The Tales of Tarya, Books 1-3

Chapter 6 - Truth and Tragedy-2

‘Hush, Aldo. You’re becoming upset. You must be calm.’

Aldo squeezed Mina’s hand. ‘Mina, I wish I had time to teach you what I know about Tarya. You could find a way, maybe, to create without stealing. Maybe even to heal, to return …’

‘Return what?’

‘The dreams, princess. We steal the dreams.’

Aldo’s body convulsed and his hand grasped hers with considerable strength, then became limp again. He let out a small sigh, and then his eyes were empty. He was gone.

Mina sat, silent and alone, holding Aldo in her arms, until Roberto and Dario found her, and helped her to her room. They didn’t ask what happened. She lay on the narrow bed, unable to cry, until Lisette returned and found her.

‘I know about Aldo,’ Lisette said. ‘He was a good man.’ She helped Mina to stand and undress, then washed her vomit-strewn hair with warm water that she fetched from the kitchen. Once this task was finished, they climbed into one of the beds and Lisette held Mina, trying to calm her trembling, until they both fell asleep, worn out by the first aftershocks of Aldo’s death.

~

The next morning the players waited in the hallways of the tavern, silent and morose. Isabella hadn’t reappeared from her night’s adventure, and Roberto had disappeared too. Aldo’s body had been moved onto one of the beds in the men’s room, and the men had slept in the hallway. Now, while Lisette and Mina watched, Jal and Dario moved mattresses and blankets back into the room. The girls stood back, so they wouldn’t catch sight of their lost friend lying within. Lisette held Mina’s hand.

Mama Tina strode purposefully up the stairs from the tavern below. She ushered them down the hallway, away from the room in which Aldo lay, and spoke very quietly.

‘My dear friends, I know you grieve, but we have much to do. Uberto has gone to find a place for the Freeing. Jal, Dario, Ciro, go to the wagon and fetch Aldo’s things. Be sure you miss nothing. Ciro, you know what is yours and what is Aldo’s—help them to be thorough. Lisette and Mina, you’ll help me. We have a feast to prepare. We must free Aldo by nightfall.’

Mina followed the other women down the stairs, shaking her head. Mama Tina’s instructions were strange to her. In Andon, when someone died they were lain out for three days, for all the village to say their farewells. During that time the family of the dead ate nothing but bread and water. On the third day the body was buried and a great feast was held, where stories were told of the person’s life, to be remembered by any in the village who had the gift of telling. These tales would become part of the Tale of Andon, to be passed down through the years.

The past wasn’t to be dwelled upon, but it wasn’t readily dismissed either. Tales of times gone could guide people through their lives. Most importantly, the tale of a life must be given proper weight, and remembered, for in that way that life would have value for all who followed. Yet Mama Tina had said Aldo’s funeral would be concluded by nightfall. For Mina this seemed disrespectful.

‘Mama Tina, what …’

Tina turned and placed her hand to her lips, shaking her head.

Puzzled, Mina tried again. ‘I don’t …’

Again Tina shook her head, and this time placed her hand over Mina’s mouth. So, they weren’t to speak. Mina followed the other two to the kitchen, confused and uncertain. They prepared food in silence. Mina could hear voices in the hallway, and after a time Alina came into the room, her steps slow from the weight of the new life she carried within.

‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ she said.

Mama Tina bowed her head to the pregnant woman, acknowledging her words but not replying.

Alina spoke again. ‘Cristina, perhaps you would come with me to select drinks for your feast this evening.’

Tina nodded, and followed the woman from the room.

‘Why the silence?’ Mina whispered, nervous about speaking.

‘Do you know not Innaroi beliefs?’ Lisette asked, also in a whisper.

Mina shook her head.

‘We will not speak now until Aldo’s spirit is freed. If he hears our voices he may stay.’

‘Then how come Alina is speaking?’

‘Only those he have known well need be silent. Those he did not know, their voices do not remind him of this life and make him wish for it again. We do not believe this in my home.’

‘And what is this Freeing?’

‘You do not know that? What happens when people die in your home?’

‘We bury them in the Field of Memories, with a marker that shows an important aspect of their life story. It might show what they did … we have a lot of fish carvings! Most of the men are fishermen. Or what they were known for, like weaving baskets or the like.’

‘That sounds good, a memory of their life,’ Lisette said, and a strange longing in her tone made Mina wonder what her friend had lost.

‘Are children buried there too?’ Lisette continued, her voice a whisper.

‘That’s very special,’ Mina replied. ‘We have a tree, a great, giant tree, so tall it looks like it touches the sky. When a young child or a baby dies, we carve a niche into the tree and place them in its heart. The tree lives on, embracing them.’

Lisette looked to the floor, her hair falling over her face.

‘They continue to grow, you see, being part of the tree, so although they’ve moved on from the story they never got to live, they become part of the story of the tree. The tree is carved all over with whatever was special to these children, or if they were babies, with images of the stories their parents hoped for them. It’s so sad and beautiful. In a way, the children become part of one extraordinary story, and they will never be forgotten.’

Lisette looked up, a crystal tear suspended in the corner of each eye. A noise nearby made her expression harden, and she placed her finger against her lips. They fell quiet again as Mama Tina returned.

The morning passed in busy silence, and the afternoon also. The heaviness of unspoken words weighed upon them all. Now and then Mina and Lisette caught each other’s eyes and saw their own grief reflected. The silence made the weight of Aldo’s last words heavier to Mina.

‘They steal the dreams.’

He’d said she might learn how to return them, to heal the hurt done by such theft. Mina couldn’t begin to understand how one could steal dreams, let alone what hurt that might cause. In her brief time in Tarya, she’d seen nothing resembling a dream, although she wouldn’t have known what to look for.

She turned her mind from these thoughts, concentrating on Mama Tina’s mimed instructions for preparing the feast. By the middle of the afternoon, the great table in the centre of the kitchen was laden with all manner of pies and fresh bread. Delicious smells wafted from the great wood-fired stove as a huge fowl roasted, coated in honey and nuts. The smell made Mina’s stomach growl in quiet desperation.

Alina entered the room in mid-afternoon with a sheepish looking Isabella, who nodded to indicate she knew what had happened. They carried a basket of dried fruits, which they soaked and flavoured with meads and honey and spices, while Mama Tina made a base of crumbled, stale biscuits. The great oven, burning away wood with its savage flame all afternoon, kept the room almost too hot to bear. Into its black depths went the transformed fruit, and soon they had tarts to go with the rest of the feast.

As the light faded outside the diamond-paned windows, Dario came and stood at the door, nodding to Mama. The two disappeared together, and returned with several wicker baskets. Everyone in the kitchen wrapped the food, crisp and warm, in cloth, and Mama Tina put a heated brick, also wrapped, in each basket. With a nod of her head she indicated they should each take a basket and follow. Alina stood by the door, nodding to them as they left, her arms wrapped over her belly, a hand now and then rubbing the bulge of the baby without thought.

In the courtyard Burattino was hitched up to the stage wagon. Mama Tina joined Uberto on the wagon seat. The wagon faced the courtyard exit, and it occurred to Mina for the first time that whatever was to happen, the feast and the Freeing, it wasn’t to be here at the tavern. The steps of the wagon weren’t in place, but a box and a helping hand from Dario allowed them all to reach the back door. Mina, Jal, Roberto, Isabella, Lisette, Ciro, one by one, climbed into the wagon. Dario set the box aside and swung himself up effortlessly, to join them in the darkened space.

Light filtered into the blackness of the wagon from open panels in the roof. Each player took a blanket from a pile near the door and sat on the floor, wrapped in their thoughts. The sliding parts of the wagon were secured, so there were faint, eerie rattles as the journey began. Dario beckoned to Mina, pointing to the roof, then lay back in the dark space. Following his example, Mina also lay back and saw, through the openings in the roof, a sky perfect with the speckling of more stars than she’d ever dreamed of.

Dario’s hand slid over hers and they lay, next to each other, watching the stars glide overhead. Mina thought how perfect this moment was: the sky, the stars, the warmth of Dario beside her. Then she remembered all this was happening because Aldo was dead, and coldness spread through her limbs. The preparations, the silence—both had distracted her from what this was all about. Aldo was dead. He’d died trying to protect her.

Ciro sat little more than an arm’s length away from her. She didn’t remember much, but she remembered Ciro had been there, and she’d been afraid, then Aldo had come and taken the fear away. Now Ciro sat there, so close to her, the cause of all of this. Or had she caused it? She’d let Ciro take her upstairs. No! She’d felt ill, and she’d trusted him. Isabella might have warned her in the past, but last night all warnings had gone from her elusive thoughts. All she’d wanted was to lie down and sleep off the spinning.

A great rage churned as she realised what could have happened had not Aldo come upon them. Her blouse had been torn. She had a vague memory of Ciro tearing at it. She wanted to sit up and face Ciro and … and she wasn’t sure what would happen then. Her anger burned her with such ferocity she felt she must run, or scream, or she would burn up from it.

Dario must have felt her body tense, because his hand over hers gave a squeeze, then seemed to press down a little. A warning, in the silent wagon. Mina closed her eyes. A redness behind her vision seeped away, and she could see strange, honeycomb patterns in gold upon black. She realised she was squeezing her eyes shut as tight as she could, and let the lids relax. Unbidden, a tear slid down her cheek. Her rage could wait. It was time to bid farewell to Aldo, her protector, her friend, the one who would have told her the secrets she needed to know. She turned her hand in Dario’s and squeezed back. Aldo hadn’t been her only friend, or protector.

~

They stopped in a field outside Irsha. Two men sat near the edge of the field, and at its centre was a great pile of wood, as long as a man and almost as high. When the wagon stopped, the players climbed out. Uberto walked over to the men, who kept glancing over their shoulders at the woodpile. One held out his hand and there was the faint tinkle of coins. Without another backward look, the men almost ran to a pair of waiting horses, stumbling over their feet in their hurry. And then, with a kick to each horse, and a shout, they were gone.