“Our daughter,” he said softly, “Sarah. Who is who she is. Herself.”
“What do you mean?”
“I only mean lineage doesn’t matter the way people think it does. Your people, my people, they both had it wrong. You knew that once. You saw god in every stranger.”
“Only because I was looking for you. All the time we were lost from each other, I was always looking for you.”
Losing, finding, losing. Maybe that was the story, the only story.
“And Sarah is not just any child; she is our child, the child I carried beneath my heart. Lineage may not matter, but love does. Help me, Esus,” I said calling him by the name of the boy I had saved only to lose him again. And again. “Help me find her.”
“What if she is not lost?”
“How can you say that?” I was angry now, desperate. “She is out there, somewhere far away on the sea.”
The sea I now couldn’t even see, the fog was so thick.
“I will tell you this, Maeve. Listen, cariad. The wind blows where it will. And I am with our daughter always, as I am with you.”
And then he wasn’t. Or I couldn’t sense him anymore. The fog brightened, but did not lift. So I supposed the sun was rising, though I couldn’t see it, but I was tired, so tired of taking things on faith.
The wind bloweth where it listeth, is the King James Version of the words my beloved left with me. But I was listless, as I paced the fogbound port, listening to the disembodied voices of men cursing the weather. Here I was again, as it seemed I had been so many times in my life, homeless and with nothing but my own wits to feed me. Or witlessness. For in my haste to get away from the ecclesiastical house, I had not raided the pantry (though I still had the knives) and I had headed straight to the port instead of stopping in Bethany for supplies. I decided to use my last coins, not enough for passage on a ship, to send a messenger to Martha and Lazarus with these words:
“Sarah’s father says she is safe on the seas. I will seek her. Remember what he said to me long ago: Tell them everything is all right.”
I wasn’t sure I believed that anymore or knew what he meant, but I found I wanted to say the words anyway. I made more inquiries and discovered that ships had sailed for a half a dozen different places around the time that Sarah might have stowed away. I tried to find vessels in port with the same destinations—Alexandria, Crete, Tyre, Rhodes. When I tried to barter passage for my healing skills, I was turned away. Merchant ships did not favor women aboard, and passenger ships wanted cash. My hair was too grey, and I had grown too thin for whoring to pay my way.
Not knowing what else to do, I haunted the docks, wondering if I might be able to slip aboard a ship and stow away myself. The fog had settled in and did not burn away by midday. The air was unnaturally still, and everyone was uneasy. The ships could be powered by oars, but navigation in those days depended on sun and stars. As I dragged myself once more around the port, I overheard a voice on shipboard.
“What I wouldn’t give for a fair wind to blow away the cursed fog.”
“How ‘bout a fair wind all the way to Fair Haven, while you’re at it, Captain.”
“We should have weighed anchor at dawn. Now we’ll be stuck here another night at least. Everything behind schedule.”
“How long can it go on? It’s downright eerie, Captain.”
“I don’t know, but I’d give half my cargo to the man who could whistle up the wind.”
“How about a woman?” I called out to the men.
All at once I knew what to do. Here was the sign I had been waiting for.
“Who goes there?”
“One who knows how to call the wind. And call the wind I will for passage on your ship.”
“Show us, then.”
The man wanted to sound skeptical, but I could hear his excitement. The strange fog and his restlessness combined to help him suspend his disbelief.
“Not until you welcome me aboard the ship and guarantee me safe passage.”
I heard a hurried conference between the captain and the mate.
“The way I see it, we have nothing to lose, captain. If she can do what she says, she’d be a handy creature to have aboard. If nothing happens, then we pitch her into the harbor and no harm done.”
“Right then. Round up the crew in case she’s as good as her word. Every man to his post. Come aboard,” he called to me.
I had practiced some weather magic on the mountain, more often calming than calling wind. Still, I was the daughter of the eight greatest weather witches in the world. I had once called a tidal bore to save my beloved from his pursuers (the same tidal bore that killed my father). I had soothed a storm that threatened to swamp Peter’s boat. A fair wind should be a piece of cake, so to speak.
As I stood on the ship deck, a memory rose of my mother standing, arms raised, dispersing the damp and the grey, calling the sun. I took the posture, and I became my mother standing on the rocks and my daughter standing on some other deck. Lineage did not matter, not the way people thought. Yet my lineage was with me, in every line and curve of body and bone as the fog rose and cleared, and the huge sun shining from the west turned the port city gold.
“Well, that’s all very pretty and picturesque,” sneered the captain, an old salt about my age. “But where’s the wind?”
I ignored him as I whistled three times, first soft and low, then louder, then a whistle so piercing and shrill you could probably have heard it in the Temple of Jerusalem. And the wind answered, moving like an invisible wave from the desert hills to the sea. It hit all at once, and every sail in the port snapped to attention, full-bellied with the wind.
And so began my career as a professional wind whistler.
CHAPTER FORTY
AT SEA
DURING MY YEARS AT SEA, I came to be known as the Grey One—or sometimes simply the Grey. My hair, long, and always coming loose with the winds I called, had turned a rather beautiful grey, not dull at all but with a capacity for reflecting light, like the sea or the moon. My clothes, after many washings and much exposure to the elements, were grey and ragged, tattered clouds trailing a storm wind. I was still strong and big-boned, but with far less flesh, so the word gaunt (which goes so well with grey) could be applied to my face and frame. My eyes, still hazel, took on the grey-green cast of the sky before a thunderstorm. I kept largely to myself, but those in need of healing found their way to me and the fire that still flowed through my hands, a molten river under the ash.
At first I searched for Sarah frantically at every port of call, hope rising and dashing on shore after shore. Over time, that rhythm became as familiar as waves, and though I never stopped looking for Sarah, I learned how to let those waves break and wash over me, rise and break again and again. Gradually I became more and more like the winds I called, defined not by form or emotion, but by motion itself or stillness. I often felt invisible in an oddly sensual way, for I found myself able to enter into other forms, trees, waves, birds, fish, and now and then other human beings, too—so that I could feel, for example, what it was like to have the strength of a young man hoisting or taking in a sail or an old man sitting in the sun, feeling the warmth penetrate his bones.
Years circled like buzzards as I slipped in and out of my body, stepped on and off ships, hunted through city markets and streets, climbed mountains, crossed plains, returning always to the sea. The night before Sarah’s eighteenth birthday found me on board a ship bound for Jaffa—not something I had planned, but I decided I would visit Lazarus and Martha since I would be so near. It was a warm, clear night full of stars that somehow looked luscious and ripe, rather than sharp as winter stars do. I stayed on deck, reliving the memory of Sarah’s birth on the tower at Temple Magdalen. I had intended to stay awake all night remembering everything I could about her, but I must have fallen asleep, for a vivid dream came to me.
I am in a cavernous place; at first I think it is one of the caves at Temple Magdalen lit with torches, but inste
ad of the soft murmur of the spring, I hear winds moaning and the crash of surf in the distance. Then I see that the flames are all clustered on the floor at the feet of some votive statue dressed in resplendent white garments. At first I think it is Isis, as we used to robe her for holidays, but when I approach the statue, I see that the figure is a young girl with a gold crown on her head, gold flecks in her eyes looking out from a face as black and shining as a clear starlit night.
In all the years that I vested Isis in various temples, I never felt much connection with the actual statues; they all seemed too literal to contain divinity. But there is something in this slight ebony figure that undoes me, something so intimate about standing alone with her in this bright darkness, looking into her face. I reach out my hand to touch her cheek, and find myself weeping.
“Don’t you know me, Mother?”
When I brush the tears away and look again, Sarah is standing before me. Not Sarah as I remember her at twelve years old, a half-grown woman determined to remain a boy. This Sarah is as tall as I am, still slight but visibly strong and tough. Her black hair is wild and her breasts, which she used to hide, unbound, her garments loose and blowing in what can only be a sea wind. Her eyes are still gold as the last light on a bird’s wings, and her face is even darker than I remember, almost as dark as the ebony statue. But Sarah’s face is not still. She is smiling, about to laugh.
“Sarah.” I try to speak, but I am not sure that any sound comes out. “Sarah.”
For a moment there is only darkness and warmth, strong arms around me.
And then I am alone with the statue again, and the flames flickering, sea sounding in the distance.
When I became aware that I was awake again, I kept my eyes closed to keep the dream close to me. I knew it was as real as any I had ever had. I did not know what the statue meant; but I was certain that I had seen and touched Sarah. I kept my eyes closed for as long as it took me to let myself know that she was all right, wherever she was, whether or not I would ever see her again in waking life. She had come to me herself to tell me.
Martha and Lazarus were waiting for me when I stepped off the ship at Jaffa, something that had never happened before. Even Martha embraced me, which alarmed me. Was there terrible news? Had someone died?
“She told us you would be here,” Martha explained.
Sarah, I thought, Sarah.
“Don’t ask me how she knows these things, but she’s always been that way. I can’t imagine how she and my sister have gotten along all these years. I shudder to think what their house looks like.”
“Now Martha,” said Lazarus. “I don’t suppose either of them notices. Let’s not keep Mary standing out in the crowds. Friends in the town have a meal waiting for us.”
They took me by an arm each as if I was in of need of support, which in fact I was since I did not have my land legs yet. I leaned on them as they led me through the crowded streets to a quieter section of the city, and finally to a back courtyard where their friends left us alone with bread, cheese, fruit and wine.
“Sarah?” I managed to say aloud. I was still feeling dazed. It was strange, after being everywhere a stranger, to come back to people who knew me—and my troubles.
“Sarah?” both Martha and Lazarus repeated with the same mix of hope and dread I felt. “Have you—?”
“No, yes, I mean I haven’t seen her, not in the flesh. But I had the most extraordinary dream….” I trailed off, not ready to speak about it, not accustomed to speaking at all. “I thought maybe you had seen her. When you said she knew I’d be here…I thought the she you meant might be Sarah.”
“No, dear, I’m sorry.” Martha was definitely mellowing. “I meant your mother-in-law. She sent Mary to tell us you were coming to Jaffa sometime this month. So we’ve been waiting here and going to the docks every day.”
“She sent Mary?” Mary my dearest foe and friend, who had given up her place in the ecclesia to protect my daughter. “Has Mary come back to Jerusalem? Can I see her?”
“I’m afraid she went back to Galatia as soon as she was rested,” said Martha shortly, and I could tell she had not softened towards her sister. “She has her own ecclesia now. Among the heathen.”
“Martha, they are not the heathen anymore,” admonished Lazarus. “Mary is teaching them the way of Jesus and the Law of Moses. I believe she has even persuaded the men to be circumcised.”
I could easily picture Mary schooling anyone who would listen in the Torah. But I could not have guessed she would take such a traditional stance on the great circumcision controversy.
“She can’t be circumcising them herself. Can she?!”
I bit my lip to keep from laughing, as I pictured Mary as a mohelet waiting with her ritual tools while the rugged mountain Celts lined up for their bris. Yet I had personally known men who had sacrificed more than a foreskin in frenzied devotion of a goddess. Still, Mary B and ritual ecstasy didn’t quite cohere in my mind.
“I wouldn’t put it past her,” said Martha grimly. “Now if you don’t mind, I’d prefer not to discuss my sister’s eccentricities.”
“Which are becoming more pronounced,” Lazarus acknowledged.
“I said I didn’t want to talk about them. Anyway, she sent you a message.”
“Mary sent me a message?”
“No,” Martha sighed. “Miriam.”
I felt seized with fear and guilt. What if Ma were ill? What if my beloved’s mother died in those remote mountains while I was far away fruitlessly searching for her granddaughter? How could I forgive myself?
“She’s not—”
“Dying? Of course not.” Martha finally cracked a smile. “Nothing as seemly or predictable as that. She wants you to come and take her to—what is the name of the city where they worship that goddess?” she appealed to Lazarus.
“Ephesus,” he supplied.
“Yes, Ephesus. You are to take her to Ephesus and set up house with her there.”
You would think I might balk at Miriam’s peremptory command; instead I felt a curious relief. Something at last had been decided. My fate had been taken out of my hands—at least temporarily—and I hadn’t realized till then how heavy it had been.
“Ephesus?” I repeated. “I don’t suppose she said why.”
Don’t ask me why, Miriam had said many times; the angels never tell why. Still I could not suppress a hope that immediately sprang into being. She knows something about Sarah. The angels have told her where to find Sarah.
“As a matter of fact, she did,” said Martha. “What were the exact words, Lazarus?”
“The exact words of the message?” said Lazarus. “Yes, I remember. Miriam said, “I need to go to Ephesus to see how it’s done.”
“To see how what’s done?” I asked.
I looked from Martha to Lazarus, but both shrugged.
Centuries would pass before I fully understood what it was:
How to be a world-class goddess.
PART FIVE:
HYMN TO MA OF EPHESUS
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
LOOSE CANON
Hymn to Ma of Ephesus
I sing to the mother of all,
she whose heart is honeycomb,
who follows the spiral flight of bees.
I sing to the mother long bereft,
to the one who is leaving me ,
for the far high reaches of light and air.
O mother of earth, crowned with creation,
think kindly on your daughter
toiling here, heavy with sorrow and fruit.
O wild, sweet, terrible mother,
ancient and young, tended and tender,
dry and translucent to my touch.
When you are gone, will you be my road?
When you are gone, will you show me the stars?
When you are gone, will I find your face in my own?
I sing to the mother who is more than mine,
to the girl grown ancient gathering eggs to her b
reast,
to the abandoned mother who has never left.
MAY BE , LIKE ME, for years you lived for your child or your children. Maybe even if your child did not run away, as mine did, you still wondered what happened to your children, where did they go, disappearing into angles, curves, height, differences, distance, as they become themselves. However much you shaped them, they somehow become someone you never imagined, could not have predicted—and yet you know them and love them still, always.
Then they are gone: on journeys, into marriages or other forms of happiness or disaster, into their own lives, and you turn around and there is your mother or your father or your mother-in-law, the one you ran from, the one you leaned on, waiting for you, waiting for you to hold their hands, help them across the room, the river, the sea, until you can’t follow anymore. Until you take their place at the edge.
I was not all that surprised to find Mary B and Ma there to greet me at the port in Antioch. It was the nearest port to the Taurus Mountains, and I had sailed as soon as I could whistle a wind for a northbound ship. From Antioch I had planned to make the trek to the Taurus Mountains to fetch Ma for the long journey to Ephesus. Although part of me had wanted to revisit our mountain home, the place where I had last seen Sarah, more of me had dreaded it. Maybe Ma guessed as much or maybe she was just eager to be on her way now that she or the angels had made up her strange mind.
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