Most of the other girls gathered round. It was plain that Occula was already regarded as an exotic character, possessed of style and magnetism.
For a few moments she remained silent, looking round the little group and tantalizing their eagerness and expectancy. At length she said, "Looks as if I'll have to, doan' it? What did you say--Lespa?"
"Yes, tell us about Lespa," said Chia. "The time when she was just a village girl on earth, same as we are. Or same as we used to be," she added bitterly.
At this there were murmurs of sympathy and fellow-feeling from the others, and as they died away Occula began.
16: THE TALE OF LESPA'S SACRIFICE
"Well, as you all know, there was a time long ago when Lespa--she that dwells among the glitterin' stars and sends us her precious gift of dreams--was a mortal girl on this earth. Where she lived none knows for certain, but everyone claims her for their own. Men from Kabin--and I've been with a few--will tell you that it was near Kabin that she dwelt: yet a man from Ikat will tell you that Lespa was a Yeldashay girl. But as I've always understood, she was born in a village of lower Suba, near where the Valderra runs into the Zhairgen."
"Why, so she was!" cried one of the girls. "My mother was from those parts, and anyone will tell you that's where Lespa grew up."
"It's a lie!" said a second girl, furiously. "Lespa came from Sarkid of the Sheaves. My mother told me--"
"Doan' that just show you?" intervened Occula equably. "Well, wherever it was she came from it wasn' my country; so perhaps I'd better just leave this story until you've had time to sort it out among yourselves."
"No, no! Go on, Occula," said Chia, "and you other banzis just shut up and listen!"
"Well, wherever 'twas," resumed Occula, "they were luckier than if one end of a rainbow had come down in the village street, for Lespa was just the prettiest girl that's ever been seen in this world. When she was fourteen or fifteen, she had only to walk through the fields in hay-time to take her father his dinner, for every lad to be driven half out of his mind. They'd gather round, and keep her talkin' through the dinner-hour, and then they'd fight over who should get in trouble for cuttin' his work to walk along with her, back to her home.
"Now of all the young fellows in the village there was one, and his name was Baltis, who could scarcely sleep by night or work by day for the mischief that Lespa quite innocently wrought in his heart. He was a fine, big lad, apprenticed to a smith; and as you know, Baltis is still a general name for smiths all over the empire. If you a meet a lad named Baltis, chances are he's often a smith.
"Baltis never lost the least chance of seein' Lespa. He fought three or four other young chaps and beat them, simply to keep them away from her: and even at that he was none too successful, for however badly he beat them they'd come limpin' back for more of what had brought it on them, just like moths to a candle. He came near to losin' his place in the forge, even though he'd always worked well and was nearly out of his time, simply because he'd down his hammer and be off if he so much as saw Lespa comin' out of her mother's door.
"Now Baltis--he knew very well what he wanted; but you must understand that as yet Lespa didn'. She was as unversed in the ways of love as a new-hatched butterfly dryin' its wings in the sun. All she knew was that she must be beautiful, for she had only to walk down the street for five or six lads to appear from nowhere and start tellin' her so; and after a time she had to give up bathin' in the river altogether--unless she could persuade her mother to come along with her and keep a look-out. All the same, in spite of bein' ignorant of what it was they were after, she enjoyed--well, which of us doesn'?--the attention of the lads, and used to show it plainly enough when they pleased her. For even in those days of her maidenhood, Lespa had pretty ways and knew--well, just as a mare or a partridge knows--how to give the right answers to those who pleased her, and how to keep them by her side as long as she wanted.
"Well, when a queen bee flies, the swarm follows-- right? But she flies high, and only the strongest gets her. And the strongest--well, it often costs him all he's got. Young Baltis, so the tales tell, Was simply not his own master in those days, for he gave all he had. Every minute of his time, every meld he could scrape together went on Lespa. And so it came about that after a time Lespa, even though she couldn' have told just what it was she wanted from him, nevertheless came to feel that she'd like to be alone with him, to be in his arms and let him teach her whatever it was that she still had to learn.
"Yet even when she'd come to this resolve, to find the least chance proved altogether beyond her. For the truth was that her father, who was a prosperous man, with a farm of his own and money comin' in from a half-share in a fishin'-boat on the Zhairgen, considered Baltis beneath the family. He wanted to freeze him off, that's what. So after a bit poor old Baltis gave up comin' to the door, for no one was glad to see him but Lespa, and she'd only get a flea in her ear if she showed as much. But you know how it is: this only made her long all the more for a chance to find out what it was that Baltis wanted so desperately; for she felt it stirrin' in her body as a kind of riddle. She felt as though she must know the answer very well, but couldn' quite see it; somethin' like as though she'd dreamt it and forgotten, perhaps--but of course those were the days before there were dreams."
"Before there were dreams?" asked Chia.
"Certainly," replied Occula. "How the hell could there be dreams before Lespa's palace came to be raised among the stars?"
"Before there were dreams?" muttered another girl. "There was a hard world, then."
"Now in that village where sweet Lespa lived," went on Occula, "the god they worshipped in those days of long ago was Shakkarn. And as you lot come from all over everywhere, and I doan' know how much or how little you know, I'd better tell you that as I've always understood!-- ever since I came to the empire, that is--Shakkarn's a god older than either Cran or Airtha. He was god of this land long, long ago; before the Ortelgans brought their bear to Bekla, even; and it must be all of five hundred years now since they were driven out to their island in the Telthearna. You can tell who are the oldest peoples in the empire, so they say, by how much honor they pay to Shakkarn. Shakkarn's a god of country places, where he's been able to survive. And Gran or no Cran, when Shakkarn leaves the empire--which he will if ever people cease to honor him altogether--the empire will fall, and a good job too. He's a god of simple folk and rough old village temples--not a god of rich priests suckin' up to richer tyrants."
"Oh, be careful, Occula!" whispered Chia, squinting up at her and putting a quick, restraining hand on her arm.
"You needn' look like that, with one eye on me and the other on the north end of south Belishba," replied Occula. "I'm worth far too much money to get into trouble in a dump like this. If we were in the upper city, now, that might be another matter. But anyway, just in case anyone doan' know, Shakkarn's big festival is held during the first days of autumn. And then every village that has a temple of Shakkarn decorates it with flowers and woven hangin's. Very often the women work half a year or more, weavin' them. And on the festival day the men all bring somethin' from their work or their trade: lambs or goats or calves if they're farmers, ironwork if they're smiths, leather if they're cobblers and so on. These are all called Shakkarn's sacrifices, whether they're livin' things or just things the men have made. And every unmarried girl over thirteen lets her hair grow all the year, cuts it off on the day of the festival and offers it to Shakkarn. And those are called the girls' sacrifices, but what use they are I'll be hanged if I ever heard."
"Why, don't you know? They stuff quilts and pillows with them," said Chia. "Then anyone gets married, they spend their bridal night in the temple, soft and warm as you like. Makes the babies come; well, stands to reason, doesn't it?"
"Well, now I know, doan' I?" said Occula, rolling over comfortably to smile at her. "Maybe I ought to try it my-self, d'you think? Sounds like a bit of good stuffin', any-way. But I'm right, aren't I, that Shakkarn has no priests? His
rites vary from one village to another, or so I've always been told. They're handed down from one generation to the next and just carried out by the village folk themselves.
"Well, to come back to Lespa. This autumn, in her village, Shakkarn's temple was being decorated from top to bottom and everythin' put to rights for the big festival. Masses of flowers had been brought in--wreaths of trepsis to make a splash, bunches of planella to scent the place, and so on--and the actual decoratin' was bein' done, on the day before the festival itself, by two old village wives who'd done the job for years and meant to go on doin' it every year until they were carried out kickin' and screamin'."
"Ah, we had one or two like that round our way," said Maia.
"Where haven' they? Well, that mornin' this precious two were hard at it, tyin' wreaths and flowers round all the pillars and pilin' green branches under the windows and so on. And then, after a time, they came to have a look at the altar itself.
"Now the altar had a beautiful, thick, fringed and embroidered cloth, which covered it all over and right down to the floor. It had been made years before, by about twenty of the village women workin' together for months, and it was reckoned to be just about the finest thing in the temple. People comin' from other parts were often invited to step in and admire it. But this mornin', when these two old dears came to decorate the altar, they were really upset to see somethin' they hadn't previously noticed. Somehow or other--probably mice--the fringe along the bottom of the altar cloth was hangin' off in several places; and just above the fringe, on one side, there were one or two little rents in the material as well.
" 'Oh, just look at that, now!' says one of them. 'That doan' look very nice at all, does it? That's got to be put right before tomorrow, that it has.'
" 'Yes, it certainly has,' says the other. 'But we haven' really got the time to be doin' it ourselves, have we? what with all these flowers and things still to get done.'
" 'Well, but we doan' want to be askin' any favors of other people,' says the first one. 'Not when everybody knows that it's us as decorates the temple and we've always told them we doan' need any help from anybody.' So then they just sat down and had a bit of a think about it.
" 'I'll tell you what,' says the second one. 'Come to look at it, we doan' really have to take the cloth off the altar to mend it, do we? I think it'd be too heavy for us to lift or carry, anyway. But if anyone didn' mind workin' sittin' or lyin' on the floor, they could mend it where it is, without havin' to move it at all.'
" 'That's a job for a young girl, then,' says the first one. 'And it would be easier to ask a young girl too, wouldn' it? A young girl wouldn' start sayin' "Oh, fancy you need-in' help! I thought you said you could do it all by yourselves"--same as some of the older ones might. Who do we know as'd do?'
" 'Why, there's Lespa,' says the other. 'Very nice, obligin' girl; only lives just up the road, and her people are well off, they've probably got all the colored thread she'd need as well. Then we wouldn' have to pay for it, even.'
" 'Fine, fine,' says the first old tabby. So off they go up the road to knock on Lespa's door.
"Now young Baltis hardly ever stopped keepin' an eye on Lespa's door, even while he might be hammerin' out a bolt or fittin' a grate together. So it's not really surprisin' that he saw them come to the door, and he saw Lespa's mother answer it; and then after a bit Lespa gets called to the door too, and there she is noddin' and smilin', and then she runs back in and comes out with a work-box and she's holdin' up bits of this colored thread and that, and there they all are clackin' away like rooks on a fine evenin'.
"Young Baltis doan' have to be a genius to work out that Lespa's goin' off to the temple to oblige the old girls with a bit of needlework. And the very notion of being able to meet her there fairly filled his heart to thumpin'. It so happened that the smith had gone off to talk to a farmer about a new well-head and chain, so Baltis, he just downs tools and slips out of the forge while they're still yammerin' away in the sunshine on the doorstep, and up the street he goes and into the empty temple.
"Well, when he got inside he was still supposin', you see, that he'd find himself alone with Lespa--for you know how often we let ourselves believe that what we'd like to happen is what's going to happen.
And findin' the flowers lyin' in heaps all round the temple, he put together a posy, all different kinds--selvon and jennet and whitebells and so on--to give to Lespa when she arrived. And he was still sittin' there, imaginin' how he'd give them to her and what he'd say, when suddenly, just outside, he heard the voices of the two old girls as they came back, bringin' Lespa with them.
"Baltis knew that if they found him in there they'd know very well why he'd come, and he didn' fancy being made to look a fool in front of Lespa; but there seemed to be nowhere to hide. I suppose the temple wasn't all that big and hadn't got much in the way of odd corners. Anyway, just as he was at his wits' end, he realized that there was only one place out of sight, and that was under the altar-coverin'; and he just had time to slip in underneath it before Lespa and the others came in.
"The altar was just a big, solid table, really, and Baltis was crouchin' under it, with the thick cloth hangin' right down to the floor all round him, when he heard the three of them come up and stop right beside him--Just the cloth between them, not three feet apart.
" 'Do you think you can do it, dear, without takin' the cloth off?" asks one of the old dears: and Lespa says, 'Oh, yes, saiyett, I'm sure I can do that--just stitch up the fringe and mend those few rents, is it? I've got some matchin' thread here. I doan' think it'll show at all.'
"So after a bit more talk the two old things went back to their decoratin' at the other end of the temple, leavin' Lespa to get down to work.
"Lespa went down on one knee, put on her thimble and picked up the hem of the altar cloth in her left hand to get a closer look at it. She'd just put it down again and was holdin' her needle up to the light, when she felt somethin' ticklin' her foot, looked down and saw it was a yellow bloom of cassia. She thought it must have fallen off the altar, so she picked it up and put it to one side. She'd just threaded the needle when she felt the ticklin' again, and she looked down and there was another bloom on her foot; and this time she saw the hand that had put it there, and she recognized it by a scar on one of the fingers. She peeped under the altar cloth and there was Baltis, smilin', with his finger on his lips. The next moment he'd drawn her in under the cloth and was kissin' her so hard that she couldn' draw breath to utter a word.
"He was still kissin' her when one of the old women called out from the other end of the temple, 'Why, wherever have you got to, Lespa dear? Are you all right?'
"Baltis let her go then, and she put out her head and said, 'Oh, fine, saiyett, thank you! I was just havin' a look from inside, to see if the light would show any little holes I hadn't noticed. I'm just goin' to make a start now.'
"And then she tried to come out, but she couldn', or not altogether, because Baltis had his hands round her two ankles.
" 'Let me go! Baltis, sweetheart, let me go!' she whispered: and then she suddenly realized that she didn' want him to let her go. She was sick of always being made to send Baltis away, and of havin' him sent away just when she wanted to keep him with her; and now here he was, cracklin' like a summer fire in the gorse. Besides, pretty Lespa had a great sense of mischief even then--though as you know she's got an even bigger one now--and the situation amused her.
" 'I think the best way I can tackle this will be to get right down to it and make myself comfortable, saiyett, if that'll be all right,' she called. 'The cloth's rather too heavy to hold up for long, you see.' And the old girl called back, 'Yes, of course, dear, just do it in any comfortable position that suits you.' "
"Oo hoo! Oo hoo! I know what's coming!" bubbled Chia.
"Well, don't tell us, will you?" said Maia. "We simply can't imagine! Go on, Occula: never mind her."
"So then pretty Lespa rolls up her cloak and puts it behind her head, l
ies down with her head and shoulders just clear of the altar cloth and begins stitchin' the fringe back on the hem. But soon it was as much as she could do to stop herself cryin' out from--well, I suppose from-- er--agitation: or it might be, disturbance. And perhaps she might have stood up and put an end to it, only that was no longer possible, you see, because by now the ladies had worked their way rather further up the temple towards her; and under the altar cloth she was all disarranged--to say the least--and they'd have seen. Besides, she was very much in two minds, for that's fishin' country, is Suba, and Baltis had been ticklin' trout almost since he could walk. It's no good startlin' them, you know. They've got to be sort of hypnotized, so that they enjoy it.
"And then, all in a moment, she went 'Ah!' so loud that the two old ladies fairly jumped.
" 'Why, Whatever's the matter, dear?' called one of them. 'Have you hurt yourself?'
" 'Oh, no, no, saiyett--thank you!' answered Lespa, as well as she could for the delicious agony.
'I--er--I just caught my finger with the needle, that's all."
" 'Oh, poor thing! I'm so sorry!" said the old lady. "It gives you such a shock, doesn't it? to get a sudden prick like that: but it woan' go on hurtin' very long, you know. Is it bleedin'?'
" 'Well, no, only just a little, saiyett,' gasped Lespa. "It feels better already, thank you.' "
At this point the story-teller was obliged to pause, sitting unsmiling in the midst of her convulsed audience.
"Same old tripe, banzi," muttered the black girl under her breath to the hysterical Maia. "You'd really wonder, wouldn' you, sometimes? Do you want me to go on?" she enquired of the others in freezing tones.
"Yes! Yes!"
"Just as well I'm not down in the market, isn't it?" said Occula. "Then it'd be half-melds in the cup all round. You're gettin' this for free--same as Baltis did. All right, shut up then and I'll go on.
"And now, indeed, sweet Lespa could scarcely tell whether she was stitchin' for the god or the god was stitchin' her, for such exquisitely fine stitchin' was altogether outside her experience and quite carried her away. And in-deed, we must believe that the god had lent Baltis some of his miraculous powers, for you'll agree that a young man that could eat strawberries and angle in a pool at once and the same time, and never make a sound either, must have had somethin' god-like in him. At all events, Lespa felt that she had something god-like in her, and more than she could well endure for pleasure, and she clasped the hem of the altar cloth close before her face and drew the thread back and forth, back and forth, all ways at once and any way but the right one, and fairly bit her lip over the delicate task she'd undertaken.