Daughter of Ivory

[persianpenname]

Katya was an old woman now, and she took pleasure in that fact. That she was old, and that she was a woman, after so long not feeling like she had any claim to the word. As she drew up her nets, fat squid squirming and shining in the early morning light, she was filled with the contentment of her life and her work.

Long ago, when she was young, her name had been longer. She had been Katyarinova Moonborn, Katyarina Bonechild, Daughter of Ivory, Blessed by [god], and so many other, tiresome names besides. They hadn’t meant much. They hadn’t *done* much. This, hauling fish and squid into her little row boat, her ankles sepia-brown from their ink, this had earned her freedom, this fed children and the old, this was so much more worthwhile an endeavor than dancing for the moon had ever been.

She was old, over a century now and not the oldest of her kind, carved thick and fat as the style had been then, carve them fat and teach them to polish away their scratches and nicks and they will wane line the moon with time. Pah! She was the moon in truth, showing every flaw and every scar in shades of grey on her yellow-cream surface. Her hands were a scrimshaw of work, shells and beaks and knife slips showing their path over her body, cloudy where the rocks from her dancing days had abraded gently at her thick feet, though she wore shoes now to protect them, soft thick-soled things the leather girl on Crumpet street made for her, sweet child.

Ah, her baskets would be full today! Her barrels too, lines strung out to dry the bulk of her catch, salt waiting for others, precious ice for the last. Those she would walk up the long roads to the palaces with, her with her trays of ice and the finest, fattest fish, the thickest squids, the longest eels.

There was a new girl, like she once had been, but delicate as she never was nor wished to be, a child who did not know how to dance for the moon, who was no priestess, who had perhaps one name and it still soft and short. Katya had seen her at the windows, and the man who sold blubber at the wharf said they had placed an order for the finest mineral oils, scented with frankinsence and faraway rose. Katya wanted to see this new girl, with her holes pre-drilled for earrings, her gold eye-casings and the soft green jade of her fingertips. She raised her hand (gloved, yes, padded on the side, yes, she’d seen what so much knocking could do) and gave the door a hearty wallop. One of the kitchen girls answered, a sullen thing with drab straw hair she’d met a few times before. Katya preferred the other one, the redhead with the gap in her teeth, who smiled so broad like all the joy in the world was slipping in between them.

“Eels, fish, and squid, my dear? Fresh caught this morning, still full of life!” Katya held her box out enticingly.

The kitchen girl glanced behind her, unsure, but Nati, the cook, had recognized her voice