Reincarnation

by Suzanne Weyn

  If she could not have the wild boy’s love, then she would have his token.

  Pressing the earrings to her lips in a breathless, greedy kiss, she hurried away to hide them in her chamber.

  The parade to honor Athena had its finish back at the wide steps of the temple. Hyacinth stood behind the high priestess. A statue of Athena had been paraded through the streets. It was a third the size of the one in the Great Hall, but imposing just the same.

  A sea of people had gathered in front of the temple. The head of the Athenian government stepped forward. “To honor Athena,” he proclaimed, “we present the winners of this year’s Olympic Games.”

  Macar stepped forward, his medals around his neck, head high, eyes steely, self-impressed as ever. His gaze shot up to Hyacinth on the steps. For a second their eyes met before Macar looked away. No doubt he was ashamed at having refused to marry her after her dowry was lost at sea. Naturally, no one blamed him.

  Hyacinth shivered, recalling what a narrow escape she’d had. Marriage to Macar would have been a loveless, dull conformity. Life as a priestess was infinitely better. She heard he’d married and was expecting a child. His new wife was probably perfectly happy to have such a prize for a husband. Hyacinth hoped so, anyway.

  Two other medal-wearing young men followed Macar. And then came Artem, his medal in hand.

  He looked at nothing but Hyacinth. His direct gaze caused her to look away with embarrassment, certain that everyone could see how he focused on her.

  Yet it seemed that only Iphigenia was aware of it. She sent Hyacinth a darting glance which Hyacinth dared not acknowledge.

  Each winner was asked to address the crowd. When it was Artem’s turn, he spoke to the high priestess. “I would offer to Athena this Olympic gold medal and all its worth in the hope that I might claim your priestess Hyacinth as my bride.”

  The crowd gasped at the boldness of his declaration.

  “I make this plea,” Artem continued, “for I know she loves me but will not be mine because she would not disgrace the goddess by breaking her oath. Yet I would rather end my days now than live without her in my life.”

  The high priestess stepped forward to reply. “Your plea is touching, young man, but Hyacinth has sworn a pledge as binding as any marriage oath. I cannot accept your medal nor release her to you.”

  Turning back toward the temple, she bid Hyacinth and the other priestesses to follow her in. As she was about to enter, Hyacinth cast a glance over her shoulder. Artem stood with his eyes boring into her.

  For the first time that afternoon, the temple of Athena seemed to Hyacinth like a living tomb. Kneeling before the immense statue, she prayed to the goddess for strength and self-discipline. To go away with Artem would be to invite ruin not only for herself but for her family. Oh, but the urge to do it was overpowering, especially after today.

  She was so deep in thought that she didn’t realize another person had come into the room and now stood beside her. But soon she became aware of the heat and energy of that presence. Opening her eyes, she stared up at an aged woman. Her long, wild, wiry white hair played around her face and shoulders. Her milky blue eyes were unfocused as she faced Hyacinth without speaking.

  Hyacinth had never seen this blind woman before, but she knew who she was by reputation and descriptions from the other priestesses.

  “You are the Oracle of Delphi,” Hyacinth acknowledged in an awed whisper.

  The Oracle was the great prophetess who foretold the future in words so difficult to decipher that only the learned could tease the meanings from what she said. Hyacinth assumed she had come to the temple because of the feast. Why, though, was she speaking to her now?

  “You know me, for we have met before,” the woman’s voice rumbled, emanating richly from deep within her throat.

  “No, surely not,” Hyacinth dared to contradict her. “Perhaps you think I am someone else. I am Hyacinth of Athens, a new priestess of Athena.”

  “I know you,” the Oracle said again, her voice rising in irritation.

  Hyacinth cowered, scared that she had angered this powerful personage.

  The Oracle lifted her arms, her wide sleeves draping. “You have been in the cave. I spied on you in the kitchen. I will bring you to fiery ruin. The jewel is not what you think. You must seek its meaning. If you seek me I will help you,” she ranted.

  Hyacinth strained to make sense of this. She had never been in a cave. She had sometimes been in a kitchen. At the mention of the jewel, she thought of her earrings.

  “The one who comes for you with the jewel is your destiny.”

  Hyacinth gasped. Artem!

  “The jewel will come between the two of you eternally if your heart is not pure.”

  “Please,” Hyacinth said. “I don’t understand.”

  “The unraveling is the journey,” the Oracle replied.

  Why wouldn’t this woman speak plainly?! And why was she even speaking to her, someone of so little importance?

  “My words will become plain in time,” the Oracle continued, apparently reading Hyacinth’s thoughts. “I come to you to pay a debt. I have wronged you before. The fates have commanded me to amend all I have wronged so that my powers might expand for the good of all.”

  “Tell me. Please. Should I go off with the one I love, the one who has given me the green jewels?” Hyacinth asked.

  “The unraveling is the journey,” the Oracle of Delphi said once more. Abruptly, she turned and, navigating her way with fluid grace, left the Great Hall.

  That night, the rest of Athens reveled and celebrated the holiday. Lamplight and bonfires lit the black sky. On the Acropolis, though, low-lying clouds obliterated the moon’s rays.

  Iphigenia sat on her bed examining the stolen green earrings by the light of her small lantern. How they gleamed! Such elegance!

  What a declaration he had made! And that idiot, that stupid girl, had stood there mute. I would have run into his arms, forsaken everything for him. Iphigenia was certain.

  And then there it was — that flute playing once again out on the hill.

  He was back! Would he return every night for all eternity?

  It was maddening!

  Still clutching the earrings, she stepped out onto the pitch darkness of her balcony to watch them as she’d often done before.

  The flute playing stopped.

  Hyacinth’s balcony was dark, empty.

  She had failed to come out. Would he finally give up?

  Iphigenia’s mind raced. Perhaps she should go down, make her feelings for him known, and tell him he could even call her Hyacinth if he wished. She wouldn’t care — anything to have his love, to be taken away from this awful temple that had been her prison since childhood.

  In the darkness, Iphigenia suddenly caught a sharp breath. An even blacker form was climbing over Hyacinth’s balcony, climbing down.

  She was going to him!

  Iphigenia stood no chance with him now. “A curse on you!” she spat as she hurled the green earrings over her balcony.

  Hyacinth’s foot ached as she searched for a foothold in the column below her balcony. It was so dark! Where was Selene, goddess of the moon, tonight when she needed her?

  Why had he stopped playing the flute?

  It was so dark. She prayed he hadn’t gone. But perhaps she had no right to pray, now that she had broken her vow to Athena. Would she be cursed by the goddess for this?

  Would Artem curse her as well? She was coming to him without the earrings that represented his love. Just a moment ago, she’d heard his flute and she’d decided that she could not go on living without him, that no price was too high to pay. She’d gone to put on the earrings, preparing to leave with him, only to discover that they were missing!

  A quick, frantic search had not produced them.

  They were utterly gone.

  And then the music had stopped. Rushing to the balcony, she searched the darkness but could not see him. She could not let him leave,
maybe forever.

  That was when she had begun the climb down, too frantic to catch up to him to let worry about the earrings interfere. She was not sure how she would manage, but he had climbed up before … which meant she could climb down.

  She was two body lengths from the bottom when the clouds parted and hit the landscape with moonlight.

  With the brilliance of a shooting star, the green earrings flew through the air, sparkling in the white radiance of the moon.

  It was a blessing from Athena! A sign that the goddess bore her no malice!

  But what if Artem was down there, waiting hidden behind a tree or in a bush? What if he thought she had tossed the earrings down as a sign that she no longer loved him?

  “Artem!” she called in a soft whisper, afraid to alert the other priestesses. “Artem!”

  No answer came.

  She saw the earrings glisten, caught in the nettles of a juniper bush at the edge of a rocky outcropping.

  Then she detected him moving below in the places not touched by moonlight. He was going toward the earrings to retrieve them.

  Still afraid to cry out to him, she judged that she could jump to the ground. She landed on her knees and her foot throbbed where it had banged on the dirt.

  He had not reached the earrings yet. She had to get there first, be waiting for him with them glistening in her ears.

  She was nearly there, reaching forward, balanced precariously over the rough juniper bush. In her rush to retrieve the earrings, she did not see him, also hurrying in the darkness.

  He came upon her suddenly, unexpectedly, skidding to a stop.

  Surprised, she stumbled back.

  Her weak foot buckled and caved under her weight. Suddenly she was pitching forward uncontrollably, tumbling down the hillside.

  Tumbling, bouncing, hitting and hitting again.

  She heard something snap.

  My Artem, I am so sorry. You have no idea how it pains me to see you sob. How I hoped that at last we could be together. How I wanted to sail away, maybe to your golden Egypt, where no one could find us.

  You do not hear me, so deep is your grief.

  You throw your body on top of mine as you howl at the moon like a mad wolf.

  I am not there anymore.

  I am no longer the young woman whose hair has come unbound and trails to the ground as he carries her broken body up the steep hill to the temple of Athena.

  He and Iphigenia bring her inside. The high priestess comes and cries out in alarm.

  Still weeping, Artem leaves. I call out to him but he does not turn back to me.

  No one speaks to me at all. Silently I watch as my dead body is washed, dressed in a new tunic, and laid in a coffin. Ashes are scattered in her loose hair. A wreath of hyacinths is placed on her head.

  Hyacinths.

  I think this word has a meaning to me but I am forgetting. I can’t remember my name, nor my mother or father.

  Trying to remember these things, I wander down the sloping Acropolis and through the streets of Athens. It is not safe for a young woman to walk through silent Athens in the night. I know this and yet I am strangely unafraid.

  I turn down an unfamiliar city street, and at the end of it I come to a river. A flat boat floats, moored to a post jutting from the water. On it, a man in a rough, brown toga stands as though he is waiting for me.

  This must be a dream, I think, despite the fact that it seems so real.

  “I will ferry you to the other side,” the man offers.

  “What is on the other side?” I ask.

  “You will like it,” he says.

  “I have no way to pay you.”

  “That gold cord ensnarled in your hair will do.”

  I pick through my knotted locks, freeing the remaining piece of broken cord. “It’s not worth much,” I mention.

  “It’s enough.”

  I dimly recall a tale Charis told me as a girl. The story does not return to me clearly, though I remember the moral. Don’t pay the ferryman until he gets you safely to the other side, otherwise he will dump you in the middle of the River Styx.

  “Is this the River Styx?” I ask.

  He nods, and I shiver with fear. This is the river of death. On the other side is the underworld.

  Fearfully, I crumple the golden cord in my fist. “No. No.” I back away.

  I buckle forward, sure I will vomit. I only dry heave, producing nothing. My eyes tingle with tears yet remain dry.

  The ferryman beckons for me to come. “You will regret life as a spirit,” he says. “Such unimaginable loneliness. This is your one chance to cross over.”

  “I will pay you on the other side,” I offer.

  He smiles bitterly, shaking his head. “Now they tell even young people that story, I see. Sad to make the young so untrusting. Pay me when you wish.”

  As I step into the boat, he unties and pushes off with his pole. The silent black river flows past the home of my parents and brothers. A jar of hyssop water sits at the front door to show there has been a death in the family.

  The river flows along the coast where Artem sits on a rock, the ocean waves crashing around him. “Don’t!” I cry as he hurls the hooked-together earrings into the waves.

  “Good-bye. Good-bye,” I call to him. He looks up for a moment as though he might have heard me on the wind or in the surf. Then he hangs his head in despair.

  It is dawn by the time the boat reaches the other side. As it bumps onto the shore, I hand the ferryman his golden cord. Then he is gone, nowhere to be seen.

  I am soon in a meadow with others. It’s full of flowers with a warm breeze wafting through. We talk and rest. I am aware of being very tired.

  Time ceases to be meaningful. I might have been in the meadow for hundreds of years, maybe hundreds of minutes.

  It is all the same to me.

  There seems to be a great deal to think about, to sort out, make some sense of. We are always talking to one another, discussing, wondering if we made the best choices while we lived:

  “What do you think I should have done differently?”

  “What would you have done if you had been me?”

  “Was I wrong to put aside love for a higher good?”

  “Is it so wrong to want to be safe?”

  “Did I do that for the right reasons?”

  It went on and on … and on.

  We are never hungry but we drink as though parched from the two rivers than run through the meadow, Lethe and Amelete. I notice that the more I drink, the less I can remember of the past.

  Each time I drink from the river, I sleep a good deal. After one very long, deep slumber, I awake in the meadow and think: I would like to try again.

  Then, soon after I have this thought, a column of blinding white light appears. It has a name that I have heard from the others in the meadow.

  It is The Hinge of the Universe.

  It hums steadily, vibrating at a very fast rate.

  I have seen it before and watched others walk into its light, but it has never before affected me. Now this day, I am unable to resist its pull; I want to go toward it.

  I am in its center.

  In a rapid stream, I am shooting downward, through a starstruck black expanse, toward the earth.

  I am returning.

  I will be done with the world that makes me hang on the whims of men. I will make my own power. I will serve the mother goddess and draw strength from her.

  Canaan, 28 C.E.:

  My dear brother, Thaddeus,

  It was a fine wedding even though the host ran out of wine at one point. It seems that this Jesus of Nazareth that they’re all talking about produced lots more of it somehow after his mother requested that he do so — a man after my own heart.

  I’ve got to stop drinking so much wine. It makes these headaches of mine even worse. I also become too quarrelsome when I drink. For example, some folks were claiming that this Jesus I mentioned is the messiah that has been prophesied.
I quickly argued that this could not be. According to prophesy, the messiah isn’t supposed to come until after the prophet Elijah returns from the dead.

  So there. I had them on that.

  I didn’t even know that this Jesus had been listening, but he had. He said: I say to you that Elijah has come already and they did not know him.

  I told him: “Well, okay. If you say so.” But to be honest, this mystified me so I asked around about what he meant by that. The group of twelve men who travel with him told me that they’re fairly convinced that he means that Elijah was born again, this time as John the Baptist. Then, when he had his head cut off, it was more of that karma stuff we heard about from the Buddha texts. It seems Elijah was responsible for having some heads chopped off way back when. So it came back to him in his next life.

  Elijah reincarnated as John the Baptist and that means it was all clear for the messiah to come. I can accept that. Reincarnation is certainly not a new idea.

  Okay, I say. Fair enough.

  I’m definitely going to stop drinking so much, though.

  London, England, 1247:

  My darling baby Gwendolyn, I give you to these good nuns of the Order of the Star of Bethlehem since I am too poor to feed you on my own. Hopefully they will raise you to be a pious nun and to serve God, especially Mary, the mother of God, as they do. Your life will be plain and holy but you will never starve. You will not have to concern yourself with life’s difficult choices.

  It is a good time in England. Edward the First is a good king. Stay true to God and country and you will never go wrong.

  London, England, 1348:

  Rest in Peace, Mother Abbess Maria Regina (born Gwendolyn of Canterbury), leader of our order who has this day died of the terrible Black Death that has taken so many others. Your devotion to Mary, our divine mother, knows no equal. Your tender ministrations to the sick and dying will not soon be forgotten. Your prodigious knowledge of Latin and Greek unlocked a world of learning to the sisters of our order.