*
Callithoe marched alongside her father's guards as evening fell. Her sandals kicked up little puffs of dust on the dry, beaten-down path to the palace. No one spoke. The faces of the many poor, the look of panic and desperation on the boy's face … she could not seem to clear her mind of the images.
To the west, Apollo drove his chariot the sun over the edge of the earth in a brilliant splash of orange and fiery red. Streaks of clouds, glowing and otherworldly, spread across the sky smears of paint, melancholy and beautiful.
A great, unbearable sadness came over her. The burden was so sudden and so heavy that she stopped in her tracks. An abandoned manger, with tumbled walls and spindly weeds growing up all about it, faced the path.
"Lady?" asked Menos, resonant and wary.
"Go on," she directed. "I wish to stay here alone."
Menos frowned. "Your father will not approve."
"My father cares only for my wellbeing." She gestured around at the empty place. "I am safe here, Menos. Can you not see? Go on."
He considered her statement. Past behavior told her that he would not hesitate to ignore her wishes entirely, if it meant her safety. But the poor had long vanished into their hovels. She had lingered at the temple to make sure they would not meet any on the way home.
He nodded, still looking warily at her. What had he heard in her voice? She suppressed the urge to give a bitter laugh.
With a few muttered commands the guards turned and marched away in a little, regimented knot. The bronze of their spear tips prodded the darkening sky; their helmeted heads looked forward only, not to the side or back. Always forward, single-minded and resolute.
She sagged to a broken wall, her eyes on the sunset, ever changing and brilliant, transforming and dying moment by moment. Fixing her mind on the memory of Mother Rhea's statue, she pictured how it stood clothed in a peplos of finest dyed purple linen paused in mid-motion, arm lifted to hail some invisible person, knee pressed against the roaring lion that traveled alongside her. She had often been the one to weave the statue's fresh laurel wreath herself, to place it on Mother Rhea's head. Afterward that whole day at odd intervals she smelled the laurel scent on her fingers.
Her eyes burned as she began to pray. "Oh, Mother. Dear Mother ..."
With all her strength, she prayed for Iambe, for the poor, for the land suffering so long in drought. Oh, how bitter it was to pray for the parched and cracked land, where even thistles and weeds struggled to grow, for the prayers brought to mind better times, greener fields and the scent of blossoms. Doso's name came to her lips as well, that her heart might be softened toward the gods, toward all good things despite the burdens of daily sorrow she suffered under.
She did not know how long she sat there, her thoughts focused on the goddess. Long enough for the sunset to dull and darken. The noise of buzzing night insects brought her out of her fervent prayers. She blinked. The bowl of the dark gray sky above her would soon be obsidian black. She stood. The stiffness of her backside revealed that she had slumped atop the broken wall for longer than she intended.
It scarcely mattered, though. She knew her way home, which lay just down this hill and over one other. Hurrying, she looked down in an effort avoid the stones in the path. Rustles in the brush startled her; a flock of night doves burst from the skeleton of a bush, squawking and protesting. Her breath sped, and sweat dampened her hairline and underarms. When she topped that second hill and saw a lamp flickering in the window of the palace, she sighed in relief.
A branch cracked not a stadium from her. She could see nothing in the gloom. Then, a low growl – a sinister reverberating scream far too loud to come from a small, inoffensive creature. Rather, it must be something lanky and large. With sharp incisors and a hungry belly. Something that could be waiting to ambush her if she didn't hurry.
Heart pounding, she ran. She fixed her eyes on the palace and abandoned her careful pace, running as fast as she dared.
Brush broke behind her. Pure terror jolted her. Another growl sounded. This one closer, and louder. Panic bit like the whip-crack strike of a viper. She forced herself to keep her wits about her, though it would have been far too easy to give into gibbering terror. Instead she focused on the palace walls ahead and on the motion of her legs, which seemed far too slow. She would get home. She would!
Though she expected to feel the crunch of teeth on bone and sinew, it never came. She made it to the front of the palace, flew up the front steps, and threw herself through the door.
She flattened herself against the wall, her mind thundering: Safe! Safe! I am safe at last!
Metaneira and her sisters gathered around her, asking, "What chases you, Callithoe?"
Demo and Cleisidice stroked her face and shoulders, murmuring soothing words. Her father the king called the guards that they might search the night for the wild beast.
The Ruling Elite and Other Stories Page 13
