Eutopia (First version)

Chapter 10

The first bright rays of the dawn brushed Eirene’s tawny skin as she slipped over the wall leading into the vineyard. Her bare feet thumped softly on the tilled earth as she skipped between the twisting vines and raced the sunlight to the small window of the room she shared with Aisha. Panting and flushed from running, her eyes shining and alive, Eirene stretched up on her tiptoes to hook her fingers over the ledge of the opening that was almost out of her reach, one foot braced against the smooth stone of the villa wall as she prepared to hoist herself up. A sudden flurry of movement, dust against dust, caught her eye and made her pause. At the base of the old olive tree that stood guard over that corner of the villa, beneath the scrubby branches of a bush lay a little bird. Its small feathers were the same dusty brown as the earth beneath it and it squirmed, wings outspread as it tried to stand. The girl came to kneel beside it, parting the low scrub with one hand as she scooped the other beneath the tiny bird, causing it to flap in fright.

‘Hush, little one, I won’t hurt you,’ Eirene muttered gently, carefully folding her hand around the delicate body to keep it still. She could feel the thundering, fluttering beat of the bird’s frightened heart in the very tips of her fingers. ‘What’s the matter, can you not fly?’ All thoughts of getting back to her bed before it was noticed that she was missing again had flown from her mind now, her curiosity captured completely by this weak little creature. Kneeling on the hard baked earth that hadn’t seen rain for weeks, Eirene forgot everything else but the little pulsing life in her hands. ‘Did you forget you had wings and fall from your tree?’ she asked, peering at the black glassy eye that regarded her with just as much interest. ‘I sleep walk sometimes too,’ she confided to the bird in a whisper as she uncurled her small fist, letting it settle on the palm of her hand where it barely stretched from the heel to her fingertips. Its wings lay still, its beak parted slightly as it panted. Eirene could feel the tiny beat of its heart steadying against her skin as it calmed. ‘Let’s have a look at you then,’ she said, gently stretching out one of the birds brown wings with her other hand to examine the feathers. The bird gave out the tiniest peep of discontentment but showed no sign of distress so Eirene let the wing settle again before stretching out the second one. ‘Hm. Well, your wings seem ok, so why can’t you fly?’

‘Eirene, is that you?’ a cautious whisper hissed down from the window above, Aisha’s eyes, as black as the little bird’s in Eirene’s hand, peering from the darkness within.

‘Yes,’

‘What are you doing out there? Who are you talking to?’

‘I’ve found a bird, I think it’s injured.’

‘What?’

‘Never mind, I’m coming in, move back from the casement.’ Eirene quickly tucked the little brown bird into the neck of her loose toga, feeling it settling its insignificant warmth against her smooth skin beneath the strip of cloth that bound her breasts beneath. She glanced up at the window where a gauzy curtain fell, covering the space where Aisha had just been and then reached up to grasp the ledge, half pulling herself up and half jumping into the room beyond.

Aisha stood in between the two low mattresses stuffed with straw and covered with plain woollen blankets. Phoibe, being significantly older than the two girls, had her own room in the cubiculum beside their own. Aisha’s bed was rumpled from her sleep. Eirene’s bed on the other side of the room was perfectly made, un-slept in. Aisha sighed and shook her head, causing the blue turban she always wore to wobble precariously on top of her head. She reached out a smooth black hand to pluck at the vine leaves tangled in Eirene’s loose, dishevelled hair.

‘Eirene, you’re impossible. Why do you keep running away? Do you know if you’re caught they’ll brand an f on your forehead?’ Aisha said, jabbing the space between Eirene’s eyebrows with a long, bony finger, a little harder than was really necessary.