Chapter 3: A Hellion of Harpies

          “Naida! Wake up!” Phanes, the olive-farmer shook her awake.  “Scaliana! Zenia!” He threw another log onto the coals of the fire, sending sparks flaring up.  “It’s close to dawn!  Get up before they shit on our heads!”

            Naida scrambled up, one arm around Aggie, Phanes’ dog.  The harpies had come out of the dawn days ago and stripped a dozen olive trees of fruit, ruining what they couldn’t eat, throwing the fruit down onto the ground and shitting on it.  Afaris hadn’t had a hellion harpy flock attack in the past six years.

            Last time the flock had been fifty strong and they’d ruined half the wheat crop and broken the branches of most of the olives.  Everyone in Afaris had gotten sick too, since they fouled everywhere they flew, shitting as they pleased, in the water.  Yalenda’s younger siblings, Izzie and ‘Thena, had both died of harpy sicknesses.  Sometimes it hit you in the lungs, sometimes the skin.  Doris still had harpy pock marks on one cheek.  Sometimes you caught something that just made you bleed to death.  Hellion harpies were cesspools of illness and destroyed food bringing famine along with illness.

            Luckily they also only flew by daylight, so people could set up traps in the night, waiting for them to show up at dawn. Naida cuddled Aggie quickly and got up, feeling for her sling.  It had worked around the back of her belt and she pulled it out and set her best sling-stone in it.  If she could spot the queen… the one wearing any stolen precious metal and hit her, that would disperse the flock for a time.  Not that people had much gold or silver, even copper.  But harpies were like magpies that way about metal and you could lure one away from food with the glint of it.

            In the fire light, and the Belt light, Naida could just see the trap.  It was a blanket laid out in the open in front of the ruined olive trees with Yalenda’s betrothal necklace and Naida’s bracelet along with Zeno’s priestess collar.  It should draw the little monsters like flies.  With her other hand she checked her club.  It wasn’t good to get too close but the harpies were small and hard to hit with arrows, even after they got tangled in the net.

            The harpies had this trilling shriek that grated like stone on stone and their stiff flight feathers clattered so you could hear them coming.  They also stank. Not many things under the Belt would eat a flocking harpy. Naida swallowed her gruel quickly as the sky got lighter and lighter.  It was hard waking up, but she could always nap up on the hill with the goats after, if she took Aggie up with her.

            The sun had barely cleared the sea when they came clattering across the water. Uri the tanner had just been getting up to check and see that the bait was firmly attached to the blanket and crouched down fast.  Naida held her breath.

            There were a lot more than fifty it looked like as they swirled like black smoke over the sea.  Last time Afaris had lost all their sheep to the murrain and getting blinded by the queen and her bucks.  It was hard to stay quiet as the wind shifted and blew their stench over everybody.  Zenia coughed but managed to muffle it with her shawl as the stinking hellion circled over the precious olive trees.

            Will they settle? Will they go for the trap? Is the queen young and stupid and greedy for shinies? Or old and canny and weighed down with gold?

            It seemed like it was a new hellion mixed young and old.  The older bucks stayed high and circled cautiously until a screech ordered them down with the young ones who were already landing and stalking in circles around the blanket, spreading their wing/hands to poke and tap the edges.  Not yet.  Goddess let everyone hold their fire till they’re all down. Don’t let them steal my bracelet.

            A soft owl hoot sounded as if the bird were settling down for the day.  That was Oios, warning everyone to stay put. The hellion shrieked and clacked and a covy of quail broke, trying to get away. They managed a few whistling wingbeats before the bucks swarmed them and tore them to bloody shreds in the air. Other harpies caught a few bloody flecks in the air, licked their handwings.  One hapless bird was carried up to the queen who devoured it in a dozen bites.

            They circled the blanket again and again the younger ones landed first.  Another owl hoot.  Then the queen herself landed, her dirty feathers the colour of tarnished copper. Naida just had time to see that she’d strung some gold rings on a copper chain as a crown before the archers stood up and fired into the air over the hellion.

            The arrows glinted white, trailing gossamer thin bird netting, spreading out over the flock whose first reaction was to crouch.  There’s something wrong! It’s not spreading right!

            It was only half spread, one archer had not fired and Pero ran out of the brush pulling his pants up. The flock launched itself for the sky, half of them aiming for the gap as he seized his arrow and sent his billow of netting over them, but it was too late.

            The queen flung herself into the open air as Naida whirled her sling, hit her squarely under her wing/hands with a puff of copper fluff, Deno’s flung rock hitting her from the other side. She tumbled into the nets and got caught up even in the tangled gossamer.  Oios and Deno and Naida were closest and sprang to smash her flat with their clubs.  People were yelling in horror as they killed the harpies trying to bite or claw them. Then it was just dirty squishing noises and getting splashed with goo as they flattened every harpy they could reach.  The vermin broke like balsa wood boxes filled with pudding, crackling, their screeching finally cutting off, leaving only the odd whine.  Among the villagers the older people didn’t react while the near-adults helping their elders cried, or whimpered as they worked. “Less noise, children, kill them quickly,” Oios said calmly, his old arms spattered to the elbows.

            The Afares stood, panting, looking up at the handful of surviving hellion disappearing over the sea as fast as they could fly.  A half-flattened harpy, tangled in the middle of the mess, squawked, flapped, and died.  Everyone was splashed with brown harpy blood.

            Phanes and Deno shook themselves out of the killing funk and Doris and the other women who had stayed in the farmhouse with the babies came out with jars of hot water.  “Oldest and youngest scrub yourselves first.”

            Zeno began handing out the lumps of harsh lye soap that Irikraska made.  “If you’re waiting for hot water, harvest the feathers and lay them on these baskets.  We’ll wash them.”

            Naida sat down and shivered even though it was already a hot morning.  “Look, girl.” Deno held out the harpy queen’s crown, sliding the gold rings off the chain.  “You took her out first.”  He held out the copper chain dripping soap and water.  “I say it’s your prize.”

            “Thank you, papa Deno,” she said.  “I’m still mucky.”

            He laughed and slung it over her head.  “It’ll wash.”  He turned to where Pero was standing with the other archers.  “And where were you when everyone was to work together?”

            Pero glanced at Yalenda who was scrubbing her hair and not looking at anybody.  “I… ah… had to go.”

            Deno shook his head.  “You’re filthy enough.  Go harvest feathers.  You get to wash last, big strong boy that you are.  Nearly a man.  Shouldn’t play silly shit like this.” Kosmosr stamped out of the group of archers and fetched his stick across Pero’s shoulders, once, twice.

            “You blasted young fool!  Couldn’t hold it another instant! If the queen had gotten away, we’d have been fighting them all summer!  They LEARN.  You can never catch them the same way twice and we’d be sick before the end of next moon!” Pero shook himself like Aggie trying to shake her coat dry and slouched off to the filthy job, eyes on the ground.

Scaliana sniggered as if she knew a secret and Yalenda flung her used water on her.  “Shut up!” she hissed.

            “Naida! Hot water!” She turned her back on the girls, 

poured handfuls of it over herself, scrubbing at the mess, the copper chain warm against her collar bones, but she could feel when Yalenda straightened up and glared at her back, as if it were somehow her fault that Pero was in trouble.

Chapter 2: The Bereft

           

          The drop of blood fell onto the scarab and ran red into the cracks of the green stone. Amani-shakhete’s hand closed over his and turned it over, pressing her fingertips over the wounds in his.  “Enough blood, my husband.  She is still alive and my Ushera has not returned, so must still be seeking her.”

            Jahi stared down at his hand cupped in between hers.  She wiped the droplet of blood off his skin and pressed the sacrifice square of linen over it.  His fingertips were scarred with years of his blood letting for his missing little girl.  “Amani, I feel so helpless.”

            “I know, my love.  I and my advisors will begin the Flow tomorrow.  There will be enough power to try and cast some sight.  South this time.  We looked North and North-East last time before the Pharaoh blocked us.”

            Jahi, his hair streaked with white from where the Roc had injured him, snatching his daughter, his eyes no longer steady and his chin jerking sideways every few minutes, closed his eyes and his wife leaned forward to kiss him.

         “Love, it was a choice of seconds," she said.  "You delayed the monster long enough that Asteri could go after him.” She dropped her gilded eyelids, looking down.  “And I didn’t want to lose you too.”  It had taken a full blood bath to save her consort, seven days of seclusion and all the power that her closest and most powerful advisors could manage.  He’d been wrapped in bandages for a full twenty-eight days afterwards, before he could be re-birthed and rise up healed.

         “So you and your ladies are about to go into the Red Temple and try and stop this disaster that is coming?  Whatever it is?”

            “Sometimes we only get warnings, my dear, you know that.  This time we can’t even see what to guard against.”

            “When my mother saw it, first time, she said it was Fire.”

            “And when Namret saw it, she and her Bennu said it was Earth.”

            “So the country needs you.  You’re bleeding yourself dry, my wife.”

            She smiled and stood up, drawing him up from where he knelt before the altar to their daughter.  “It’s my duty as Candace.  Trust Asteri.  He would have come back and told us if he’d failed.” She waved at the scarab.  “Her naming scarab is whole so she is alive and it is bright. She is well.  Asteri will find her.”

            Jahi picked up the staff of his office, that he more often leaned on these days, the falcon headed lapis staff.  “I hear you, wife.  I will trust the bond of your blood.”

            She drew her hand down his face.  “Our blood, husband.”  Kehet-Ana’s Bennu came fluttering in the open window, singing, golden feathers flashing.  “Ah.  The Flow has begun.  I will see you in seven days, Jahi.” Kehet-Ana always started the Goddess’s flow first of the Candace’s advisors and her phoenix summoned everyone else.

            There were twelve women in the Candace’s advisory council, all synchronized to flow together, so they could raise their powers together out of their monthly blood.  Twelve women who would enter the waters of the Nile, dive down under the Red Temple and emerge inside the red sandstone walls, the red glass windows, the image of a red tent raised inside around the entrance pool.  The images of Nuit and Sehkmet gracing the inside walls, lounging on the red couches of power, light flowing from between their legs and out of their mouths and hands.  The pool in the Nile was the only way in or out.

            “I’ll raise you out of the waters myself.”

             “I trust that you will.” She smiled at him, took up crook and flail, and went to her duty.

Chapter 1: Mean Girls

Chapter One:

           The last bit of moss was just outside Naida’s reach with her scraper and she stepped up one more step on the ladder.  “Pssst!  Hey, Dirt Girl!”  She ignored the malicious whisper from below.  That was Yalenda.  “Hey, Found Girl! Mud Puddle!  Harpy Dropping!”

            Naida stretched as far as she could.  The Temple should be cleaned and she wasn’t going to let Yalenda’s yammering bother her, even though her stomach clenched and she ground her teeth together, to keep from answering back immediately.  Zeno, the priestess, and the other children were just heading out with their baskets of trash to dispose of in the cracks in the rocks higher up the cliff and Yalenda was just taking advantage of no one being able to hear her.

            She got the last bit of moss off the roof tiles and dropped it on Yalenda’s head. “Hush. This is for Spring Festival and for your betrothal to Pero and I don’t want to do it in a bad spirit.  Mama Zeno says that a priestess has to try and keep a clear heart.” It was the most she’d said to Yalenda all winter, managing to even keep the conversations with her to ‘pass the bread’, even when Naida was spending her month with the olive farming family in Afaris.

            “A bad spirit!  You are a bad spirit!  The miller should have left you in the pass and not 

brought you home! And how dare you call the Priestess ‘Mama’!”  She wrenched the bit of moss and dirt out of her long, straight hair, clenched her fists and kicked the bottom of the ladder that Naida stood on.  The bottom slid out from under her feet and Naida grabbed frantically for the roof-tiles of the shrine, landing on the edge with her legs dangling over the edge.  The ladder clattered over and then tipped to tumble off the edge of the cliff into the wave-washed rocks below.

            She couldn’t breathe and all she could do for the longest moment was cling.  Then her air came back with a sob and she managed to swing her legs up onto the shallow roof-pitch of the Goddess shrine.  Her whole body was clenched with holding on and her fingertips were white as she looked down at Yalenda, who stood with her fists over her mouth and her big, blue eyes wide and round as the moon.  “You tried to kill me!” Naida gasped.

            “I did not!  It was an accident! You put up the ladder wrong!”  Yalenda tossed her hair back, set her basket down before snapping “It’s your fault just for being here, Dirt!” She turned and ran up the meadow screeching that there’d been an accident and that Naida needed saving.

            The refuse ravine was at the other end of the meadow and it would be a while before she got up there and a while more before they’d get back.  It wasn’t as if she were hanging on by her fingertips.  Naida inched back up onto the warm tiles and looked up at the Goddess’s Belt in the sky, shining red , with the silver moon as its buckle this time of year and phase of moon.  It really looked more like a glittery stripe of red across the full moon and Zeno said that the Belt was between the moon and the earth.  Naida let out her breath again, her whole middle aching from being banged about and from her clenching up to climb onto the shrine roof.

            “Mama Goddess, why did you put me here?” She said to the Belt in the sky.  “Why did you take me away from my real parents and throw me here?”  It was her mystery.

Isocratis, the wheat farmer and the village miller, had found her, all alone, wrapped in white cotton, instead of being stripped and exposed like she would have been if she’d been a true discard.  Just the baby lying in the middle of the pass. No people anywhere around.  No caravan. Nothing except that she had a gold and jade bracelet around one chubby wrist.

            Naida figured it was because of the bangle that he’d picked her up. Another mouth to feed. Another girl and a strange looking one at that.  The bracelet was on the altar of the shrine. She couldn’t say it had been stolen from her since she could see it anytime she went into the temple.  Not stolen from her at all. It had been Doris the Weaver who’d whipped her for saying it was stolen when she was smaller.  She couldn’t wear it.  It was too small anyway, meant to fit a baby’s wrist.

Naida didn’t have parents. Or rather every grownup in the village was her parent and that was different from the other kids.  Nine other kids who had sets of parents of their own. She was so tired of being different.

The village of Afaris wasn’t near anywhere, as far as Naida knew.  On the edge of a coast too treacherous to sail from, on the edge of an enormous cliff barely flat enough to have plants growing up it, all the way to the pass.

Naida looked along the meadow to see the other children – Pero, big, strong, handsome boy, in the lead.  Yalenda acting all worried right up with him. Zenia, and Scaliana, Yalenda’s hateful chorus trotted close behind, and the Priestess and the Priest, Mama Zeno and Papa Oios came behind, not running but moving as fast as their old joints and walking sticks would carry them.

“I don’t look like anyone else.  I don’t get sunburned like Pero or Scaliana.  Goddess, I need to complain.  I don’t look like anybody else.” She was the only person in the village with brown skin, gold eyes, brown hair that frizzed out in a wild tangle from her head and made her look like she wore an Aegypty head-dress when her month parents wrestled it into submission no matter how it hurt and how much she complained or squirmed.

Afaris was full of pale skin people, with sleek, long brown hair that lay flat as if it were wet, even when they didn’t rub the olive oil through it.  They had brown eyes and blue eyes and green eyes… not one had gold coloured eyes. As a baby she’d been passed around from house to house, a month in each, so she wasn’t a ‘burden’ and that had gone on, her whole life.  Weaving, baking, spinning, pottery, blacksmithing, farming. The best parts where when she was on harvest watch to drive the birds and miniature harpies off the olives, or out of the wheat fields with her sling. Or now up in the highest meadow, with the goats.

Her life wasn’t like any of the other kids either, round and round and round because no one wanted her forever.  But no one ever came looking for the gold and jade bangle.  No one ever came looking for her. No one wanted her.

“I shouldn’t think that.  Bad me.  The whole village wanted me, raised me. I should be grateful they didn’t just let me get eaten by a sphinx,” she told herself firmly.  “Bad of me to be ungrateful.” She smacked herself in the head with a slap, because that’s what her this-month mother, Doris, would have done, wobbled a little on the roof.

“Naida.  Child, don’t do that.”  Zeno waved her stick up at her.  “It was just an accident, don’t punish yourself!” Pero and Isocratis the little, peered over the edge to see if they could find the ladder.

“It’s right here!” Pero called.  “It got hung up on a bush and we can get it!”

“Excellent, boys.” That was old Papa Oios.  “Naida girl… are you all right?”

“Yes.  It fell.”  She clenched her teeth at Yalenda in something that might have been called a smile. Not for the whole world would she accuse Yal, who looked like butter wouldn’t melt in her unctuous, worried mouth. Zeno raised her eyebrows at Naida but just shook her head as the ladder fetching crew cheered.

“It is a blessing that you were not hurt, which would have been a dreadful omen.  Imagine Yalenda, if Naida were hurt cleansing the Temple we’d have to put off your betrothal.  You and Pero would have to wait till next year.”  Oios nodded beatifically as his wife spoke, pulled his pipe out of his pouch and packed it slowly with pipe-herb. He smiled through the smoke at Naida who gaped at Yalenda’s absolutely horrified face.  Oh that would have been too much!  Have she and Pero been ‘practicing’ for married life already?

“I’m so glad my clumsiness didn’t ruin your betrothal, Yal,” she said quietly, dancing inwardly with her softly worded revenge.

Pero lifted the ladder up all by himself and Naida didn’t even slap him when he patted her bottom ‘steadying’ the ladder for her.

You foul boy.  You and Yal deserve each other.  Mama Goddess take my rage away from me.  Take me away from here.  On the power of Your Holy Blood, save me from those who raised me. Her jaw hurt from smiling at her ‘rescuers’.

She had no idea why Yalenda hated her.  She was perfectly pretty in the Afaris way, with big blue eyes and a light blond waterfall of hair.  She had parents that didn’t change every month and her mother had made her two dresses for every day, as well as her festival clothes. And Pero, big, wide, blond, strong Pero liked her, not Naida.

“Come along, children,” Oios tottered into the tiny shrine, where he’d cleaned out the seep at the foot of the statue.  It wasn’t a full spring, just a tiny puddle the size of Oios’s two clenched hands.  He had big hands, twisted and gnarled because he was the village plowman as well as the priest.  Gentle hands that held without pinching, or hurting. 

Mama Zeno was an ocean scavenger for Afaris.  Not a fisher, since there was nowhere safe to launch even a little boat, or even wade in to fling a net.  She knew where the welks and winkles hid though, the little lobsters and the bounty oysters.  Afaris couldn’t afford to have people who just did priestly things.  Everybody worked, just to make sure everyone could eat.

After they’d put the new chiton on the statue everyone else went down to the village and their other jobs.  Naida stayed up in the high meadow with the goat herd, finally, finally left alone with the creatures who didn’t teach, or judge or snipe at her.  Goats she liked.  Most people, not so much.