by Laura Gill
The high priestess wove at the loom, her hands deftly working the shuttle. “I’ve already explained that to you.”
“But I don’t want to be a Nobody.”
“Of course you don’t, but you need to be filled up.” She paused her work to look at me. “Why do you think it takes nine months to make a child? It has to grow, to be filled up with mother’s love and everything else it needs to survive. And remember, newborns aren’t named right away. For the first ten days of their life, they, too, are Nobody.” Phileia smiled. She had a gap between her two front teeth that I never noticed before. “Once you are filled with the knowing and being to become a priestess and Woman of the Mountain, then we can put a name to you.”
Dejected, I stared at the floor. “Do I have to wait nine months?”
“That depends on how quickly you learn and adapt. I myself went through the ritual, as do all priestesses before they’re dedicated. I had my name stripped, but as I remember telling you, I was a willful and lazy child. I clung to being a king’s daughter.” Strangely, she laughed. “Why, I didn’t even understand what it meant to be the daughter of a king!”
All I heard was that I must wait, and earn the privilege of becoming Somebody. “I suppose.”
“You suppose?” Phileia harrumphed. “Look at me. The first thing a Woman of the Mountain learns is to hold her head high.”
*~*~*~*
The first thing I learned as a Woman of the Mountain was hard manual labor.
I had to rise before Helios, in the hazy chilliness of late autumn, to milk the sacred goats and carry the steaming liquid to the cheese-maker’s cave and the house whilst watching my footing on the rough ground. Ktimene had already cuffed me thrice for being careless and spilling the precious milk. Was it my fault that I had never done such labor and now struggled with it? If Ktimene wanted the milk fetched properly, she should have done it herself; she was certainly strong enough. Despite the scratchy mittens and rags I wore as protection against the cold, the weight of the liquid caused the wooden handles of the buckets to bite grooves into the tender flesh of my palms.
Not only did I have to help bake the bread if I wanted to eat, but Phileia ordered me to work the stone quern to grind the grain into flour, too. What backbreaking work that was! So that was why the kitchen women at Argos had such bent backs. If I continued at it much longer, I would turn into a hunchback with knotted hands and chilblains before I ever reached womanhood. Even washing my own clothes, which the palace laundresses made look easy, was hard, when I had to scour the stains with stones and stinging lye, and wring every drop from the saturated fabric before Phileia allowed me to hang the laundry on lines stretched near the hearth. I told myself I would thenceforth be more careful with my clothes, and not get them so dirty, on account of my red and blistered hands.
“There are tricks to make the work easier, and the rest will come with age and strength. And calluses.” Phileia raised her palms to show me the horn of a working woman’s skin. I thought such hands ugly, a mark of low birth. Danaë of Argos had soft, white flesh, the hands of a king’s daughter. At this moment, Danaë would be snugly dressed in the softest, finest woolens, sitting beside a brazier in a high, frescoed chamber. She would not have wake early to perform menial chores, but would spend winter afternoons spinning and embroidering with the court ladies in the comforts of the Larissa’s weaving room.
Less than a season had passed since Sostrate and the other Women of the Mountain had come for me. Nonetheless, with each passing day it became ever harder to hold onto myself as a princess of Argos. I struggled, reassuring myself every time someone called me Nobody that I was Somebody called Danaë. I whispered my true name into the pillow every night. Sometimes I cried, more for the pain of having lost myself than for any real homesickness.
Yet only at night could I dwell on such grim personal matters, for between them Phileia and Ktimene kept me preoccupied during the day. Aside from my daily chores, I had to memorize the particulars of various ceremonies and offerings which I found strange. The Women of the Mountain offered neither prayers nor libations to Helios to lengthen the days, and likewise never invoked storm-wielding Zeus, Poseidon Earth-shaker, or Apollo, or even Hades, whose annual release of Persephone allowed spring to come.
“Women do not need men to survive,” Ktimene told me. “We do well enough on our own out here.”
“But there are no babies without men.” I dared counter her only because Phileia was there, and because the high priestess had commanded me to challenge Ktimene in debate if I disagreed.
Ktimene narrowed her eyes. “We’ve no need of men here. A woman who trusts in the Mistress and the strength of her own heart and own two hands is greater in spirit than any princess or queen bound to a mortal king.” Her hands twitched as though she wanted to emphasize her point with a cuff to the ear, but while she somehow managed to keep her more castigatory urges under control she made no effort to modulate her derisive tone, implying that Argive noblewomen like my stern aunt, even my mother, were undeserving of the goddess’s blessings.
Bristling at the not-so-subtle insult, I would have retorted had I known what to say. Phileia intervened then, stopping the whirling of her spindle to add, “Sadly, the women of the towns and neighboring lands have forgotten much, and we sometimes forget to be forgiving of their ignorance.” She glared at Ktimene as she stated this. “But we who live in the mountains remember better. Ah, keep spinning.” She nodded toward the spindle lying idle in my lap. “It’ll keep your fingers warm, and maintain your spirit’s communion with the Mistress who granted you that skill.”
I held my tongue against pointing out that Cyrene and then Wordeia had given me the art of spinning, for saying so was blasphemy against Lady Athena, the bones of whose far-ranging owls hung everywhere. I did not want to end up like Arachne, as a shriveled brown spider hanging from a cobweb in the rafters.
“Why do you hate men?” I asked them instead.
Both women stared at me as though I asked why the sky was purple. Ktimene glowered and instinctively raised her hand. Phileia regarded me goggle-eyed. “Outis, who says we hate men?” she sputtered. “I know I never said that. Of course they’re necessary, or the Mistress wouldn’t have created them, but here in the sanctuary the women are all unmarried, and many—”
“Men are the source of all ills.” Ktimene voiced her disagreement right over the high priestess’s explanation. “They violate the earth with their greed and bloodlust, and they subjugate the natural preeminence of women.” She smacked her fist against her palm for emphasis. “Who do you think released evil into the world? Pandora? That’s the story they tell now. But we know better.” Her eyes glittered feverishly like the obsidian chips set into the eye-sockets of the presiding stuffed raven, and her face flushed scarlet. “It was that fool Epimetheus, the one without forethought, brother of that sacrilegious thief Prometheus.”
“Ktimene!” Phileia’s interjection cut sharply across the younger priestess’s tirade. “Sit down and cool your grousing.” She waited for the woman to comply before addressing me. “Outis, that’s not a question you ought to ask around here. Most of the women you’ve encountered here originally came as initiates preparing for their lives as wives and mothers, as the local girls do when they’ve reached womanhood, but some refused to return to their villages. They begged for sanctuary instead, to escape unwanted betrothals and cruel kinsmen. I bear men no particular grudge. I had a kind father, but some women can’t say the same.” She nodded toward Ktimene, sulking on her footstool clenching and unclenching her hands in her lap. I wondered why the younger priestess so despised men. “Women in distress naturally seek out their mothers, mortal or immortal. We accept all who come, and ask no questions.”
Afterward, the incident bothered me to the point where I could not sleep that night, but instead stayed awake in the darkness listening to the rhythm of Ktimene’s loud snoring. It was not so much the threat of violence that pricked my nerves, for I had gradu
ally come to accept her surliness as part of her goddess-granted character, but the nagging certainty that the two priestesses had left things unsaid.
Phileia had mentioned her father. I had a kind father. Other women can’t say the same. Ktimene openly loathed men. They spoke of cruel kinsmen, and women seeking refuge. Did I hate men? I only knew Father, and the bard Archelaus, and some of the sentries who had regularly patrolled the palace’s upper floors.
So did I hold any particular grudge against Father? Was it any surprise that I searched and discovered that I resented him? Who would not, after being cast off and banished into the wilderness without even their name? I clenched my teeth in the darkness and silently beseeched Lady Athena that Father should lose all his hair, that he should have terrible stomachaches for a week, and that he should instantly regret his awful mistake and send for me again, and that when I arrived home he should beg forgiveness in front of the whole court, and heap me with jewels and pretty dresses and ribbons for my suffering.
It felt good to ill-wish him, and simultaneously uncomfortable, as if I was committing a sacrilege. Athena must have rejected my prayer as unbecoming an obedient daughter, for in the end it was I who suffered the regret and the stomachache.
*~*~*~*
Phileia took me aside the next day to explain, “Don’t mind Ktimene’s occasional outbursts. She burns hot with devotion to the Mistress.” Why did she lie? I was no ignorant child. I would be nine at midwinter, and I understood readily enough when adults kept secrets. Also, I could comprehend the difference between devotion and other, darker compulsions. To my mind, Ktimene seemed a deeply unhappy woman. Did she chafe at the confinement of the sanctuary? At being forbidden to become a mother or wife?
Even though we were alone, I did not ask Phileia because my instincts told me that she, not perceiving my ability to understand, would try to mollify me with more lies. “I think she’s angry at me because she doesn’t like me.” If there were secrets concealed in that household, I would learn them eventually.
Phileia tugged her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. “Nonsense!” she exclaimed. “Why would she not like you?”
“Because I’m an Argive,” I answered, “and I don’t believe everything she says about men or the Mistress.”
“So you don’t.” Phileia clucked her tongue as she wound her spun thread around the top of her spindle. “It’s of no consequence if you don’t share her sentiments about men. I myself bear them no particular ill will, though I sometimes disapprove of their boorish behavior and their misguided notions of superiority.” The glance she cast in my direction was stern, mirroring the changed tone of her voice when she spoke again. “But there can be no disagreement about your devotion to the Mistress. When you’re consecrated to her service, you serve utterly, with a whole heart.”
I tried to keep my hands busy, but I had not quite mastered the art of spinning smoothly when distressed. “Even though she’s not my goddess?” Holding my breath, I waited for the high priestess to reprimand my impiety, to box my ears, but when she did not, I explained further, “She’s too strange. Everywhere are bones and eyes and darkness.” I kept going, though my mouth felt dry and my hands trembled. “I believe in Zeus and Queen Hera, in Artemis, and Athena, and Apollo and—”
“And you want to go home to Argos, to what’s familiar, is that it?” Phileia finished gravely. She fingered the combed-out fleece of the rolag, rubbing the wool’s natural lanolin into her wrinkled skin to soften it. “The Mountain is your only home. The Argive girl you speak of was called Danaë, a king’s daughter. You’re Outis, a young maid without a mother or father, a birthplace or a name. What are the Argive gods to you? There’s only the Mistress, Potnia Theron, she who controls life and death, who embodies every goddess that is or will be, and no matter how much you deny her godhead you can’t turn your face from her.”
I stared at the pale worm her rolling fingers made of the rolag. “I’m not a Nobody,” I insisted, without meeting her gaze. “My name is Danaë.” Yet the words falling from my tongue sounded strange, unconvincing, even to my own ears, as though I were merely a peasant pretending at being a princess of Argos. No matter how much I tried to cling to my true self, a hole existed where “Danaë” had been. With each day, each night spent in bewildered contemplation, the loss seemed to me a dark and dreadful sorcery.
Then Phileia moved, pushing aside her spindle and wool basket to grasp me hard by the chin, to compel my attention. “There is no Danaë,” she barked. “Danaë is dead, devoured by the Mistress, buried forever in her bosom. You are now Outis. Nobody.” Her fingers pinched the flesh of my jaw. “You will humble yourself before the Mistress as bidden.” I grasped her wrist in a feeble attempt to get her to release me. Phileia only tightened her hold. “You will accept the name she bestows on you, and you will serve her faithfully and obediently for the rest of your days, as a consecrated virgin, and you will be grateful for the privilege.”
“I don’t want to serve her!” Was she not listening? I slitted my eyes in a feeble attempt to suppress angry tears. “I’m not a nobody!”
Her digging fingers compressed my mouth into a fish’s. No doubt she would beat me for my insolence, or have Ktimene do it, but at that moment I did not care what she did or thought. Better to protest now, before any oaths were taken, than later. “Do you think you have a choice, girl? Where do you think you, a creature with no name, can flee? You think you can run away and take a new name, just like that? The Mistress is everywhere.” I heard my breath whistling through my smashed lips. Phileia’s fingers were surely leaving bruises. “You can’t have anything but what she bestows, and if you continue this way, willful and stupid, you’ll have nothing.”
“I’ve nothing now,” I hissed.
She released me so suddenly that I lost my balance and tipped from the footstool onto the floor beside the hearth. “Count yourself fortunate, foolish girl. You don’t know what it is to have nothing.”
Then she ordered me to help her tend the Mistress of the House by measuring out the food and drink offerings for the kernos. Afterward, I sulked with my back against the hearth, a deliberate insult to the Mistress for which Phileia sternly took me to task.
“Don’t think she won’t notice.” Her fingers savagely twisted my ear. After that first, startled exclamation of pain, I held back to deny her and the goddess the satisfaction. “How ignorant you are, thinking the Argive way the only way!” She released me as suddenly as she had seized onto my ear, and circled around to loom over me. “Ktimene and I have told you many times that you wouldn’t be long without a proper name, that this was done for your protection. Would you prolong the waiting with your foolish rebellion?”
Red-faced and burning, I crossed my arms defensively. I had begun to feel stupid for having deliberately shown my back to a very ancient, potent goddess. Slowly, reluctantly, I maneuvered around, while keeping my gaze downcast. Phileia would have had me throw myself on the mercy of that little idol, but I was not going to capitulate that easily. No matter what anybody said, I had begun life as a princess of Argos, not as a peasant’s brat to be exposed on a mountainside because my family already had too many mouths to feed.
“Go to bed,” Phileia ordered, “and think hard before you question the Mistress and your elders again.”
My grumbling belly kept me half-awake, so I noted when Ktimene returned home from her responsibilities in the cave sanctuary, and overheard hushed snippets of conversation between her and Phileia. I heard “Outis,” then whispers and mutterings, then finally Ktimene’s voice, so unsuited for the indoors, asking point-blank, “Shall I whip her?”
“No. This one cannot be beaten into submission.” I dared not open my eyes or shift position lest I betray my wakefulness. “She’s not ordinary, and she can’t help her unfortunate circumstances. A priestess must be able to bend without breaking. No. Persuasion is a better tool to use with stubborn royal daughters.”
But Phileia did not forget or immediate
ly forgive my insolence. Although she let me eat in the morning, she placed other restrictions on me. I had to sit outside in the afternoon to spin wool. My mittened hands worked clumsily, and more often than not I found myself idly listening to the mournful whistling of the wind and watching snowflakes drifting like dandelion heads down from the mountain heights. Pretty though they were, they dampened the wool of my mittens and the fleece attached to my spindle, hindering my ability to draw out a proper thread.
Overhead, the owl bones rattled in the wind, a constant reminder that the immortals watched everything I did.
When Phileia called me inside to bask in the warmth of the hearth. “You see what blessings the Mistress has to offer? Men lived in the cold darkness of caves and ate raw meat before she as Athena instructed them in the arts of making shelter. I know they believe that in Argos. They believe it in the villages, too.” Her withered hands helped me undo my wrappings. As she did, I noticed she purposely overlooked my ruined spinning. “Prometheus had no need to steal the secret of fire. The Mistress would have granted that gift, too, in the fullness of time.”
Phileia must have considered me particularly naive if she thought she could sweet-talk me into believing as she did. Maybe what she said about the Mistress as Athena teaching primitive men to build shelters was true, but unlike her I could not blame Prometheus for the theft. Gods did not grant gifts without exacting a harsh price in return. Cyrene used to assure me that Prometheus must have had a perfectly legitimate reason for stealing fire from Olympus. “The immortal gods don’t always understand mortals. We have ills like hunger and cold and sickness,” she had said. “Why, Prometheus needed fire to cook and keep wild animals away. And he shared the fire he stole with everybody else, so it’s not like he committed a great sin.”
I nodded in semblance of agreement and found a quiet task that would not disturb the napping Ktimene, whose methods of persuasion took the form of muttered threats. “I would have whipped your backside raw. You need a good drubbing to rid you of your nonsense and insolence,” she had told me that morning in the goat pen.