Danae

by Laura Gill

  Phileia hissed at me to remember the sistrum. Realizing my error, that I had neglected the instrument, I resumed my task of shaking it, summoning the Mistress to the sacrifice; the blood would appease the dryad’s spirit so she would not blight the Mountain’s other acorn-bearing oaks. Ktimene sprinkled sacred barley meal on the soft wool between the kid’s ears, and reached for the mallet.

  “For the Mistress.” Phileia’s knife glinted dully in the gray dawn. Blood flowered against the animal’s white coat.

  I imagined a hundred thousand lightning bolts streaking from the heavens to blast the Mountain, blinding me, consuming me in a rush of heat and pain, and the scream that filled my head seemed so loud I marveled that no one else could hear it.

  That night, the kid appeared to me. We sat together among the trees, she resting peacefully in my lap, and I wondering how she had come together again after the quartering and burnt offering. Her eyes, formerly brown and soft and large, were filled up with scarlet. How had the blood returned to her veins?

  A light, warm breeze eddied all around me, carrying with it the juniper-and-pine scent of the Mountain. Pine was sacred to Poseidon, and juniper to Potnia Theron, and suddenly I heard the lamb bleating. Each bleat was different, each a step toward transforming into a woman’s voice that recited the names of trees, flowers, and fruits associated with the various gods.

  “Pomegranates are for Queen Hera, and roses for Lady Aphrodite, whom they know as Lady Pipituna in Crete. Pine boughs are sacred to Poseidon, and juniper to Lady Eleuthia, and oaks belong to Zeus.”

  “I know,” I said slowly.

  “Do you?”

  The lamb abruptly bounded from my lap, evading my feeble attempt to snatch her back. Foolish creature, she could not roam the Mountain on her own! She would get lost. Lions or bears or wolves would eat her, and then it would be my fault. Potnia Theron kept predators away from the sanctuary, but the Hunters and herdswomen reported seeing them elsewhere on the mountain heights.

  “Come back here!” My hands moved to brush away leaves and dirt, and came away bloody. Sacrificial blood smeared my clothes. I would have to worry about that later. All I could do now was race after that silly beast before I lost her tracks entirely.

  And then, I stumbled into a tree that suddenly appeared out of nowhere. My outflung arms embraced a trunk fragrant with the scent of exotic spices such as I had only encountered in my father’s palace. A soft giggle from deep within the tree gave me pause. Forgetting the resurrected lamb in my surprise, I stumbled back only to find myself staring at a majestic oak bearing the most impressive crown I had ever seen.

  The breeze that stirred the leaves now smelled like wildflowers. A tinkling sound compelled me to lift my gaze toward the branches, for where the boughs should have sighed and rustled, they chimed. I caught my breath. Oak leaves naturally had a silvery underside, but these appeared to be real silver, glimmering softly in the light. I lifted a finger to inspect the nearest leaf; the topside shone gold, and the whole was etched with fine veins. Higher up, I saw clusters of acorns that looked like globules of gold glimmering in the sunlight.

  Another soft giggle alerted me to the presence of what must have been the dryad of the oak delighting in my astonishment. And yet, I did not share her levity. Someone else was there, a gaze crawling at my back. Had I come unwittingly to a forbidden place? Was I violating some mystery of the goddess’s sanctuary?

  Then a shadow descended on the space, dimming the loveliness of the sunlight. I thought I heard something breathing heavily behind me, and a heartbeat that trembled the earth. My dread intensified. Certainly the goddess was angry. My apology had not sufficed. I would have to throw myself upon her mercy.

  Shaking, but determined to beg the goddess’s forgiveness for whatever transgression I had committed, I turned around.

  And found myself staring into a man’s face.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  He was the first youth I had seen in over five years, and was the most golden and indescribably handsome specimen I had ever seen. I did not know what to think, much less what to say, when I had expected something terrible and female. I instinctively averted my eyes.

  Warm fingertips touched my chin, urging me to glance up again. His skin smelled like the rare kinnamon the king of Argos imported from far eastern lands. His bow-shaped lips widened in a smile. He wore nothing, but gloried in his perfect physique. I trembled, remembering that men were forbidden inside the sanctuary enclosure, and that I was a consecrated virgin. How had he come naked through the forest and gotten past the sentries?

  I opened my mouth to inquire who he was and where he had come from, when he touched a silencing finger across my lips. “Danaë, I come for you,” he said in a voice that encompassed both the soughing of the wind through the oak boughs and the rumbling of storm clouds on the Mountain on a dark winter’s afternoon.

  “I am Myrtale.” Why had he called me by that other name? I heard my own voice, slow and thick though it was, although my lips never moved. An unseen magic articulated my thoughts, and that redoubled my apprehensions, for my thoughts were jumbled, confused, and may the goddess help me if the stranger discovered even half of it.

  “I know who you are,” he answered tenderly. “You are the daughter of Argos. You are meant for me.”

  Butterflies escaped his lips with every word, until the air around grew thick with the winged creatures, silver and gold and iridescent. He spewed them out, and with a twirl of his finger had them dancing in circles around us. His rich laughter turned my knees to butter, and in his arms I spun dizzily about. “Kiss me, Danaë!” he cried.

  Yes, yes! Then no. A coldness gripped my belly. Suddenly everything was too wonderful, too frenzied, too blindingly golden and fragrant and tempting. I remembered myself. I was not Danaë, but Myrtale. I was a consecrated virgin, dedicated to the Mistress, and he was a man. A god, perhaps, but still forbidden. I remembered the darkness of the sanctuary, the melting blobs of faces and limbs of those impious souls the goddess had trapped in the limestone. I even recalled my own innocent adolescent curiosities about lovemaking, and I became sorely afraid.

  “No!” I screamed. “It’s forbidden!” Pushing him away, I turned and, with a sudden, icy gust of wind whipping at my back and his voice, hard now like granite, roaring for me to return, I fled into the depths of the forest.

  *~*~*~*

  A violent lateral shaking wrenched me from the dream world into a terrifying reality in which the house was rattling all around me. Objects crashed to the floor. In the darkness, someone screamed, “Earthquake!”

  I tumbled from my cot, stumbled and fumbled my way toward the door, and then I was outside where the forest offered moderate safety. Phileia and Ktimene might have been right behind me; in my primal drive to escape, I forgot to look for them. Only when I was out in the grey, predawn light and glimpsed other women scrambling from nearby dwellings did I remember the two priestesses. Things had been crashing to and fro, objects falling from shelves, and the whole house swaying. Had I left them seriously injured?

  Then I saw them, half-dressed and hurrying toward me. “There you are!” Phileia called out breathlessly.

  “I was looking for you!” I exclaimed in relief.

  Ktimene hastened ahead to inspect me. “Are you all right?”

  Physically, yes, but my heart thudded in my chest, and my mind raced with thoughts of angry immortals. The ground juddered beneath my feet, not as violently as before, but sending forth waves like ripples in a pond. Several feet away, the initiates huddled together in blankets; the youngest, a maiden of thirteen, wept and hyperventilated in terror, and seemed oblivious to the wetness staining the front of her shift.

  “They’re aftershocks,” Phileia said, her voice quavering. “The Mother of the Mountains settling down.”

  An unwelcome coldness seeped through the soles of my feet, and then I realized that I had fled barefoot from the house. Ktimene, seeing my predicament, gave me her blanket while
she hurried back to fetch warmer clothes and shoes for all three of us.

  I heard falling rocks in the distance. Wiry old Thalamika, captain of the sentries, sent her women down from the heights. Sostrate, her raven headdress askew, directed her Hunters to check for damage; several ran toward the smoke of a burning house. Rhona and her Gleaners went around with blankets, checking injuries, and comforting the bruised, battered, and rattled. Yet I stood uselessly, my mind blank with shock and frozen in terror at the manifestation of some immortal’s anger. No one gave me any instructions, and, having never experienced a temblor of such strength, I did not know how to take the initiative.

  Presently, Ktimene returned with a bundle of things, including the Mistress of the House hastily wrapped in a shawl. “She was knocked down. Broken,” she said as she undid the bundle to reveal the damage.

  Phileia and I dressed ourselves, but our attention was on the little idol cushioned in the folds of Phileia’s favorite shawl. One of her pendulous breasts had broken off, stunting her powers of fertility. Ktimene shuffled through the bundle as she searched for something. “I know I put the broken piece somewhere.”

  At length, Phileia set a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “We’ll find it. Now, let’s get a bonfire going, and find some beer and grain to feed everyone with.”

  Feed everyone. That was something I could do. Yet when we approached the storage caves, trepidation compelled me to halt. The whole weight of the Mountain loomed overhead, and I feared being entombed under it. Phileia snapped her fingers and ordered me to assist her in scooping grain from the largest pithos into baskets to take outside. The whole time I worked feverishly, frantically praying that Poseidon withheld his anger to allow me and Phileia sufficient time to escape; the tremors seemed stronger underground, as was my growing conviction that the Earth-Shaker was angry with me in particular. The dream had been so real, I could still smell the kinnamon of the god’s flesh, and visualize the butterflies spewing from his mouth.

  Nonetheless, he could not have been Poseidon. Although he had not told me his name, the god needed no introduction. Oak trees were the sole property of Zeus Dendritis. Only he would have transformed an oak into a shower of gold and silver, or approached a mortal woman underneath its shimmering boughs.

  But why me? My hands visibly trembled as I scooped grain from the pithos into the basket in Phileia’s outstretched arms. I was consecrated to the Mistress, forbidden, yet why had the goddess abandoned me? Had I unwittingly offended her, or had it been all the Women of the Mountain who neglected some ritual or offering, that had caused her to withdraw her protection from the sanctuary enclosure?

  “Quicker!” Phileia’s irritable command brought me back to attention. “We’ve hungry mouths to feed.”

  No one outside was that hungry, but as I shared her desperation to leave the cave I concentrated harder, and soon we were in the open again, dispensing grain to be ground into flour and baked into flatbread.

  Phileia took the first loaves to the xoanon of Potnia Theron in the outdoor enclosure, which had suffered little damage. The Women already kneeling at the goddess’s feet shifted aside to let her place the loaves and make the ritual supplication.

  “Great Goddess, Earth Mother, be still. Smile upon us, and receive this gift of bread from your faithful worshippers.” Echo sent the high priestess’s unsteady voice throughout the enclosure. All conversation around the bonfire ceased. Those who had not approached the goddess crept forward and knelt in the cold, damp earth. I, too, went, and touched my forehead to the ground, and prayed for the shaking to subside, even though deep down I agonized that it was not the Mistress whose wrath needed placating.

  But then, once the goddess was placated, the initiates linked arms and danced, singing a paean of praise to Poseidon Earth-Shaker. Ktimene, who had remained by my side throughout, harrumphed at the display. “Down in the villages the people will sacrifice their precious bulls and horses to the god,” she sneered. “But up here we know better.”

  At last, I could contain my private fears no longer. “I don’t think it foolish. He’s the Lord of Earthquakes.”

  Her eyes narrowed disapprovingly, but she made no comment. Of more immediate concern was delivering libations and offerings to the sanctuary cave. Ktimene ground her jaw, not because Phileia commanded her to risk life or limb to descend into the earth, but rather because the high priestess insisted upon going alone. “If anything happens,” Phileia said, “the goddess’s anger will claim but one of us.” Ktimene protested, to no avail, while I was privately relieved at not having to accompany her, and simultaneously shamed by the old woman’s courage.

  A tense hour passed as we waited for Phileia’s return. Each aftershock renewed fears that the Mountain would collapse over the cave sanctuary. Was Ktimene ready to become high priestess? Her trembling hands and anxious manner betrayed self-doubt, but in my mind her misgivings about Phileia’s safety had as much to do with the broken Mistress of the House as with the earthquake.

  The Hunters, who knew best how to boil animal bones and sinews to make glue, had earlier reassured Phileia that the damage to the Mistress’s breast could be repaired, as long as we found all the pieces. Ktimene fretted over those tiny slivers that remained unaccounted for.

  “Her power will be diminished,” she lamented. “We’ll have to add talismans to the hearth to make up for the loss.”

  “But the goddess is very old,” I argued, “and she’s been damaged before.” With my finger, I indicated preexisting scratches and chips.

  I wanted to confide in her about last night’s dream, to be able to rely on her familiar strength to assure me that the god had not forced his way into the sanctuary through the lightning strike, that the earthquake was not the result of my refusing him; yet suppose that it was all my fault? Ktimene would probably beat me about the head the way she used to do when I was a nameless, stupid newcomer, and Phileia would do the same. If she returned.

  Or maybe they would hold me blameless—which I doubted—but become drawn with worry, nonetheless, because the god’s presence meant that the Mistress had forsaken the Mountain. I aided wherever I could, helping build lean-tos of wood and waterproof goatskin in the clearing where Ktimene ordered the bonfire lit, and saying prayers for the injured while Rhona and her Healers tended them. How could the goddess forsake the Women of the Mountain? As the day strengthened, I started believing otherwise, that she had enabled me to break away from the god, and that she had shielded her devout worshippers; no one had been killed by the quake, unless...

  I refused to think about that possibility. Phileia would not have to pay the price for everyone else’s survival. She would return, the goddess would be placated, the earth would stop shaking, and everything would return to normal.

  And yet, when no one was looking, I took a fragrant pine cone from the wood Sostrate’s Hunters were breaking into kindling, and laid it in the bonfire with a hastily whispered prayer to Poseidon Earth-Shaker.

  Phileia finally returned, disheveled and pale, but unhurt. The Women swarmed her as if she embodied a manifestation of the Mistress herself, and pleaded for news of the sanctuary. She held her tongue, though, which Ktimene and I found strange.

  Later, she revealed to the two of us what she had discovered in the sanctuary cave. “Many of the pillars are cracked, broken. The Mistress-pillar remains intact, may the Mountain and our prayers preserve her, but the temenos wall collapsed. We’ll have to repair it ourselves.”

  Ktimene shook her head. “As above, so below.”

  I hated this depressing talk. “The Mistress of the House can be repaired.”

  Both women looked at me as if I had claimed the sky was green. “When you break the stones, everything special about them spills out,” Phileia explained. “The power of the life-giving earth, of many generations of women’s prayers, all gone. It’s as if you were to smash a hole in a pithos to let the precious grain or oil run out. If you could somehow collect all the pieces, even the ones p
ulverized into dust, you might be able to fit them back together again, but the pithos would never again be as strong as it was when it was whole.”

  I understood what she said, and yet did not. “You said once that things that were battered were stronger and more beautiful than those that weren’t ever touched.”

  Ktimene reached out to set a hand on my shoulder before Phileia did. “Battered,” she emphasized, “but not broken.”

  Huddled between the two priestesses under a thick blanket before the evening bonfire, I reflected how only two days ago I had been so snug and content, where there had been soft wool to work, delicious baked apples to eat, and women’s secrets to share. Only two days had passed, and yet it seemed like half a lifetime ago.

  The lean-to the priestesses shared was far from comfortable, but it would serve as a temporary shelter against the seasonal cold and the wind coming down from the heights. No one wanted to sleep, despite the exhaustion brought on by the day’s labor. Phileia decided that tomorrow she would fast, and Ktimene suggested burying the little Mistress in the cave beside the Mistress-pillar to restore her potency once the damage to her breast was repaired. I had no suggestions to make, except to lead tomorrow morning’s prayers by the outdoor shrine. I certainly did not intend to renew their brooding doubts with stories of strange and vivid dreams.

  That left me to confront my uncertainty alone. I concentrated on breathing, on drawing the Mistress’s presence close so she might guard my sleep. Had I not weathered far worse night terrors? Nightmares of being locked away and forgotten in a clothes press, of drowning, even of being taken captive and forced to confront a monster of dreadful countenance? All those terrors had come to nothing.

  Yet there I was again, standing before the oak, but now summer had become winter and the shimmering branches hunched dull and skeletal under an ominous bank of clouds. A shivering wind scattered the husks of dead butterflies as if they were a multitude of fallen leaves. The air was no longer fragrant with wildflowers, but reeked of the metallic vapor that always charged the air before and after a thunderstorm.