Free Dragonfly Song by Wendy Orr

act in their minds. The Lady can’t discuss it with anyone else in case they realise there are things she doesn’t know, but the chief talks it over with the guards. Tigo, the youngest guard, can walk on his hands. He’s never managed to do a backflip, but he thinks he can work it out. He’s put in charge of training.
    Every year something is added to the training; every year Tigo is a little better at teaching it. The year that Nasta and Luki are chosen is the sixth year. The chief, the Lady and the guards are all determined that this time it will make a difference.
    Aissa doesn’t care. She doesn’t want to watch them training for something that she knows in her heart is hers. She doesn’t care if the new dancers live out their year in the bullring, or if the island has to pay tribute forever. She can’t worry about anything now except how to survive.
    Though it turns out that their training is very useful for her survival. Later on, in the heat of summer or chill of winter, no one will be nearly as keen to join in, but in this restless spring weather, runners want to race them and wrestlers want to wrestle. Everyone wants to see how the new dancers perform. The other twelve year olds watch especially jealously, jostling around, showing off their own handstands and roaring with laughter every time Nasta or Luki falls over.
    ‘Shoo!’ Tigo shouts, flapping them away like stray dogs.
    The families of the dancers who haven’t returned are watching just as closely. They desperately want these two to survive, and they just as desperately want them not to be as good as their own children. They can’t decide which one they want more, and they can’t stop watching.
    And while they’re watching Nasta and Luki, Aissa’s watching their market stalls. She’s finally discovered what’s worse than the thin end of the servants’ gruel: nothing. Even when all that was left of the meat was a hint of its flavour, and the vegetables were a shredded mush, there were still bits of barley to roll on her tongue and suck through her teeth. And it was always there. She misses that twice-a-day stomach-filling warmth.
    Aissa is very, very hungry.
    Silent as stone,
    soft as a ghost,
    Aissa slips through the Hall
    because the Hall folk don’t know
    she doesn’t exist
    and see only a servant girl
    clearing scraps from tables,
    the remains of platters
    laden with food –
    barley cakes and honey,
    the last dried figs,
    soft curds of goat cheese –
    taking them back
    for the servants’ meal.
    They don’t see that the girl
    with her head bowed low,
    moves the platters,
    but never takes them to the kitchen.
    They see her reach under a table,
    as a good servant should,
    for the dropped fig
    and broken barley cake
    but don’t see her swallow both
    before she stands.
    But Aissa, gulping hard,
    sees a twin head –
    the rightful clearer of platters –
    approaching the door from the kitchen,
    and Aissa steps
    behind a pillar
    out to the square
    as Half-One walks in.
    In the square Half-Two,
    forgetting she can’t see
    the one who doesn’t exist,
    spits hard –
    a slimy glob of hate
    on Aissa’s face.
    Aissa wipes with a finger
    and flicks it back.
    So all these days
    the rest of the town
    watches bull dancers
    and Aissa watches
    the rest of the town.
    Drifting on the edges
    like a shadow,
    scurrying through hidey holes
    like a rat
    chased and despised,
    racing the dogs
    for a bone
    thrown from a feast,
    sweeping spilled grains
    from the stone grinder in the square,
    where lucky people
    with barley to crush
    smash it from grains to flour.
    Because after the first morning
    the servants are quicker
    to guard their share
    from meals from the Hall
    and there’s nothing left
    to feed compost worms
    or Aissa.
    Half-One and Half-Two
    would eat till they sicked it back up
    before they left something
    that Aissa could eat.
    The third day without food
    her weakened body sleeps through morning
    and she slides out from her cave
    while the world