by Mobi Warren
“At least tell me what you saw.” Beau said.
“I don’t ever want to go back, Beau.”
“Come on Mel, just tell me what you saw.”
Melissa slipped off the bench and sat on the ground. “When I travelled this time, it wasn’t to the shrine but to some kind of filthy jail where Hippasus is being held. It was horrible. Just a pile of straw smeared with manure and a bowl of smelly water. His legs and arms were tied. They’re treating him like a goat.”
“We don’t treat any of our goats like that.”
“No, of course not. I can’t believe they sacrificed human beings, a little boy!”
“Why do they want to kill Hippasus anyway?”
Melissa reached for the basket of bees, turned it upside down, and shook all the bees to the ground. “They blame him for a fever that’s killed a lot of people.”
Beau took the basket from Melissa and started to pick up bees.
“Don’t bother, Beau.”
“But there must be something we can do, some way to reverse his death sentence.”
“Beau, we live twenty-six hundred years in his future. Face it, it’s already happened. He’s dead.”
“Would your Mom know how to help?”
“Why would she? She doesn’t know about my seizures. You’re the only one I’ve told.”
Beau took out his ball of clay and rolled it between his hands. “I just mean she might know about human sacrifice in Ancient Crete. If we knew more, maybe we could figure out a way to help him.”
“You just don’t get it, Beau.” Melissa stood up and turned towards the porch steps. She looked over her shoulder and said, “Beau, go home. I want to be alone. Can’t you leave me alone for once?”
“Mel—”
“I mean it. Just go. And don’t bother to pick up any more bees.”
“Mel, it’s taken weeks to fold these.”
“I never want to see an origami bee again.”
“But what about your vow? The bees are for your father, right?”
Melissa glared at Beau. “Are you kidding, Beau? The real bees are gone and nothing’s going to cheer up my father. Especially nothing I do.”
Melissa stomped up the porch steps, entered the house and slammed the door. She’d seen the hurt look in Beau’s face, but it was too late to take back her words.
When she was sure that Beau was gone, Melissa went outside and gathered up the bees, crumpling many of them in her hands. She tossed them, basket and all, into the compost bin. She slumped down on the porch steps and buried her face in her hands. Hermes nudged her with his cool nose as tears stained her cheeks.
She wanted to erase the past month from her mind, but how could she? She had shared something with Hippasus that felt extraordinary and real. And what about the Yolo bees? What was she supposed to do? Maybe Beau was right about her mother. But she couldn’t tell her about the visions. Her mother would never believe any of it. Finally, Melissa rehearsed what to say before she tapped her holo-band.
It was late afternoon in Texas, close to midnight in Crete. She hoped it wasn’t too late, but when a virtual image of Claire Berry rose into the air, she could see her mother was having dinner at some outdoor restaurant. Her mother’s cheeks were slightly sunburned and she was holding a glass of wine in one hand. A platter piled with stuffed grape leaves was set on the table in front of her. Melissa was surprised to see Colin Anderson sitting nearby. What was he doing in Dia? Her mother had never mentioned he was going to be part of the dig team.
“Melissa?” her mother looked happily surprised. “I’m having a late dinner with colleagues.”
“Oh, sorry. Should I call back later?”
“No, of course not, just let me move to a quieter spot. There. What’s up?”
“I was thinking about that statuette you found.”
“The young athlete? A gorgeous piece, isn’t it? It made me think of you.”
Melissa noticed the running shoe charm on the silver chain around her mother’s neck and instinctively raised her hand to touch her own.
“So, have you found out if there was a race on Dia?”
Her mother shook her head of red curls and half-frowned. “No, I’m afraid not. We’ve sifted through several layers of the site and except for a few shards of broken vases and stones from a very old shrine, there’s not been anything to confirm my theory yet.”
“Nothing at all?”
Her mother shrugged. “Afraid not. I always knew it was a long shot.” Claire Berry looked at her daughter and her eyes registered concern. “Are you alright, Melissa?”
“I’m fine, Mom. Hey, I was wondering, um, could that site have been used for human sacrifice?”
Her mother’s eyebrows shot up. “Goodness, what made you think of that?”
“Well, didn’t they sacrifice humans in ancient times?”
“Sometimes,” her mother conceded, “but it was rare in the eras I study. Sometimes a community might try to purge itself of a plague or other misfortune by selecting a scapegoat, usually someone already accused of crimes and slated for execution.”
Melissa fingered her racing shoe charm. “Would they kill someone just because he was different?”
“How do you mean?” Her mother looked puzzled.
“Well, if someone looked different, like if he had a hoof instead of a foot?”
“A hoof?”
Melissa realized how silly it must sound and quickly added, “You know, an infant born with a clubfoot or something.”
“Infant exposure was certainly practiced. Fathers had the right to decide if a newborn lived or died. But why this sudden interest in human sacrifice?”
“It’s just something I came across while reading and was wondering about. Did victims chosen for sacrifice ever get a reprieve?”
“A reprieve? Not that I know of unless they managed to escape.” Her mother twirled the glass of wine in her hand then took a sip. She looked slightly distracted. She probably wanted to get back to dinner with Colin.
“Melissa, you seem a little agitated. Is something going on that I should know about?”
“No, everything’s fine.”
Her mother touched her running shoe charm. “I miss you, Honeybee. I miss our runs.”
“I don’t use that nickname anymore, Mom.”
“Alright, but I do miss our runs.”
“Me, too. I’m running a 5K on Sunday.”
“Are you? That’s great. Let’s find a race to run together as soon as I can visit you in Texas.”
“Sure, because Ba’s never going to.”
Her mother smiled. “No, he was never into running. Well, I should probably rejoin my colleagues.”
“Okay, Mom. Bye.”
“Bye, Melissa. I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
That evening, Melissa half-heartedly poked a pair of chopsticks into the bowl of fried rice she’d prepared for dinner. The usual pile of fruity and veggie pills sat by her plate next to a glass of water. Her father served himself a second bowl. He hadn’t shown that much appetite in days.
“Ba, is the Yolo queen still alive?”
“Yes, and oddly enough, she and the remaining worker bees have calmed down. They even seem cheerful. They act as if they expect the other bees to return.”
Surprised, Melissa sat up in her chair. “How do you tell if a honeybee is cheerful?” she asked.
“Part of my research has been to measure emotional response in honeybees. I’m pretty sure I can identify cheerfulness, or at least a form of honeybee optimism.”
Melissa realized there was a lot about her father’s research she didn’t know about. Another time, she’d have to ask him about honeybee emotions.
“Do you think the other bees might still return?”
“It’s prett
y doubtful. They’ve been gone for several days.” He sounded resigned, but Melissa’s spirits suddenly perked. Her father placed his bowl in the sink and retired to his study, leaving the dishes for Melissa. She washed them up in a hurry, grabbed a pack of origami paper then signaled Hermes to jog with her to Beau’s. Rocio directed her to the goat shed where she found Beau sitting on a stool milking a goat.
“Beau, I’m really sorry about earlier.”
He shrugged.
“I was upset.”
He pointed to a corner of the shed. There sat the basket of bees she had thrown into the compost bin.
“Where? How did you?”
“I figured you might do something rash. I didn’t want you to regret it later.”
Melissa didn’t know whether to be angry that he’d spied on her or grateful. She sat down beside him to watch him milk Pandora. The goat munched contentedly on some kind of pellets while Beau squeezed her milk into a silver bucket. As the milk splashed against the metal sides of the pail, it made a pleasant sound like the shaking of hand bells.
“Those alfalfa pellets she’s eating, they’re worth their weight in gold,” he said.
“Aren’t there milking machines to do that work?”
“Sure, but sometimes it’s nicer to do things the old way.”
“Is that hard to do?”
“Not once you get the hang of it. Here, let me show you.” Beau stood up from the stool and gestured for Melissa to sit on it instead. He crouched behind her and placed his hands over hers, showing her how to grasp the teat with her thumb and forefinger and then squeeze with the rest of her fingers in a smooth, successive motion. Melissa found the firm, confident touch of Beau’s hands around her own comforting.
“Ba says the Yolo queen is acting optimistic. I’m going to try to travel again, Beau. I’m scared but I know I have to do it.”
“Right now?”
“Right now. You in?”
“You bet. This is the last goat I have to milk. We can wash our hands and be off. Back to the lavender field?”
Melissa shook her head. “No, I thought to the riverbank. They want to drown Hippasus and I’m thinking being near water might help.”
“Okay. And I can show you where the trail for Sunday’s 5K starts.”
Amethea felt battered by waves of fear, anger, and remorse. She could not quiet her mind. Hippasus was sentenced to drown at high tide in two days, bound and tethered like a goat to a wooden post in the sea. A scapegoat, a sacrifice to cleanse the island and appease the gods. She had condemned her own brother by her cowardice; had placed winning a race above his life. Her tears fell as she placed wild poppies and daisies on the shrine altar. In her other hand she clutched the gold votive figure of the goddess. She pressed it to her breast before placing it in the center of the flowers then lay down on the cracked marble floor. The broken tiles were like a scattering of bones.
A waning gibbous moon, white as a bowl of milk, spilled light over the shrine. She searched for the blue heart of the lion and found it; but it brought no comfort to her own bruised heart. Dove had followed her to the shrine and tried to comfort her by licking her tear-stained face.
“I do not deserve your pity, Dove.” She looked into the hound’s amber, almond-shaped eyes. “When the elders came for Hippasus, you growled and would have protected him with your sharp teeth, but I held you back.” She buried her face in Dove’s soft blond fur and wept.
She thought back to that scene, how the elders had first spoken to Hippasus in sweet voices, saying they intended to escort him to a banquet in his honor. Hippasus did not believe them and tried to hobble away. One man caught him and the other placed a rope around his neck.
“If you won’t come willingly, we’ll drag you, son of a goat,” the man snarled.
Hippasus had implored Amethea with his eyes, but she stood by impassively.
“Go with them, brother.” Karpos had told her she must steel her heart.
“Thanks to Karpos,” the man who held the rope said, “we have a sacrifice to end the fever.”
Amethea looked at him, stunned. “It was my uncle’s idea, not orders of the Council?”
“Only a man as sure of himself as your uncle would have suggested a human sacrifice. That took some guts,” said the other man.
Amethea felt sickened as she watched them lead Hippasus away. Her uncle had lied to her, betrayed his own kin.
Now as she lay on the cold stones in the shrine, she cried, “Artemis, Goddess of Bees, tell me what I must do to save my brother! Send me a dream!”
An hour passed, then two. The moon slid across the sky. Amethea lay as if paralyzed, too miserable to fall asleep. Finally, she sat up and hugged her knees to her chest, then reached for the woolen shawl wrapped around her aulos. She placed the flutes in her mouth and played a mournful tune, lifting her fingers up and down over the holes. An owl, white as sea foam, passed overhead on silent wings and for an instant blotted out moon and stars.
Amethea put her flutes down and crawled to a corner of the shrine where Hippasus kept his pebbles. He had made a counting sequence with them, placing one pebble, then two, then three, all the way to ten pebbles arranged in a tidy triangle. He had lined up other pebbles to create geometric figures including several hexagons linked together like a honeycomb. Hippasus had told her that the pebbles were helping him to learn the language of honeybees. She placed her palm over the pebbles now and softly counted from one to ten. What had Hippasus meant? Did honeybees speak in numbers and shapes?
“Goat boy! Goat boy!” the village boys had taunted Hippasus, and the uncouth tanner made hand gestures to ward off evil when he saw her brother. But prior to the fever, no one ever suggested he deserved death. The fever had poisoned their minds. Rich and influential Karpos had darkened their minds even more. She now knew it was Karpos himself who insisted on a sacrifice and had offered his own nephew, pretending it was a noble, selfless act, when what he really wanted was to rid himself of any duty to the boy. Amethea wanted desperately to take back her agreement with him. She should have fled with Hippasus, but where? And now it was too late, too late.
As Amethea cupped her hand over the pebbles, she felt a sudden warm pulse rise from them. Startled, she lifted her hand. A small light flickered on and off over the pebbles. Was it some kind of insect, a firefly? No, it looked like a honeybee. Several other bees popped in and out of sight, each like a tiny burning lamp. One dropped lifeless among the pebbles. Amethea stared at it and then nudged it with her finger. She gasped when the body of the bee unfolded itself into a small square. She lifted the square and peered at it. It was made of the same material as the ornament bee her brother had shown her, the one that had flown into the tree snag to join the shrine bees. The square folded itself back into a plump bee and flew to the altar stone where the gold votive of the bee goddess began to softly glow. An image of a dark-haired girl running flashed across her mind as it had once before. The Bee Maker was sending her a message!
Amethea knew what she must do.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
PYTHAGORAS
OF SAMOS
At sunrise, Amethea left the shrine. She draped her shawl over her head and shoulders and carried a laurel branch, the sign of a supplicant, as she made her way to the home of her friend Kleis. Kleis’ father sat on the Council and her mother had been a trusted friend of Amethea’s mother. Amethea hurried over the stony path until she reached a house with a clay-tiled roof, three times the size of her own cottage. The mud brick walls were painted in swirls of blue and green.
She entered the courtyard and was met by a slave girl with thin arms and a sullen expression. When the girl returned with Kleis’ mother, Amethea was shocked to see how drawn and pale her face was. Her eyes were ringed with dark shadows and patches of her golden hair had been yanked out, a sign of mourning. With a stiff nod she acknowledged Amethea but did n
ot invite her to sit. Her mantle was torn; strips of cloth hung like limp snakes as if she wore a version of Medusa’s severed head as a breastplate of sorrow. Or rage.
A wall of doubt closed around Amethea. Someone had died in the household. The woman stared at her with vacant, accusing eyes. Amethea barely managed a whisper when she spoke. “As a sister-friend to Kleis and in remembrance of your friendship with my mother, I come as a supplicant to speak with your husband.”
“Dead, both dead,” the woman said in a clipped monotone.
“Kleis, dead?” Amethea’s voice trembled.
“Kleis. My husband. The fever stole them both in the night.”
“Oh, no!” Amethea cried, “I loved Kleis.”
“Why are you here?” the woman demanded.
“I came to beseech your husband’s help for my condemned brother.”
The woman spat on the stones before Amethea’s feet. “There is not a person on Dia who would spare the monster Hippasus.”
“Hippasus cannot be blamed for the fever,” Amethea protested. “Our own mother is dead.”
“Leave! and take your polluted words with you.” Kleis’ mother turned abruptly and disappeared through the door of her house. The slave girl scowled at Amethea before following on the heels of her mistress.
Her eyes stinging with tears, Amethea stumbled over narrow goat trails. She couldn’t bear to return to the cottage where wilted celery boughs hung in the house like ghosts. At last she turned her steps in the direction of the village market, her shawl drawn over her face so only her eyes showed. She slipped between vendor stalls where merchants hawked clay pots, jars of goat cheese, and packets of purple dye ground from seashells. The bustle of life continued despite the fever, despite the death of Kleis, despite the fate that awaited Hippasus.
She glanced up and spotted Dika at the far end of the square where she was busy scooping up sesame seeds with an olivewood ladle. Amethea turned away and saw a crowd gathering near the market center. There a Dia elder, perched on a block of marble, began to address the crowd. She stifled a gasp when she saw Hippasus behind him, his neck and hands bound with ropes.