Jay Lake - Green

I looked down at my earth pear and wondered how I might feed it to her. Words, I reminded myself. You will triumph with words.

The lesson was clear: Anything could harm, if used in a certain way. Food. Words. A length of silk sewn into a tube and filled with sand. Even a person.

Are they training me to live well? Or to know different ways to kill and to die?

My lessons changed as the seasons did, along with the lengthening of my legs. Mistress Balnea brought the promised horse into the courtyard one day, and we began the study of the living animal instead of the illustrated scrolls and parchments. Our example was an old brown mare with a white blaze on her head who stared at me with empty eyes and suffered herself to be touched and poked and prodded. I was given to understand that in time I would be permitted to mount and ride, as if this were some great treat. At times she brought a dog instead, different breeds on different days, and pointed up their skills and purposes, what their requirements were, and the conformation of their bodies. The dogs had more spirit than the broken old mare, but they also seemed easily cowed.

So, too, other teachings changed. A great loom was delivered and set up overnight beneath the pomegranate tree, with a dyed canvas sheet for shelter from the rain. Mistress Leonie began to teach me the more commercial aspects of weaving. A whole pig carcass arrived, which Mistress Tirelle and I spent three days butchering so I could see where on the animal’s body each cut of meat came from. Some we cured; some we cooked. Much went to waste.

Whatever they truly meant to make of me, I became increasingly aware of the substantial investment of time and resources the Factor was lavishing on my education.

The best change in lessons came, as I might have hoped, from the Dancing Mistress. She arrived one evening after dinner, not her usual schedule. Mistress Tirelle’s habit at that time was to have me read or practice my calligraphy in the last hours. She would then retire early. Thus I was surprised to see any of my instructresses at such an hour-especially the silver-furred woman.

“Come outside, Girl,” the Dancing Mistress said to me from my doorway. Behind her, Mistress Tirelle made some grumbling huff at the bottom of her breath. Judging by the look that passed between them, this argument had already been waged and lost.

In the courtyard, the moon spilled careless light on the cobbles. The newest shoots on the twigs of the pomegranate tree were silver-dark, while the shadows seemed to breathe ink. We stood awhile under the cold stars, exchanging no words.

That, I was happy enough to do. Every moment of my life was ruled by a guided watchfulness. Sharing the airy silence with the only friend I had was a goodness.

“You climbed well,” the Dancing Mistress said. “This pleases me.”

I clasped my hands.

Her voice deepened with sadness. “You are free to speak while we are at this lesson.”

“Mistress, I enjoyed the climb.”

“Good. Would you do it again, by moonlight?”

“When the tree is dark?” How hard could it be to find my way up? I was still quite small then, and had little fear of fitting my body anywhere I was permitted to go in the first place.

“Your friend the moon will provide hints to your eyes, Girl.”

I wore nothing but a shift, under a rough woolen wrap I’d woven for myself. My hands and feet were bare.

Up I went. The memory of my prior climb was strong. The tree’s bark was knotted and twisted to welcome my fingers. The branches alternated, so I could reach them like the rungs of a ladder.

Climbing was a joy. This was as close as I’d come to freedom since first walking away from the sound of Endurance’s bell with Federo’s hand clasped firmly around my own. No wonder Mistress Tirelle had so violently disapproved of climbing. My spirit soared with the lifting of my body, and the ancient moon was my oldest friend.

If the tree were tall enough, towering over the whole city of Copper Downs, could I see all the way home to Papa’s fire and the whuffling breath of the ox?

The upper branches were light and thin. They swayed even beneath my then-small weight. I could see the roof of the Pomegranate Court, the copper sheaths that kept the rain off my head, gleaming back at the moon. The bluestone walls were topped with a wide, flat walkway that I could not see from the ground. A place for soldiers to tread upon their watch, I realized, thinking back on all the battle poetry Mistress Danae had read to me. At least, if this house were in need of soldiers. Rooftops poked beyond, hinting at the city I’d seen so briefly on arriving in the harbor, and had been hidden away from ever since.

I turned and looked the other way. The taller inner wall of our courtyard was more clearly seen as a tower. Other treetops were visible in the other courts I had glimpsed before. For a long, strange moment I wondered if other Girls had been set to climb this night, if I would meet the eyes of my rival slaves over the rims of the walls set to keep us isolate and inviolate.

The Dancing Mistress had not asked me to move with speed, and so I did not return right away. Instead I looked down at the canvas that covered the loom, at the chest where the gear for the horses and dogs was kept, at the gatehouse marking the path to freedom.

Mine was a tiny, tiny world, but still far richer than the frog-filled ditches of Papa’s farm. I had no word for farm in my own language-where we lived was where we lived. I would not have learned to read, or anything of arithmetic, or the finer arts of cooking with all the poisons of the world, if I had stayed there.

I would not have been a slave if I had not come here.

“No one will own me,” I said in my own words.

The climb down was more difficult than the climb up had been. I picked my way with care and still slid twice, before falling the last ten feet and just barely missing the loom’s canvas. Still, I landed upright and kept my stance.

The Dancing Mistress stared at me, her eyes hooded by shadow. “What did you see up there?”

I opened my mouth, then stopped. She did not want a report on the copper roof of my house. What had I seen? I wondered. I blurted the deeper answer as it came to me, without further thought. “The path to freedom.”

“Hold that in your heart. I cannot release you from this place, but together we can visit freedom.”

I longed to ask her how, but the patience that had been beaten into me was a lesson well-learned.

“Now you will run about the courtyard as fast as you can go,” she said.

“For how long?”

“Until I tell you to stop, or your legs slip from beneath you.”

Eventually I went back inside with my shoulders aching and my mind racing.

I had trouble walking again the day after that first run, though I was pleased this time rather than humiliated. The pain had been earned. There was no cruelty. Just honest effort. The Dancing Mistress told Mistress Tirelle that I had bruised myself practicing cross-steps.

Federo came again that day. He was afoot instead of ahorse this time, and appeared wrung out. The sea had stained his clothes so that his velvet finery was ragged, while the sun had colored his skin so he less resembled a maggot and more a ripening berry.

He found me in the courtyard with Mistress Leonie and the loom. She excused herself as soon as she noticed Federo and went in search of Mistress Tirelle, or so I presumed. He sat on her little padded bench and stared at me awhile.

I offered him the small smile that was all I ever let out.

“How is it with you, Girl?” he finally asked.

“I learn.”

“Good.” Federo reached out and took up my hand. He turned it back and forth, looking first at my wrist then my fingers, at my palm then the back. “Do you learn well?”