Cuckoo's Flight Page 2

  At the top of the riverbank she stops long enough to catch her breath and whistle – a cuckoo’s call: one long, one short. It’s always brought Grey Girl from wherever she is. If she can walk.

  The mare trots gently up the hill, her round belly swinging. The scent of trampled thyme reassures Clio before she sees her. Now soft lips are nuzzling the girl’s face, whiskers tickling. Clio drops her crutch to stroke the mare’s forehead, rub between her ears the way she loves, before running her hands over the round sides and belly. Everything feels normal.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says, to the Great Mother and god of horses. Her right hand is on her heart in prayer, but she keeps her left on Grey Girl’s face, to remind the gods who the thanks are for and from.

  The colt and filly prance up but lose interest quickly when they see she hasn’t picked anything for them. ‘Next time,’ she promises, though only Grey Girl’s ears twitch as if she understands.

  Clio buries her face against the warmth of the strong grey neck.

  She knows she ought to hurry back to the kiln – but I was so sure she needed me! What was that heart prickle if not Grey Girl’s call?

  As if in answer, the mare nudges her shoulder. It’s been two years now, but sometimes she forgets that her girl can’t ride anymore.

  ‘Even if I could,’ Clio tells her, ‘you’re too near your time.’

  Grey Girl nudges again, and when Clio still refuses, starts up the hill.

  Hector says that mares are often restless before they foal. Is she searching for a safe place now? Clio wonders. Is that why I felt her calling? She grabs her crutch again and follows.

  The mare ambles up the hill to the ridge overlooking the river. The vultures have moved on, but eagles circle lazily in the winter sky; further back towards town, Clio can see the goats grazing near the herders’ hut. The tune of a flute wafts gently over the breeze. At the top of the ridge, Grey Girl stops and sniffs the wind.

  On flat ground, the mare’s shoulder is just above the girl’s chin. But here on the steep side of a hill, Grey Girl’s back is level with her chest. It’s almost overwhelmingly tempting to pull herself up, swing her left leg over and sit there, just for a moment, the way she used to …

  She’s tried often enough to know she can’t. Even if her hip didn’t scream with pain, the right leg doesn’t turn to hug the mare’s round barrel; it can’t squeeze or grip. The only way she could stay on is to wrap her arms around the mare’s neck – and that’s not riding.

  She wouldn’t mind so much if she knew that her father’s chariot idea would work. Maybe in his home in Troy, but what if there’s a reason there’s never been a horse-drawn chariot in this town?

  ‘The reason is they’re stuck in the past, thinking that only oxen can pull carts,’ Hector always says. ‘Once they understand how to make the new wheels, they’ll see that horses can pull a light cart faster and farther than any ox.’

  ‘Is that true?’ she asks the mare, resting her arms across the warm grey back and looking out over the blue waters of the bay. ‘Can we do it?’

  That’s when she sees it. A ship.

  On this chill day of winter there shouldn’t be a ship to see. There are more than two cycles of the moon before the sailing season begins; the little fishing boats go out in the bay, but the trading ships are safely in their sheds for the winter. Exactly as they should be.

  But there, coming up to the east point of the bay, is a long black hull with a bright wicked eye at its bow and a bowsprit long and sharp as a swordfish’s spike – and though there is breeze for a sail, the mast is down and the oars are flashing, stroke after even stroke.

  The oars raise as if in salute, and when they lower again the ship disappears, going back the way it came from. It is the neatest turn she’s ever seen.

  Uncle Doulos would love to see that!

  No, he wouldn’t. No one wants to see that.

  This isn’t a trading ship from the next harbour. It’s different from the island’s ships: heavier, more rows of oars; the warlike eye instead of the gentle swallow of her uncle’s ship or the octopus of his rival’s. But the main difference is that they are out in the winter, rowing for no reason.

  As if they’re training. Training for the raiding season.

  All this year, refugees have been coming in from villages further up and down the coast. Warriors from the mainland started attacking when Clio’s grandparents were young, in the dark days of fire and flood. The great sacrifice had given the goddess strength to hold them back for many years, but now they’ve started again. This time they don’t seem satisfied with raiding, stealing and slaving. Now they want the land too. The refugees tell of the villages they’ve invaded, the palaces and temples they’ve burned and the farms they’ve taken. Say that some have beached their ships for winter in isolated coves and settled in as if they’re going to stay forever.

  But no one from the town has seen this proof till now. The raiders are closer than anyone’s imagined, and they are readying themselves for war.

  Grey Girl quivers beneath Clio’s arms. Is her time coming near? I need to get back to the kiln where I’m supposed to be – but I can’t leave her if she’s about to foal!

  The mare nuzzles the girl’s face, asking her to blow into her nostrils in their private language, and Clio knows it’s her own fear that Grey Girl is feeling, and that she’s reassuring her as she would a foal. They share each other’s breath for a long moment.

  ‘Thank you,’ Clio whispers, and picks up her crutch.

  The wind hits her as she moves away from the mare’s bulk; she pins her cloak tighter around her shoulders but the shivering isn’t just with cold. Stepping back down from this rock, she can’t see the point at the end of the bay. If Grey Girl hadn’t nudged her up to this particular slope of the hill, she wouldn’t have seen the ship.

  The thought hits hard as a stone to the belly. The ship didn’t want to be seen.

  And the other part of the thought: the goddess wanted her to see it.

  I can’t be the only one, she thinks desperately. Goatherds will have seen it along the way.

  Maybe. But the lookout, up in the tower on the eastern wall, won’t have. If herders further up the bay saw it, they’d think the town would see it too. By the time they tell someone, it might be too late.

  Too late for what?

  She doesn’t want to think about that.

  I’ll tell the lookout, she decides, and then I won’t have to tell Mama that I left the pots with Delia. Dada might understand, and even Grandmother Leira, but Mama is so worried about my future she’s angry at everything I do that isn’t exactly what she wants.

  Deserting the kiln is a big one.

  From the hill across the river

  Mika watches –

  the foal-bellied mare,

  the brown filly

  and the prancing colt,

  taller and darker than the others –

  a wild beauty that makes her heart sing;

  watches the girl

  older than her by a year or three,

  lucky, well cared for and born to a craft –

  though Mika’s visited town too rarely to guess

  more than she’s neither priest-folk nor fisher;

  ponytail neat in a long dark plait,

  leather apron over her tunic

  and warm sheepskin as well.

  But not so lucky in her legs

  for she drags the right

  and needs a crutch to stand.

  She calls the horses with a cuckoo’s song –

  they trot up like whistled dogs

  but the mare is the one she loves

  and the one that loves her –

  she strokes and leans on the round grey back

  as if she’ll slide right on.

  ‘Do it!’ wills Mika,

  longing to see the girl ride

  nearly as much as she yearns to do it –

  and when the lame girl stops,

  gra
bs her crutch and flees,

  Mika’s bereft

  as if a warm meal

  has been snatched from her grasp.

  2

  THE ORACLE

  Delia is still at the kilns; she looks up from the fire, her face flushed and shocked to see her friend rush past without stopping.

  ‘Back soon!’ Clio calls.

  She swings through the gate onto the cobbled street. This is the main craft quarter: small, two-storied whitewashed houses and workshops crowd on either side. It bustles with craft-folk, farmers, slaves and priest-folk all going about their business; chatting, shouting orders or singing as they work. Stone vase makers thump hammers; a dog barks frantically at a shepherd carrying a ram over his shoulders. The fresh salt scent of sea is overlaid by the stink of molten metal from the bronze workshop.

  The carrier twins pass with a load of raw copper on their tray. ‘Igor said this was urgent,’ Head calls after her. ‘Your friend’s pots are next.’

  Clio smiles back as if she hasn’t been too worried to even wonder why they’re just leaving now. At the corner, where Delia’s mother’s workshop is next to the weaver’s, she turns and follows the narrow street up to Watchtower Hill.

  The pacing lookout is tall and thin, a yellow shepherd’s scarf wound around his dark hair. Petros. Clio flushes with warmth: she’s guessed right. It was his sister fluting to the goats – her friend is on lookout duty.

  ‘Clio! Are you lost? The kilns were down by the gate the last time I looked!’

  He sees her face and the teasing stops.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I’ve seen a ship.’

  ‘How could you? I’ve been watching. I swear I didn’t doze … maybe for a moment, no more. Don’t tell anyone.’

  ‘I had a feeling Grey Girl was in trouble – I had to check. The ship was close in to shore and turned around at the point. You couldn’t have seen it.’

  ‘I might have,’ he says. ‘And you might have been at the kilns, not out with the horses.’

  ‘But … oh! Thank you, Petros!’

  As quickly as she can without knocking anyone over with her swinging crutch – dreading someone asking what she’s doing at the lookout – Clio races back down the hill.

  Delia is turning into her mother’s workshop. She flashes a thumbs up and Clio thanks her with a hand-on-heart. No one else sees their quick signals.

  She’s still out of breath when she returns and tells Mama the figurines are firing now.

  ‘You put them in facing east?’

  Does Delia know that? Her family’s workshop makes household dishes; Clio’s is the only one that makes the house goddesses. But they’ve stacked the kilns together often enough.

  Clio nods, trying to cool the red blush from her cheeks.

  Mama pats her shoulder and pours her a cup of ale. ‘Rest; you’re puffed out from stoking the fire.’

  Clio’s blush blooms redder, from toes to scalp.

  Matti, whose mother died giving birth to him four years ago, stops galloping his wooden goat around the floor and stares at his young aunt. ‘Why is Clio so red?’ he demands.

  Grandmother Leira, resting on her bed beside the shrine, watches Clio’s face and says nothing.

  ‘I’ll check the mare with Clio before I go to the shipsheds,’ Hector says next morning.

  ‘And me!’ shrieks Matti, climbing his grandfather’s leg as if it were a tree. ‘Take me too, Dada!’ Hector and Selena are the only parents Matti’s ever known – his father died at sea soon after he was born. They think of him as their youngest child, Clio’s little brother rather than her nephew.

  ‘Not today,’ Hector says. ‘This is Clio’s job. You help Mama with the clay.’

  Selena sighs. Her brother Doulos often complains that Hector doesn’t take the shipping seriously enough, and she can’t see why it takes two people to check on one animal, especially when they pay a herder to do it … but there’s no point in arguing with Hector or Clio when it comes to their horses.

  Matti’s wails fade as the Lady’s call to the sun floats out from the palace courtyard. Clio and her father stop briefly to honour it, and turn onto the river road.

  Petros is back with the flock today. ‘I haven’t seen Grey Girl this morning,’ he says. ‘But Colti’s restless, and I think he’s guarding that hill.’

  The colt is near where Clio first saw the horses yesterday. He starts towards them before swerving up the ridge. Hector and Clio follow, hearts thumping anxiously till they hear a whickering and see the mare in a sheltered hollow near the bottom of the hill. She looks up at Clio’s whistle and the shadow beside her becomes a perfect, healthy foal, paler than its mother, more the colour of clay than her soft grey. Nuzzling into her side, the foal begins to nurse.

  Grey Girl licks it protectively, still watching them.

  ‘Thank you, Great Mother,’ Clio whispers.

  Her father hugs her so hard she drops her crutch, and they both laugh. As they head back across the field, Clio sings and her father whistles.

  Petros grins. ‘The foal is born?’

  ‘Healthy mare and foal,’ Hector agrees. ‘Though they’ll be wanting your protection in these next days.’

  Petros nods. ‘We’ll keep the goats in this field till at least the next turning of the moon. The only problem would be if she gets through the barrier at the shallow ford. It’s stood all winter, but not if she’s determined to get through.’

  ‘She loves to wade there, even when it’s cold,’ says Clio. ‘And if she wants to keep her foal away from the goats …’

  ‘We’ll repair it now,’ says Hector.

  ‘I’ll take them down to water with the goats every night, and the foal will get used to the flock from the start,’ says Petros.

  The gully at the river’s bend

  carved from the steep bank

  washes silt to the water

  trapping pebbles from the creek above –

  gravel and silt forming a ledge

  across the river, nearly to the other shore.

  But that far bank

  is steep with rocks,

  not easy even for goats –

  and unwary beasts

  wading on that peaceful ledge

  can be swept away when they step

  into the river’s depth.

  Now the goats follow Petros

  like children in a game,

  a favourite bumping at his heels

  while others wander –

  searching always for something better –

  but all watching

  where their herder goes,

  especially when he starts to cut

  thorny branches that they might eat.

  Hector chops with Petros

  while Clio, sheepskin pinned tight at the throat,

  snaps off two long thorns

  to pin the cloak at each wrist,

  shielding her arms with tough hide sleeves –

  and weaves new fence into the old.

  It’s not a task anyone could love –

  face-slapping branches escape their weave,

  thorns tear fingers, stab through capes

  and seek bare legs, keen as hunters –

  but between yowls and sucking bloodied fingers,

  Clio sings the joy of her heart,

  of working in the fresh cold air

  with her father and friend

  rather than home on the workshop floor,

  where time moves slowly –

  clay slipping, oozing through her fingers,

  refusing to be shaped –

  even these sharp thorn branches

  love her more than the clay.

  The fence can be crooked

  but as long as it works

  she has not failed.

  Building the barrier will keep the foal safe, but a few days later, when Clio opens the cooled kiln, it seems the goddess herself has blessed the birth.

  Every little figurine – a he
ad and torso with raised arms on a skirt like an upturned cup – is perfect, and facing east.

  Clio can’t apologise to Delia for that niggling doubt, but wishes she could leave the carrier twins, busy loading their palanquin tray to return the figurines to the workshop, to thank her friend again.

  ‘As soon as they’re all safely stored,’ she promises herself.

  But there’s much more to talk about by then.

  Everyone, from the lowest slave to the Lady and the goddess herself, knows about the ship Clio saw three days ago. Now it’s leaked out that it wasn’t Petros who saw it from the watchtower but Clio from the ridge with her horses.

  I should have just told Mama the truth then!

  Her mother’s scolding is soon the least of her worries. At the next morning’s dawn ceremony, the Lady announced that she would consult the oracle. Now it is noon and the townfolk have returned to hear what the goddess demands to save them from this new danger.

  From the palace balcony

  the Lady appears,

  gold at her throat and wrists,

  tall coned hat,

  tight-laced blouse

  and a flounced skirt bright

  with the gods’ own purple.

  Face-paint death white,

  lips red as blood

  and huge eyes glazed

  from communing with gods,

  reading the patterns on a grain-dusted floor

  where the Great Mother’s snake

  chases fleeing mice.

  Swaying, gazing

  over the silent crowd;

  her goddess voice

  is hoarse and deep.

  ‘The oracle says the need is great:

  these warriors, men of bronze

  on black ships bright with shields and spears,

  threaten not only homes and lives

  but the goddess herself, mother of all,

  casting her out where she lives

  in statues of clay or wood,

  for their jealous gods of sky and sea,