Mystic Isle

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by Patricia Rice


  Chapter Three

  Nautilus and his crew kneeled outside the bower concealing the praying virgins. Their high, sweet voices stirred his blood as it shouldn’t.

  In all his years of duty in the service of the goddess, he had not once been tempted by the maidens in white hovering above him in their distant temple. He and his men had the freedom of the seas and shores, of lusty, colorful women who greeted them with welcoming arms. The vestals were ethereal angels not to be considered in such an earthly manner.

  But days and nights on a narrow ship had proved the women were human. They hungered, they cried, they feared. And best of all, they had shapely legs and rounded curves.

  If the goddess provided, and they found the other galley, the island would soon be housing nearly three dozen hungry men with almost an equal number of nubile virgins. Well, maybe somewhere around two dozen of each, if he didn’t count the children.

  Nautilus prayed his thanks that their mead supplies ran low.

  “They have the voice of angels,” Demetri, his first mate, declared with a transfixed expression. “Do you think we might be near friendly shores? Sicily is said to have beautiful women.”

  Nautilus followed the path of his thoughts easily enough since his own traveled the same direction. No man could remain sane resisting such lush bounty for long.

  “First, we find our ship. Pray hard and divert your nasty thoughts,” Nautilus admonished.

  “You will have mutiny if you expect us to behave like eunuchs,” Demetri protested. “This island is isolated as the other was not. We have nowhere to spend our coins.”

  “The goddess will provide,” Nautilus said solemnly. After he’d watched the priestess bring his heathen men to their knees, perhaps he ought to start to believe, but he was a practical man, and the philosophy of worship didn’t put food in his stomach. “It won’t hurt you heathens to learn respect for goddesses and virgins.”

  Demetri slanted him a skeptical look but returned to praying.

  Nautilus tuned in to the wind and the dawn sky and calculated the minutes until they could navigate the narrow passage back to the familiar sea.

  The singing descended into a single chant accompanied by a rhythmic drum beat. A drum? Nautilus didn’t remember instruments being brought aboard. Perhaps a hollow trunk.

  The priestess emerged from beneath an arch of flowering vines. The white nimbus of her hair rippled over a newly cleaned tunic. The purple belt circled a narrow waist and emphasized the fullness of breast and hip. Power emanated from her presence.

  As the dawn beamed upon her Venus-like beauty, his crew audibly gasped and bowed their heads, tearing their pagan gazes from her holiness.

  Unbowed, Nautilus studied her without the veil of frantic urgency from these past days. Lady Tasia’s skin was fine and lightly colored with pink from days in the wind, not bronzed like that of most of her handmaidens. She no longer looked so frail as earlier. The sea breeze molded her linen to a proud figure, a Venus worthy of worship.

  Her speech distracted him from his musings.

  “The goddess has spoken,” she said in a clear voice that carried over the lapping of waves and the murmurs of men. “Our home is lost. She has brought us to a new one. The Chalice of Plenty will provide all we need. In this blessed garden, there will be water and food for all, a safe harbor for our ships, and peace. Our duty will be to protect the chalice from outsiders, and to this end, she has given us, her chosen people, many gifts. We are to use our gifts wisely for the betterment of all, and not just for ourselves. If we worship her and obey her laws, we—and our descendants—will be blessed forever. Go forth and sail with safety to find our friends and comrades.”

  She departed as silently as she had come, leaving the men gaping.

  Their descendants?

  Before speculation could run rampant, Nautilus was on his feet and heading for their remaining ship. “To sea, men! We must find our brothers.” If anything, the lady had inspired his men to return here as quickly as they could.

  If Nautilus prayed at all, he prayed that they’d find the other ship and return safely. If anything happened to both ships, the women would be left stranded and their goddess would have to provide men from Olympus.

  * * *

  “We have the pot the soldiers left for us,” Daskala told Tasia. “We have the fire they started. We have water and fish to cook. But we need root vegetables as well as fruits to feed us. We need knives to clean the fish.”

  “The boys carry knives.” Tasia pointed at one of the brown-eyed, brown-haired, half-naked youngsters the captain and his crew had left in their care. “Let them share in your duties. We must learn a whole new way of doing things, men and women together. We cannot survive apart in this world.”

  “Perhaps some of the boys could go with Sirene and look for roots?” Daskala asked tentatively.

  “It would be better if we had Gaia to lead them, and Mageiras to look for spices,” Tasia said sadly, speaking of the agronomist and the cook on the second ship.

  She could not bear to consider the loss of so many valuable minds and hands. First, the task at hand. “Gaia would recognize plants similar to those we grew at home. Perhaps one of her acolytes has enough knowledge to help?”

  “I will ask. If we are to stay here, we need Gaia’s guidance in tilling our fields. We do not know what the winters will be like. How will we cook without herbs?” the teacher asked, muttering to herself as she walked away. The herbs had been stored on the second ship with the goats.

  If plants were the only problem… Tasia began mental lists of tasks, most of which required tools and labor they did not have. Paradise had its limits.

  Painfully aware that if the ships did not return, they would be abandoned forever despite the goddess’s promise, Tasia kept a watch on the harbor and the sun. She knew it would not be possible for the men to return before dark, but the idea of spending the night here without adequate shelter or guardians worried her ceaselessly.

  Should she have demanded they build a stronger lodging before they built the altar? Had she merely succumbed to hunger, and her vision of safety was just wishful dreaming?

  To worsen her doubts, the day was not without its mishaps. One of the small boys twisted his ankle in an animal hole. While the younger girls screamed in fear that the hole might have been caused by snakes or worse, Tasia and Althaia wrapped the boy’s limb in tree fronds and vines, and left him soaking it in a cool grotto pond.

  Terrified of their poorly dug latrine, one of the smallest girls wept hysterically rather than use it. A very young carpenter’s apprentice built her a bottomless stool to place over the hole, using his knife and vines and branches the other children gathered. It broke when the next child used it, starting another round of weeping.

  By dark, Tasia wanted to cry from exhaustion, but everyone had been fed, the ill had been tended, and beds of moss had been prepared for all. She sat guard with Althaia, their Healer, for the first part of the evening, feeding their small fire and praying for the safe return of the ships.

  But even she had to submit to sleep sometime.

  By morning, the grumbling and fear had multiplied. The younger girls wept for their familiar meals and pets. The older women complained of aches and pains and glanced worriedly toward the harbor. Everyone griped about tramping through unfamiliar vegetation in search of food and fields and building material.

  The pleasant, orderly routine of meals and classes and prayer had vanished with their home.

  Then Khaos stumbled and spilled her bucket of water over their only cooking fire. Tempers snapped. Even Daskala screamed and ranted in desperation and anger. The nine-year-old Khaos wept heart-breakingly, sitting on the ground, hugging her knees, and rocking back and forth as if the world had ended.

  Tasia picked the child out of the muddy ashes, brushed her off, and set her to attempting to make fire with kindling and their one flint. But nothing could be accomplished if tempers continued to flare.

&n
bsp; “Sirene,” Tasia begged at last. “Is there a song that might lighten their moods? Bring joy to the heart? We could all be at the bottom of the sea, feeding the fishes, or buried in debris had the goddess not saved us. We should spend our days in rejoicing.”

  Sirene obediently lifted her heavenly voice in a joyous hymn to the day, a simple hymn even the children knew. Within minutes, the clearing where they were constructing their shelters became a place of laughter. Happy shouts greeted the lifting of walls and completion of leaf roofs.

  Tasia gazed upon the change in amazement. “It took only a song?” she asked Daskala, who was weaving palm fronds into a basket.

  “And prayer, I’m sure,” the elder teacher said soothingly. “Sirene’s voice must reach the heavens.”

  Tasia did not remember Sirene’s voice reaching the heavens on any other occasion, or their former priestess would have set the musician to singing day and night to prevent petty quarreling.

  Khaos cried out her triumph as she produced fire in their small hearth, and those assigned to cooking hurried to set about their tasks with relief.

  The worry over the missing ships seemed as endless and painful as the tasks they must accomplish. While Daskala muttered of the need for stronger shelter from storms, Tasia sent the youngest to splash in a pond and gather flowers for the altar.

  “Play is worthless,” Daskala argued. “We are alone now and must learn to work through the day. They are not too young to gather shellfish for our dinner.”

  “Would you break their spirits with endless work?” Tasia asked, sitting down to join her teacher in weaving the fronds. “Children learn from play. The goddess has promised us plenty. We are not hungry. One day at a time is all we can hope to take.”

  “Do you mean we can never leave this place for civilization?” the teacher protested in anguish. “I have no purpose here. My scrolls are useless when all we do is work. The young will grow up ignorant.”

  “Of course we can leave, just as we could leave the temple if we chose to give up that life. I would miss you, if you chose to go, but I wish you would stay so that we could learn this new life together. We must thank Khaos for bringing the scrolls.” Tasia’s hands trembled with weariness and her heart sobbed with sorrow, but as leader, she could not let others see her doubt and pain. Someone had to be strong.

  “We will die here,” the older woman said with a sigh.

  “We will die anywhere,” Tasia responded with amusement. “We escaped dying in the quake and again in the storm. I do not think Aelynn has brought us here to die of hunger.”

  But they might die of loneliness and grief if the ships did not return.

  They’d scarcely acknowledged the existence of the soldiers until the quake had rearranged their lives. And now, it was difficult not to think of them—and of their missing sisters.

  At dusk, without permission or even a means of doing so, Khaos set fire to a stack of dry seaweed on the high cliff overlooking the harbor.

  * * *

  Eyelids drooping with weariness, Nautilus stood high in the bow of his ship in the last minutes before dawn, urging his equally exhausted men to row. Lashed to the rear was their foundering sister ship.

  “We don’t have enough strength to pull both boats,” Styros argued. “Let’s take our losses before we lose this one.”

  “When will we have the materials, tools, and boatbuilders to build another?” Nautilus asked. “We don’t know what the future holds. We can’t afford to waste anything. Now that we have everyone safely aboard, we’ve doubled our crew. Let half a dozen men rest for a few hours, then send another half dozen below. We’ll manage.”

  “The gods be praised that we found them,” Styros said. “But besides killing the men with exhaustion, we need to make better time. We’re out of fresh water. There is illness among the women. One of the lads may lose his foot from that blow he took in the storm. People are more important than ships.”

  “You are like a demon nagging on my shoulder,” Nautilus complained. “Go rest. We’ve accomplished the impossible already these past days. We’ll hope we can prove our worthiness to the goddess.”

  Styros snorted. “They have you believing in such things? You’ve gone weak in the head.” He gestured at the foggy night sky. “We have no stars to guide us back to those rocks.”

  “I’m willing to believe that the priestess saved us. That’s enough for me.” Nautilus wasn’t entirely certain he believed his own words, but if he said them with confidence, he might make Styros believe. At least the man stomped off to rest, leaving the captain to await the dawn alone.

  Nautilus prayed that the lady was holding her own without aid from any but a few handmaidens and boys. Surely they would not starve in a few days.

  Except—An entire island had disappeared into the sea in a few minutes. And their new home seemed determined to vanish into the mists just as certainly as the sea had claimed the old—once more, heavy fog blanketed the ship.

  Perhaps he really ought to pray to the goddess. Without the navigation of the stars, they had no guarantee they would ever find their new home again.

  The fog swirled around the masts, and the wind abandoned the sails—just as before. A few groans from below gave evidence that the rowers were weary enough to notice.

  For all Nautilus knew, in this miasma he’d been robbed of his senses and was sailing into a dream. He had no vision of rock cliffs to guide him, just the instincts that he’d started to doubt.

  A tall, brown-skinned handmaiden strode up to stand beside him, admiring the horizon. “The goddess awaits,” she murmured in awe. “See how the sun shines like gold from the heavens on our new home.”

  He blinked, and damned if it didn’t. He knew sailors often saw illusions in the waters, but this was in the air. It was as if the rocks produced a miasma to conceal the sun. But if one knew the fog was an illusion and looked above, he could see the dawn’s light transforming the sky into a golden mist shimmering with rainbows, illuminating the rocks surrounding the island, inviting them to land.

  Or to crash upon the rocky barrier.

  How had the woman—perhaps all the women—seen what he had not? That served as reminder that the goddess’s acolytes were chosen for their special abilities. If seeing sun where there was none was one of them, perhaps they had others.

  “Can any of your women help the rowers?” he asked the maiden who had so mysteriously seen the island before he did.

  “If they will let us.” Without another word, she departed on her errand, disappearing as swiftly as she had appeared.

  He would have to learn her name—and those of all the women—if they were to combine forces as the Priestess had said.

  There was only one way of joining forces with women that he knew, but he would gratefully learn all their names for that reason alone. Had the priestess truly said they would have descendants? Had the goddess lifted the boundaries around her maidens?

  His entire attitude would shift—if he believed in the Elysian Fields here on earth. But such a garden of the gods did not exist. He would have to return to Greece and hope to put his future back together again some other way. A man without wife and family was nothing.

  The two ships limped through the thick fog. Nautilus navigated by his instincts, testing the currents and winds in search of the narrow aperture that would return them to paradise. These cliffs would present a formidable fortress against weather and mankind. Perhaps a sentinel on the highest rock with a signal . . .

  A golden light caught his armbands, and the fog parted sufficiently to see the craggy crevasse the priestess had insisted they sail. On his own, he would never have taken such a risk. Leave it to one who knew nothing to discover new worlds!

  Dreaming of alluring sylph-like curves and hair finer than silk, Nautilus startled abruptly back to the moment with a shout from the rigging.

  Glancing up, he watched in horror at the fire spreading across the island bluffs.

  Fire, not the sun, had i
lluminated the thick fog.

  Chapter Four

  Tasia saw the flames ignite on the bluff and immediately raced in that direction. She was fairly certain that was Khaos up there, playing with her new-found ability to start fire.

  As the wind caught the sparks, the fire spread through the dry grass. Khaos sprinted down the hill with flames licking at her heels.

  The fire was outracing the girl’s short legs. She’d be engulfed in flames in seconds. Tasia grabbed a bucket of water one of the girls had filled and shouted at the horror-struck vestals. “Save the scrolls and the chalice. Follow Daskala.”

  “To the harbor!” Daskala shouted. “Hold the scrolls above your heads! Into the water.”

  Tasia was already on her way up the hill, running toward the spreading flames as her vestals ran in the opposite direction.

  She heard the others screaming at her to turn back, but the little girl’s cries of pain couldn’t be ignored. Just as it had at home, instinct or Aelynn guided her—not fear or thought.

  She caught Khaos just as the fire engulfed her. Splashing water on the closest flames, Tasia pushed the child to the ground and fell on top of her. Together, they rolled in the dirt through the flames—and off the grassy verge into the darkness below.

  * * *

  A brisk breeze caught the galley’s sail once they reached the open harbor, but Nautilus focused on the growing flames on the bluff, not the beach where the women raced into the water.

  With a horror so gut deep that he nearly fell to his knees, he watched the priestess and the child go up in flames and disappear through the smoke.

  If they had fallen from the cliffs, they would have met certain death in the water, but he hadn’t heard the splash or seen them fall. Perhaps they’d rolled down the hill. Or lay dead upon the burned grass. The gods may as well have ripped the heart from his chest.

  His rowers could not row fast enough. The breeze was not strong enough, and it carried them toward the main beach, not the more northern bluff. Nautilus ran to the bow and without further thought, dived into the water.

 

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