Goddess of Yesterday

by Caroline B. Cooney

  But they sailed safely away, every one of them, even the backstabber, and I stood among the dead.

  I sank down into the water.

  The octopus let go and swam off.

  I was alone.

  A full moon came out, casting silver light upon my task. Diving underwater time and time again, I retrieved the sail of a sunken ship. It was surprising that the pirates had not taken the sails. Cloth is harder to come by than wood.

  With difficulty I hauled the big soaking piece to shore. In this I wrapped my hostage father's body.

  Lying in the sand were shovels from the gold mines, brought by men with no other choice of weapon. I dragged the corpse high on the beach and dug a hole as deep as I could. The same seawater that had ruined the king's gold mine now filled his shallow grave. After I covered him, I swam back out and retrieved an oar. It was not the king's oar, beautifully painted and retired to a position of honor in his throne room. It was just an oar.

  I stabbed it into the sand to mark his grave.

  So here I stand in the ruins.

  Every song must be dedicated to the powers above, and I dedicate this song to the goddess of my birth island.

  But it is a song not finished. I swear to my goddess and to Medusa: I shall take my revenge upon the men of the twisted fish.

  THE DAY AFTER THE PIRATES attacked Siphnos, I retrieved a second sail and created a tent to shelter myself from the heat. I could not leave the narrow beach. I was trapped there by piles of the dead; by eagles and vultures and gulls come to feast on them.

  I kept track of the days by marking a stone with a bit of charcoal that had once been some treasure made of wood. I ate bread and oil from supplies abandoned on shore when the pirates saw Medusa. There was even plenty of fresh water, the pirates having planned to restock their ships with our jars.

  By the fifth day, I was out of food.

  Rain began on the eighth day, surprising me very much, for it generally does not rain until autumn. We had not had rain in months and the earth would not accept it. Rain ran in sheets down the terraced fields, pulling walls over, flooding the ruined town, changing the ashes of the palace to mud, which slid over the cliff and dissolved in the sea.

  Rain to a farmer is joy. Rain to a sailor is the gods pissing through a sieve. I agreed with the sailors. It rained hard all day and all night, but on the ninth dawn, it slowed to a drizzle.

  Three is of course a magic number. It is best to call upon three gods or to call upon one god three times. But on the third day after the attack, I had had no taste for gods who abandoned us. Nine being an even holier number than three, however, on the ninth morning I gathered my courage.

  I walked uphill and forced myself to pass through the stumps of the Curved Gate. The courtyard was packed with bodies in various states of decay, all the insects that live on meat feasting on what had once been people. I breathed through my apron.

  The pirates had taken the sheep. The goats had vanished into the hills. With practice, perhaps I could get back the skill I had lost weaving in a princess prison and bring down a rabbit. I scavenged among the bodies of fighters to find a sling, a pouch of shot and a knife for skinning and then I went back out the Curved Gate.

  The climb was not the usual dusty scrabble. I slipped continually in mud. Part of the path to the ancient olive had been destroyed and I had to walk much farther to get there.

  The rain increased.

  I faced into the wind and washed my hands in the falling drops. If you do not purify yourself first, the gods will spit back your prayers. “O goddess of yesterday,” I said sadly. “Be with me, for I am full of fear and sorrow.”

  I did not know what to do.

  I could cross the spine of sharp hills and descend to the opposite coast. Find another village. Beg for help. But a young girl alone is a target. I had no important name to impress strangers. In fact, people would wonder why I still breathed, when no one else survived. Had the will of the gods been sidestepped?

  Strangers might finish me off without giving me time to explain. They might not believe the explanation anyway. How indeed could a twelve-year-old girl drive away a horde of pirates in their swift ships?

  O goddess, again I have no family. Again I have no home.

  I wondered if the queen was still alive. I wondered if she would rather be dead.

  “Goddess,” I whispered.

  The rain slackened and became mist, and the sun floated on each drop and a rainbow lifted in the sky.

  A nightingale began to sing.

  Nightingales will sing both day and night, unceasing, but usually in spring, when finding mates and raising young. I searched for the plain little bird with the beautiful voice, but could not see him. The song seemed to come right out of the sky.

  Slowly, I realized that it did come out of the sky. It was the voice of my goddess.

  I raised my voice to sing with her, and our voices mingled and my hair began to dry and my hopes to lift.

  “I give you all my jewels now, O goddess,” I told her. “I keep none for myself. Be grateful for this, goddess, and care for me properly now.”

  Slowly I went back down the hills, walking on the tops of terrace walls to stay out of the mud. I went in the scorched and collapsed side entrance of the palace. Both roof and balcony of the women's quarters had collapsed into a pile of timbers and broken beds. I kicked the ashes, wishing I could kick the pirate who had stabbed my hostage father in the back; wishing I could kick Fate.

  And there in the ashes was my Medusa.

  Few humans smile at Medusa, but I cried out in joy, kissed and embraced her.

  She is but seven inches high. She was darker from the fire, but unhurt. The nightingale sang on and I turned my back on the carnage and looked at the noble sea.

  There were sails scudding toward Siphnos.

  Even from so far away, the sailors would know what had happened here. Flags and banners no longer waved from a tower that no longer stood. Walls that had been as white as clouds were black with soot. No ship was moored in the harbor; no women mended nets on the shore.

  Whose sails were these?

  Good men, allies of Nicander?

  Or the very same ships of the very same pirates? Coming back for the loot they had left behind when they were frightened away by a girl and an octopus?

  Should I run or should I hope?

  If I was to run, the time was now. I could follow a goat path and lose myself in the crags and folds of the island.

  Instead, I walked down the narrow path strewn with corpses unburied and treasure uncarried. I put my Medusa in the basket of my apron. I was caked with mud, my clothes stained with ash and gore.

  I stood beside the oar of my hostage father's marker. If these were pirates, they would kill me where I stood.

  But these sails were black with a white horse—the very famous mark of a greater king than Nicander. The ships of Menelaus, the red-haired king of Sparta, Lord of the Main Land, to whom Nicander himself paid tribute.

  The Main Land was a place not surrounded by the sea. I had never seen it. I could not quite imagine it.

  Menelaus would not kill me. But he would want to know why I lived, when my king and princess had died; why I was safe, when my queen had been taken into slavery. Who are you? the red-haired king would demand.

  I am nobody, I would have to say. Only the unwanted hostage daughter of a minor chieftain on a rocky isle.

  It was too much to hope that the king would have me serve gently in his own household. A filthy stinking halfclothed twelve-year-old girl without family has no value. Perhaps Menelaus would parcel me out to a sailor who was short on loot. Although who would consider me a treasure, I could not imagine.

  Or would Menelaus send me back to the mother and father who had never spoken my name again? I no longer remembered what Chrysaor and Iris looked like. My brothers would be men. They might be married. They might have children. I might be an aunt.

  Would Chrysaor and Iris take me in? Or
send their forgotten daughter to live in a shepherd's hut and marry a farmhand?

  But perhaps the isle of my birth had been sacked as fully and viciously as Siphnos. Perhaps none of them were alive either.

  Chrysaor and Iris were so remote. It was Nicander whom I loved, and his wife and daughter for whom I grieved.

  The ships of Sparta drew near. The black sails were taken down, the anchor stones dropped into the water.

  I stood as straight as I could, clasping the long slim handle of the oar as if it were a spear and I its warrior. I would not show fear. I would not call out. I would stand my ground.

  Slowly the men waded toward me. They looked ordinary, so I remained silent. I would not speak except to a captain. Unblinking, I stared beyond them, waiting. Each sailor paused, nervous at my demeanor.

  Well, that was not surprising, since I had recently been Medusa. I suspected that was a trick which would not work twice.

  The men encircled me and I thought of death.

  From one of the ships, a dory was lowered into the water. A red-haired man, assisted from above and from below, that he might not get wet or stumble, stepped in. Two rowers brought him through the shallows.

  He was brawny but not tall, a barrel of a man who gleamed with oil. His beard was very curly. Fashion required a neat projectile, extending a man's chin straight out in front of him, but this man's beard raged over his cheeks and jaw like a bad temper. He was not handsome. His hair was red as a poppy, having no gold in it like my own.

  It could only be the king of Sparta himself. Lord of the Main Land. A man to whom a king such as Nicander was merely a commander. And I—what was I to such a king?

  Menelaus stepped out onto dry land.

  I clung to the oar. I had not been strong enough to dig a deep hole. Every day I had mounded the sand back to keep the body covered. There was no mistaking the shape of what I stood beside.

  The king approached me slowly, boots sinking in the soft sand. “Lady,” he said courteously, “stranger-friend. Tell me what has passed here.”

  I am acquainted with many languages, since our slave women come from so many places. Not all languages treat the word “stranger” and the word “friend” as one, but in our tongue, the words tangle. You must wait out a conversation to see into which category you and the other will fall. Not all strangers are friends, but such must be your hope.

  That the king of Sparta would accord me such courtesy weakened me. I felt tears rising and my throat thickening. I tried to speak, but the horror of what had passed would not land on my tongue. The king laid a hand of comfort on my shoulder to encourage me.

  “They stabbed him in the back,” I said finally, and my voice broke. “The pirates who destroyed our town. I buried him here. My father the king. Nicander. All the rest are dead.”

  The king of the Main Land put his arms around me and kissed my ruined hair. “Poor princess. I am so sorry. How proud your father the king would be that you found the strength to bury him properly. That you marked his grave with a fine oar. That you stand by his resting place as a priestess by her altar.”

  I had referred to Nicander as my father only to honor him. It was a figure of speech used by many, for a king is father to his people. It did not follow that I was his daughter. Yet so Menelaus assumed.

  My fingers grew tight and stiff on the shaft of the oar.

  I did not correct the king of the Main Land.

  Nicander had cared more about gold than about gods. And it seemed that I cared more about staying alive than being true.

  Menelaus had women with him, booty from his own expedition. Two of these were brought ashore to bathe and dress me while the warriors of Menelaus began the terrible task of cleaning up bodies. We do not burn our dead as a rule, but burning was the only choice now. Great pyres were built on the sand, on the path, by the gates, and in the courtyard. The dead were dragged to each heap.

  “Truly,” said Menelaus sadly, “they went through your town with a net.”

  It is a fishing term: When fishermen fling their nets into the sea, they hope to enclose an entire school of fish, drag it back and eat every one.

  “Yes,” I said, thinking of Callisto and of the six-year-old shepherd.

  The women drew water from the well and the men brought a cauldron to heat it, and from the ships came towels and fresh clothing. It was an extraordinary relief to be clean. But an even greater relief was to be cuddled in the soft arms of plump women. They spoke no language that I knew, but they were mothers, and for a moment, they were my mother. Their towns too must have been slashed and burned; their daughters lay dead and their sons murdered; their futures now terrifying and unknown.

  I buried my face in the bosom of a woman newly made slave, while she worked with a comb to get the tangles out. When I was clean and my hair drying in the sun, each redgold curl springing up, the king came back. “You are a princess,” he said approvingly. “Hair like the sunset. Eyes like the sea. Though I do not recall that Nicander had either red hair or blue eyes.”

  No. And no one else would recall that either, since the real daughter of Nicander had had hair as black as night, and eyes dark as deep wells. “My father the king's hair was black as the pines after the sun goes down,” I said, hoping poetry might distract the king. “Thank you for this lovely gown, sir.”

  He had not noticed what I was wearing and looked blankly at the gown. It was for a girl much older than I, pale pink, embroidered with roses and bordered in white. It was loot. I thought about loot. Why be loot if such could be avoided? Why be a slave?

  If Chrysaor and Iris never admitted that I existed—well, then, I would not admit they existed.

  To deny one's father and mother is probably a very bad thing and it is no doubt worse to pretend another set of parents altogether. Kind as they had been, Nicander and Petra had never called me daughter. Friends though we were, Callisto had never called me sister. But I required a lineage and theirs was excellent.

  I said to the king of the Main Land, “Fire chased the pirates out of my palace before they reached our treasury. I think all our treasure still lies within.” For Nicander had been a successful sacker of cities since paying off Apollo. “I trust that you will keep my treasure safe for me, O king, so that when I am grown and you give me in marriage to a noble, I will have an island and much gold to bestow upon my husband.”

  The king's men stood tensely awaiting his answer. Of course they hoped he would laugh at a little girl. They wanted that gold divided among themselves.

  I fixed my eyes upon the king's.

  “You have guarded your treasure well, little princess,” said Menelaus. “I give you my word. I will keep it in trust for you.”

  “Thank you, my king,” I said, as if I had expected nothing less. “Will you leave a man here to take care of me?”

  Menelaus was astonished. “My dear princess, you cannot possibly stay here. It will take a year to rebuild your palace and you have no flocks and no people. You will come home with me. I have a daughter with whom you will be friends. She is younger than you. She's nine, while you look about twelve. I recall that none of Nicander's sons lived. I should remember the name of his precious daughter, but I do not. Please give me your name.”

  I dislike silent prayer. The mind of a human is too small for a god to listen to. To be heard from the sky, a human must call out. But I had no choice.

  O goddess! Hear me even in silence. Is it evil to claim the name and lineage and island of Callisto?

  I heard my goddess clearly.

  I am with you.

  So I had been wrong. The gods could hear a silent prayer.

  “My name,” I said to the king of the Main Land, “is Callisto. It means ‘the fairest.’”

  Menelaus smiled at me. “And the right name for you, my princess. You are fair indeed.”

  And so, for the second time in my life, a king carried me across the water and brought me to his house to be companion to his daughter. Again I sat on a decked sh
ip to listen to the stories of a king.

  Menelaus loaded my treasure into his vessels to be taken to his own palace, where it would be stored apart, Menelaus assured me, and saved for my dowry.

  “But I am surprised you have room in the hollow ships for yet more treasure,” I said to him. “You must have great booty from your latest expedition.” I thought that I would chat with him for a while and then mention the sails of the twisted fish; I would tell him of my plans for revenge and seek his help. He was a great king who had traveled much of the world. He might know who those pirates had been.

  “I collected a little tribute,” said Menelaus, “but I did not sail to sack cities. You see, Callisto, my kingdom, my beloved Sparta, has been ravaged for two winters with a horrible illness. People get a raging fever, and just as they seem to get well, the stomach bursts and they die. We have lost hundreds to this, even strong men and young wives. I went to Delphi to ask the Lord Apollo how to stop this plague that he had sent. His oracle told me to cross the sea to Troy, which has a very important altar, and make offerings to the Palladium.”

  The very same god had taken all those baby sons from Nicander. Now I learned that he would kill hundreds of strong men and young wives. How could men worship this god? On the other hand—how could they not?

  O my king! I thought, but the king in my heart was Nicander.

  “You weep,” said Menelaus gently.

  “For my father,” I said, and it was only half a lie. I opened my mouth to tell Menelaus about the twisted fish when it occurred to me that the pirates might be his allies, having just paid tribute themselves. Menelaus might care more about them than about me.

  Besides, the real Callisto would never have considered taking revenge. The living Petra probably was not considering it now. She was a lady. Even in the suffering of slavery, she would not think of using a weapon, shoving sharp bronze between ribs and into a heart. Although I considered myself as hard as the soles of my feet had once been, I too must be soft.

  So I said, “What is the Palladium?”

  “The most ancient form of the goddess Athena. I shivered to be near it. She came as a huge stone from the sky, pocked and pitted and very strange.”