-Danger, Deceit-
Sidestory .02
Character: Priya Tuan

72nd Year of Azulon, 11th Year of Kuei -Early Summer

["…And he went in unto Hagar, and she conceived…"]

~ Genesis 16:4

The little girl ran through the still, stifled halls of the mansion, her bare feet slapping first over polished wooden planks, then flags of cold granite, until she burst into the garden. Panting, she raced across the sculpted landscape for the far wall. Ignoring the door where the gardeners threw out the debris of their tending, she leapt onto the stone face, small fingers grasping and calloused toes gouging into the rock as she climbed. Glazed terracotta tiles clanked and clattered as she hauled herself over the wall's decorative roof – a cracked ridge piece snagged the hem of her robe, ripping it as she jumped clear. With a cry of dismay, she grabbed at the shredded red silk, momentarily forgetting the ground rushing up to catch her.

"Oof!" She had managed to get her feet under her just in time, to little avail. Tumbling knees over shoulders, she came to rest in a patch of mud, trying to wheeze air back into her lungs. A sob struggled to break free, but she grit her teeth and stumbled to her feet. Yanking out the knot in her sash, she threw aside the ruined robe and began running again, clad only in her mud-spattered white cotton undergarments. Across the field beyond the mansion, splashing through the stream and startling the peasant boys fishing there, she ran on, her lungs beginning to burn, a stitch throbbing in her side, sweat streaming her dark bangs into her squinted eyes.

At last! Straining up the hill, feet slipping over the rocks hiding under the long leaves of grass, she collapsed in the cool, gentle shade of the bowing willow, embraced by the streamers of bright green and silver swaying on the summer breeze.

"Uhn!" She clamped her hands over her mouth as the urge to cry seized her again, before she had had a chance to get her breath back. Rolling over onto her knees, she rocked back and forth, trying to slow her breathing and her still-racing heart.

"… whew…" Slumping over onto her back, she pressed crossed forearms against her closed eyes, so hard that explosions like dark fireworks danced behind her eyelids.

"I hate Mama," she declared, taking care to enunciate each word as though repeating the line of a classical poem back to her tutor. A breeze stirred the willow and the little girl held her breath… but nothing more dramatic followed.

"Humph." Pursing her lips, she let her arms fall to her sides and watched the flicker-dance of sunlight and shade play the slender leaves. "So, it's not such a bad thing, after all?" she asked, wiggling her fingers into the dirt until her hands buried themselves up to her wrists.

The willow tossed its bent head, ignoring her. Unoffended, the little girl smirked. "Of course you don't care. You're a tree. You've probably never even met your mother!" She paused, considering. "If you ever had one. Do trees havemothers?"

She pretended that the willow shrugged in answer. "You're lucky."

"Priya! Priya!"

The little girl, who had just been about to doze off, bolted upright, tearing her hands free of the dirt and spattering pebbles and bits of grassroots every-which-way. The call had been faint, but she recognized the voice. "Amah…"

"Priya!"

Without a second thought, she scurried up the willow's trunk, secreting herself within a clutch of branches well above a normal adult's height. Had she been seen, or had Amah figured out her newest hiding place?

'Mama must have sent her out… or maybe one of the other servants saw me.' She hoped it was the latter; Mama only bothered to send Amah out after her if Papa were coming home unexpectedly, and that meant more pinches and slaps and tears and weird, scary muttering until Papa actually arrived. Not that she didn't want Papa to come home – Mama was nicer when Papa visited from the capital, but she always got meaner after he left. Even Papa's presents were not worth that.

'But maybe… Papa could stay this time?'

She winced and hissed at herself; only stupid little babies wished for stuff like that! She would be nine in less than a fortnight, she was most definitely nota baby!

"Ah-ra, imagine my luck, finding a little white kitten up a willow tree."

"Yeep!" Priya clutched the branches, heart hammering against the roof of her mouth as the ground lunged up at her. "Amah, don't do that! I could have fallen out!"

Below, Amah arched a dark eyebrow, her hands on her hips, not the least bit apologetic. "Your Amah would have caught you if you had," she said, lowering her veiled head in ironic subservience. "But the Young Mistress has gotten too good at climbing trees lately for me to worry, yes?"

"… knewI should have hidden under the bridge," Priya muttered, annoyed at having made it so easy for her nursemaid to find her.

"'And the beetle wishes that he had not stuck his horn under the tent flap,'" returned Amah with dry agreement. Her red-brown eyes flashed. "Now, Young Mistress, are you going to climb down from there, or do I have to take you down, like last time?"

Priya weighed her options: on the one hand, it wasn't fair how Amah always got her way; on the other, rocks and dirt in her undergarments, no matter for how short a time, was mostuncomfortable.

"Young Mistress…"

Also, Amah never bluffed.

"Ah-ra, you're even more nimble than a kitten!" Amah observed approvingly as a sullen Priya joined her at the foot of the willow. "But I doubt any self-respecting cat would allow her fur to get so dirty."

"I didn't know there was a patch of mud right by the wall!" Priya pouted, feeling the tears she refused to shed before stinging at her eyes. A temper tantrum over Amah's teasing was better than crying about Mama's cruelty; Amah had a sense of humor, bad as it was.

Amah clicked her tongue. "I would have brought a new robe," she apologized, patting Priya's hair, her hands moving to the little girl's shoulders to start feeling for injuries. "Saji found the one you threw off – he's mending it now."

Priya, patiently bearing the way Amah prodded her left knee, sighed in relief.

"Why run away, if you know you lady mother will only be more anxious when she discovers that you've disappeared?" Amah sat back on her heels, apparently satisfied that her charge had not broken any bones nor sprained any joints her latest escape attempt.

"She doesn't care," Priya said under her breath, staring at the line of ants crawling up the willow trunk. "And I don't care that she doesn't care, so Amah shouldn't care either!"

*smack!*

"'Think, but do not speak, against the one who holds power,'" Amah cautioned, her face and voice hard. "I hope you never talk like this in the house."

Priya rubbed her cheek, not because it hurt but because Amah only "slapped" her when she was disappointed, tears welling up. "No."

"Oh, Young Mistress…" Amah pulled Priya into a tight hug, rocking her back and forth.

"I didn't m-mean to!" Priya gasped. "I d-didn't know that P-Papa gave her that st-statue! I-I tried to f-fix it, b-but…!"

Amah let the little girl cry on her shoulder until her veil and dress were soaked through, replying to each wail with nonsense soft sounds of soothing. "Let's stay here for a little while longer," she suggested, after Priya had exhausted her tears and could not stand without swaying.

"Mmmh…" Without asking, Priya collapsed in Amah's lap, tucking her thumb into her mouth because she knew Amah would let her get away with it out here. The cool shade and veiled sunlight danced over them, and it was easy to imagine that only she and Amah ever came to this place.

"Oh, bright bird, who flies o'er the sea,
of what things can you tell to me?
Sing of endless blue and white foam,
you who, far, far from here, can roam," softly sang her Amah: a song in Amah's harsh, strange words that she had taught Priya in secret over the years.

"Oh, bird of white wing and sad cry,
for a moment only, abide!
Here within my tent take your rest,
ere you would fly on to the west.

"Oh, bird who comes from farthest sea,
fly on no longer, stay with me!
Let my humble tent be your home,
be at peace, no further to roam.

"'Ah,' but says that bright bird to me,
'I must e'er fly, and rootless be,
blessed and cursed never to rest,
on I must go, into the west!

"Oh, how I cry as he takes wing,
the east wind, his farewell bringing.
One bright feather remains behind;
one day I will its owner find…"

"Pfffft… I think you should just let that mean old bird fly away," Priya muttered drowsily around her thumb. "I'd never leave Amah!"

Amah laughed, tucking a lock of Priya's hair around her ear. "I would be sad if you did," she admitted to the little girl. "Sleep a little; when we go back home, I'll teach you how to fix that statue."

"Okay," Priya agreed, smiling a little as she drifted off into dreams of flying high over the open sea, a strange sad song singing in her ears…

- Postscript-

"Miserable is a heart that has no beloved.
It is difficult to be without a friend or a beloved.
These few moments which you can never find again,
If you have a heart, do not be without a beloved."

[~ Nezāmi-ye Ganjavi]