wave
destroyed homes and ships –
its name will not be spoken
and all who come from it
are cursed.’
‘No!’ shrieks Mama,
or maybe it’s me.
Suddenly my mind hears
Dada’s voice saying the oracle
proclaimed worse death to come,
warning him to sail
before the season had begun –
but it still can’t make this true
and I struggle to hear the guard:
‘The chief says you may stay in the camp
with the other homeless,
and find work as you can.
You may enter the town in daylight
to collect water from the well,
but rations for this day only.
‘And in the camp or outside
he warns you to never
or claim to be priest-folk or kin.’
My tongue has stuck to the roof of my mouth. My throat is so dry it clicks. I’ve lost my speech, just like Mama!
And what is there to say? There are no lessons in courtesy for being told to deny who you are.
‘Andras!’ shouts the guard, and the boy who showed us the way last night comes running – I don’t know from where because my mind is so black that I’m seeing through layers of veils. ‘Take them to the storerooms and see that they’re given a day’s rations.’
Andras nods; beckons for us to follow, and we do, obedient as slaves – are we slaves now, if no longer priest-folk? Is this what Nunu thought, when she was sold to my grandparents?
Slaves get fed. That thought is important. I’m very hungry. Half of me is disgusted with the hungry half. The hungry part says it wants to survive.
Out of sight of the old guard, Andras asks, ‘Last night I wasn’t sure – I didn’t really think you were runaway servants – but you’re priest-folk!’
‘Not if we want our rations!’ snaps Nunu, and Andras laughs, because a blind dog could see that Nunu is not a priest-woman.
‘I thought that the chief might allow lost priest-folk in, once it was daylight.’
‘He’s ordered that we mustn’t claim to be who we are,’ I say bitterly, ‘or ever mention where we come from.’
Andras’s fingers flash against evil.
Why am I so stupid? I’ve just told him exactly what I’ve been ordered not to. And we need those rations!
‘Goddess weeping!’ he breathes. ‘I knew you were alone – but you’re the last of your people!’
‘There are as many islands in the sea as there are meanings to an oracle!’ I snap. ‘The land the sailors saw dying was not our home.’
He nods, half convinced.
‘Our island and its people are strong. My father and brother will return from the trading season with goods to rebuild, and we’ll see it again next year.’
How will they find us? I’ve got nearly a year to work that out. Right now we need food.
The storeroom is packed tight with pithoi, rows and rows of huge pots – but the room itself is not huge, and when Andras asks for the rations, the woman asks him to help her lay one of the pots down so she can reach in for the last dried fish. ‘All those are already empty,’ she says, pointing.
There are two small dried fish for each of us, a handful of chickpeas and another of barley.
‘Homeless rations,’ says Andras. ‘They have nothing to cook with.’
The woman raises her eyebrows in surprise but says nothing. She exchanges the barley for a small stack of barley cakes.
‘Do you have a jug for ale?’ she demands.
‘No.’
‘Or a wineskin?’
‘No.’ We have nothing. It sounds too pathetic – I can’t say it.
The storekeeper stares at the gold around Mama’s neck. Does she think we’re going to offer her that for a jug of ale?
‘Wait!’ says Andras, and disappears. Time stands still while he’s away; the woman is studying us with open, hostile curiosity, Nunu is glaring her down, Mama is crooning ‘no, no, no,’ Chance is licking an oil spot on the floor, and I – I don’t really know what I’m doing. I’m floating somewhere outside my body, watching all this and the pale, worried girl that is me.
Andras returns with a clay jug, too misshapen to be an accurate measure.
‘My cousin Teesha is the potter’s apprentice,’ he says, as if that explains it. ‘She was supposed to smash it – but she gave it to me.’
He’s looking at me as though I should say something, but my mind is still struggling to think through its veils. This is the ugliest jug I’ve ever seen. No, that’s not right. I made better ones as a child at Nunu’s knee. Not that either.
‘For you – she gave it to me for you. So you can get your ale today, and water from the well.’ He hands the jug to the storekeeper, who fills it from a barrel at the end of the room and gives it back to me.
Idiot! It’s a gift! It doesn’t matter what it looks like – it’s a jug, and it’s yours.
‘Thank you,’ I say at last, hand on heart, my face glowing hot as a sunburned boy’s. I hope he couldn’t guess what I was thinking. ‘Please tell your cousin we are grateful and beseech the gods to reward her kindness.’
We move out of the storeroom with its suspicious keeper into a quiet corner of the square. Andras is still with us, and he’s blushing too; I don’t know why.
But there are other more important things I don’t know: where we go now, where we can live, what we’ll eat tomorrow, what the guard meant by finding work…
Nunu is quicker than me. ‘Young master,’ she interrupts the silence, ‘you have given us time and help, and I offer you a grandmother’s blessing. But we are strangers, and do not know what the guard meant by work that we might find. I have raised two generations of children – are there households that need help in this way?’
Andras shakes his head. ‘Since the war of the gods, every house is full with family who have lost their homes; there are more willing servants than people to serve – and the folk who can afford them still have their slaves. Folk might be grateful for a child nurse in these hungry times, but they’d have no room to keep you, let alone the priest-woman and the maiden.’
‘You can’t call us that!’
‘Sorry,’ he says, blushing again. ‘But that’s the other problem. Everyone will know that you’re priest-folk – so if the palace doesn’t trust you, they won’t either.’
‘Like the storekeeper?’ I ask. It still takes me by surprise when people don’t try to please me. In Tarmara I thought it was because of Mama’s wailing, but she’s not shrieking now. This is just because of who we are. Panic rises in my throat; I want to claw out of my own skin till I become invisible.
‘She doesn’t know how to talk to people who look like priest-women and need help like beggars,’ Andras confirms.
‘So why don’t you mind?’ The words come out before I think. I haven’t had a conversation with a boy my age since I started my Learning – until the goatherd, and now this boy, Andras. Does it count if they’re not our clan? I don’t know the rules anymore.
He doesn’t either. Maybe these rules have changed, like everything else. ‘My family are seal-stone carvers. Priest-folk like to discuss their seals – the stone, the design – with the person making them. I’ve learned that we’re not so different.’
‘I can say that we’re craft-folk! I can spin…’
‘Like every other child in the world,’ sniffs Nunu.
‘And weave.’
‘There’s a weaving workshop for trade, for the fabric to be dyed at the purple works,’ Andras explains, ‘but most of their wool was lost in the flood, so they have nothing to weave now till the sheep can be shorn again.’
I can find the flowers the goddess requires in different seasons, the lilies, anemones and crocuses; I can pluck saffron threads and dry them for make-up and medicine; I can sing and dance in her praise. But those are all the things I’m not allowed to do here.
‘If you go to the homeless camp, you’ll be sent to labour wherever the palace needs you, and be paid in rations.’
‘Or you might be able to work with the fishers. They’ve lost homes and boats; they might feed you in exchange for help with their rebuilding.’
Hope flashes through me again. ‘I know about boats! My father…’
‘If the chief said…I wouldn’t mention your father’s ships.’
He’s right. We’re not Swallow Clan. Dada isn’t an admiral or a captain. We’re nothing and we come from nowhere.
‘Andras!’ shouts the guard at the gate.
‘I thought you were a seal-stone apprentice?’
‘That’s for normal times. Until the troubles are over, every man and boy has to take his turn at guard duty.’
Normal times. I can hardly remember what that means.
‘Good luck!’ Andras calls, and races away. Mama waves like a child; Nunu and I look at each other.
‘A barley cake each and our ale,’ I say, ‘then we’ll find the fishers.’
Every crumb and drop is gone, and I’m still not ready. A feast wouldn’t have been long enough.
Don’t think about feasts! Don’t think about creamy cheeses and roasted snails and figs and goat skewers and honey cakes and…
‘We’re servants,’ I say. ‘Mama and I are a priest-woman’s maids, from a place where the maids dress like their mistresses. The master was a sea captain, and we fled when the house and its people were taken by the sea.’
Nunu nods. ‘Where is this town?’
‘On the other side of Tarmara. It’s not a town, just a settlement that we won’t name because it was taken by the gods.’
‘They made pots there,’ Nunu says sadly.
‘Beautiful pots,’ I agree. ‘Painted with the sign of a swallow. But they’re all gone.’
Last night it was too dark to see the beach and the houses near it; this morning we walked on the cliff path and I’d been thinking too hard to look around me.
Now I’m looking. Now I understand why they have guards at the gates; why they give only one day’s rations to the homeless; why everyone is scared. It’s not that it’s so different to what we saw at Tarmara, but some horrors are fresh every time you see them.
From the beach to the centre of the town, the ground is littered with wreckage – fragments of houses, pieces of boats, bits of I don’t know what. And it’s not just wood: stones have been rolled away from walls, tossed onto other walls. Chunks of pumice are scattered on top of everything else, with sand, dead fish and seaweed. It seems that while the ashes of the destroyed island were flying through the air, the bottom of the sea was being vomited across the land.
If I live to be a great-great-grandmother, the oldest crone that has ever lived, I hope to never see a battle of the gods again.
But even though we can smell bonfires, and a stink of rotting sea creatures, there’s no stench of dead animals or bodies like the miasma that hung over Tarmara. Maybe not so many died – or they have been buried or burned already. Maybe that’s why the people of Gournia, although they’re frightened, haven’t rioted like the inhabitants of Tarmara.
One thing is for sure: there’s a lot of work to do. And the time spent trapped in our goddess-shaken house, as well as the months on the farm, taught me that I’m strong. Even if I don’t have great skills, I can lift and carry.
We start trying to help. I join a group of women hauling debris out of the ruins of a house, and they shout at me as if I’m going to steal these scraps of walls. A group of fishers collecting blocks of the floating pumice rocks are so shocked and confused when we try to help that their leader finally shoos us away. We try out our new story, but they don’t seem to understand it and if they do, they don’t believe it. The fishers’ accent is much stronger than the craft-folk’s, and we don’t understand them much either.
After a while we give up, and they ignore us. They don’t want us there but they don’t chase us away, and they don’t even mind Chance – we’re nothing to them. Maybe they think Nunu and I have lost our spirits too, because Mama is not the only broken person on the beach. Many people are weeping quietly as they work; a young woman is standing waist-deep in the sea, screaming; an older man with a great scar across his forehead keeps going through the stack of salvage and laying it out across the beach. People mutter as they stack it up again and carry it up to safety, but no one shouts at him, or at the screaming woman in the sea – or at Mama chanting an endless ‘no, no, no.’
But nothings don’t get food and shelter; somehow we need to find our own. We need to survive before we can worry about belonging.
‘We’ll shelter for siesta, then go back to the town,’ I say. ‘We gave up too quickly – there must be something we can do there.’
Towns are safer. Towns are what we know.
And the town holds Andras, the only person who’s been kind to us.
‘I could be a potter’s apprentice, like his cousin,’ I say. The idea has been growing inside me, like a seed sprouting in a dark cupboard, and it feels like the first happy thought since the gods fought.
Nunu sniffs. I know that sniff. It means, you don’t know anything!
‘I have to do something, Nunu!’
But Nunu bursts into tears. ‘This is all wrong!’ she sobs. ‘Your mama’s spirit still wandering, you trying to work like a slave…and people saying the goddess has swallowed our home!’
It was better when I thought the sniff meant that I was wrong, and not the world.
‘They’re lying!’ I insist. ‘You heard the sailors in Tarmara – the island that died didn’t even have a town! It can’t be ours. But for now…you know I always loved visiting your family’s workshop. We’ll be safe if I become an apprentice.’
Nunu sniffs again and wipes her nose on her arm. ‘You could have made a much better jug than this,’ she says, and almost smiles.
For a moment it all seems easy. We’ll find Andras and ask him to send us to the potter. We will sleep and eat with the other apprentices; I’ll learn to make pots, beautiful pots, and when Dada returns I’ll have a whole new supply of trade goods that I’ve made myself.
But the guard at the gate is the grumpy captain from the night before.
‘The chief said we can enter the town,’ I tell him.
‘Do you have a house to stay in?’
He knows we don’t. I shake my head.
‘Then you’re within the walls only during the day. No beggars in the square overnight.’
‘We’re not beggars!’ I snap, at the same moment that Nunu says, ‘Goddess mercy, man, at least let us in to fill our waterjug. It’s nowhere near nightfall.’
Dogbreath smirks with satisfaction at making us beg. ‘You go, old one. These two and the dog stay outside to make sure you come back.’
Hope disappears as fast as a frightened hare. Or maybe I’m the disappearing hare. I’m certainly frightened enough.
There’s no point in asking if we can see Andras. He can’t help us now. No one can.
We wait for Nunu to return with the precious jug of water, then go back to the ruin where we spent last night.
It’s on a small point, with shrubby trees and prickly plants growing up through the floors that the ancients walked. A white cliff slopes steeply to the water, just on the edge of the fishers’ beach. The fishers don’t like us, but I don’t think they’ll harm us. That’s the good part about being a nothing. On the other side of the bay, on the next point, is the stink of the purple village – the purple works, Andras called it.
But tonight the breeze is blowing from the west, blowing the smell away from us.
Inside, by a gap under a rock, is a snakeskin. This has been a good and maybe holy place: the house snake, the spirit of this home, is still here.
So I sing to the gods, pour a libation of fresh water from our ugly jug, and scatter a pinch of our dried chickpeas at the door. ‘Goddess of this point,’ I beg, ‘allow us to make a home here and honour the spirits of this place.’
A feather drifts down. I look up to see three eagles circling.
Even Mama stands still, hand on heart in reverence until they disappear. The gods have given us permission to stay.
The fishers wouldn’t let us help them, but they’d showed us what we had to do.
We eat our last barley cakes, Mama and I have a drink of water – ‘I drank at the well,’ says Nunu – then we cross to the cliff.
Just below is a ledge scattered with red, black and grey pumice, the strange floating stones that the fishers are collecting to mend their houses. That’s what we’re going to do too.
Nunu agrees but Chance doesn’t. He barks frantically, darting at me and nipping my hands when I scramble over the edge of the cliff. I’d tie him up if we hadn’t lost his cord.
Ignoring him, I choose the first rock – a red one, as big as I can hold. Nunu starts to follow me, but this time I think Chance is right:
‘I’ll pass them up to you!’
Nunu lies down, and when she finally inches right to the edge of the cliff, grumbling all the way, manages to take the rock from me. Then Mama, as if her wandering spirit has been touched by the gods’ eagles, takes the rock from Nunu and carries it to the ruin.
The rocks are light but the work is hard, and I don’t want to be on the cliff when the sun disappears. I clamber back up: ‘Yes, yes!’ says Mama, patting my face and showing me her pile of rocks. Chance throws himself at me, licking my face and hands with relief that I’m alive.
Nunu takes a bit longer to get to her feet and walk, stiff-legged and rubbing her back, over to the pile. I haul Chance back before he can jump at her and knock her down again.
The pile is as high as my waist, and as round as it’s high. If Mama had put it next to a wall it could have been useful where it was. But she didn’t, so we start stacking them to make two more walls to enclose the corner. My hands are scratched and sore before we start, bleeding when we stop – and we’ve only finished the pile, not the walls. It’s easy enough to put them on the bottom, but it gets harder and harder to balance them with each layer. Still, even if each wall doesn’t go much past my knees, we’ve got four of them, with a narrow space for a door.
Mama has given up helping. She sits in the corner watching us and smoothing the ground around her. Last night we were too tired and worried even to do that, so maybe she knows what she’s doing; it’s hard to tell. She shoves twigs and stones against the wall, pats the dirt smooth with her hands. One stone seems to please her. It’s shaped like an ibis egg cut in half, the smooth, rounded side fitting neatly into the palm of her hand.
Ibis egg! I’m drooling at the thought.
‘Good girl,’ says Nunu, holding out her hand. ‘Give it to me.’
Mama makes a face but obeys.
‘It’s a tool from the Old Ones,’ says Nunu, showing me the chipped edge. ‘The goddess is thanking us for that dagger – she’s given your mama a knife.’
‘It’s a strange knife,’ I say doubtfully. I’m still angry about the palace taking our beautiful bronze dagger and giving us a handful of barley cakes in return.
‘Or an axe,’ says Nunu. ‘I don’t know what the Old Ones called it, but it’ll cut branches to make a roof for this hut.’
I take the rock out to the bushes to try it in the last evening light. I hammer and saw, but what works best is to chew away at the branch with the tool’s serrated edge till it’s weak enough to break. Nunu helps me drag the branches back. We can make a roof with them later, when our walls are higher, but for tonight we shove them into the ground at the door and around the walls, a dark filigree as the red light of the setting sun glows through them. Then darkness comes and we huddle together again, one cloak on the bottom and the other on top, and sleep, waking to twitch at noises then sleep again, on and off till sunrise. Chance mightn’t be old enough to defeat bandits, but his warmth is comforting beside me.
Dreams of a house
built of Mama’s bones
glued with tears –
though I see my Mama-child sleeping
curled safe on the floor
while Nunu weeps and guards
so I must build around them –
my bone-bricks tumble
and I grab and replace them
with bleeding hands.
Waking sobbing
because it seems the floating stones –
red, black and grey like the cliffs of our home –
are bones of the great mother,
and this dream is telling me
what I don’t want to know.
it’s easy to shove
the dream from my mind.
I walk to town each morning
like a peasant girl, to fill our ugly jug,
because I am the strongest
and it no longer matters
who’s mistress or slave –
and because I would burst
if I never saw anyone except Nunu and Mama.
The other girls at the well
are too busy chatting to bother with me –
though they look me up and down –
but Andras smiles,
asks where we’re living
and if we’ve found work –
we all know that work means food.
‘The fishers are bringing in fish again,’ he says –
though why would they feed us
when they have barely enough
for themselves?
But, as I step carefully home –
the walk is too far
to spill precious water –
I wonder if Andras is saying
that we could fish too.
I wish I’d spied
on the boys in their Learning –
my own Dada teaching them to fish
and why couldn’t he have taken me!
because you never know
when you might lose everything
you’ve ever known.
And though I’ve watched the little boats
in our harbour,
it was never important to see
how they flicked their lines or nets,
or reeled in their catch.
Mama’s muttering crossly,
thinking I don’t understand
how hungry she is,
as she follows me to the fishers’ beach
so I can watch and learn.
A few brave fishers are out on their boats
but many have lost them –
they wade to their waists
in the sea that’s taken their homes and living,
bending and scooping,
a patient dance with glistening nets;
my heart dances too
when I see fish leaping silver inside –
I know the fish are dying
but the fishers will live
and if I can learn, so will we.
On the littered shore,
others scavenge sad remains –
a cry of joy at a paddle undamaged
under the rubble of houses –
and under that, a net.
examines;
hugs it to her like a long-lost child –
a fishing net is not quick to weave
and the maker knows it for her own.
Through my hopeless thought
of how could we ever find or make one
flashes an image, silver as leaping fish,
of Mama bending and swooping
in the swallow dance with her fishnet shawl.
I whisper my plan to Nunu. ‘But Mama will cry,’ I say.
‘Better than dying,’ says Nunu, taking the shawl from my mother’s shoulders. ‘Time to wash it,’ she says, in her no-arguing voice, and Mama nods obediently.
But sometimes Mama forgets that we don’t have slaves and servants to do the work for us. She looks around the naked fishers on the beach, as if asking where the washing girls are.
‘I’ll take it to them,’ I say quickly.
Mama raises a disapproving eyebrow, just the way she used to – and I can’t help it, I’m laughing. We haven’t eaten since the day before yesterday, we’re sleeping in a ruin with no roof – our whole world is broken and lost – but my mother is worrying about why the washing girls haven’t appeared. For that tiny moment, I’m out of time, the way Pellie and I used to be when we laughed until our knees were weak and our eyes were leaking. I remember the feeling of clinging to each other, our heads bumping with the force of our giggles, and the more our mothers raised their eyebrows, the harder we laughed. For an even tinier moment, I can feel Pellie here with me now.
Maybe she’s laughing at home, and thinking of me. When we meet again we’ll say, ‘Do you remember a day in spring when you started laughing for no reason, the way we did when we were children?’ And that will make us laugh and cling to each other again, even though we’ll be women by then.
But if I’m going to live long enough to be a woman, right now I need to play with the boys’ Learning, and catch us a fish.
I head around the point with the fishnet shawl, away from Mama’s disapproving eyebrow and the fishers’ eyes. Chance stares in shock for a full two heartbeats, his head tilted on one side because he’s forgotten ever hearing me laugh, and then bounds after me. I’m glad.
I untie my skirt, pull my nightshift over my head, and step naked into the sea. The cold water makes me gasp. I wade out deeper, till the water’s as high as my chest, while Chance races up and down the beach, barking for me to come back. After a while he gives up and starts sniffing for anything to eat. He’s not fussy about how long things have been dead.
The fishers’ bending and scooping dance isn’t as easy as it looks. No matter how I hold the net, it keeps floating to the surface; I bend deeper and splash stinging water into my eyes. I step back – my foot slides on something, the sand gives way, and I’m falling backwards, sitting on the seabed with my head under water, scrambling up coughing, spluttering, spitting out the taste of sea…
I can’t give up.
I find a firmer footing. It feels safer with the sea lapping no higher than my waist, and I can pull the net lower through the water without getting my face wet. Though sometimes I splash myself to cool off – the water doesn’t feel so cold now I’ve fallen in, and the sun is warm behind the haze. My body settles into the rhythm of bending to pull the net through the water, scooping it up, starting again…
And now I’m pulling it up and there’s a little silver fish inside, and I’m so surprised I almost let go of the net. But I don’t. I pull it in tight, and the little fish is mine.
‘Mama!’ I shout – I don’t care about the disapproving eyebrow anymore. ‘I’ve caught a fish!’
I’m wading to shore as Mama and Nunu come around the point, and Mama starts no, no, no-ing at the sight of her daughter coming out of the water as naked as a fisher, until she sees what I’m carrying. ‘Fish!’ she shrieks, her first word finally making sense. ‘Fish, fish, fish!’
I want to hand it to her, this amazing gift, but the tiny fish slips from the net and flops on the sand until Nunu hits it with a rock.
‘Fish!’ Mama exclaims again – and grabs it and eats it. It’s very little. Two bites and it’s gone – Mama is spitting out sand and saying, ‘fish, fish?’ in a way that obviously means, more, more!
I go back out, and before the sun is high I’ve caught enough for us all to eat. We’ve each eaten two before I remember to thank the fish for giving their lives, so I sing a long prayer, praising the goddess for how wonderful a small raw fish can taste, wet and salty as the sea itself.
But after the first two, I think longingly of the smoky crispness of the fish Cook Maid used to serve us at home.
If only the fish could have cooked in the sun as easily as I did. My back and shoulders are red as a painted boy’s, and sting where my shift touches them. I’m so thirsty I drained the last of our jug, and feel like crying to think I’ll have to walk all the way back to the well for more.
But that’s what I do, even though everyone else in the world is having their siesta, because I’m too thirsty to rest. I return even hotter, more tired, and impatient to have a home. Nunu and I get more rocks and build our walls higher: they’re growing well till one rock rolls out from the bottom and that whole wall crashes down.
Mama watches thoughtfully, eating a lizard.
I’ll have to fish again tomorrow.
My skin burns like fire. Blisters pop up on my sore snub nose and across my shoulders. I want to spend the day lying in a soft bed in a cool dark room, with a maid bringing me grapes, cheese and sweet wet ale…
I’m down at the sea in time to greet the dawn; the water is cool but Nunu wraps me in a cloak when I get out with my meagre morning catch. It doesn’t take long to eat.
And we need water again. I’ve never understood how constant the need for water is. Nunu helps me drop my nightshift over my head so it doesn’t catch on my blistered shoulders and wraps my skirt around me. It goes around further than it used to. I think about draping my cloak over my head to protect my sunburned face but the woollen fabric is too heavy – and I’d look even less like a servant who could be offered work.
Which doesn’t matter anyway, because Dogbreath is at the gate. ‘Get your water and get out. You won’t get work or rations till you’re in the homeless camp!’
The camp is even bigger, noisier and smellier than before. It’s like the animal sheds at the farm when everyone started getting sick. If we went there, Mama would wail, we’d be driven out, ostracised or worse…I still don’t know if that was a joke about Chance being dinner.
I drink at the well, refill my jug and leave.
But the fish I can catch with my shawl net are barely enough to keep us alive. The fishers are our only hope.
Down at the shore, everyone who’s not fishing or building is picking sea greens. The murdering wave ripped them from their rocks, scattering them high on the shore to rot, but they’re already growing again. And though they’re precious as gold, the only greens anywhere not smothered by ash, the fishers say nothing when we begin gathering too.
They trust us! I think. I’m surprised at how good that feels.
‘No!’ shouts a tall, strong-looking woman, charging at Mama and grabbing something out of her hand.
Nunu and I rush at them. Rage roars through me, fiercer and stronger because of that fleeting thought of trust. ‘Don’t you dare touch my Mama!’
Mama is screeching and trying to snatch her treasure back.
‘Bad,’ the woman tells her. ‘Make you sick. Make you die.’ She shows us a rotting oyster on an open shell, before flinging it as far away as she can.
My anger dissolves into tears. ‘Thank you,’ I say, with my hand on my heart, and Nunu does the same.
The woman nods. Then she takes us around the beach, pointing out the sea greens and shell creatures that are good to eat, and the ones that aren’t. I pay attention as if this was Kora with the next step of my Learning.
‘Priest-folk know nothing,’ the fisherwoman says suddenly.
Nunu laughs and I blush.
‘But you’re not priest-folk now – you can learn.’
I’m glad that Mama hasn’t understood. I don’t know if I understand either: I’m still Leira, and my clan is part of who I am, or who I used to be…It’s a good thing the fisherwoman isn’t waiting for an answer.
‘They say you’re living in the home of the Old Ones?’
I nod.
‘And that you have no fire?’
I nod again.
She beckons us to follow her up to a half-built shelter of salvage and pumice, like ours. The fire beside it has been banked for the day, a big log smouldering gently under a layer of sand, but she takes a stick and pokes it in till it’s glowing.
We have fire.
The moon has cycled from full to full again since the war of the gods, but my bleeding hasn’t cycled with it. It’s come with the new moon, every time since it started. Mama said that was a sign of power.
I’ve gone from maiden to crone, old as Nunu, without ever being a woman in between.
I don’t want to tell Nunu, but Nunu always knows. And I don’t want to cry, but I do. ‘What’s happened? Am I old?’
‘Not old,’ says Nunu grimly. ‘Just hungry. Your body needs food for its magic.’
My first bleeding, in the House of the Lady,
learning a woman’s blood is sacred,
her body a mystery
who transforms that blood into life.
To be a maiden, an almost-woman,
not strong enough to bleed,
dishonours the goddess –
and I never want to see
our great mother angry again.
The fish I catch with Mama’s shawl
are barely enough to keep us alive;
the sea greens no more than a taste
and no green grows yet on the ashy hills.
At the town,
even the kind guards answer the same:
‘No one new enters the palace;
no servants needed –
especially one from the island
we dare not name.’
I can see Andras in the workshop –
it’s not far from the well
if you take the wrong path.
His head bent over his work,
hair long enough to plait
pulled back from his face
as he smooths a stone
for his mother to carve.
‘Wait!’ he calls –
and what else do I have to do?
I watch and wait
and wish.
‘Are you buying?’ calls the carver –
a small woman, with such tiny hands
I wonder that she can hold her tools
with the strength to cut stone.
‘Not today,’ I say, before I hear her laughter,
because for a moment
I was back in Tarmara
planning the trade goods I’d buy and sell
not the hungry beggar she sees.
Andras shows her the stone;
she studies it with fingers and eyes,
nods in approval.
‘You can fetch more water from the well
but I don’t want to wait
because someone walks with you.’
He flushes, and escapes.
‘She’s kinder than most,’ he says,
carrying his pitcher – not as ugly as ours –
and just for a moment I hope:
‘Would she take me as apprentice?’
‘We’ve never had anyone
outside the family,
and she doesn’t know how
we’ll trade what we have
if the world stays hungry as now.’
Home with my jug and aching heart
I ask the tall fisherwoman
if I can learn to fish with them,
but she laughs and says,
‘You mayn’t be priest-folk now
but you’re no fisher neither.’
A changing breeze
wafts a stink of purple up my nose –
choking, putrid stench of rot –
but even purple slaves
have food.
In night dreams I am small,
a lowly snail
that Mama wants to eat,
grabbing me from my path –
her round mouth opens,
teeth sharp as a wolf’s –
but Nunu shouts, ‘No!’
and pulls me away from Mama’s grasp,
throwing the me-snail as far
as her arm is strong
because I am stinking rotten
and no one who eats me
will survive.
The thrown snail flies free,
losing its shell to become a swallow
while the empty shell falls
to grow like barley,
rich and golden
in the purple earth.