And when she steps back inside the town walls, her head carefully bowed to hide the purple of any stolen mulberries, she feels a secret thrill like a bright ribbon through her darkness: Half-One and Half-Two would be so angry if they knew how much I love this!
But now she’s here without being sent, and that’s the strongest magic of all. As her feet hit the path, her whole body remembers Kelya’s songs; it hums and throbs, singing silently through her hands and feet and belly, as if there’s music inside her struggling to escape.
She hurries faster up the hill to where the path forks. The left-hand trail will take her to the procession at exactly the right place and time, but her feet turn the other way, and suddenly she is looking down at the white cave and deep blue water of the Source.
Aissa is sure she’s never been here before: it’s too holy a place for servants and No-Names. But it calls to her, and something in her recognises it. She slides down the white pebbles to the edge of the steaming water.
There’s a flash of deeper blue. A dragonfly skims over the rock, a breath past her face, and disappears across the pool.
My name! Aissa thinks. It’s my name that was calling me. She cups her hand into the pool, splashes the sacred water onto her face, and turns back to the trail.
It leads her into the forest, dark and shadowy, whispering with mysterious noises. Aissa is too full of dragonfly-wonder to be afraid. She comes out again onto a rocky hillside, catching her arm on a wild rose bramble and sucking the blood off quickly, before it can stain her new tunic. She doesn’t even notice the blood on her foot, where a stick has speared between her toes.
The hill rolls down to a smaller meadow where the billy goats are sometimes kept away from the herd. Aissa skids cautiously down the hill, skirting the edges of the field. She’s so close now, she’s not going to be stopped by a charging goat. But if any billies are lurking in the shadows, they don’t care enough to charge. She reaches the end of the meadow.
The procession stretches in front of her on the broad mountain path. She doesn’t recognise anyone; the people passing now are mostly herders and woodsmen. But further down, the tail end is in sight: the Hall servants are nearly here. If she’s going to join in, she has to do it now.
As the sky purples into twilight, Aissa scrambles over the rock fence, crouches behind bushes – and slides into the middle of the procession. She smooths her tunic as if she’d just ducked behind a shrub to pee.
No one notices. Eyes flick over her and return to friends. She’s just another young girl who’s strayed up in the crowd from the servants, or back from the craftsfolk. For this one night, she’s invisible – and free.
4
THE LIGHT OF THE FIREFLIES
Aissa free in the darkness,
slipping through the crowd
as if she were one of them.
Turning away from familiar faces
or curious
or kind –
but still with them.
Up the hill to the cliff
high over the marsh,
the people crowding in –
the Lady and the chief above
on a dais of rock.
From the rock to the ground
the Lady pours wine
for the goddess to drink,
scatters poppy cakes
for her to eat,
and cries her plea aloud,
‘Feed our dead,
and set their souls free.’
The people are waiting
anxious in the dark
for that first light,
the brave soul riding on a firefly back,
towards rebirth.
Always-spying Aissa
sees it first:
a light in the sky,
the dancing spirit
of a soul set free.
Now the crowd sighs,
a thousand voices
of Ah! relief
and tears of joy.
And the fireflies come,
a cloud more than Aissa can count
till the dark sky flickers
with dancing stars.
And the potter,
the potter’s husband,
the dead guard’s wife,
the gardener’s son,
all who have lost,
sing their last goodbye
to the souls they’ve loved.
Aissa watching
the firefly souls,
the Lady and her family
on their high flat stone,
the guard below
handing an unlit torch to the chief.
The chief passes his hand
over the torch
and presents it to the Lady –
who twirls it gently,
high in the darkness
till a freeflying soul,
seen by none,
lights it with its firefly flame.
Aissa feels the magic,
hears the sighs,
but she has seen too
the red glow of coals
dropped from the chief’s leather pouch
to the waiting torch.
The Lady glows like the moon itself. Torch flames dance off the gold of her headdress and necklace, from her gold-laced waist and arms, and the crowd is hushed by her majesty.
Now she passes the sacred light from her torch to the chief’s, and then to Fila and the maid walking with the little boys. They step down from the dais and the crowd surges around them.
‘Lady!’ people shout, thrusting their unlit torches towards their rulers. ‘Hey, Chief!’ and even ‘Fila, over here!’
It’s worth shouting and shoving. The earlier your torch is lit, the higher-born the person who passes the flame to you, the luckier your season will be. So the Lady and her circle light the torches of those around them, and then they light the torches of those around them ... Flame by flame, the lights spread all the way down to the servants, till the shimmering tablelands drown the stars above and fireflies below.
Finally every torch has been lit. The guards clear a path through the crowd, and the Lady begins to lead the long bright snake back down the mountain. Castes are confused in the flickering darkness; fishermen walk with wise-women; the stone carver’s daughter shares a torch with the garden boy Digger. Aissa slips from one group to another, always a step away from the torchlight. It’s easy enough to do – only the richest or largest families have more than a torch or two to share. Aissa’s not the only child without her own, and not the only one separated from her family on the return.
For a little longer than is wise, she trails a farmer family, breathing in the pungent smell of their goatskin jerkins. The smell wakes memories that she can’t quite reach, teasing her with a glimmer of happiness. Maybe, she thinks, maybe they knew my family. Before I was a bad-luck girl; when I was Aissa.
The oldest boy is watching her just as curiously. The torchlight falls on his face, and suddenly Aissa recognises him. He’d come to the town a moon ago to offer the year’s firstborn kid to the sanctuary. Now he’s trying to figure out where he’s seen her before.
Aissa waves wildly, as if to a searching mother, and charges like an angry ram. People slap and shout but Aissa’s fast: she ducks and weaves, and is quickly out of reach.
When she dares lift her eyes again, the first woman she sees is the Lady. She’s far ahead, but for just that instant, the crowd thins, so that Aissa can clearly see the back of her head and shoulders, and the glinting of the gold ring in her hair.
If the farmers weren’t so far behind they might have thought she was claiming the Lady as her mother.
Aissa breathes deep, and slips through the crowd more quietly. Head down, elbows tucked, her thin frame sidles between adults and around children, past craftsfolk and traders, till, as the procession nears the town, the privy-girl is right behind the Lady’s people and guards.
I must be crazy! she thinks. But not crazy enough t
o go through the main gate.
No one notices when she steps aside to retie her sandal, and slips silently down the dark path to the garden. A moment later, she’s in the servants’ kitchen.
Suddenly she feels as drained as an empty waterbag. Too tired to worry whether anyone will notice her new, clean tunic in the morning, she finds her ragged cloak in her sleeping place against the wall. Luckily the twins are too afraid of her pollution to take something she’s already worn. She curls up in the cloak on the furthest corner of the stone floor. Long before any of the other servants have stumbled in, Aissa is truly, deeply asleep. She dreams of fireflies. Dreams that the stale air of the kitchen is full of tiny golden stars dancing above her, lighting her space while the rest of the room is left in gloom and shadows. The free-flying souls light up the lowliest, least sacred place on the island. Voices cry out, and Aissa wakes in a leap of terror.
The fireflies disappear as if her thoughts have extinguished them.
In the morning the fear is gone, but the golden glow is still dancing inside her: a sign that her life is going to change.
It’s the day of the lottery.
Every twelve year old on the island will assemble in the square. They will draw the signs of their names on shards of pottery, carefully and clearly, and drop them into an urn – one for the boys and one for the girls.
Year after year, Aissa has watched the solemn guard tip and swirl the urn, mixing the shards so only the gods can know which one is on top. She’s seen the pale, tense faces as the chosen shards are pulled out and the new bull dancers are named.
Now Aissa is twelve. And she has a name to call.
As if a firefly in the night
has brought rebirth
to a girl who is not yet dead
but has barely lived,
the no-name girl
has a name
and a sign,
and a light in her shines
secret bright,
as blue as the dragonfly of her name.
Buzzing
as she shakes her cloak at the door
and shoves it in the hole
at the bottom of the wall –
away from the others,
because no one wants the cursed child’s things
to touch their own.
Buzzing fierce
as she hauls water from the well
and fiercest of all
when the chores are done
and she squats in the lane
by the kitchen gardens
where she played long ago
with the potter’s daughter,
and with a stick in the dust,
draws her dragonfly name.
She draws what she knows
of the long, slim bodies,
their round, watching eyes
and fast-beating wings.
She draws the sign she saw
on her mama stone
till knowledge and sign
are one and the same
and all her own.
The potter sees her
drawing in the dust.
She shouts a curse
and spits,
once, twice, three times,
because her daughter is dead
in the Bull King’s land
and the bad-luck girl is here
and alive.
Now the shards
of the potter’s smashed pots
will choose the girl
to dance the bulls
in her daughter’s place.
The potter’s hatred,
cold as winter ice,
makes Aissa shiver
and chills the joy
of her dragonfly name.
The morning’s too late
and the square too busy
for a girl to slide
under the sanctuary rock.
But in the gardens
behind piles of compost –
rotting weeds and kitchen waste –
she finds a place to hide
safe from hating eyes.
Drawing her sign like a prayer
till the buzzing grows again
because the bad-luck girl
has found her name
in time to draw it on a shard of clay.
She knows,
as if the gods have spoken,
that by this nightfall
the privy-cleaner will be free,
will be warm,
clean and well-fed,
cherished and honoured,
with the chance to free the island
and herself.
It will be worth
dying with the bulls
to be that girl for a year.
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.
Aissa watching from her nook
knees trembling
holding her mama stone
for comforting strength,
because the last boy
is dropping his name
into the urn.
The guard rolls the urn,
tumbling smashed-pot pieces
for the gods to choose.
The chief reaches in,
pulls out a shard.
‘Luki,’ he says.
The boy stands
straight and proud.
In the audience
his grandmother faints,
thumping hard to the ground
as if her heart can’t hold
the joy and dread
a bull dancer brings.
Aissa feeling nothing
outside her quivering self;
the Lady’s calling the girls,
but still Aissa hides –
her legs as useless
as her voice.
A no-name girl
can’t be named.
The gods won’t choose