Free Dragonfly Song by Wendy Orr Page A

rests
    in the warmth of noon.
    At the door of the sanctuary
    the table’s been cleared
    of morning offerings,
    but unseen, underneath,
    is a bouquet of pigweed
    and twelve dried raisins –
    a gift from the goddess
    telling Aissa to live.
    So sometimes
    in the busy market,
    an olive stored from autumn,
    a chunk of octopus leg,
    a roasted snail
    slides from the stall
    to Aissa’s hand
    and mouth.
    Till the day she sees
    thin spears of asparagus
    fresh and juicy,
    heaped to tempt.
    The watching woman
    spits, ‘Get out of here!’
    and Aissa flees.
    But a voice in her head says,
    ‘You found asparagus
    long ago
    in the hills with Kelya,
    and just last year
    for Half-One and Half-Two.
    You can find it again
    for you.’

7
    THE HILLS
    The world is new and different – or maybe Aissa is. She’s only a shadow in town, but when she’s out in the hills she’s alive. It’s as if she’s just learned to breathe.
    Of course she’s not the only one out foraging. It’s springtime, and after a long winter of dried food, everyone’s hungry for fresh green plants. Fat-leafed pigweed and feathery fennel, nettles that don’t sting once they’re cooked, the unfurling new leaves of wild grapes, mallow and thistle and wispy ram’s beard . . . they’re all begging to be picked, and most mornings, someone from nearly every family on the island will be wandering the meadows and forests to do it. Only the Hall folk and their servants wait in town for other people to gather food for them.
    Baby animals appear too, as if the sun’s warmth has magicked them out of the rocks and shadows. Young hares, rabbits, hedgehogs, deer and ibex are easy prey for slings or arrows. Trees hold eggs in nests, and thereare strange birds that land for only a few days, in spring and again in autumn. Sometimes they crash to the ground in high winds and are too exhausted to escape a hungry hunter.
    The only problem is the other hungry hunters. The chief killed the last lion for his cloak when he married the Lady, but there are still bears, boars, lynx and wolves and now they all have young to feed. They like the same meats that people do, but they don’t mind adding humans to their menu.
    So nobody walks the hills alone, unless they’re a hunter or a goatherd with a good sling for rocks. Half-One and Half-Two, before they thought of making Aissa go, always went with girls from the town. Even the wise-women, if they’re going far from other gatherers, take a hunter with them.
    But for Aissa, a wild-haired, fur-cloaked hunter is just one more thing to run from.
    Aissa doesn’t have
    a bow with arrows,
    a spear,
    or even
    a sling like Zufi’s
    when he guarded the goats –
    though it didn’t save him
    from the raiders.
    She could make a sling
    if she only had
    a knife to cut cord,
    a spindle to make it,
    something to spin –
    and a basket to collect it –
    but she doesn’t know how
    to make any of those
    because a privy-cleaner
    doesn’t learn much else –
    just knows she needs them
    to survive as more
    than a hunted rat.
    Needs to learn
    what the tiniest children know
    if they have mamas or dadas,
    gaggies or poppas,
    or anyone
    who loves them.
    Like a song,
    at the back of her mind
    is an almost-memory:
    a child warm on her grandmother’s knee,
    Gaggie’s old hands
    guiding Aissa’s young ones
    to whirl the spindle
    that spins Spot Goat’s hair
    into yarn.
    If Aissa can learn
    to spin again
    it means she can learn
    to be a little
    like everyone else –
    but all her memory gives her
    is that glimpse of love
    and sometimes
    it hurts too much
    to remember that.
    So when she sees
    a spindle winding wool,
    up the spike in its round clay disc,
    that disc might as well be gold
    for all the chance
    Aissa has to own it.
    Because the grieving potter
    is still so sure
    that Aissa’s curse
    killed her daughter,
    that she would smash
    every spindle in town
    before she let
    Aissa own one.
    The morning is hot and windy. Aissa is plucking juicy pigweed