He slid off Pegasus, and let her graze. Euridice looked up again. ‘Did you get it?’
He nodded and held up the big bag of flour. ‘We can bake enough loaves to last for weeks. And look.’
Her face lit up. ‘Olives!’
‘And dried grapes. And…’
Her eyes grew wide as she looked into the small, rough pot. ‘Honeycomb! Nikko, how did you get that?’
He laughed. ‘The headman’s woman wanted a turquoise necklace. I gave her two stones to string on a bit of leather. You’d have thought I’d given her a dozen sons.’ He settled down on a rock by the fire, and held his hands up to warm them.
‘They were friendly then?’
‘Oh yes. The village is big enough not to fear strangers. The headman gave me a seat at his table, and fed me bread and wine. They’d have had me stay longer, just to hear stories of far away.’
She must have heard the underlying tension in his voice. She knew him well by now. ‘Nikko, what is it?’
‘The headman’s wife has been to your shrine,’ he said simply. ‘Three summers ago, to ask the Mother for a son.’
He had expected her to look excited, to ask at once how far away the shrine was from here. But she surprised him. ‘Did she get one?’
He grinned. ‘Twins.’
‘Good. If that’s what she wanted. Well?’
‘It’s two days’ ride from here.’ He pointed to a mountain on the horizon. ‘There’s a valley below that mountain that narrows to a gorge. The shrine is at the end of the gorge.’
‘So.’ Euridice looked back at the fire. She turned the venison again. One side had slightly scorched while they were talking. ‘Perhaps the women at the shrine have heard where your sister is. They must hear news from all over the country.’
‘Perhaps.’ What was she thinking? thought Nikko. What was hidden in that smooth, still face? ‘Euridice, don’t go.’
‘I have to.’
‘Do you want to go?’
‘That doesn’t matter!’ she said fiercely. ‘It’s my duty. There’s nothing more to say.’
‘Yes, there is! You told me once you wanted to join the temple, that it was more than duty. Tell me honestly: is duty all that calls you now?’
Euridice stared at the flames so long he thought she wasn’t going to answer. At last she said, ‘I don’t know. That is the truth, Nikko. I can’t allow myself to think of what I want.’
‘I think that should tell you your answer,’ he said quietly. ‘Euridice—we’re free. For the first time in our lives. Don’t throw that away like last month’s bread.’
She glanced up at him through her fringe of hair. ‘What should I do, then?’
‘Stay with me. Be my wife. We’ll find Thetis, then build that house, and plant our olive groves…’
She turned to look at him fully then. He had never seen her smile like that, soft as sunlight after rain. There was nothing of the wild girl now. ‘I can’t. I would like to, Nikko. But I can’t.’
‘But—’
‘Neither of us is truly free. Will you give up the search for Thetis?’
He hesitated, then shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Then you should understand. This time has been a gift, Nikko. Men and women have to follow the path they are set, like twigs being carried by the flood.’
‘You’re sure where your path leads?’
She nodded. ‘Back in Mycenae you told me the Mother would send me a sign. She did, Nikko. The walls of Mycenae fell so I could escape.’
She reached over and stroked his hand, staring at it as if it was the most important thing in the world. He froze. She had never touched him like that before. She lifted her hand, and kissed it, then pressed it onto his wrist. Her skin seemed to still hold the warmth of her lips.
‘The Mother has been good to me,’ she said softly. ‘She has given me this year with you, and still let me come to her a maid.’
She stood up suddenly and lifted the meat off the spit. ‘This will dry out if it cooks any longer. And olives and bread and honey…it’s a feast, Nikko. A midwinter feast!’
Our last feast, he thought. But he didn’t say it, just pulled the knife from his belt and cut off a chunk of meat.
CHAPTER 40
The gorge was sunless, and crowded with dark trees fringed with lichen and soft with moss on the south side. Light would streak down here in midsummer, but now it only flickered between the great cliffs, gilding the stream, the trees, the boulders, from the horizon where the midwinter sun sat, fat and lazy.
Birds sang above them, liquid notes as though they’d learned them from the stream; the water tumbled under a thin film of ice; Pegasus’s feet clopped against the stones. But they seemed the only humans in the world.
Neither had spoken since this morning, when they began the trek up the valley. What was there left to say?
The gorge grew narrower and narrower still. The pools were deeper, etched out by years of spring floods, almost black now in the winter shadows.
The gorge gave a final twist. Suddenly sheer cliffs surrounded them on three sides, streaked with eagle droppings. There was a tumble of boulders at the bottom, except on one side, where a gap opened like an ancient mouth in the rock, half the height of a man.
Or a woman. For as they looked one stood up from where she had been sitting by the cave. She looked as old as the rocks, as wrinkled as the cliffs.
She was grey. Not just her hair, which hung in thin strands down to her waist, but her dress, a shapeless goatskin tunic dyed with chalk perhaps, thought Nikko, with the apron of a priestess of the Mother—but slate-coloured, not gold—over it all.
Her skin was grey as well. For a moment he shivered, wondering if she were a ghost, then his anxiety eased: she must have dabbed her face and hands with dust. Only the hag’s eyes were brown, and her white smile, when she showed her teeth, was as humourless as the grin of the cave. ‘You are here to make sacrifice to the Mother?’
‘Yes.’ Euridice slipped off Pegasus. She stood straight and tall. The horse stamped behind her, then grew still as Nikko pulled at the reins. ‘Is this the valley of the Mother’s shrine?’
‘It is.’
‘Then where’s the temple?’ demanded Nikko. There was something strange about it, something that made the hair shiver on his arms. An important shrine should have a grand building, or at least a small one, made of alabaster trimmed with gold, the favourite colour of the Mother. Not even birds sang here. No lizards basked on the winter-cold stones. The Mother was life, the generosity of the earth. This place…nothing.
‘Nikko, hush.’ Euridice seemed too calm. It was impossible to read her face.
The hag peered at them. ‘What better place to have the Mother’s temple than within the earth itself? What have you come to sacrifice?’
‘Myself.’ Euridice lifted her chin. ‘I was promised to the Mother years ago, but was taken to serve the High King. The House of the Lion has fallen…’
‘So you have come to the Mother again.’ The hag’s smile had vanished. ‘Why should the Mother want you now?’
Euridice flushed. ‘I am still a maiden.’
‘That was not what I asked.’ The hag nodded at Nikko, sitting wordless on the horse. ‘Will this one not marry you then? Do you come here with nowhere else to go?’
‘I would marry her.’
Euridice glanced up at him, her expression blank once again.
Nikko tried to find words that would convince the hag. If this was what Euridice wanted, he would stand by her. ‘She has other choices. Don’t be fooled by her stained clothes. We have jewels, gold, gifts from the High King of Mycenae. We are…skilled dancers…too.’ He didn’t think the hag would understand if he said acrobats. ‘We could build ourselves a stronghold, or find a home with another king, who would give us ease and plenty if we performed. Euridice will sacrifice all these things, to come to you.’
The hag peered at Euridice. ‘Is this true?’
‘Yes.’
‘It is a true sacrifice, then. The Mother welcomes you.’ She waved toward the dark cave mouth. ‘Enter, my dear.’
‘What?’ Nikko stared. ‘That…that can’t be the temple of the Mother.’
‘Oh yes? And what do you know about it, man?’
‘But where are all the other women? There isn’t room in there for a temple.’
The hag shrugged. ‘That is no business of yours.’
‘Nikko.’ Euridice reached up and took his hand. Her skin is still browner than mine, he thought, even after so long on the road together. ‘Please. I must do this. I…I trust the Mother. I have to go.’
He wanted to scream, ‘No.’ He wanted to yell, ‘Stay with me. Or if you don’t want to stay for me, stay for the sunlight. Don’t go in there!’ The crevice looked like a place of sacrifice, not a temple.
The hag stepped toward them. For the first time there was sympathy in her face. ‘Once she goes inside she can choose to come out.’
‘Can she?’
‘Oh yes. She has a season. If, when the leaves have unfurled and the sun sends its first shadows into the valley, she wishes to leave, the Mother will let her go.’
‘You won’t stop her?’
‘No.’
‘Nikko.’ For a moment he thought Euridice was going to say more. But she just reached up again and touched his hand one last time. One brief touch then she stepped away. ‘I’m not going to leave the Shrine. This is my life now. Be happy, please, for me. Sing your songs again—I haven’t heard you sing since we left Mycenae. And find your sister too.’ She hesitated then added, ‘Thank you, Nikko.’
He watched her go. Step by step toward the cave, not looking back.
The hag reached out, and took her hand. They vanished into the darkness together.
CHAPTER 41
He didn’t leave. He couldn’t leave.
What if they sacrificed her on a stone, like the young rams at Mycenae?
He couldn’t follow her—not into the cave, the world of the Mother. But he could stay here. In case she called. In case she changed her mind, and chose the light.
He had to stay.
There was water, a trickle through the rocks further down the gorge. He drank, and so did Pegasus. He let the big mare graze. She rambled down the valley to pull at the grass between the boulders every day, but came back to him at night.
He made a makeshift shelter near the cave mouth, propping up branches against the cliff, pulling down more branches and leaves to make a thatch, enough to keep the rain off, and the occasional drift of snow.
There were hares, and pigeons, and juniper berries in the rocks, a stand of pine trees with the cones fallen on the ground. The mice had eaten only half the nuts.
He waited as the moon grew fat and round, then let the moon spinners unwind her dress again. He waited another two moons after that, waited for the trees to bud, then for the first leaves to unfurl. He waited as the first sunlight speared into the valley, giving birth to the shadows of the spring.
He left the shrine only for a short time each day, enough to drink, to find some food and wood to cook the meat, or check the horse. The hag grew used to him. She was the only priestess to appear outside the cave, unless there was another just as dusty and wrinkled.
She never spoke. Most times she dozed, sitting with her back to the cliff, face to where the sun would be, up in the world beyond the gorge. She left at dusk, creeping into that thin grin of rock, most times so silently it was as though she vanished, though Nikko suspected she waited till he was looking elsewhere, to reinforce a sense of mystery. Each dawn she was back, or someone like her was.
Most days others ventured up the gorge: women, with gifts of cloth or skins tanned to softness, or jugs of grain or oil, with whispered prayers for the Goddess, hoping for a child perhaps, or a husband with a kind smile. They laid them on the rocks, before the cave, bowing with their hands pressed to their foreheads. Once a man arrived, lugging a bearskin and a hunk of meat. He bowed before the hag, ignoring Nikko, just as the women had, and whispered his request, then went away.
How many have waited here like me, thought Nikko, hoping that one of those inside might change her mind?
When the hag left that dusk, the bearskin and the meat went too, just as the other gifts had vanished.
The nights grew shorter. The wind had lost its bite, though true warmth was still far off. Finally, up above the cliffs, the forest turned from the pale leaves of spring to a patchwork of summer greens.
What must it be like inside the darkness of the cliff, thought Nikko, never seeing the seasons change, or feeling the soft tongue of the wind?
Sometimes he thought of Thetis, and devised vague plans to find her, asking at villages if they knew of a newcomer at any of the towns nearby. At other times he remembered the best days of Mycenae: not the cheers of the crowd, but the soft words of Orkestres, teaching him a movement, showing him how to stretch his legs and arms; or Dora tenderly rubbing red salve into Thetis’s lips and his.
But mostly he just kept waiting.
It was midday. The trees were all in leaf now. Lizards had come out to bask upon the ledges; dragonflies hovered above the pools.
Nikko had speared a wild goat that came down to the gorge to drink at dawn. He had heard the goats calling for the past few days. This one was an old buck goat, cast out of the mob perhaps by a younger buck, doomed to wander alone until it died.
Its flesh would be strong tasting, and probably tough. But Nikko had grown past caring.
He left the goatskin to dry on a rock then looked at the meat. It was more than he could eat, and even left to dry in the smoke of the fire it would go bad in a few days. The shadowed gorge was too cold and damp to dry meat properly. On impulse he looked over at the hag. ‘Would you like some meat?’
They were the first words he had spoken to her since Euridice had left.
She smiled. It was a genuine smile, he realised. ‘Goat meat is always welcome.’ She waited while he cut off a leg, then lugged the rest of the meat over to her rock. A few flies buzzed, the first of spring. She waved them away. ‘You will be going soon?’
‘No.’
She looked at him, her surprise as genuine as her smile had been. ‘But the leaves—’
‘The leaves are green on the trees. I know. But there are still no shadows in the valley.’
‘Young man.’ The voice was strangely kind. ‘She isn’t coming out. Believe me, no woman in all the time I have sat here has ever wanted to leave the Shrine, once they have joined it.’
Nikko said nothing.
The hag sighed. ‘Thank you for the meat.’
He sang that night.
He hadn’t sung since before the Lion Gate fell.
But now as the thin cheese slice of the moon crossed above the cliffs he felt the music come.
It was a song without words, without the music of the harp or lyre. The sort of song he had sung as a small boy, when he hadn’t known that music could have lyrics. It was a song of loss, and love and longing, a song of falling and unfurling leaves.
And then he slept. When he awoke the hag was waiting for him, sitting by his side. A thin stream of sunlight trickled down the cliff face, sending brief shadows flickering on the rocks.
The hag smiled again. ‘Come,’ she said, ‘I’ll show you what no man has seen before. I’ll show you why Euridice will stay.’
CHAPTER 42
‘Why me, when you have brought no other man?’ It was the first time he had spoken since she had taken his hand and led him into the cave.
The cave smelled of damp and dust and bats and something else: blood, he thought. How many freshly killed sacrifices had been brought in here?
For a moment the hag said nothing. And then she said, ‘Because I heard you sing. Because you waited. Because I trust you.’
‘Trust me?’
She turned to face him. They had gone so far that almost all the light was gone. Only the grey dust on her face sh
owed in the darkness. ‘I trust you not to tell what you have seen; to leave when you have seen that she is happy. To not look back.’
‘Why can’t I look back?’
‘If you look back you might know the way in again. This is a place of women, not for men. I trust you to look down so you don’t see where you are going. You can come here once. No more.’
The words came from the depths of his being. ‘If Euridice is happy—if she wants to stay—I promise I will go. I won’t come back.’
‘Good.’
She began to guide him again, feeling the way now with her hands against the rock. He could sense rather than see passages leading off from the cave they were in: each twisted into the earth with a whisper of wind, the scent of darkness, rock and dust.
For a moment he wondered if she was leading him to sacrifice, if a dagger would come from the darkness, deep into his heart, spilling his blood for the Mother just as Euridice’s might have been spilled a season ago. But somehow, for some reason, he trusted her, as she had trusted him.
He’d keep his promise. But how could Euridice still want to stay here, hidden in this darkness? Even if they had candles, torches…she was a creature of the light. How could she live cramped up inside a dark mountain?
She would see him and then she’d take his hand. They’d come away together, ride Pegasus back from the gorge, into the sun.
All at once he was aware of light. Daylight, not candle light: white light, not the yellow or red of flames. It grew brighter, then brighter still. He could see the sides of the cave now, hung with cobwebs. A bat fluttered above them, then plunged back into the dark.
The cave narrowed. The hag slipped around a ledge, smooth at the top from years of clothes brushing it. Nikko followed her, then stopped.
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