Amber and Clay by Laura Schlitz (phonics books txt) 📕

the water, scooping it back —

Then there was one night, one moment

I felt the water hold me up.

It could bear my weight.

I could rest on it!

I wouldn’t sink.

I wouldn’t drown.

After that it was easy.

By the next full moon, I could float on my back,

stroke through the water, kick myself forward.

I stared straight up at the face of the moon,

and my mind went blank.

Most of the time, during the day,

my mind was full of struggling things:

anger at the heat,

fear of Georgios,

missing Lykos,

drawing horses.

But when I floated, it was clear

like clean water,

white as the moon with her single eye.

I’d been afraid Lykos might haunt the river.

I’d been afraid of drowning.

What I hadn’t been afraid of

was getting clean.

I hadn’t thought about that.

But night after night, that hot summer,

I swam in the river. And it made me clean.

And that’s what sealed my fate.

2. WATER/DAYLIGHT

Every slave knows his master.

No master knows his slaves.

Our master: Alexidemus. We knew he was vain,

quick-tempered,

and unjust.

He was generous with food, and a glutton.

He was pious and feared the gods.

On sacrifice days, even the slaves

got a gobbet or two of meat.

He hated stinginess

and was proud of his horses.

He was the son of that Menon of Pharsalos,

who fought in the Persian Wars.

Everyone said the master

wasn’t the man his father was.

He knew that, and it gnawed at him.

We knew all his tender points.

If there was a slave woman he wanted,

we knew of his desire

before he did. If he ate too much,

and his bowels ran loose and black,

we knew that, too.

He was kyrios, lord of the household,

and our master.

He could have been worse.

His younger brother, Thucydides,

and his sons,

Tycho and Timaeus,

shared the house.

There were also some girls.

We didn’t know them.

They stayed indoors.

I don’t mean to bore you,

telling you all these names,

but what I’m trying to make you see

is that we needed knowledge,

and we gathered it,

and when we found it,

we passed it on.

Menon was the master’s son,

and I ought to have known —

even Lykos warned me.

One morning he came down to the stable

with his cousin Tycho. Georgios saddled their horses

and off they went.

Menon was a bruising rider,

fearless,

destined for the cavalry.

They galloped back at noon, the horses lathered white.

Menon yelled for someone to hot-walk his horse.

That was often my job.

See, when a horse has been worked hard,

you can’t just let him rest,

you have to walk him out,

keep him moving

till he’s breathing soft and steady

and the fleshy pad between his front legs is cool.

So Menon called for someone — he just called “Boy!”

which could be anyone: Georgios was a boy,

old Orestes, who was toothless, was a boy.

I was the closest boy,

so I came forward. In those days

nobody looked at me much. They just handed me things,

a pitchfork, a bucket, the reins,

so it was a shock

when Tycho whistled and said:

“Look at that hair! Like firethorn berries!”

Then his voice changed.

“Menon, he looks like you!”

Menon said, “What? With that hair and that skin?”

— because Menon was dark.

“Don’t look at his hair!

I’m talking about his face!

Look at his brow and his nose and his chin!”

I ducked my head. Before my mother left,

she used to wash me,

and people noticed my red hair. After she went,

I never washed,

and I guess the red

was hidden under filth:

sweat and oil and dust.

That summer, I’d gone swimming,

and the filth got washed away;

my face was still dirty

because I swim on my back.

Menon frowned at me,

eyes narrowing. He had a gaze like a hawk’s.

Arm and scruff, he seized me,

and dragged me to the water trough.

I struggled and yelped.

He was strong as iron,

supple as a python,

and Tycho came to help him.

Then I was spluttering,

coughing, held fast

facedown in the trough

while they scrubbed me.

Hands in my hair, their fingers

poking my eyes,

I thought I would drown.

Menon’s fingers were twined in my hair;

he lifted my head —

I could breathe.

My lashes streamed water,

and snot ran out of my nose.

There was the world, seen through water:

sun and sky and grass

and Georgios walking the horses.

He must have seen everything

but Menon was the master

— so —

Menon said, “He’s not like me.”

He wasn’t laughing anymore.

“He’s like Lykos.”

The two of them looked at me

as if I were a ghost —

I’d heard how Menon bullied his brother

and wept for him after he died.

I could see it in his eyes:

his grief.

Tycho let out his breath.

“He’s probably your father’s brat. Or my father’s brat.

There was that Thracian woman, remember?

With the red hair? She must have been the mother.

The two of you together!

with those matching faces — ”

He didn’t finish. Menon wasn’t listening.

He smiled at me

and it was the first time.

Later on I loved his smile

and courted it, shameless as a girl.

“Little brother!”

After that day, he never called me that —

“Little brother, I want a boy to wait on me,

to be my personal slave. I choose you.

You’ll like waiting on me.

It’s got to be better than what you’re used to!

You’ll sleep by my bed,

and go to the gym —

You’ll watch me work out and rub me down after.

What do you think?”

He asked as if I had a choice.

I was dazzled and half drowned —

but I wasn’t stupid: I knew I had no choice.

If Menon wanted me,

I would be his slave.

I wouldn’t have to pick up turds,

but there would be other things.

Nobody ever gets out of anything.

Tycho warned him:

“Your mother won’t like it. She hated that Thracian woman.

She won’t want him in the house.”

Menon shrugged. “It’s nothing to do with her.

I’m a man now. Mother has to see that.

If I want my own slave, I’ll have one.”

That’s how my life changed.

I followed Menon like a dog.

I slept beside his bed that night.

The floor was harder than my bed in the barn —

no straw —

and I couldn’t run off to the river.

I couldn’t sleep. I missed the horses snorting

and the smell of the stable.

I thought of Menon calling me little brother.

He’d given me a new tunic to wear,

with no holes in it.

If he was my brother,

I was son to the master,

and brother to Menon

— or his cousin.

I hoped he was my brother.

3. GYMNASION

It’s hard to tell you about Menon.

I know I was stupid

— you’ll see that —

but you have to see how it was for