Dragonfly Song (24 page)

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.

The day after she returns from the cave, she and the other young priestesses strap on strong sandals, put on divided skirts that let them walk nearly as freely as an acrobat's shorts, and follow a Sister into the hills where the purple autumn crocus blooms. They spend the morning collecting the flowers with orange stamens of sacred saffron, while the sun shines on them and a cool north breeze blows their hair. Aissa is flooded with the joy of the hills, and the peace of knowing she's safe. Suddenly it bursts out of her and she's whirling, spinning in the dance of praise. The Sister smiles.

There are more duties, too, as she goes deeper into the life of a priestess.

She goes to the crypt where the snakes live, and takes her turn at carrying the pot up to the morning room. One full-moon night she hands the bowl to a Sister to collect the blood when the Mother offers a lamb to the goddess. During the day, it's the king who offers sacrifices to his god, but sometimes, at night, the goddess needs her own.

And although the king rules the land of warriors, navies and their taxes, the Mother's scribes in the craftsfolk's wing keep their own records of what is due to the goddess: clay tablets inscribed with details of goods and gold owed.

‘But it's always wise,' says the Mother, ‘to remind people that they're working for the gods, not the scribes.'

So every half-moon, a Sister takes a trainee down to the scribes to collect the tablets for the Mother to study.

Aissa has never been in this part of the palace. She follows the Sister to room after room of different trades and arts. Rows of weavers sit at looms strung with brightly coloured flax or wool, potters spin their wheels to shape wet clay into bowls and vases; sculptors chip stone into statues and carve tiny gemstones that jewellers set into rings or amulets. The metalworkers, dripping with sweat from the heat of their furnaces, form molten gold into the finest jewellery – Aissa sees a bee so real it looks as if the living insect has been simply dipped in gold – or mix copper and tin into bronze for exquisite figurines or sharp-edged swords.

Her head spins with heat, new sights and smells, and with the strangeness of knowing that so many details – everything that has been produced, where the raw materials came from, who's been paid, what is owed – are recorded on these tablets for the Mother and Sisters to see.

All the young priestesses spend time every afternoon learning to read and write. Aissa knows her own name-sign, but now she learns the symbols for
the goddess and the bull, for gold or copper ingots, shells for purple dye, wood for the furnaces, and every other thing that goes in or out of the palace. It's not easy learning to copy each one, and it's even harder to remember them all. But as Aissa scratches the symbols into the soft clay of the practice tablet, she thinks of the words in there, speaking without a voice, for anyone to hear, and knows that the goddess has given her a glimpse of the most powerful magic of all.

The Mother also judges family disputes and women's business. Like the Lady, she listens to the wise-women, but one day in five, the women from palace and country are granted an audience with the Mother herself. The apprentice priestesses sit on benches either side of the throne as the Mother's questions probe and her judgement rings out, clear and strong.

Some of the girls get restless, but Aissa is used to listening. That's why she understands the bull king's language now – and why she hears so many secrets.

‘Promise you won't tell . . .'

How am I going to do that?
Aissa thinks, though she doesn't roll her eyes at the stupidity anymore, not since she made a girl cry. Now she nods, looking serious.

So she probably knows more than anyone else about who's got a crush on a young priest or a guard, or even one of the other priestesses, about fears of rejection, of not being beautiful, of becoming ill. Aissa had never known that other people – lucky, perfect people – had so many fears.

Or so much to bicker about.

‘My roommate bumped me when Sister was watching me dance,' a sow-faced girl whines.

‘Cessie won't talk to me because I bumped into her when she was dancing,' her roommate whispers.

Tell each other and sort it out!
Aissa wants to sign, the way she might have with the acrobats – but they wouldn't come to her for consolation if they thought she'd give advice.

And it's probably just as well that they can't hear her thinking,
Do you really think your friend talking to another girl at dinner is a problem? That the world is going to end because someone laughed when you tripped on the stairs?

Maybe it's worse because winter's coming; it's not as cold as home, but it's chilly enough for the Mother to keep a brazier of burning coals in her rooms, and for the girls to need an extra fleece on their beds at night.

After ten days of rain keep them inside the palace, not even venturing into the courtyards, it feels as if the whole hive of priestesses is about to explode.

The Mother feels it too. She arrives in the middle of a writing lesson. Everyone scratches harder at their soft clay tablets – Aissa smudges her ox symbol and has to rub it smooth and start again. But the priestess hasn't come to inspect; she is followed by servants carrying goblets and a jug of honeyed wine.

‘That's enough writing for a grey afternoon!' she announces, and while the girls drink their wine, the servants open the folding doors to make two rooms into one big one.

‘Now move the benches and tables to the side – even the goddess needs to be cheered up on a day like this.' Aissa still has to stop herself from jumping up to help servants move furniture. It's been hard to learn that something as wonderful as dancing is her duty just as much as privy cleaning was No-Name's.

So she plays the rattle, clicking in time as the other girls' voices flood her body; they dance until the goddess is praised and the girls can't think anymore, and dance on till they drop.

Aissa has just finished bleeding for the third time. Tomorrow is the bull dance to celebrate winter's shortest day and the next turning of the seasons. Aissa will be dancing with the priestesses – and she'll see Luki. If he's still alive.

23

THE BULL DANCE IN MIDWINTER

Luki is still alive. It sometimes surprises him. From the confines of the training ring and hall, he's watched the seasons cycle from spring to winter; he's seen the hills go brown in summer and start to green again with the winter rains; he's watched the barley fields being sown, workers on their way to the olive groves for harvest, the grape pickers passing with carts and baskets of purple grapes. He's watched the cranes and swallows migrate south for the winter, and wondered if he'll still be here to see them return in spring.

He tries not to wonder if he'll see his own home again. Maybe he can dare to hope if he survives the dance of the shortest day.

The worst thing about the winter rains is training inside the hall. They're no freer in the arena, but Luki feels that he can breathe. After ten days of being inside he doesn't sleep as well at night; there seems to be more time to think and worry. He wonders about
Aissa, doing whatever a junior priestess does inside that palace. He wonders if she thinks about how they have changed places since he was the god-luck dancer and she was the cursed child. Bull dancers are honoured here once they're successful, but the trainees are truly slaves. At least Aissa was able to roam free when she was an outcast.

But on a good day, when the sun is shining and the air is cool, and he does a perfect one-handed vault over a bull-high rail, Luki wishes that Aissa could see it.