Mestra #3
The dog was black, with a white stripe down its nose, and sharp upright ears.
It made a noise as it watched me, low in its throat.
What sort of man would train a dog to keep someone in the house?
If I had been myself, I would have been weeping for fear.
But I was my cousin, who had always been good with dogs, and after another shiver, I was the butcher himself.
The dog stared at me. Well come on, I said, and snapped my fingers just as he had. Move it.
The creature rose and lumbered back to its corner, and I slipped out the door, grinning.
My father had said I must not let anyone see me change, so I stepped into the first alley I could find and shook off the butcher’s skin, and became our cook again.
My father was seated near the marketplace, sucking on his fingers and smelling of grease.
I wished I could ask him what he’d eaten, so I could imagine him enjoying it.
But that would only torment him, now that it was gone.
“I got away, just as you said.”
“Good,” he said. “You used the god’s gift well.”
It had been so long since my father had praised me.
In the old days, he used to call me over at feasts, and dare some king to list out his ancestors.
He’d laugh when I recited them all back perfect.
I warned you, he’d say, as they handed over their gold.
And I’d stood beside him, feeling like gold myself, cheeks polished and shining.
He sold me next to the youngest son of a minor lord, who paid in silver.
The man was gangly, with a wide mouth. All the way back to his house, his fingers gripped at my waist, and he whispered in my ear what he wanted to do to me.
Thankfully, he also wanted me washed first, because he was afraid of getting some rustic disease.
I followed a servant to the courtyard fountain, waited for him to leave, and then became him.
The way out passed the kitchen. I hesitated, then grabbed a few loaves of bread for my father.
My father ate them, and sold me once more as the cook.
The next day he sold me twice as the Queen of Mycenae, and twice as the nurse’s daughter.
I liked being both of them, one graceful, one filled with buoyant life.
I liked being my cousin best of all. I would hold my own hand, and imagine she was really there.
The men often pinched at me, and grabbed me beneath my dress, but it was not me they grabbed, I reminded myself.
Their slobber and handprints could not stick. When I changed, we were wiped clean.
My father sold me five times in a single day, then six times the next.
I was worried he might be recognized as himself, but he never was.
The city was large, and sat on the sea; there were always new ships in.
Most people went their whole lives without ever meeting their lord.
And my father never sold me in the same place twice.
He took us from marketplace to marketplace, from tavern to harbor.
He was as skilled at bargaining as he had been at hosting kings.
This is your chance, at that price she’ll be gone by noon.
They never wanted to miss their chance. I thought surely even a large city would eventually run out of men with money to pay for a girl, but it didn’t.
Three silver pieces was enough for roasted eggs and a basket of breads and cheese.
Ten silver pieces was two huge haunches of beef.
It was a feast compared to what we’d had these last months. I watched him eat, pleased with myself.
“Is it good?” I asked.
The crumbs fell over his long cloak. The clothing was too warm for midday, but he had to wear it so he wouldn’t frighten away buyers with how thin he was. Soon he would not need it, I hoped. If we could heap the food high enough, the curse would groan and break beneath its weight.
“Six times is a new record,” I said.
He looked up at me with pale eyes. “You are proud of yourself?”
“I just mean I am glad to help.”
He swung his hand down, like chopping off a chicken’s head. “Help? A mouse would starve on what I’ve had today. We should be getting three times as much, but I have to sell the same tired nags over and over, because you can’t do what you’re told.”
He went back to chewing crusts. His knees looked like stones joining two sticks.
His anklebones were the thickest things on him.
The god had given me a gift to save him, and I couldn’t even use it right.
I stayed up late that night trying to put my cousin’s head on the queen’s body, but no matter how I shivered, I couldn’t do it.
It was bad enough that I let them be handled and mauled every day, I could not chop them up besides.
After all this was over, when my father was whole, and the curse lifted, I didn’t know if I could even bear to see my cousin again.
All these hours I’d spent as her would sit between us.
I didn’t tell my father about my failure.
Instead, each time I escaped, I raced back to him all the faster to be sold again.
I became practiced at stealing, walking off with baskets of dates or rolls or sugared almonds.
Every night, I tallied up the day’s food.
Roasted pig and lamb, porridge with honey, beans in gravy, thick slabs of roasted cheese, two rounds of bread and a large millet cake.
When he wasn’t looking, I examined his wrists, his neck, to see if it had begun to work. Not yet.
On the tenth day, he sold me to an old man who pinched me all the way to his house.
I’d had pinchers before, but this man’s nails were long and ragged, and put red lines in Arete’s flesh.
The man’s mouth was yellowed with dried spit, and the more I shrank from him the more he seemed to enjoy himself.
As soon as we were in the house, he pressed against me.
His breath was even fouler than the first merchant’s had been.
I tried to pull away, but his fingers hooked into me like briars.
He was dragging the dress from my shoulders.
Sir, I said, in my cousin’s sweet voice. I need a moment. I need to make water. Please.
Later, he said.
Please, I am afraid I will have an accident.
You better not, he said.
I shoved at him with my cousin’s small wrists, and it did nothing.
But this man wasn’t a god, and he was older than my father.
So then I shoved him again, and this time, he flew back.
I towered over him. I hadn’t changed into the fisherman since I’d realized who he was.
But now the old warmth washed through me.
The old man shrieked. “Help! A monster! He will murder me!” He ran from the room and out the front door.
I could hear his cries, and voices answering, feet running.
I would be cornered. Could I fight my way out?
I couldn’t imagine the fisherman doing that.
I looked to the window, but it was too narrow for a person. It would only fit a small animal.
I felt a pang of grief, letting the fisherman go so soon, but I could not let us both be caught.
The room seemed to tumble, and then the window darted towards me.
I passed through it, and out into the sky, wheeling upwards.
The houses below sped by so fast I could scarcely see them.
I spotted the crown of a poplar tree in a small square, and landed in its shade.
My cousin had kept a tame sparrow. She’d named him Honey, because of the cakes he liked, and his sweet disposition.
We would feed him from our palms, and laugh at the bright way he cocked his head.
She was always trying to train him to land on her finger.
I wished I could fly to her right now and tell her how Honey had saved me, but instead I turned into Mestra and went to confess to my father.
“You’ve ruined it, haven’t you?” he said. “I heard the shouting. You changed into that brute again.”
I flushed. “Father, if you had your horse back, could you sell her?”
“Of course. She was descended from horses given by the gods themselves, you know that. I should never have eaten her. She would have sold for more than you ever have.”
I believed it. Oak, she’d been named, for her brown flanks hard with muscle.
He had roasted her last of all, over a brazier.
We walked to a field outside the city, and with a shiver I changed into her.
I felt the great kick of her heart, and though I had meant only to trot, I raced down the field, spraying dirt behind me.
When I stopped, air heaved through me, in and out, tasting of sun and dust.
He took me to the richest man of the city.
He didn’t have to say much, the stable hand’s eyes were wide when he saw me.
He ran off to get his master, and they all stood at my chest, marveling at its glossy width.
My father recited my lineage for them. You could own a piece of divinity. This is your chance.
The lord ran his hand down my side, and I stamped my foot. He startled back.
Just a fly, my father said. She’s obedient.
I kept still after that. But I liked knowing that the lord feared me.
When the gold was handed over, they put a rope around me, and led me to the stable.
The groom ran off for some water for the trough, and I turned into myself, and opened the latch on the door, as if I had escaped that way.
Then I turned into the falcon that used to glide past my window.
By the time the groom came back I was up in the thin blue of the sky, watching him scramble below.
I flew to a tree near my father, changed on a low branch, then dropped to the ground as myself.