Dragonfly Song Read Free

tiny-crack-open
    like watching home from bed
    when Mama says sleep.
    Mama’s not there.
    Eyes open wide and still no Mama.
    No singing Lady.
    No legs all around.
    No Fox Lady.
    But a tall man, opening the gate,
    pries Aissa’s fingers off wooden bars.
    ‘Where’s your mama?’
    But Aissa stays quiet, still as stone,
    as he carries her inside
    the singing Lady’s walls.
    ‘Kelya!’ calls Tall Man.
    A gaggie comes, crooked like Poppa,
    wart on her chin
    kindness in her eyes,
    takes Aissa from his arms.
    ‘Alone?’ she says.
    ‘Maybe lost,’ says the man.
    Kelya lady carries Aissa
    on her hip just like Mama
    away from Tall Man,
    to the wall of the Lady’s house,
    puts her down on a low stone bench
    squats in front of her,
    holding Aissa’s hands,
    rubbing thumbs over Aissa’s wrists,
    finding white moon scars that are Aissa’s own.
    And she looks at the mama stone
    but doesn’t touch.
    ‘Little one!’ says Kelya, kissing the scars,
    looking around fast,
    then squeezing Aissa tight,
    arms like Gaggie’s
    but not Gaggie.
    ‘No one must know!’ says Kelya
    and Aissa stays quiet,
    still as stone.
    It’s a small island: even people who’ve lived all their lives inside the walled town, under the shelter of the chief’s hall and the Lady’s sanctuary, know someone from outside who knows someone else, till in the end everyone is connected to everywhere. They all know that the little girl has come from the raided farm.
    People who’ve met her aunt aren’t surprised that she’s dumped the child at the gates. The girl is not the first orphan to be left there. She’ll be raised in the Hall with the other unfortunates and the servants’ children: a space on the kitchen floor to sleep, food to eat when everyone else is done, and chores as soon as she’s old enough to do them.
    ‘She’ll talk when she’s ready,’ says Kelya. ‘She just needs time and kindness.’
    But it’s a busy place. There’s not much time or kindness for a child who would rather hide than play with the other children, who bites if anyone tries to read the name-sign on her amulet.
    And though the last thing Kelya wants is for Aissa to say her name out loud, where the Lady could hear, she does want her to be accepted. She sits on the stone bench with Aissa on her knees, smoothing olive oil intothe black curls to comb out the twigs and tangles. Sharp tugs bring tears to the child’s eyes but she never cries, not the tiniest squeak.
    If I hadn’t seen her tongue myself, Kelya thinks, I’d swear the raiders had cut it out. She finishes combing, and plaits Aissa’s hair into two long tails. ‘Lovely!’ she says, kissing the girl on the tip of her nose.
    Just for a moment, she sees another face looking back at her, because Kelya is old enough to remember before the Lady was the Lady, all the way back to when she was a four-year-old girl.
    Quickly, she undoes the careful plaits, rumpling the little girl’s hair into its own messy curls. People see only what they expect: no one will look closely enough to see the Lady in a cast-off child with tangled hair.
    Later she sees Aissa squatting outside the kitchen garden with the potter’s daughter, making careful patterns in the dust: a ring of flowers in a circle of stones.
    Kelya smiles to herself. The girl will be all right, she thinks: she’ll make her own way.
    Aissa at the gates
    waiting all the morning
    watching for Mama who never comes,
    but seeing through the bars
    butterflies,
    red wings on the sea
    dancing in the dawn.
    No one else sees,
    busy, busy all around.
    Guards pace,
    singing Lady gone inside
    with her snakes
    and her crimson robe.
    Watching through the gate,
    as red wings sail closer,
    and turn into a boat.
    Guards run, singing Lady comes
    no snakes or songs;
    her man comes too,
    the new chief in his lion cloak.
    Flowing robe brushes Aissa
    but the Lady doesn’t feel,
    doesn’t see Aissa
    trembling at her touch.
    Bread lady, milk boy, washing girls, fish man,
    pot lady,