Amber and Clay by Laura Schlitz (easy books to read TXT) 📗

me an order

I should jump to do it,

scurry,

as if I couldn’t wait to obey.

He taught me to bow my head,

and not look up

at people who were better than me —

which was everyone.

I had a new name: Thrax. It means Thracian boy.

I said I wanted my old name, Rhaskos.

He gave me a clip on the ear.

I decided it didn’t matter what people called me.

Nobody spoke to me much.

He was a horseman, Georgios was.

He told me: A horse is only as good as his feet.

A horse’s hooves can get soft and sick

if he stands in his own muck.

The stalls and paddocks had to be kept clean.

Our master, Alexidemus,

was proud of his horses. Horses are precious.

There wasn’t a horse in the stable

that wasn’t worth more than I was.

Even their turds were precious.

So I picked up turds:

Squat and stoop,

till the bucket is full,

lug it to the dung heap. Dump it.

That’s what I did all day.

In summer, the blinding light,

the stink and the flies.

When winter came, I was cold.

I outgrew the tunic my mother wove,

and no one gave me a new one.

The turds froze to the ground.

I was glad to find a fresh one

to warm my hands.

Rainy days were best. You can’t scoop turds out of the mud.

Sometimes I hid in the barn.

I burrowed into the straw and slept.

If I was lucky, no one found me.

I was always starved for sleep.

Sokrates once asked me,

how do I know I’m awake when I’m awake?

how do I know when I’m dreaming?

It’s strange. In those days

I felt more awake when I slept.

My dreams were full of color

and surprises

sometimes terror — my mother holding the knife —

but also action: wrestling in the courtyard,

riding on my mother’s back.

I’d wake up

and the dreams drained away.

I’d go back to work.

My hands moved, but my mind stood still:

a pool of rotten water.

I felt like a shade, like one of the dead,

as if no one could see me.

As I recall these things,

I imagine you sitting across from me.

I see your face,

and it makes me laugh,

because when I talk about turds,

you screw up your mouth:

disgusted.

Look; I got used to the turds.

They weren’t the bad part. Horses are cleaner than pigs,

or men. The bad part was

if you do the same thing over and over,

and nobody talks to you,

you see your life stretching ahead

endless and dull and lonesome —

You think the gods have forsaken you,

because you’re just a thing that picks up turds,

a nothing.

Two years went by like that. I think it was two.

I got bigger. I groomed the horses

and picked the mud from their feet.

I walked them out

after the master rode them.

Their lives weren’t easy, either.

The bits in their bridles were spiked, like burrs,

and the master rode them hard.

They came back lathered with sweat;

their mouths wet with foam and blood.

Some were sent to fight in the wars.

It’s strange

how those days blur together.

But here is one memory

bright and clear as water:

I was in the high pasture,

where no one could see me.

There was a horse on the ridge,

a stallion; a fiery chestnut

blood-red against the sky.

His head was up, ears pricked. He was sniffing the air.

Something had spooked him.

— There was the line of his neck,

the arc of his withers,

the saddle-scoop of his back.

Then his rump, almost round,

like a ripe apple.

His tail streamed like a waterfall

teased by the wind.

There was a sharp stone in front of me:

and a bare patch: the puckery dust

of a dried-up puddle.

I dragged the stone over the dust

and made that horse:

the spear-sharp ears,

the crest,

the flanks, the rippling muscles —

Point and line and curve and scoop —

Alive in the hollow of my hand —

I glanced back at the horse. He’d dropped his head to graze.

Whatever had spooked him was gone.

I looked down. A shock of joy:

There was the horse

small but real

dug in the dust.

I’d made the horse.

I’d curved his rump.

I made the wind

that combed his tail.

Have you ever done that — ?

Tried to do the impossible,

without thinking?

and you did it?

I remembered the horse I’d seen

long ago, on the andron wall.

I’d wondered how that horse came to be.

Now I understood:

Another man had seen a horse,

and picked up a tool,

and made that horse.

I, Rhaskos, was like that man.

Me again. I forgot to tell you two things.

One: about the land. This boy Rhaskos —

who’s just found beauty

in a horse’s behind —

lives in a radiant land.

Ελλαδα. Don’t call it Greece.

That’s a word like a sneer:

hissy

greasy

unmelodic

and worst of all, Roman.

The Greeks call their land Ελλαδα. That’s Ε,

which more or less

rhymes with play,

and λλα is la, as in tra-la,

and the thing that looks like a d

is more like a th. Eh-LA-tha.

Ελλαδα.

Isn’t that better?

Now close your eyes a second —

Not yet. Wait till I tell you —

Close your eyes and imagine blue,

a startling, bracing, breathtaking blue:

the sun on a kingfisher’s back — Now!

. . . Open your eyes. Take that blue

and brush the dome of the sky.

Look up! There’s the sun, a burning chariot

drawn by shell-white horses

plunging through the clouds.

That’s Ελλαδα:

a land of wind and sunlight,

rimmed by a restless sea.

A land of rough volcanic rock

and forests, dense and fragrant:

alive with bearded centaurs,

stags and wolves,

and nymphs with delicate feet.

And underfoot, cold with dew:

sweet clover and violets,

parsley, mint, oregano,

poppies, wild garlic, and thyme.

Though

to be perfectly frank

it’s not a land

that feels that it owes you a living. The soil

is laced with acid and iron. The country

has always been poor.

There’s the constant threat of hunger. As a god,

I don’t have to worry about that.

On Mount Olympus,

there are endless banquets,

nectar poured from gold . . .

What else? Oh, yes,

the other thing I forgot to mention:

The country is always at war.

Civil war. Roughly, it’s Athens versus Sparta.

It’s been waged

for twenty-some years

and will likely keep on going.

Rhaskos knows nothing about it. Who talks politics

to a slave? He only knows

that the horses are sent off

and few of them return.

The battlefields are far away.

Melisto’s city, Athens,

is bleeding. Money, bronze, horses, lives,

all lost in the war.

It’s a war that Melisto

is too young to understand

(and I have to admit, it’s complicated),

but she’s not too young

to have nightmares about the Spartans,

those long-haired warriors

in their red cloaks. Personally, I find them picturesque,

albeit deadly. Melisto