Honey for Celephaïs: Chapter 6

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Poietria Martine and her retinue continued toward the Boreas Gate, one of the three gates to Skala Eresou. As they approached the Avenue of Boreas the shops grew larger and fancier, boasting of their wares to the traffic on the Avenue. While you could find cheaper (and sometimes tastier) food deeper in the marketplace, many people preferred to pay a little more to buy it here and avoid all the mud and noise entirely.

There were three constables on duty at the gate, women dressed in leathers and armed with swords of various types. The foremost woman held up her hand.

“Poietria Martine, you may enter, but who is this lad?”

Martine squeezed his hand.

“Thank you,” she nodded in greeting. “This is Roach and I stand for him.”

“Roach, Poietria?” smiled the constable. “A rather unusual name, I would think.”

“He will have a new one by nightfall, I assure you.”

“You have never brought a male into Skala Eresou before, Poietria Martine.”

“There is a first time for everything,” she smiled. “He is a new student at my school, and I stand for him.”

“You may pass, Poietria Martine,” said the constable, standing back to allow them to walk through the stone arch freely.

The buildings and streets of the Skala Eresou enclave were much the same as the rest of Celephaïs, but Roach felt something was different. He twisted his head to and fro, looking about.

“The public fountain is up ahead on the left,” said Martine. “That big gray building in front of it is the public bath.”

Roach was listening, but he was more interested in trying to figure out what was different… of course! It wasn’t something he could see, it was something missing!

“No men, Mistress…”

“You address me as Poietria.”

He nodded.

“Men are not allowed here, Roach. Boys such as yourself may enter. Skala Eresou is run by women, protected by women, and woe be to any man who tries to enter by force!”

He thought on that.

“Uncle Sarl was a man. He hit me.”

“No man shall you here, Roach,” she reassured him. “But I may if you fail your studies!”

“Studies? You mean, school?”

“Can you read and write?”

“A little,” he said.

She laughed.

“We’ll teach you, boy! We’ll teach you more than that!”

She stopped and looked him straight in the eyes.

“But do you know what we’ll teach you most, boy?”

He shook his head, face expressionless.

“To dance!”

* * *

Poietria Martine’s dance school was in a small, quiet building on the other side of Skala Eresou, close to the di Scalotta Gate. The entrance faced the main plaza there, providing easy access to the public fountain and bath.

They dragged him to the kitchen first, and he had his first full meal in a long time… it wasn’t mealtime and the cooks had their hands full preparing the evening meal, but at a stern look from Poietria Martine they put together a perfect feast for the boy… hot soup, chicken, a heaping bowl of rice with tomatoes and beans, and an apple for dessert. It vanished without a trace as fast as they could dish it out.

When the dishes were empty, Roach stood, without a word of thanks, and asked the Poietria “Now what?”

The head cook, standing nearby eyeing the obvious satisfaction of a handsome, hungry boy in her cooking, tightened her lips, spun on her heel, and stalked off into the depths of the kitchen. Mistress Kileesh had been cook here for decades, and was famous for her silent, disapproving looks. She was also famous for being able to flense flesh with her words when finally provoked to speech.

Martine was also taken aback, but decided to let it ride for now, figuring he was still off-balance after the exciting events of the day.

“Next is a bath and clothing.”

“Don’t need a bath,” he said.

“You need a bath,” she corrected. “Now.”

She turned to Maia.

“Maia, take him to the public bath, then the barber. Here is coin for the barber,” she said, handed over a few small coins. “Find him a clean tunic, and bring him to me when you’re done.”

“Yes, Poietria,” she said, giving a shallow bow, then took Roach’s hand and led him off.

When he returned an hour later, he was a different person… clean, hair cut and brushed, wearing a linen tunic with a Greek meander embroidered around the hems, and leather sandals, he looked the perfect little prince. His face was more handsome than ever, even at his young age.

Martine sighed. He was going to be trouble as he grew into a young man. He already was trouble, she reminded herself.

Roach entered and stood before her silently.

“I’ve watched you in the marketplace toying with the constables,” she said, “Your balance and reflexes are excellent. Your body is still weak and untrained, of course, but you will make a superb dancer. If you can stop stealing.

“We cannot keep calling you Roach, boy. What shall we call you?”

“I like Roach.”

“Rogier, then.”

“If you wish.”

“I wish. You are now Rogier, and will begin training with the first class tomorrow.”

She sat down at her desk again and nodded at Maia, who had stood waiting by door all this time.

“Show him where things are, Maia. You are relieved of your duties for the rest of the day. You are also responsible for Rogier for the rest of the day.”

She kept her face blank as she automatically replied “Yes, Poietria,” and bowed again.

She stepped out of the room, calling “Come with me.” to Rogier as she left.

Maia walked briskly through the school, paying little attention to Rogier and speaking rapidly as if hoping to get it done with as soon as possible.

The school building—there was really only one—had originally been a private estate built like a Roman domus, with a two-story building surrounding the central courtyard, garden, and other structures, but it had been a dance school for centuries, the buildings renovated and repurposed again and again by successive dance masters over the years. The school now consisted of a two-story dormitory for students and staff, a kitchen with adjoining dining room, a small library, and rooms for practice, practice, practice. In addition to an outdoor practice yard (which also featured a small vegetable patch), there was a huge wood-floored practice room, and a smaller exercise room for advanced training.

The students were almost all in their second twefths, and female. He discovered that pre-puberty males could live in Skala Eresou as long as a woman stood for them, but once they reached puberty they would need a special pass from the Council, the women running Skala Eresou. Maia explained he was the only male at the school, and one of the youngest students accepted in recent times.

He thought Maia didn’t like men in general, and judging from the way she avoided approaching him as much as possible, probably feared them.

He listened quietly, taking in everything without comment or question.

It was late afternoon by now, and the students were studying their books. Most sat on the floor, a few lucky ones were seated on one of the benches in the library. They were reading from scrolls and a few books, reciting quietly to themselves.

“What are they doing?” he asked.

“Learning the lines.”

“Lines?”

“The next dance will have both music and speech, and the timing will depend on the speech. They are memorizing the actor’s lines.”

“How can you know what the actor will say?”

“It’s written in the book,” she told him, and pulled a scroll out of one of the shelves. “Here, see?”

She pulled the scroll partially open, revealing tightly packed letters.

Rogier stared at it blankly.

Maia lowered the scroll, looking Rogier in the eyes for perhaps the first time.

“You can’t read, can you?”

He shook his head.

She laughed. “That’s why there aren’t any boys here! Until you came!”

She snapped the scroll tight again and dropped it back into its slot.

* * *

One afternoon, after practice was over for the day and the students could enjoy a little free time before the evening meal, Maia noticed Rogier crouching in the outdoor practice yard, near the herb garden. Curious, she looked closer.

He was motionless, hunched over, head down, staring intently at something.

She squinted to see better… it was a mouse!

It was struggling wildly to escape, trying to leap, and biting at its foot.

She took a step closer to see better.

A bamboo skewer stuck up through the mouse’s leg, impaling it to the ground, and Rogier was just watching its struggles, making no move to free it.

She gasped.

He must have impaled it!

She hated mice, but the thought of deliberately stabbing a living thing like that and just watching it die… she gagged.

Rogier turned and looked at her, face expressionless.

“Me and the cat were mousing,” he said. “Bwada is a good mouser, but I’s even faster.”

Bwada, a huge black-and-white cat that had adopted the school as its home some years before, sat some distance away, watching the mouse.

Rogier and pulled the skewer up out of the ground with one hand, and grasped the mouse by the back of the neck with his other, then abruptly twisted its neck around and casually lobbed the writhing body toward the cat.

He turned to face her.

“What’s for dinner tonight, Maia? I’s hungry!”

Mouth still open in shock, she watched him walk back inside without a word.

* * *

Rogier’s days at the school were not very enjoyable, but even at their worst they were far superior to living on the streets. Ample (sometimes even good) food, safety, soft blankets, even a bath every day if he liked!

Because of his young age he was assigned a personal tutor, in addition to his practice in the first level. Maia was furious with him, because tutoring him meant she lost what little free time she enjoyed.

He mastered the shapes of the letters very quickly, and quickly mastered both block and script. On demand he could write any letter, or all of them, quickly and clearly.

But try as he might he could not read words, and could not write them.

She pointed at the book once more.

“This word. What is the first letter?”

“C.”

“And the second one?”

“A.”

“And the last letter?”

“T.”

“And what does C-A-T spell?”

Rogier was silent. He smiled at her with his best, most innocent smile, but obviously had no idea.

“She ate tea?”

Maia slammed the book back onto the stone wall.

“No! CAT is cat, you idiot.” She jumped to her feet, pacing back and forth in the garden in her fury. “Why can you not see that, you imbecile! I’ve shown you again and again and again and still you can’t read the simplest word!”

“I can write CAT,” he suggested hopefully.

“But you don’t know what it means, do you?”

“No,” he answered, quite satisfied with himself.

He picked up his pen again and began to draw, ignoring her furious pacing.

Minutes passed in silence and Maia approached to see what he was writing… she looked over his shoulder at the sheet of paper in front of him on the ground.

His pen practically flew over the sheet, leaping to the inkpot every so often, then flashing back to the paper where a face was rapidly emerging. As she watched the strands of hair multiplied, growing fuller and blacker, drawn into a braid at the back. The nose grew more evident, and scattering of freckles emerged. Large, slightly tilted eyes opened on the page, staring back into her own.

It was her… he was drawing her face with incredible speed, never hesitating, and never turning to look at her face!

It was done.

Rogier looked at it for a second, judging his work, then nonchalantly crumpled it into a ball and pushed it aside, ready to start on a new picture.

Maia gasped, knelt, reached for that crumpled sheet.

“May I… May I keep this, Rogier?”

He didn’t even look up.

“It’s trash.”

She squatted, gently smoothing out the wrinkles. The ink had smeared a little but every perfection and imperfection of youth and beauty was there, captured in black and white.

She stared into its eyes, entranced, then glanced to see what Rogier was working on now.

It was the face of an angry little man, with a sharp nose, small eyes set deep under bushy brows, receding hairline, sagging cheeks in a face that reeked of too much drink and too few hopes.

“Who is that?”

“Uncle Sarl.”

“Who? You have an uncle?”

“No. He’s dead.”

“But that drawing is so lifelike!”

After a minute he finished the drawing, and crumpled it up like the first.

She gingerly reached out, picking it up to add to her growing collection.

Later, as she was leaving the evening meal, Poietria Martine beckoned her over, ushering her into her room.

“Sit, Maia,” she invited, waving her to a chair. “Show me his drawings.”

She hurried to pull them out of her tunic pocket. There were eleven, in all.

“I didn’t steal them, Poietria! He said they were trash, and I was going to show them to you…”

“Quiet, girl,” hushed Martine. “You did nothing wrong.”

She spread them out of the tabletop, examining them closely. She brought the oil lamp closer to illuminate Maia’s face, comparing it to the drawing.

“I recognize these pictures, of course, of students and staff, but who are these people?”

“He said this one was Uncle Sarl—he said Uncle Sarl was dead—and this one is a constable named Ng, and this one a merchant named Thabouti, uh, Thabouti something, I forget.”

“Enough. Yes, this is Sergeant Ng, I remember. Do you recognize him?”

“Sort of… I didn’t really look at him, to be honest.”

Martine nodded to herself.

“He is very good, isn’t he?”

“Yes, Poietria.”

“You may keep them.” Martine handed them back. “How does his reading and writing progress?”

“Poietria, his letters are beautiful, his script immaculate,” Maia said, “but he cannot spell, he cannot read or write even the simplest word, no matter how I try.”

She hung her head.

“I will try harder, Poietria! I promise!”

“Oh, hush, child. You cannot squeeze water from a stone.”

Martine stood.

“I will take over his tutoring now, Maia. You may return to your normal duties.”

“Thank you, Poietria. I will…”

“You may go now,” interrupted Martine. Waving her hand toward the door.

Maia scurried the doorway, turned to bow once more, and left.

* * *

The first level was mostly girls in their first twelfth, a hodge-podge of different races, colors, styles, even dialects. They all had one thing in common, though: one way or another they had been separated from their families and brought her to dance. They were no longer daughters of farmers or nobles or soldiers, but merely students stumbling through their studies as their bodies matured.

The majority already knew their letters, and could read musical notation; the few who didn’t were learning, goaded on by the staff and the scorn of their fellow students.

Everyone knew Rogier couldn’t read or write, and he became the convenient target of choice. As the youngest, he was also put in charge of cleaning the toilets, and keeping the tank on the roof full of water. Water was drawn from the city pipes, but had to be pumped up to the rooftop manually, drawing a lever back and forth innumerable times until the tank was full. It was tiring, boring work that the students all hated, and they agreed Rogier needed the exercise to build up muscle because he was so small and puny. And because he was the only boy.

Rogier never complained, and never had to be told to do the job… he merely did it every morning, usually before the others woke, and never mentioned it unless asked. The tank was full, the toilets clean, but they all felt cheated that it didn’t seem to bother him.

The morning was full of exercises to build strength, flexibility, and control.

Rogier was stronger than about half of the girls in the first level, and his small stature made it impossible to achieve the leverage they enjoyed with longer limbs, but he easily surpassed all but one of them in flexibility, and surpassed them all in fine control… whether with a finger, a wand, or a thrown rock, he could touch the smallest target the first time, every time, from a standing or a running start.

One night they decided he needed to be taken down a notch, and hatched a plan.

First level students slept on the second floor, in large dormitory style rooms. They were not allowed to leave their rooms at night, except to visit the toilet, and while they could sneak to other rooms, the only ways out were either past the dance teacher whose room was just in front of the stairs—and who was known to be a very light sleeper—or leap over the balcony into the open atrium.

The entire atrium was a large pond with only a small rock or two breaking the surface, and facing it across the encircling hallway were the rooms of other school staff. They all knew the stories of students who had leapt the railing, hoping to leave the school after hours—the front gate was only a few meters from there—but had ended up in the water, or hurt on the stones of the edge, and faced painful punishment from angry teachers.

“Rogier, tonight you must prove yourself to become one of us,” said Tonya, one of the girls in his level. “Go to the kitchen and bring back some fruit for us.”

“What fruit?”

“Oh, any fruit will do,” said Tonya, not expecting him to succeed.

He nodded, and lay down on his blanket again.

They waited to see what he would do, but he merely closed his eyes and waited. As time passed they gradually drifted off to their own sleeping places, whispering that he had given up, or would stupidly try the stairs and be caught.

Later, pitch dark in the silence of the night, he rose and walked to the balcony overlooking the pond. It was invisible in the darkness, no reflections of the moon or stars hidden in the clouded sky.

Without hesitating he grasped the balcony and vaulted over as Tonya watched him from her blanket. She waited to hear the splash, but there was only silence… she threw back her blanket and raced to the edge.

He was gone, but there was still no splash, no noise at all. But he had jumped.

In total darkness.

She waited, and in a few minutes she heard the rustle of clothing below, and suddenly Rogier leapt up from below, grasping the railing with one hand to haul himself up and over.

He held a bag of apples in the other.

She stepped back in disbelief. He placed one apple on the top of the railing, carefully balanced, and handed her the bag.

He walked to his blanket without a word and lay down. The floor where he walked was dry; he had not stepped into the water at all.

As she stood in shock, he flicked a stone from his finger into the apple, and Tonya stared as it tipped, rocked, and finally fell down, down, into the pond with a loud splash.

She was still standing there when the door to the dance teacher’s room opened, and light from the oil lamp clearly illuminated the bag of apples in her hand.

* * *

Poietria Martine considered the girl’s story.

Nobody had ever jumped from the second floor to land on the tiny rocks in the pool before, especially on a pitch-black night with no moon or stars. And while it was not impossible to jump from there back up to grab the railing it would be a difficult leap for a grown man, let alone a boy of ten or less.

Then again, he had already demonstrated the agility of a monkey while making fools of those constables…

The boy had been in his blankets, feet dry, while Tonya had been standing at the railing with the apples.

Had she merely used the stairs and was boasting?

That seemed unlikely… the stairs creaked quite loudly, by intent, and innumerable other students had been heard and caught in the act.

“You are on kitchen duty for two twelves,” she pronounced.

Tonya sighed, head down.

“Yes, Poietria. Thank you, Poietria.”

Kitchen duty meant rising at four every morning to prepare food, then serving and scrubbing after, in addition to all her regular duties and studies. Usually kitchen duty was rotated, with each girl handling it for only one day at a time, two or three times a year, but now she would spend a month in that purgatory.

As they all rose to leave the room, Martine beckoned Rogier.

“Rogier, stay.”

He sat back down on the floor and waited for the room to clear.

When it was empty she walked closer, hands behind her back.

“Did you do it?”

“No, Poietria.”

“I see. Could you leap from the second floor and land on the rocks as she describes?”

“No, Poietria. The rocks are too small. I would fall into the water.”

“You’re sure.”

“Yes, Poietria,” he smiled. “I don’t think anyone could do that.”

“Can you see in the dark, Rogier?”

“No, Poietria.”

“I’m going to blindfold you, Rogier,” she said, picking up a piece of cloth from the table and wrapping it around his eyes. She tied it tight, and checked that it blocked his vision completely.

“I want you to turn around in that spot, three times.”

He turned around three times, feet moving precisely, without losing his balance at all. His arms remained loose at his sides, his chin down in a normal position as he made no effort to try to see.

“Three,” he said.

“Where is the picture of the dragon?”

He pointed diagonally to the right, directly at the picture hanging on the wall.

“Where is the apple from the pond?”

He turned halfway around, and pointed at the apple on the table.

“Take this stone,” she said, “and hit the apple with it.”

He threw the stone with considerable force; she stared at the apple as it rocked back and forth, the stone half-embedded in its flesh.

“Here is a second stone,” she said, handing it to him. “When I tell you I want you to hit the apple with it again.”

She walked over to the apple and moved it half a meter to the right, making sure not to block Rogier’s view, even though he was wearing a blindfold.

“Throw.”

The stone whizzed through the space where the apple had been, clattering off the back wall.

“You moved it,” he said.

“Yes, I did. And you couldn’t tell that I moved it. How did you know where the apple was the first time?”

“I remembered.”

“You remembered where it was, and were able to hit it even after spinning blindfolded!?”

“Yes.”

She sat down, looking at him quizzically.

“You may go, Rogier.”

“May I take the blindfold off?”

“Yes, of course. Go.”

He handed her the blindfold and left silently, not pausing to bow on the way out.

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Honey for Celephaïs: Chapter 7