by Laura Gill
Had I only been menstruating that day, I could have avoided the descent into the cave of Persephone, where generations of Women of the Mountain were buried; a woman’s blood agitated the shades. “Then they’ll expect libations,” Phileia had explained, “and might even follow you back to the domain of the living.”
“Even with the protection of the moon mask?” I asked.
“Even so,” Phileia said, adding, “And they crave a virgin’s newly-flowing blood most of all.”
I had become a woman six weeks ago. Or rather, I had cramped, wailed in frustration, and bled. I hated the woolen plugs Ktimene had given me to stanch the flow, hated the messiness and pain, and thought the prospect of learning the mysteries poor compensation. And to think that I had looked forward to the day when I became a woman! How quickly I became disappointed with the mysteries, which consisted of chants designed to awaken things I as a consecrated virgin had no need for, and of shaving my head and donning vestments that were terribly cumbersome to wear. How I wished I could rewind the thread of Fate and return to being an ignorant child who did not burst into tears on account of foolish whims.
“Myrtale! Hurry along!” A sharp nudge from behind brought me back to attention. Holding the lantern, Ktimene had already penetrated the cave’s opening, and now Phileia urged me to hasten. “I’ll be right behind you.”
As I always did, I heaved a great breath before plunging through the entrance and leaving the sunlight for the dark realm of Persephone and the Mother of the Mountains.
In summer, the path was drier, the way somewhat easier, but past the narrow entrance beyond all sight of daylight, where the floor sloped down in a gentle decline and the cavern opened up, the air was always chilly. Goosebumps pebbled my skin. Only a corpse could have appreciated the grim-dark atmosphere.
No visit to the cave, whether to fetch ritual equipment from a side recess or to clear away the leavings of a sacrifice, was complete without paying reverence to the Mother of the Mountains in her temenos. We went down on our knees so Phileia could beseech the goddess, “Potnia, Mother of the Mountain, you who are also dark Hekate and deathless Persephone, grant us your protection as we walk among the shades of the dead.” Then Ktimene bent double, kissed the cornerstone of the rock-built temenos, and uttered the same prayer. I followed suit, with Phileia adding, “Myrtale is a priestess newly flowered, innocent of the rites of death. Be her guide in this realm. Let her go forth and come safely through.”
Phileia took the lantern from Ktimene, so that when we set forth again, she led the way. Down farther into the cavern, along a narrower path I had never before traversed, air in the caves changed, intensified. I caught a whiff of death and instinctively brought a hand to my nose before remembering Phileia’s instructions not to muss the paint.
Ktimene noticed. “You might as well breathe normally. There’s no escaping the odor.”
The central cavern was large, sloping down toward the heart of the mountain, and contained numerous shadowed recesses. Some were bare rock, while others opened into corridors that ran a labyrinthine course through the darkness, or terminated in dead ends, smaller caverns, or precipitously sudden chasms. The priestesses had never taken me beyond the temenos, never introduced me to the manifold wonders and terrors of the Mistress’s domain, though they hinted at chambers of colorful stalactites, courts where stalagmites representing the myriad guises of the Mistress gathered in secretive council; there was even a side corridor where long, long ago worshippers had left their handprints and paintings of animals done in red ocher.
Summer signified beauty and life, not death and darkness. If loveliness lurked in the shadows beyond the torchlight’s reach, I wanted to see it with my own eyes, but Phileia would not be rushed. Persephone’s Cave came first. It was similar to the storage caves above, she assured me, in that it contained dozens of sealed pithoi. Those were the ossuaries, which I was not to touch.
Marpessa, the woman we were about to disinter and rebury, had died just as I had arrived at the Mountain. Having never seen a decomposed body, I kept imagining a husk of putrefied flesh reaching for me, jaw unhinged to swallow me whole. Why disturb the dead, anyway? Why not simply inter them once with their grave offerings and be done with it? All I ever heard was that this was the ancient way, and immutable, sacred to Persephone and the Mother of the Mountain.
Phileia’s lamp revealed an opening in the wall on the right, an orifice exuding a fouler odor than before. All three of us gagged, but unlike me, neither Phileia nor Ktimene tried to shield their noses. Following their example, I attempted to breathe deeply, to acclimate myself to the miasma of death; my reflexes balked.
When Phileia paused at the entrance, my heart leapt and stopped with her. Whatever lay beyond must be too terrible, if even the high priestess had to gather her courage. But no, she then raised the lamp and in a sure voice addressed the darkness.
“Queen Persephone, Receiver of the Dead, light the way! We come not to violate the dead but to honor them.” The nymph Echo distorted Phileia’s voice. “We come only to attend to the devoured remains of the woman Marpessa, to wash her with wine and restore her to your bosom.”
I released a trembling breath when I saw no corpses crowding the space beyond the threshold, yet still I dragged my feet, hopelessly wishing we could turn back. We entered a long, natural corridor that opened onto arteries of smaller chambers; those toward the rear had been blocked up with crude walls of fitted stones. Others gaped open, completely unguarded except for the air of foreboding attending them. Where the torchlight illuminated the walls, I saw thousands of ocher handprints covering the walls and ceiling; unbidden images of people buried alive and trying to claw their way out with bleeding hands flashed through my mind. Shuddering, I thrust away thoughts of being walled up in one of those blocked-in chambers, and of screaming and clawing, and no one coming to my rescue.
Phileia touched her hand to one of those prints, smaller than even her diminutive hand, and, reverence paid, passed inside. Ktimene, too, touched a handprint. “You do the same now, Myrtale. These were made by the ancestors to guard the way.”
All I could think of then was how small the first priestesses to venture into these caves must have been, and how faded their prints, as if each priestess who had touched them down through the generations had carried away a piece of that beginning.
The stench of death cut through my ruminations with such vigor that I could practically taste the decay.
Unlike the other chambers with their stone floors, dirt covered the drop-down floor of this cave; it and the grave worms that labored here had been brought from the outside and regularly replenished to help Persephone devour the dead during their first interment. Squinting in the flickering light, I counted thirteen white grave markers for the thirteen Women of the Mountain who had passed away in the last five years. There was space to walk between the mounded graves, so the priestesses should not offend the dead by treading on them.
A niche contained lamps and jars. Some contained oil, but others were larger. I started when Ktimene opened one of those amphorae, thinking it contained human remains. Catching my eye and winking, Ktimene sloshed the contents around, in doing so releasing the acrid vapor of wine vinegar. My eyes watered, but at least the vinegar momentarily banished the miasma of decay.
“This is for purification,” she said quietly. “We don’t leave the cave with the pollution of death on our hands.”
Phileia, meanwhile, gestured to a place at the head of Marpessa’s grave. “Myrtale, you stand there and watch while we unearth her.”
Getting on their hands and knees, the priestesses used primitive shovels made of deer pelvises to remove the earth; dead things put to use among dead things. I stood anxiously, trying to concentrate on respectful thoughts so as not to offend the spirits, yet feeling self-conscious without a task to distract myself, to justify my presence in that grim cave. Ktimene had left the vinegar jar with me, and I could not resist the occasional temptation to w
iggle the cork free and inhale.
A hand sharply tugged the hem of my skirt. Goddess, what was that? I gasped aloud, almost dropping the jar. Then I felt abashed. It was nothing as horrifying as a restless corpse trying to drag me under the earth, just Phileia prompting my attention. “Come here and see how Persephone devours the living,” she said.
Catching my breath, steadying myself, I cautiously peered over her shoulder to see the remains revealed in their opened shroud.
Five years under the Mountain with the worms and the dark goddess for company had sloughed away the dead woman’s humanity.
The grave worms were there, fish-belly white and wriggling against the black earth. Persephone’s helpers, the priestesses called them. My heartbeat quickened when I saw the skull. Dirt and leftover rot clung to it, and the bone was peat-dark from having lain underground. From the earth jamming the eye sockets, a worm squirmed for freedom. A whimper escaped my throat.
“This is what it means to be mortal. Our bodies do not endure.” As she spoke, Phileia used an obsidian knife to cut the gristle attaching the skull from the spine; the crunch of dried out sinews and shifting bones turned my stomach. I barely had time to set down the jar and run for the entrance before vomiting up the remains of last night’s supper; the priestesses had warned me not to retch inside the precinct of the dead.
When I returned, I saw that Phileia had spread out a rectangle of fine wool she had woven. “Come here,” she said again. “This is how we wrap the dead for their final interment.”
I bit my lip. Bile still soured my mouth, and beneath that I could still taste decomposing flesh. Phileia and Ktimene had made short work of disarticulating the remains, cutting and tearing like vultures. Now they touched the bones with their shreds of rotted skin as easily as if they were edible roots and bulbs dug out of the earth.
“You show disdain for Persephone’s handiwork?” Phileia observed.
That, and despair over the thought that this disgusting task was to be my lot in life. Sacrilegious musings that I strove to banish from my mind. “You couldn’t have left Marpessa in her shroud?” I asked instead.
“And jumble her bones together like pebbles when we move her to the ossuary?” Ktimene hissed. “The dead must be handled with as much care as the living.”
Phileia set the skull in the center crease, and folded the cloth over. The ribcage and pelvis were wrapped alongside, then the long bones of the legs and arms disappeared into the bleached wool as though they were pieces of precious alabaster or painted ceramic the priestesses did not want scratched. Then the smaller leg and arm bones, and the spine. Each foot and hand with its many tiny bones was cocooned separately in its own square of wool before being added to the growing bundle. Finally, Phileia bound the package with scarlet thread.
We had been down there long enough for the lamps to begin sputtering. A primeval terror of the dark seized me, momentarily driving out common sense. If the lamps failed, how would we find our way out? I glanced toward the shelf with its oil and spare wicks, and sighed with relief when Ktimene gave permission. I remembered to be mindful of the sleeping dead as I stepped around the graves, but then discovered that I could not quite quell the trembling of my hands as I replenished the lamps; oil splashed from the jar onto my hands and dripped into the dirt.
Before returning, I took a moment to remind myself that I had nothing to fear with the two priestesses and the blessing of our dead predecessors to protect me.
Ktimene relieved me of the lamp while directing me to fetch the vinegar jar. Phileia carried the bundled remains in both arms. She broke into a singsong chant the moment we reentered the corridor.
Thanks be to the queen, to her messengers, to the earth,
For devouring this woman, this sister, this mortal shell.
Receiver of the Dead, Mistress of the Mountain, Dark Queen,
We bring Marpessa to her final rest.
We entered another chamber where a half-dozen unadorned pithoi hugged the walls. The stench of decay emanated from the pithos that Ktimene opened, though the odor was not as strong as in the cave of first interment. With a cautionary shush, Ktimene shone the lamp inside to reveal a mass of cloth bundles tightly packed together. Some of the shrouded bundles were themselves rotting, their original white darkened and frayed.
Phileia deposited Marpessa’s bundle on top as tenderly as if she were tucking a child into bed. Then we sealed the jar and left the chamber.
On the threshold of the Persephone Cave, before we returned to the main caverns, we scoured our hands with the vinegar and vigorously scuffed our shoes against the stones to dislodge any clinging, tainted earth. Then, up above in the daylight, we took additional measures to purify ourselves. We stripped, drenched ourselves with the jars of ice-cold water brought from the sacred spring, and dressed in clean clothes.
As always, the ascent and emergence into the upper world brought joy; each time, I felt like Orpheus’s Eurydike, had she not been cursed with an untrusting husband who turned around at the last second. Free from the underworld, I sucked down breaths of fresh mountain air. The fragrance of pine needles crushed underfoot and the smell of juniper and nearby cypress enveloped me like an elixir. I shuddered, but it was a good thrill after the oppressiveness of down below. Too bad the priestesses discouraged my singing on the way back; rejoicing at returning aboveground would have offended Persephone.
My ebullient mood lasted only as long as Helios’s sun-chariot remained in the sky. Night came too swiftly, renewing fears of wandering shades and death. Phileia burned extra lamps, and wafted smoking bundles of sage to further purify the clothes hung to dry by the hearth. She made an infusion of dried chamomile to help us all relax.
I slept fitfully, chased by half-dreams of giant earthworms and pulsing graves that expelled black blood. An uncomfortable ache in my womb woke me. Scarlet splotches were already oxidizing on the blanket beneath me. No wonder Hypnos had sent those visions. My woman’s blood had arrived in the night, a week earlier than expected, but too late to have helped me avoid yesterday’s ordeal. What a nasty sense of humor the Mistress had!
Ktimene prepared for me an infusion of the ground willow bark that she used herself while I fumbled with inserting the woolen plug for the blood; my maidenhead made a tight and uncomfortable barrier that I had to learn to negotiate around. Ktimene also warmed her leather pad over the fire, to tuck against my womb while she and Phileia went to pay morning honors to the Mistress.
I had prayers to observe, too, thanks for the Mistress’s gift of blood, although I did not feel even remotely thankful except for the blessing of not having to descend again so soon into the goddess’s underworld.
My blood did not, however, exempt me from my usual chores. Ktimene had a second leather binding, this one to wear while fetching water and feeding the nanny goats, that I could borrow until I fashioned one of my own.
Late each morning, I attended lessons in herb lore with Rhona.
In five years, I had learned the properties of most of the plants growing around the enclosure. I knew my kitchen and basic medicinal herbs. I knew which mushrooms were safe to harvest and eat, and which brought delirium and death. The poisonous plants, however, remained a step above my training. I could not handle foxglove, which in the right quantities had medicinal uses, or deadly nightshade or wolfsbane, or the sacred poppy. “That’s not for me to teach,” Rhona steadfastly insisted. “Phileia must decide. But here, I will show you something you will like.”
She brought out a small vessel of olive oil and bunches of dried lavender, fresh goat’s milk and drippings of lard she had saved. “We’re going to make something nice for your skin. Now that you’re a woman, you should celebrate yourself with creams and scents.” She started stripping the plant’s faded heads.
Reaching for a sprig and shears, I started helping her with the lavender. “I don’t feel like celebrating.”
“Of course not. You’re new to womanhood, and hate what’s happening to your
body. The blood, the cramps, the hair where you had none before, the pimples. You want to go back to being a child.” She gathered a handful of heads into a mortar and passed it across to me to grind the lavender into powder. “There’s no going back along the thread of Fate, though, and no reason why you should. Womanhood brings its own blessings.”
Grinding with the pestle only heightened the menstrual ache in my womb and lower back, but I refrained from complaining. “That’s only good if you’re a woman who wants babies.” So I had also answered when Phileia reminded me that my woman’s blood entitled me to be initiated into the female mysteries. What other reason could there be to want to flower? Since I, a consecrated virgin, was never going to marry or have children, why did I have suffer the blood and pain?
Rhona laughed. “You’d rather remain a caterpillar when you could be a butterfly? Having your woman’s blood is like having wings. You’ve only just emerged from your cocoon, and you haven’t yet learned how to fly.”
The analogies the women around me made did not aid my understanding, or help me accept womanhood. Bad enough to bleed and hurt without also wanting to rage, or weep, or do both simultaneously. Phileia said those things were the price women paid for wisdom, except I did not feel particularly wise.
One failing in general: my inability to hide my emotions from the older women. Rhona read me masterfully, because she said, “Wisdom comes with experience and time. Celebrate being pretty.” She chuckled. “Have I told you how my eldest sister was born with a moustache?” Many times, yes. “My mother and aunts tried every remedy under the Mistress’s heaven to remove it. I wonder if they ever found her a husband.”
Then she gestured for me to pass the mortar so she could inspect my handiwork. “Today we can indulge ourselves, but tomorrow we’ve serious work to do. Phileia wants me to show you the uses of motherwort and raspberry leaf. We use those for childbirth.”
I flexed my sore fingers, which smelled of sweet lavender. “Why do I need to know about childbearing?”