Dragonfly Song Read online

  Also by Wendy Orr

  Nim’s Island

  Nim at Sea

  Rescue on Nim’s Island

  Rainbow Street Pets

  Raven’s Mountain

  Mokie & Bik

  Spook’s Shack

  Peeling the Onion

  First published by Allen & Unwin in 2016

  Copyright © Wendy Orr 2016

  The moral right of Wendy Orr to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the United Kingdom’s Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin – Australia

  83 Alexander Street, Crows Nest NSW 2065, Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  Allen & Unwin – UK

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  London WC1N 3JZ, UK

  Phone: +44 (0) 20 8785 5995

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.murdochbooks.co.uk

  A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from the National Library of Australia www.trove.nla.gov.au

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN (AUS) 9781760290023

  ISBN (UK) 9781743369029

  eISBN 9781952534362

  Teachers’ notes available from www.allenandunwin.com

  Cover & text design by Design by Committee

  Typeset by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  CONTENTS

  Author’s Note

  The Firstborn Daughter

  1 Another Spring, Four Years Later

  2 After Eight Springs in the Servants’ Kitchen

  3 The Fireflies of Rebirth

  4 The Light of the Fireflies

  5 Dragonfly Banished

  6 The Sanctuary Cave

  7 The Hills

  8 The Sea

  9 The Rock Slinger

  10 The Bull Dancers

  11 Milli-Cat and the Snake

  12 The Goats and the Wolf

  13 The Bull Dancer and the Boar

  14 Dragonfly at the Source

  15 The Cold North Wind

  16 The Wise-Women

  17 The Herb Gatherer

  18 The Ship in Spring

  19 The Bull King’s Ship

  20 Spring Training

  21 The Dance of Summer Solstice

  22 In the Mother’s Rooms

  23 The Bull Dance in Midwinter

  24 Meeting the Bulls

  25 The Great Spring Dances

  26 From the Grey-Green Bush

  27 The Bull King’s Promise

  28 The Lady of the Bulls

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Around four thousand years ago, on the Mediterranean island of Crete, a great Bronze Age civilisation grew up. Its palaces had grand courtyards and stairways, flushing toilets, lightwells, and painted frescoes on walls, ceilings and floors. They were filled with beautiful art, gold and jewellery; images of priestesses holding snakes and of young men and women leaping over the backs of giant bulls. Archaeologists call it the Minoan civilisation, in honour of the legends of King Minos of Crete.

  One of the most famous legends is of the half-man, half-bull Minotaur that lived in Minos’s palace. This monster ate human flesh, and every nine years – or every year, depending on who’s telling the story – the town of Athens was forced to send seven youths and seven maidens for the Minotaur to catch and devour.

  But do those bull-leaping paintings tell us how the legend truly began? What if the youths weren’t sent to be eaten by a monster, but to gamble with their lives in a thrilling, dangerous spectacle? And perhaps tribute didn’t come only from Athens, but from anywhere that the powerful Minoan navy could threaten. Maybe even from a small, distant island where a snake priestess still ruled . . .

  For my parents, who encouraged my love

  of mythology and archaeology as well as

  literature; my children and siblings,

  who cheer me on; and Tom, who listens

  with patience and love.

  THE FIRSTBORN DAUGHTER

  In her dreams, Aissa feels

  memory before memory,

  before thought or words,

  when she is still soft and small

  and warm in her mother’s arms.

  A dada face leans,

  squeezing her arms tight.

  A flash of silver –

  pain,

  blood dripping from her hands

  and the dada face dripping tears.

  Slippery as snakes, the whispers slide from the Hall to the town and across the island, up hills and through valleys, from the fishers’ cove to the furthest mountain farm.

  The whispers say it’s not true that the Lady’s firstborn died at birth. They say it’s worse – the baby was born with an extra thumb dangling from each wrist.

  If she’s not perfect, she can never follow in her mother’s footsteps.

  The whispers grow: ‘Is the Lady fit to rule us, if she can’t have a perfect child?’

  But the chief looks down at his newborn daughter and thinks she is the loveliest thing he’s ever seen. ‘What does it matter if she’s got an extra thumb? They’re barely thumbs anyway, just wiggly lumps.’

  ‘Wiggly lumps!’ shrieks the Lady, as if he’s said ‘boar’s tusks’. ‘Whatever you call them – she shouldn’t have them, and I shouldn’t have her.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asks the chief.

  The Lady cries, and doesn’t answer.

  And so, in a moment of madness, the chief defies the Lady, and the gods. He will make his daughter perfect himself. First left, then right: he holds the tiny arms and with his sharp bronze knife, slices away the useless thumbs. He pinches the wounds shut till the bleeding stops and rocks his baby till her crying stops, too.

  The very next day, as he fishes on a peaceful sea, a high, curling wave comes from nowhere. It swerves and chases him; it towers over his boat, swamps and sinks it. In seconds, the chief – the baby’s father, the Lady’s husband, leader of the guards, hunters and fishers, ruler over land disputes and village squabbles – is gone. The gods have spoken: the baby’s fate can’t be changed with the cut of a knife.

  Her mother wailing

  louder than baby Aissa,

  more weeping all around

  as if the walls have tongues and tears.

  Aissa, too young for words,

  old enough for nightmares.

  In the dark of almost-morning

  lifted from her mother’s bed,

  cradled on a bony chest –

  smelling kindness

  and fear,

  but no milk –

  the baby sleeps again

  rocking, jolting

  through cool night air,

  up the hill

  and across a mountain.

  Kelya is the wise-woman who takes the baby from the Lady’s bed. Cradling her in a sling across her chest, she wraps her cloak around them both. It’s too early for even the lowliest servants to be up; no one sees her slip through the darkened Hall and across the square to
the kitchen gate.

  The mountain lane is steep and narrow, but Kelya’s feet know it well. She hurries as fast as she can in the darkness. She is old and stiff; she’s carrying a heavy basket of gifts as well as the baby, and she has a long way to go. If she could have asked for help she would, but she can’t burden even the other wise-women with this knowledge. Not when she’s keeping the truth from the Lady herself.

  She’s happy to see the sky lightening by the time she reaches the Source.

  The cave sheltering the spring is white, and so are the pebbles leading down to its shore, but the pool itself is bottomless and blue, bubbling up from the heart of the earth. Steam rises from it, mixing and swirling with the cool morning mist.

  Kelya leaves her cloak and basket at the start of the rocky slope. There are flowers on top of the gifts: white and yellow daisies, bluebells and blood-red anemones; clutching them in one hand, she picks her way carefully down to the edge of the water.

  ‘Great Mother, accept my offering!’ she calls, and throws the flowers into the pool.

  They drift on the surface, twirling and bobbing. Kelya stands with her hand on her heart, watching and praying.

  As the bluebells start to sink, a dragonfly hovers over them, iridescent blue in the dawn light. The wise-woman sighs with relief. Her gift is acceptable. She’s betraying the Lady, but not the goddess.

  She lifts the baby from the sling and unwraps her swaddling blanket.

  No one knows all the secrets of the Source, but Kelya knows more than most. Hoisting her tunic up over her knees, she squats on the pebbles at the edge of a small, shallow inlet where the water is cooler. Further in, the pool is hot enough to boil pork.

  She dips the baby in the water.

  ‘Keep this little one safe,’ Kelya begs. Once, twice, three times, dunking the tiny body under the warm blue surface. The child doesn’t cry until she’s lifted out and dried.

  Kelya tucks her back into the sling, scrambles up the slope and picks up her cloak and basket again. It’s not far from here to the steep western cliffs, the final jumping spot of those who offend the gods – the place the Lady expects her imperfect baby to be taken.

  But the sun is rising, birds are singing of new life, and the goddess has accepted the wise-woman’s prayer. Turning the other way, Kelya follows the stream that winds down the mountain from the Source, carrying the baby through wildflowered hills to a farm on the rocky east coast.

  Because whispers can work their way up from the island to the Hall, as well as down. It is Kelya’s business to know who’s had babies, and who has lost them. She knows a baby girl was born on this lonely farm the night that this child was born to the Lady. She also knows that the farm’s baby died the same day the sea god took the chief. So she hopes the grieving parents will have room in their hearts for this rejected girl.

  She’s right. It’s a small family: the woman who owns the farm, her parents and sister, her husband and seven-year-old son. No one else will know that Aissa wasn’t born here. After all, there are few mountain goatherds without scars of one sort or another – no one is ever going to notice a girl with a small half-moon mark at each wrist.

  The only thing Kelya forgets, as she starts on the long trail back to the town, is to remove the amulet the Lady had placed around her daughter’s neck the day she was born.

  The baby hungry,

  fretful and crying,

  delivered to new arms,

  to rough-skinned hands

  gentle with love,

  rubbing the wise-woman’s salve

  onto the wounds

  where floppy thumbs used to be.

  Waking to a new home:

  a goat smell,

  a hearth-smoke smell,

  but a smell of milk

  and comfort.

  The arms are Mama’s,

  and the home is her home,

  but in nightmare dreams

  they are new

  and strange.

  1

  ANOTHER SPRING, FOUR YEARS LATER

  Night is warmth of Mama

  snores of Dada

  goat-rug softness

  hearth-smoke smell

  glowing coals.

  Now night is screaming

  Zufi bursting through door

  gasping, ‘Raiders!’

  Aissa waking,

  and the nightmare staying.

  Brave Zufi out watching the goats,

  guarding against wolves

  and lions

  with his slingshot and rocks,

  all by himself, the very first time.

  When Aissa is big

  she can do that too,

  brave like Zufi.

  Now Zufi has left goats to run,

  has forgotten wolves waiting

  to eat young kids.

  ‘I heard a noise, up from the sea

  and the moon showed me:

  a band of men

  climbing the cliffs.’

  ‘Hide!’ cries Mama, fear-eyes staring

  at her home,

  her family,

  her Aissa.

  ‘Fight!’ says Dada. ‘They’ll not take what’s ours.’

  ‘Fight!’ says Gaggie. ‘I’m too old to run.’

  Poppa grabs his wood-cutting axe

  with the heavy stone head

  and Tattie picks up her knife,

  the sharp shining blade

  that Aissa mustn’t touch.

  But Mama wraps Aissa tight in her rug

  and runs,

  panting up the hill

  far from the house

  to tuck Aissa in a hollow

  under the sharp-scented, grey-green bush

  where Spot Goat’s kid

  was born yesterday.

  ‘Don’t make a sound,’ says Mama,

  brushing her fingers over Aissa’s lips.

  ‘No matter what you see,

  no matter what you hear,

  you stay quiet,

  still as stone till I come back.’

  Mama makes her sign that keeps Aissa safe

  and runs

  back down to home.

  Aissa sees her

  because the moon is shining

  bright and round

  and Aissa’s eyes are open –

  a tiny seeing slit –

  even though Mama said, ‘Close them.’

  Then the screaming starts.

  Aissa wiggles further

  under the sharp-scented bush,

  curls tight as a finger-poked bug,

  squeezes her eyes good-girl shut

  and tries not to hear.

  Still as stone while the goats bleat and run

  up the mountain, in the night

  away from fire,

  away from screams.

  Flames lighting the sky,

  higher than home;

  screams tearing the night,

  screams in Aissa’s head.

  Aissa’s legs want to run with the goats

  but Mama’s sleeping spell

  holds them tight to the ground

  through the long red night,

  Aissa cold

  and all, all alone.

  When the screaming stops

  Aissa’s heart cries loud for Mama

  though her voice stays quiet, still as stone.

  Mama doesn’t come

  but Spot Goat does.

  Spot Goat bleats and nuzzles

  at cold toes in morning dew

  till Aissa wriggles, snake-silent,

  drinks from Spot Goat like a baby kid

  because Spot Goat’s kid is gone,

  like Mama.

  Morning, not morning, with no warm Mama bed

  smoke in the sky

  stinking stronger than the grey-green bush

  and her rug piss-wet and cold.

  Waiting through that long fear-morning,

  waiting quiet and still as stone.

  Spot Goat waits too – />
  but Spot Goat doesn’t know what Mama said

  so she bleats

  till the man finds them.

  It’s the third time this year that raiders have attacked the island. When the flames of the burning homestead light the sky, distant goatherds call the alarm. Twelve men gather from the farms, but long before they get there, the silence tells them that they’re too late.

  They trudge on, dreading what they might find. It’s as bad as they could have imagined.

  The house and farm buildings were made of stone, but their roofs were thatched straw. The thatch flamed quickly when the raiders lit it, and the burning roofs collapsed, destroying everything underneath. The rock walls stand like chimneys, smoke pouring from the smouldering mess inside. The husband, grandparents and dog lie dead in front of the door.

  There’s no sign of the two women or children.

  The men search hopelessly. All they find is a pool of blood at the gate.

  ‘Let’s hope that’s a raider’s,’ one man says viciously.

  It probably is, because a bronze dagger is lying under a bush nearby. The owner wouldn’t have left it unless he was too wounded to notice.

  It’s a small sort of payment for the dead, and the women and children taken into slavery.

  The dagger is a murdering weapon and it needs to be cleaned of blood and cleansed of evil, but the boy who picks it up can’t help coveting it. Metal is expensive. His grandmother loves reminding the family that she’d paid six kids and a vat of olives for their one short and plain bronze knife. This one is very fine. Its blade is engraved, and the hilt is carved with the head of a horned beast.

  ‘It’s the sign of the Bull King,’ says the oldest man. ‘If he’s behind these raids, the island is in big trouble.’

  ‘I’ll take the dagger to the Lady,’ the boy decides. If he can’t keep it, at least he can be first with the news. He whistles his dog and starts across the hills to town.

  Three men stay to sing the dead to peace before their burial; the others go out with their own dogs and whistles to round up the straying flock. Which is how one man discovers Aissa, cold, wet and terrified, sheltering under a nanny goat.

  ‘What’s your name, little one?’ he asks.

  She doesn’t answer.

  He calls the others; they’re so relieved to find one survivor that for a moment they’re almost happy. The man who finds her is a hero.

  Except that now he has to go to the orphaned child’s aunt, the husband’s sister, and tell her that her brother is dead, and that she has a new child to care for.