Dragonfly Song (7 page)

By noon, the twelve year olds and their families are in the square. Two days in a row, they're clean and dressed in their best. The children are fidgety and self-conscious; the parents' faces are a mixture of pride and fear. They're all pale and dark-eyed from last night's procession – no one is used to staying awake after sunset.

The watching crowd jostles for places. Whether you're grateful or ashamed that you don't have a child to offer this year, you want to see the chosen ones. You want to touch them right at the start, so that their luck can rub off on you. The excitement is growing – and the louder it gets, the paler and more awkward the twelve year olds and their families become.

The guards bang their spears for silence. The Lady and the chief appear; Aissa sidles out of the garden and across the square. There are eleven boys and eight girls. Eight girls plus Aissa.

Another sign,
Aissa decides.
Easier for the gods to choose my name.

Though she's still not quite ready to join the line; she slips behind it to her nook in the wall.

Even now, no one notices that there are actually nine twelve-year-old girls in the square. No one thinks that a girl with no name would have an age. Aissa wouldn't know it either, if Kelya hadn't told her. This is the first spring that the wise-woman has forgotten to remind her she's another year older – that she's five, then six, on up to eleven.

The chief is speaking.

‘Welcome!' he says, looking around at the families in the square so that each of them feels as if he's talking directly to them. Then his voice booms out loud, carrying to the furthest listener.

‘The chance of honour falls equally on every family. We do not know who the gods will choose: we know only that the new dancers will be chosen from every girl and youth who reaches twelve summers healthy in mind and body. Let no one stay hidden; let no family shrink from their duty!'

He glares so fiercely that people shuffle their feet and stare around too, as if they might spot a secret stash of twelve year olds – but still no one sees Aissa.

The chief takes one last look, and when he's satisfied that he hasn't missed anything, bows to the Lady.

The Lady begins in her oracle voice. ‘Dancers have died, but some will live. This year brings change, and a greatness that has not been seen before.' She pauses.

‘The Oracle doesn't say whether the change will come from the dancers who have just left, or the two who will be chosen now.'

But if this year's dancers live, we won't need new ones!
Aissa thinks. It would be evil to feel disappointed. She doesn't care.

The Lady continues, ‘All we can do is ask the gods to select whom they will to fulfil this prophecy. To choose those who are destined for greatness and change, however and whenever it comes.'

The children and their families look solemn. Aissa is shaking.
I've got to step forward. It's what the gods demand; it's what I must do.

She stays in her nook.

The tall guard places an urn in front of the chief. Another guard puts down a basket of clay shards.

‘We call the boys and their namers,' says the chief.

Boys and their mothers shuffle into a raggedy line. Two boys don't have mothers; a grandmother stands with one and a father with the other. The woman at the front of the line looks panicked. But she can't run away now. She salutes with her hand on her heart.

The chief nods at her and she takes a deep breath.

‘I present to the gods Luki, son of Misha the tenth,' she taps her own chest, ‘daughter of Ina, daughter of
Isha, daughter of Misha the ninth . . .' She chants on right back to Misha the first, so many daughters-of ago that Aissa loses count.

Have there been Aissas before me?

How can I step up with no one to name me and my line?

It's one of the first things a child is taught: the long chant of who they come from, mother to grandmother and on till the beginning of time. But Aissa knows only Mama and Gaggie. She doesn't know their other names, and she couldn't say them if she did.

But she has her own name. That is infinitely more than she had yesterday morning. It'll have to be enough.

Luki chooses a shard from the basket of smashed pots, and the guard hands him a lump of charcoal. The boy squats in front of the basket. Carefully, he draws his leaping-deer name on his piece of clay, and drops it into the urn.

He and his mother step back into the crowd. The next mother and son begin.

5

DRAGONFLY BANISHED

The kitchen garden sprawls between the Hall and the houses of the inner town. Its back wall is the solid rock of the mountain. Nothing grows against it, but it's a good place to dump garbage. Aissa dumped dog droppings onto the pile this morning, and the lottery's name shards will end up there too.

That's where mine belongs!
Aissa thinks bitterly.
Buried in filth
.

There are also piles of compost: rotting kitchen scraps, weeds and manure from the dovecotes. The waste shrinks as it turns into rich soil ready to dig into the garden. The three oldest heaps have shrunk so much there's a gap between them and the cliff – a big enough space for Aissa to crawl through and hide. But she can't hide from the voices in her own mind, and those are even crueller than the jeers and curses of the audience.

How did I dare?

I wish I'd never learned my name.

It's a punishment for trespassing into the Lady's bathroom.

Milli-Cat pushed me out there as if she knew. Is she laughing too?

She can't bear to think of her only friend betraying her. It's nearly as bad as wondering what's going to happen next. Because she knows that Half-One and Half-Two, and every other servant right up to old Squint-Eye, will punish her for standing up as if she were a twelve-year-old girl like any other. She just doesn't know what the punishment will be.

She waits till dark before she creeps into the servants' kitchen. The floor is already covered with sleeping bodies, and she's not brave enough to pick her way across them to find her cloak. She curls up on the bare stones just inside the door, where she can get out before anyone sees her.

But her stubborn name whispers around her head as she sleeps, and she dreams of dragonflies.

She wakes to the hiss of whispers. Swift as an eagle plummeting onto a rabbit, Aissa crashes from her dream into her body.

The kitchen is grey with the first light of dawn. The whispers get louder, like a venom-filled hiss. She huddles on the floor while the poisonous words flood over her.

‘She's worse than cursed – she's a demon!'

‘It's the gods' answer for letting her attempt the lottery.'

‘She should have been thrown out for the wolves when the raiders left her at the gates.'

‘The raiders didn't leave her at the gates, idiot.'

‘Someone did. And they should have left her for the wolves.'

‘It's not too late. We'll go to the Lady, tell her we can't spend another night with her here.'

‘Who knows what she'll call in on us next?'

Aissa gives up trying to pretend she's asleep. She opens her eyes.

A cloud of dragonflies is hovering over her.

She flees to the garden, and the dragonflies follow. When they disappear she feels more alone than she's ever been.

Aissa's always hated being small, but today she wishes she were smaller. Even more, she wishes she could have turned into a dragonfly and flown away with the cloud.

‘Keep away from us, insect demon!' Half-One snarls when Aissa tries to snatch a barley cake from the kitchen waste.

‘Go and eat gnats!' Half-Two adds.

‘We should tell Kelya that she's a demon.'

‘And when Kelya tells the Lady, No-Name will be thrown off the cliffs.'

‘Or left out to feed the wolves,' Half-One finishes. She licks her lips, which makes her look even more wolfish than she means to.

They turn together to Squint-Eye. Squint-Eye is so old she spends most of her life in the kitchens now, organising the others – with her stick if she needs to. She's older even than Kelya, and the girls know that she is the only one who could approach the wise-woman.

‘Stupid girls!' Squint-Eye snaps. ‘You don't know anything!'

‘But . . .'

The long walking stick slashes at twin legs. ‘Anyone who talks to Kelya will feel this stick across their back.'

Half-Two squeals. Aissa almost smiles to see the red welt across her enemy's calves.

‘I'll decide what to do with No-Name,' says Squint-Eye.

All that day Aissa sweeps and scrubs, grinds barley in the heavy stone querns, and even hauls extra water, because if she does everything as perfectly as she can, maybe Squint-Eye will forget that for two nights in a row, she's filled the room with insects.

Maybe.

It's nearly time to fill her bucket again and sponge the tables clean for the Hall folk's dinner. Her stomach rumbles emptily; she's had nothing since breakfast yesterday – she'll be glad of the barley soup and leftovers when it's her turn to eat.

She leans over the well to haul up her bucket. Someone pinches the back of her neck, so hard that Aissa jumps and nearly falls in.

Half-One. Of course. Half-One with a smug, malicious smile saying, ‘Squint-Eye wants you. Now.'

All the servants are in the kitchen. Every one of them is watching her.

‘Here, girl!' Squint-Eye beckons. ‘In front of me: I need to see that you understand.'

There's not a sound. The room seems to be holding its breath.

‘No-Name child,' Squint-Eye says solemnly, ‘you brought a curse to this town the day you were abandoned at the gates. The Lady in her goodness allows you to live. But now you've shown yourself for the demon you are, calling up creatures in the night, I cast you out from the fellowship of servants. You will not sleep in the kitchen; you will not eat when we do. You will live as a rat in the night: you are no longer one of us. Now go.'