by Judith Tarr
She had done well, by her lights. She had found the last six men in this part of the world who were fit to make a marriage with a daughter of the grove. It was a pity they were not fit to marry a daughter of Achilles.
Two
“I want to marry,” Polyxena said. “I dream of marrying. But if I’m given to choose, why must I choose those?”
Her sister Troas paused in stitching a state robe for the king. She was a softer spirit than Polyxena, and some said more beautiful: a beauty of milk-white skin and soft hands and wide blue eyes. Still, she was queen, and she had her own share of wisdom.
Her long fingers traced the curve of the embroidery along the hem: gold thread on crimson. One of her maids hastened to fetch a new coil of thread; green, this one, like new grass.
When the needle was ready, she set a row of tiny, perfect stitches. Then she said, “You only have to choose one.”
Polyxena tossed her head impatiently. “What’s to choose between them? They’re a flock of blue-eyed sheep.”
“They’re handsome sheep,” said Troas. “Choose the handsomest and be glad you weren’t born elsewhere in the world. Royal daughters aren’t given to choose their marriages there, nor are royal sons, either, unless they’re very lucky.”
“Kings can do as they please,” Polyxena said. “I want a king to choose me.”
“Any king? Even if he’s old and ugly and smells like a he-goat?”
“There are young kings and strong kings. If my king hasn’t mastered the art of the bath, I’ll teach him.”
“You are young,” said Troas, who was a whole five years older. “These Hymenides already know how to bathe, and they’re young and pleasing to look at, and they’ll do your bidding. With them you’ll be free to do as you please.”
“I want a man,” Polyxena said stubbornly, “and I want one who is worthy of me. I want a king.”
* * *
There was no budging the girl. She had always been headstrong, but with time and training she had learned to rein herself in. She had performed her duties and assisted in the rites of the temple as an acolyte should, albeit with a certain lack of passion.
Now that Polyxena’s body was waking to itself, Nikandra had dared to hope for an end to her long vigilance. A young woman distracted by a handsome husband would be safe; once the children came, she would focus her powers on them and not, please the Mother, on more perilous things.
The Hymenides had been the answer to Nikandra’s prayer. They were men of the old world, impossibly rare in this graceless age. Nikandra would have thought Polyxena would be delighted to choose a man who had been raised to do a woman’s bidding.
But Polyxena was cursed with a contrary spirit. Troas was useless; her attempts at dissuasion only deepened Polyxena’s defiance.
Nikandra had her own substantial share of stubbornness. She extricated Polyxena from the queen’s house and brought her back to the temple with not a word spoken. Polyxena was obstinately silent, and Nikandra saw no profit in argument.
* * *
In the morning, as the first light of dawn struggled to brighten a sky gone dark and cold, Polyxena emerged from her cell and nearly fell over the youngest Hymenid. He sat cross-legged in front of her door, wrapped in a bearskin, rocking and singing softly to himself. The rhythm of his song had crept into Polyxena’s dream; her heart was still beating to it.
“Go away,” she said.
He rose with grace he must have studied since he was old enough to walk. Her belly tightened in spite of itself. He was not the man she wanted, but he was a beautiful creature.
His voice was as lovely as the rest of him, light and melodious like a trained singer’s. “Lady, I can’t. I’ve been commanded.”
“I command you to let me be.”
“The Lady said you would say that,” he said. “I’m to assist you with your duties, and you are to allow it. That’s her command, lady.”
Polyxena drew a long breath. She should not shriek and rail at this boy; it was hardly his fault that he had been inflicted on her. If anyone deserved a grand fit of temper, it was her aunt.
Nikandra would be expecting it. Polyxena refused to gratify her. With careful calm she said, “Do as you please. Goddess knows it’s dull enough.”
“Surely not if you’re with me, lady,” he said.
She ignored his flattery. There was water to fetch and the floor to sweep and the lamps to tend—all in biting cold that held no memory of the previous day’s warmth. Only then could they break their fast with fresh bread and olives cured in salt and a cup of heavily watered wine.
He uttered no word of complaint. Even when the sleet turned to snow while they fetched water from the spring that ran only in the daylight and went dry as the sun set, he never failed of his carefully trained courtesy. He shielded her from the wind and insisted that she put on his bearskin, though her woolen mantle was warm enough.
He was an excellent servant. She would have kept him for that.
Only a handful of pilgrims had braved the storm to beg for oracles. Timarete had the unenviable task of sitting under the sacred oak, sheltered from the snow by its branches and warmed by a brazier, and making sense of the song the wind sang as it smote the flasks and jars of bronze that hung from the branches. To Polyxena when she passed, the god’s voice sounded like a long and rambling complaint.
It set a thought in her head, which she left to take root and grow. When the temple was in order and the priestesses’ comfort attended to, Polyxena had lessons to recite and a heap of mending to do.
Her shadow lent a hand with that; for a man he was deft with a needle. Then she learned that his name was Attalos and that he had been born in the year before her, as near as he could tell. She also discovered that he could sing; his voice was as tuneful as she might have expected.
She did enjoy his company. When she looked at him, the stirring she felt when she watched the king’s Companions in the field was barely there. He was too smoothly pretty, and she did not incline toward women or unfledged boys.
* * *
Her dreams that night were dark and strange. She danced by moonlight in the sacred grove. The clashing of cymbals and the pounding of feet on the winter-hardened ground echoed and reechoed down the long corridors of trees. Cold light cast darts through the black branches. The night was full of eyes, of shadowy shapes and whispering voices.
In the dream the temple was either gone or not yet built, but the Mother’s tree stood tall under the moon. Its leaves rubbed together like hands; a voice spoke from its heart, deep and slow, in a language older than any mortal thing. She almost understood the words; almost comprehended their meaning.
Her body was full of the dance. She had begun in her acolyte’s tunic, but after a while it vanished. She danced naked with her long hair loose, whipping her flanks, and the blood-warm air caressing her skin.
The moon and the darkness spoke of winter, but the heavy heat was unmistakably summer. It rose from inside her, like the music and the dance, throbbing in her veins.
A great shape loomed out of the dark: the Bull of Minos with his heavy shoulders and massive horned head, dancing on a man’s feet, with a man’s body, and a man’s phallus but great as a bull’s, rampantly erect. For all his size, he was quick, and he moved with ponderous grace.
He was closer to Polyxena’s dream of a man than any she had met in the waking world. His dance woke depths in her body that she had never known were there. He was dancing for her: the blunt-muzzled head turned toward her; the dark eyes fixed on her.
Even if she could have resisted him, she would not have wished to. She stepped out into the circle, where moonlight and darkness crossed one another like blades. The music quickened. The hands that gripped hers were breathtakingly strong, but she was no weaker than they—unless she chose to be.
This was the choice she wanted. This was a taste of the power she longed for. Raw as it was, it begged her to master it; to make it complete.
He seize
d her in the midst of the dance. She was already reaching for him. When his arms tightened, her own were locked around his middle. As he thrust, she opened to him.
Pain was pleasure. Pleasure was exquisite pain. He filled her until she was like to burst—but however huge he was, she was vast enough to contain him. She was the Mother in the living flesh. All that he was, was inextricably a part of her.
* * *
She lay in the dark, listening to the wind that wailed through the branches of the grove. Her little box of a room was icy cold, but she was awash in warmth. When she flung off the blankets, the chill hardly touched her bare skin.
Her breasts were taut. When her fingers brushed her nipples, she gasped; a shock of pleasure ran through her. Her hand ran down the curve of her belly to the heat below.
The memory of him was still inside her, a fullness so complete that there was no room for any lesser presence. The milk-and-water boy who slept outside her door was hardly a flicker in her awareness, even as she stepped over him. He murmured words she did not care to catch, and curled up tighter, like a puppy in a litter.
She was naked and barefoot, her only garment her hair, but the fire of the dream was with her even yet. She stepped out into the windy dark, to find that the storm had blown away and the stars were brilliant overhead.
The grove was full of voices—though not those of her dream. Those had come from outside, from watchers who had haunted her dreams for as long as she could remember, although they had never shown themselves in the waking world. These voices were born in the grove.
She had only begun to learn the language of the oracle, but on this night the Mother was in her, with all knowledge of past and present and to come. She stood beneath the Mother’s tree in the clangor of bronze and the crying of wind.
Out of sound came light, and out of light came understanding. Her body followed it, dancing to the ancient rhythm.
She bowed to the skill of the priestesses who could transform this glory into words. She had not advanced so far. She could see and feel and understand, but that understanding ran too deep to express.
It was like the tapestry she had glimpsed on the priestesses’ loom: darkness shot with sudden fire. The Bull of Minos was in it, and the Mother’s snakes coiling together, and the old dance of body and body that gave birth to the sun in splendor.
She stamped and spun, dipped and swayed. The wind caressed her. The starlight tangled in her hair.
The sun was coming. Already it seared her skin. It swelled in her womb and shouted to be born.
She spread her arms wide and whirled until the stars spun away and the darkness came down, soft and heavy as sleep. And still the wind sang.
Three
Nikandra found her niece at sunrise, sound asleep under the Mother’s tree. The wind was bitter still, though it warmed as the sun rose; but Polyxena was as warm as if she had been lying beside a fire.
She stirred at Nikandra’s touch, languidly, and smiled in her dream. Nikandra shivered. The Mother’s presence was so strong it had a taste, like blood and rain.
She shot a glance at Attalos. He sprang to wrap Polyxena in his own mantle and lift her in his arms. He grunted as he stood: she was not tall, but she was solid enough.
Nikandra hardened her heart. The effort would do him good. “Put her to bed,” she said, “then take her place in the temple.”
He dipped his head in obedience. Nikandra stayed for a while in the ringing of bronze and the rattle of branches, while he vanished into the temple with his burden.
From the time this child was born, Nikandra had watched and waited and prayed. The omens of her birth and the oracles that had accompanied it promised great things—terrible things, things that would destroy the Mother’s rule beyond hope of restoration, and give the world over to men and their gods. Nikandra had done everything she could to turn those omens aside, to raise the girl properly and turn her toward the Mother.
If that meant concealing her from any power that might find and corrupt her, keeping her in ignorance of all that she was, and binding her magic so that she could not use it nor be used by any other, then so be it. Above all, if it meant giving her to a man to live crushed and trammeled as women were forced to live in this world, Nikandra could appreciate the irony—but she would do it. It was for Polyxena’s good, and the good of the Mother’s people.
But Polyxena was persistent in her refusal to follow the path prescribed for her—and it seemed the Mother was inclined to indulge her.
“It is always perilous to stand against fate,” Promeneia said.
Nikandra had not seen or heard her coming. One moment there was no one else beside the tree; then the eldest priestess was there as if she had always been, sitting on the oracle’s chair, age-gnarled hands folded in her lap.
“I had thought,” Nikandra said carefully, “that you shared our visions for this child.”
“I shared your fears,” said Promeneia. “It seems the Mother’s will is otherwise.”
“Why?” Nikandra cried. “Why would She suffer the end of the world She made? What profit for Her in giving it to upstart gods and fools of men? Has She lost Her power? Or merely Her mind?”
“No mortal may understand the mind of the Mother,” Promeneia said, “nor should any of us presume to try.”
Every part of Nikandra resisted that painful truth. She did not want it to be true. She would not let it.
She was not a child; she had learned through hard lessons that not everything she wished for could or even should come to pass. Nevertheless, this she could not accept. The Mother’s power in the world had been fading for time out of mind. Nikandra could not and would not let her own flesh and blood destroy it.
She drew herself erect. “Mortal I may be, but I am sworn to serve the Mother with my whole heart and soul. Whatever I can do to keep Her alive in this world, I will do.”
“Surely,” said Promeneia, “and so shall we all. But this child is not meant for our order. That, the Mother has made clear.”
“What, then? What shall we do with her? We dare not open her eyes to what she is, still less reveal her to a world that will transform her into a weapon against all that the Mother has made. Shall we let her uncle dispose of her as kings do with their chattel in these darkening days?”
Promeneia’s calm put Nikandra’s agitation to shame. Under her dark and quiet gaze, Nikandra subsided slowly, recovering a little of her wonted equanimity.
Promeneia nodded approval. “Be still and listen. The Mother will tell you what She wants of us all.”
It was not a rebuke, nor was it meant to be, but Nikandra felt the sting of it. It struck her in her pride.
She had waged war all her life against the way of the world. This child had been meant to carry on what Nikandra had begun: the only one of her blood who had either the strength or the gifts for it. Such strength and such gifts indeed that they were perilous beyond any Nikandra had known; therefore she had kept them hidden even from the one who possessed them, and buried her in the grove where no spying eyes could find her.
The Mother, it seemed, willed otherwise. “What do we do?” Nikandra asked the last and eldest of her order—and maybe the Mother, too. “What is left for us?”
“Not all change is an ill thing,” Timarete said, taking shape in the shadow of the tree. “That one will fly high, but she’s no black dove of the grove. She looks to the eagle’s way.”
“For what?” Nikandra demanded. “To be the eagle’s prey?”
“Or to be his mate,” said Timarete. “Is that so ill, if it continues to ward her against what else she could be and do? For us there will be another acolyte. That boy with the fair face seems willing, and the grove speaks to him.”
“He is male,” Nikandra said, meaning to end it there.
But Timarete was no more willing than the rest of the world to do as Nikandra wished. “He is willing. At least let us use him while we can, until the Mother sends someone more to your liking.”
> Nikandra bit her lip. Again she knew the sharpness of rebuke. She was the youngest of the three. They did not stand on rank, for the most part, but age did teach wisdom—and the others had studied longer and searched deeper into the mysteries than she had yet begun to do.
She was not so very different from Polyxena. What she wanted, she wanted with all her heart. When it failed to come to her, she fought for it, no matter the odds.
It was bitter to think of defeat, of changing the path she had followed since the girl was born.
It would not be defeat. It would be victory of a different kind. The calamities that Nikandra had foreseen would only come to pass if Polyxena woke to the fullness of her powers. Nikandra would do whatever she must in order to prevent it.
Nikandra faced her elders who in the ancient way were her equals. “We’ll use the boy, and we’ll use the girl, too. We’ll let her fly where the wind takes her—but the wind will blow where we direct it, and we will guard her every stroke.”
The others nodded as if Nikandra had seen what was clear to them from the beginning. She swallowed the anger that rose all too quickly; once it passed, she rested in surprising calm. She was not about to surrender—not nearly. But she could change her course if she had no other choice.
* * *
After the storm and the dream and the dance, it seemed to Polyxena that the world and the people around her had retreated into a kind of torpor. The boy Attalos stayed on in the temple, serving as acolyte and sharing the duties, but he made no move to claim any part of Polyxena, and no one forced her to claim him. The days ran their round as they had for as long as she could remember, with nothing new or different to distinguish them.
She was suspicious of this quiet. It had the air of a trap waiting to be sprung.
Spring ripened into summer. The rites of the Mother passed one by one. Pilgrims came and went, received their oracles and left their gifts and strengthened the gods with their belief.
Every night Polyxena dreamed. It was not always the same dream, but it had the same taste: like blood and earth and heated bronze, overlaid with a flavor that she could only call watchfulness. The Bull of Minos was in it, and the Lady of Serpents, and the voice of the Mother singing through Her creation. Polyxena would wake with her body loosed in every muscle, and one or more of the temple snakes coiled on or beside her, basking in her warmth.