“You think that means she liked you?”
“What else would it mean?”
“Did you ask her?”
“Not yet. She’s taller than me.”
“Are you waiting to grow?”
He’d met a Garamantian who swore that in his country they could make rivers flow underground and rise up whenever they wanted them to. There were other Libyans as well, including a pack of small boys who ran with dogs. They liked nothing better than chasing grasshoppers. They tossed them living into their mouths and chewed, grinning and yelping their language, which is so strange, it’s no wonder the dogs understand them.
“They don’t roast them first?” Laelia asks, incredulous.
“See? I told you there are strange people among us. I don’t mind, though.”
Yes, for a time they are children again. Better than children, because there was little laughter in their childhoods. They have roles. They are free. To some degree, she’s always humoring her brother by listening to him—she can give him that, the appearance that she cares as much as he does—but also the things he talks about remind her that they are part of something bigger than they’d ever imagined. And she can give him other things too, details she observes of Spartacus, small things about Astera that, she’s sure, he’ll spill with enthusiasm when he rejoins the pack of young men he runs in. That’s all right since she tells him only things she doesn’t mind him repeating. She likes that it gives him joy. She likes that he’s alive. So long as he is, she knows that she is as well.
Before he leaves, she grasps his hand and holds it tight. He doesn’t move until she releases him.
—
Alone, the respite her brother provided fades fast. She busies herself with sorting through the things they will need tonight. Herbs to burn: bendis flower and wormwood. Others to sprinkle around the bowl of water: dog rose and horse tongue. Powders ground fresh that morning: day root and knucklebone. Or made into a paste to draw with: buckthorn berries. All of it has a purpose. All of it must be just right for the goddess because tonight Astera will bring down the moon. Laelia has dreaded this since the first time Astera promised it to her. She has never let on that she is afraid. She’s strived to learn everything Astera has taught her, and she was thankful, so thankful, that they’d had to wait until Epta gave birth to her child. That’s done now, so Epta is a single being again, not two. The goddess will not think they are trying to deceive her.
Laelia tries to take comfort in that, but to look a goddess in the face…She doesn’t know that she will be able to do it. More than anything she fears that Kotys will look upon her in rage. Aren’t all of her names fearsome? Beautiful in Wrath. She Who Never Forgets. The One Who Looks Away. The Bleeding Mother. The Wolf That Eats the Moon. She Who Sees Through Night. The Dead Sister. Eater of Men. She has so many names. All of them fill Laelia with dread. But, Astera says, that’s exactly the type of goddess they need. What use is a goddess of the fields or fertility or hunting deer? What use a goddess of the lyre or the hearth, or one who protects from biting things? No, they need a goddess to drive the warriors’ hands and make them strong. Kotys.
Through the winter, Astera had told Laelia many things, more than just which herbs to burn and which to sprinkle and why. The girl listened, feeling privileged, sure that neither the other sisters nor even Spartacus had heard many of the things Astera revealed. Her tribe is the Dii. She grew up believing that the gods had blessed the Dii above all the other people on the earth. It isn’t just that they live in the Rhodopes, high enough that they walk through clouds and prefer the solitude of the peaks to crowded places. It isn’t just that they ink their dreams into their flesh with stigmas, so that the gods who bestowed them will know they have received them. All these things are true, but none of them are the real blessing.
“What truly makes us special,” Astera told her, “is that only the Dii know the truth about Kotys. Others have forgotten about her, believe her dead, despise her as a corpse with no power. We Dii know better. Understand what is true and what is not.”
What is true is that Bendis and Kotys were sisters. Twins. They were identical to look upon, but they were not the same inside. That is a truth. Another is that the god Sabazios, seeing them, fell in love. At first he adored them both equally, but with time he was drawn more and more to Bendis. Perhaps she was softer. More womanly. A creator of life, where Kotys was better at ending it. Bendis knew to spread her legs and give him an open womb for him to fill. Kotys, though, she was a hunter. She knew the spear and the bow and the dagger.
One day she returned from a hunt with a stag slung over her shoulder. She meant it as a gift for Sabazios. But she found the god deep inside Bendis, thrusting and declaring his love for only her. In an instant all her love for him turned to hatred for her sister. She swung the stag so hard, it knocked Sabazios back, and then she attacked her sister, punching and clawing, trying to choke the life out of her.
“She would have killed her,” Astera admitted. She paused with leaves pressed between her fingers, ready to drop them into a bowl. “That would have been a horrible thing, for there is no renewal of life without Bendis. This world would be dead, and we would live in darkness.”
“But she didn’t kill her?” Laelia prompted, unusual for her, but this mattered and she wished to know.
“No, she didn’t die. Sabazios flew back at Kotys, himself in a rage now. He beat her away from her sister. He picked her up and smashed her onto the earth. Again and again, until she went lifeless and fought no more. And then he hurled her far, far away, so far that she passed over the Rhodopes. So far he didn’t even hear her crash down again. Do you know why he didn’t hear?”
“Because she didn’t crash down.”
“That’s right. She still hasn’t. She hangs in the sky. Desolate. The first time he saw her rise, Sabazios thought her dead. A corpse. He left her there for all to see at night. But she isn’t dead. It’s just that she has turned her face away and rarely shows it. She is still angry, though she knows she was wrong to attack her twin. She is angry for those who are misused and betrayed. So don’t fear her, daughter. Love her instead, for she will love you.”
Astera told her other things as well. The good ones. And then the bad.
She told her that she had a husband whom she loved back in Thrace. His name meant the sound of an eagle’s cry on a clear morning. He put a daughter in her and then a son. Both of them lived and grew. The girl had red hair like hers; the boy was darker, like his father. The boy liked to break things: his wrist, the small finger on his left hand, a tooth chipped on a rock. It was all right, his father said. He was just preparing for the trials ahead more enthusiastically than most.
They had their life in the mountains. They had hunts and howling of wolves at night and snow on the peaks even in the summer. In the winter there was always wood for the fires, and they knew how to keep warm. They had Kotys. On clear nights they were so near her they could almost reach out and touch her. They had enough food most years. For other things they needed, they traded with the plains tribes. Through them they first came in contact with Romans. Mostly, though, they were of the mountains and didn’t wish to leave them.
Perhaps they should have taken more care about the world down the hill. They didn’t, and because of it they didn’t know the Romans for who they were until they left the plains and came into the heights. They made demands. Threats not to be believed. Who were they to demand so much? What did they know of the Dii and of the mountains? Nothing. They meant nothing, she thought.
She was mistaken. They meant everything.
She had been gathering herbs from the high meadows that day. Gone for the long hours of the morning and glad to be alone. She lingered longer than she should have. On returning to the village, she knew from a distance that something was wrong. Too much smoke billowed for the time of the day. Closer, she heard screams. Pleading. She heard a language that made no sense to her. She circled around and came in on the trail that l
ed to the clearing from which she would be able to see their hut.
The scene was this. Men yelling. Women shrieking. Children crying. Death. Romans, armored as they were, with their tall shields and crested helmets, with their bloody, vicious swords. There were so many of them, and among them were Thracians who weren’t Dii. Odomanti, she would learn. Traitors.
The things she watched as she stood there, unable to move, are with her always. Her husband pushed to his knees and beheaded. Her son picked up by his ankles and swung so that his head bashed on the tree stump they chopped firewood on. Broken worse than any arm or small finger or chipped tooth. She saw her daughter pushed into their hut by several men. She was too young for what she feared. She hoped and hoped and hoped that they were making her show them valuables.
She would never understand why she’d done nothing. At some point every day since, she has imagined what she might’ve done. The imagining changes nothing, though. She stood, long enough that the men came out of the hut, swaggering in a different way than when they went in. They pulled logs from the too-big fires and tossed them into the hut, onto the roof. The flames grew and grew. Her daughter didn’t come out. To make her misery complete, they nailed her son to a post.
Seeing him hang upside down by his feet finally moved her. She walked toward him. Thinking what? That she would lift him down and lay him on the ground? That she would wash the blood away and make him, somehow, look whole again? That her tears, wet on his face, would wake him? All this. And none of it, for never for a moment did she believe any of that possible. She just walked, and the Romans, seeing her, came to greet her.
“See? Nothing I did was what I should’ve done. The Romans’ gods must have clouded my thoughts. Pushed out everything but misery. They have that power. Maybe not many other powers, but they have that one. They make misery. It’s why I will never have children again. Love, yes. I lay with Spartacus and love him, but I have ways to keep his seed from taking. Better that I just have you, that you’re my moon at night. You, I’ll never let Rome have.”
And just that morning, before Laelia fed the snakes with Hustus, Astera had said, “I’ve told you some of what the Romans did to me. Not all of it, but you don’t need to know all of it. Hear now a good thing, one that came to me in a bad time.”
That first night outside Capua, she says, the day before she walked into the place of gladiators, sleeping chained to hostile women, she had a dream. It began with her walking along a road. A Roman road, the paving stones flat and smooth beneath her feet. A quiet afternoon, the landscape bathed in yellow light. She was alone. Unchained and uneasy because of it. She had escaped, though she didn’t know how or where she was. The road was before her, so she walked on.
That’s when she came upon the man. He sat on a stool in the center of the road, atop the rise of a small hill. His back was to her. He did not turn as she approached, and yet she knew that he was waiting for her. He held up one large hand. She grasped it. The man stood, and together they walked forward. Nothing was said, but she knew that they were walking home, and she felt too that there were others behind them. Many souls following. She wanted to turn and look at them, but knew she was not supposed to. So they just walked, knowing that they led many, unseen, in their wake.
“Do you know who this man was?”
There can be only one answer. Laelia gives it. “Spartacus.”
“Yes.”
Astera hadn’t seen his face in the dream, but she saw it when she gazed across the compound the first morning she arrived in Vatia’s ludus. She memorized it so that she could find him again. She had dreamed him before she had ever set eyes on him. That had to mean something.
“Kotys gave me that dream. It meant the goddess had not abandoned me. Here was another chance to prove myself to her, to worship her with action and offer her the blood of her enemies. This time I would not hesitate. I would not do the wrong thing instead of the right. See? That’s what I have worked toward ever since. Spartacus is the instrument the goddess led me to. I am the hand that wields him, as Kotys is the will that drives me. And the souls following? Who are they?”
“The Risen.”
Astera smiled. “Because the things we do are done for all of us. All of us. You see? Dreams cannot be denied. Tonight we will call to Kotys. I will speak with her and she will tell me if she is pleased, if we are doing the right things. If you can find your voice, you may call to her as well. Be ready. She is coming.”
—
The first part of the ritual, they do on a bluff above the day’s encampment. They begin the moment the moon rises into the evening sky. Astera and Cerzula, Sura and Epta, and Laelia: they purify themselves by walking through the smoke of burning incense. This time they don’t strip naked. They don’t sacrifice three puppies. Just chickens instead. Laelia didn’t like killing the puppies. She admitted this to Astera, that it made her sad to see them die, made her belly ache and made her feel cruel. Astera said that was good. That was why she could be a priestess. She had a heart and it was kind. That meant Kotys would see her sacrifice as a true one. If someone is heartless, what worth are the things they offer?
Astera takes a sip from a bowl that Sura brings to her, this one containing a tincture of the roots of the plant called nightshade. In Thracian, it’s called the Bright-Eyed Lady. Just a single sip, to open her to visions the goddess wishes her to see. Laelia doesn’t drink the Bright-Eyed Lady. Not yet. She is not ready yet, Astera tells her, as the visions can be horrible and vast. And she is young. The Bright-Eyed Lady, if one sips too much, is deadly. She gives the bowl back to Sura, who flips it over and sets it down.
Holding the chicken, Astera speaks in the strange other language she uses to call to the goddess. It’s not Thracian. Laelia knows the sound of that tongue. But it’s not Latin or Greek or Celtic either. The goddess understands human languages, but she has her own that she truly loves. It’s their task to learn it, each in her own way. For Astera, that way is an ululating moan, broken by sharp gasps and moments of mumbling. She speaks with her eyes half closed, and the words possess her body. At times she jerks. Her shoulders pop. Her arms move as if an unseen hand were knocking them about.
She cuts off the chicken’s head and catches the blood in a wooden bowl, holding the chicken just so until the blood slows. The stigmas on her arms make it look as if the snakes twisting up them are taking part in the sacrifice. She does the same with two more. When she is finished with each one, she shoves the corpse to Sura, who takes it and silently walks away and drops it on the grate atop the fire. In no time, once the scent of burning feathers has passed, comes the glorious smell of roasting meat. For later, though. Not for now.
Astera arranges the chicken heads at points around the bowl. She lifts the bowl and drinks. When she pulls it away, her lips are darkly stained, crimson dribbling from the corners of her mouth. She tilts the bowl to Laelia’s lips and has her drink as well. Laelia fights the urge to gag. As soon as the bowl is pulled away, she lets as much of the blood as she dares spill from her lips. The rest she holds sloshing on her tongue, sickeningly sweet and salty and metallic all at the same time. One by one the other women are offered the same. They do this so that when the goddess comes, she’ll smell the blood of the sacrifice on their breath. She’ll think they ate the birds raw, as she herself prefers.
Laelia once remarked that it was strange that so much of their rituals included deceiving the goddess. Astera responded, “This is not deceiving. It is pleasing the goddess. So long as she is pleased, all is well.” She has no doubt about this. Laelia tries to have no doubt as well.
Next comes the mixing of the blood with oat flour. Astera kneads it with fingers, making a dark mass that looks like flesh. When she is satisfied with it, she hands it to Cerzula, who will bake it as a present for the goddess. This too Laelia doesn’t understand. But she trusts that Astera is right, and she looks forward to eating the roasted chickens later.
When Cerzula returns the bowl, Astera pours water
into it, swirling the blood. She sets it down and then sends the three women to make the points of a triangle around them. Unlike with other ceremonies, this time they do so from afar. Cerzula moves down the hill a bit. Epta perches on a rock, outlined in the moon’s bony light. Sura is in the trees. The goddess will see them all. That’s why they are spaced wide, to better pull her eye from the sky. And also, Astera says, the goddess will reveal herself only to her chosen women. Astera is one. Laelia, if she is found worthy, will be another.
They kneel on either side of the bowl of water. The liquid is nearly still, a mirror to the sky that stirs with the breeze every so often, making the stars dance. Astera has given her no further instructions. For a time Laelia just kneels, listening to the other women, wishing she understood Thracian better than she does. Then to Astera as she begins her goddess-talk. Laelia closes her eyes to better hear it. It’s so perfect, she thinks. Every note and breath. Each pause and renewal. The more she listens, the more the sounds ring true inside her. Incomprehensible, yet exactly as they should be.
Without ever deciding to, Laelia begins to hum. She lets it fill her chest. She begins to move with it, her body pulling it in different directions, stretching it out. Pounding it down. Lifting it up. Like hands kneading dough. When the moment feels right, she shapes her lips into an oval and makes other sounds, whichever ones come to her. The sounds she makes grow more varied and complicated, more like words. Not words she understands, but words the goddess will. A song for her. Of course that’s it. She doesn’t have to comprehend Kotys’s language. How could she anyway? What matters is that she forms the language with her mouth and chest and arms and legs. She gets lost in it. She doesn’t notice when Astera goes silent. She only realizes after she’s been singing on her own for a time. Suddenly, her voice seems thin. Alone. She stops.
The Risen Page 24