by Wendy Orr
What am I doing alone on this sacred day? Why aren’t I with my family?
‘You’re doing what the great mother bids,’ says Pellie. ‘Your way is not with the fishers.’
‘Or the priest-folk or the craft-folk or the slaves,’ I snap back, but go on singing, even though I’m too numb to care whether the sun becomes strong or gives us this longest day of the year.
The day that I should have been starting the fourth and final season of becoming a woman, celebrating rites that I will never learn, for a land that no longer exists.
‘You’ll learn if you listen!’ says Pellie.
I pull my shift out of the shallows and shake it. Something white flies free, and I catch it mid-air, my hand snatching before I have time to think, the way it did when Pellie and I danced with balls, throwing them back and forth to each other, four small balls in the air at once.
This one is just a pebble, smooth and white, perfectly round and no wider than a fingernail. It’s not gold or a jewel, but I would wear it as a necklace if I could; use it as my seal-stone. Even my frozen heart knows that it comes from Pellie. I will keep it forever.
So I pull on my damp shift, finger-comb the curls that flow past my ears now, and tease out the tangles of the long hank before tying it into its bouncing ponytail again. No plait today; even hair needs to dance wild and free to celebrate the goddess in her strength. I retrieve my sacred skirt from the hut and wrap it around me, the flounces falling straight and the waist wrapped tight. My pebble is knotted securely into the tail of the sash; whether Pellie is oracle or friend, I need her with me.
I’m as ready as I can be, though I’m glad there’s no mirror.
I still don’t know what I’m ready for.
‘You must climb to the goddess’s mountain shrine,’ says Pellie.
‘But the rituals were at dawn! And I’m not allowed.’
‘The people are returning now. You’ll not be seen, but the goddess will hear you.’
‘I’ve already given everything we have. I’ve got nothing left!’
‘There is always something left,’ Pellie says firmly, in her oracle voice.
The peak shrine is clear from here. There are taller mountains, but this one is a perfect, rounded cup of a hill. It will be two hours of walking before I get to the base.
I think Pellie’s spirit will guide me, but she has disappeared; maybe she thinks I don’t need her now. The town is deserted as I pass, and the trail to the mountain is wide. Sometimes it twists so that I can see the snake-line of people winding down towards me, too far away to tell how many or how fast they’re walking.
Then I hear the music: the chanting of ecstatic song, from the Lady’s clear soprano to the chief’s deepest bass, threaded through with the piping of flutes and the clatter of rattles.
How far away? I ask Pellie.
No answer.
I keep going, peering around each bend before I step, and am at the foot of the mountain before I see the first priest-folk coming towards me. I can tell the Lady and the chief because there are guards in front and behind them, but even the guards are chanting. There’s time to wrap my skirt more tightly around me, scramble through two thorn bushes and rest with my back to a tree.
I don’t know if I’m allowed to be here, or if it matters if they see me. I just know that I need to do this, and do it alone.
The bushes around me are too thick to push through; I’ll have to wait till the path is safe. I curl up in the dirt between the roots of the tree, and doze in the shade.
When I wake, the sun is close to its full height and the path is empty. I start to climb. The heat beneath the haze is kiln-hot and my throat is already dry – but I am tougher now than I’ve ever believed I could be. The trail is steep and the higher it goes, the more often it’s nothing but rock to rock, a high step up where I’m guessing the Lady had the support of her guards so as not to bring ill omens with a stumble and fall.
I do it alone and I don’t stumble – and though my parched throat won’t sing loud, I hum the goddess’s song under my breath.
Goddess of all
we sing your praise;
give us long days
for fruit and field.
Mother of all
we bring you gifts
give us long life
for flock and herd.
Since I don’t have a gift, I sing the hymn over and over, the endless verses that list every fruit and grain, every green and growing thing that the sun’s warmth will ripen and we will eat: olives and barley, pomegranates and lentils, because even those harvested in winter or spring need this midsummer heat to grow.
The rote words stop me thinking about my only true wish: take the world back to the way it was a year ago, when all I had to worry about was when I would start my bleeding and my Learning.
Stepping off the path
I shelter a moment in the arms of a rock
so old it’s been hollowed by gods
like the huge trunk of a tree
blasted open by lightning –
and though it’s a rock,
it has the same god-feel
as the wishing tree at home.
The shrine is clear from here:
red pillars and doors
into the side of the hill,
the bull-horned altar
with its splash of blood,
the offerings around it –
with vultures hovering –
and the priestess-guardian
in the shade of the wall.
Since the earth mother shook
half a year ago, on the shortest day,
I’ve done all that I could,
lost more than I can believe,
suffered more than I knew I could bear.
Even now,
clean and combed in my sacred skirt
blood reddening my feet
I’ve climbed the mountain alone
offering my songs –
and the goddess laughs.
Outcast that I am –
neither priest nor slave –
I cannot approach the shrine
that the priestess guards.
I thought I was broken,
dead inside and couldn’t feel –
but that numb deadness
was deep as the sea –
my rage is swelling like the murdering wave:
red fury, weighted with darkness
because it’s Mama I hate
for losing her spirit,
Dada for leaving us;
Glaucus for dying –
and me for betraying my clan
and becoming a slave.
But now, my body shaking
like the earthmother’s trembling,
my fury erupts
blinding and deafening
like the gods at war;
scorching my veins
like the rain of fire
that scarred the goldsmith;
swallowing me like the burning rocks
that killed my land,
my clan, my friends, my home.
We are nothing –
the chips the gods play with
in their gambling games –
the only one to hate
is our goddess, mother of all.
She’s betrayed us,
over and over,
not honouring the gifts
we sacrificed,
demanding her rites
as she destroys our world.
I shriek my fury –
if the priestess hears, I don’t know or care –
I can’t think or feel
anything but hate –
I scream until
the rage drains
and I feel the warm slither
of a snake across my toes –
messenger of the goddess,
from her world to ours.
‘Follow,’ says Pellie.
‘You must sink into darkness
; before you can rise.’
I don’t know what she means
because Pellie
is no longer my sister-friend
but a spirit oracle.
Deep in my belly I know that she’s gone
but am glad of her voice –
though I wish she’d still speak like my friend.
The snake disappears,
but a second trail leads from this rock;
I leave the path to the shrine
and follow the hill’s great curve
to where the rocks gape open –
a door to the underworld,
the great mother’s belly –
and I see the flick
of the snake as it enters.
I don’t need Pellie to tell me to follow;
I’ve hated the great mother –
as well as my own
and now I must pay.
l follow the snake
into cool blackness,
walls wet with the mother’s weeping,
and in the emptiness of caverns
touch pillars of tears,
growing as stone from ceiling and floor.
No light or sound, no heat nor time
nor scent of any living thing,
but I creep on and down
sliding on a foot-worn way;
heart thudding,
thick fear rising
entering the belly of the mother
with nothing to offer –
but my feet go on as Pellie ordered
slipping down in the blackness
past the tear-built rocks;
till I feel water rising to my knees
and am blinded by light –
a bolt from the sun at its peak
to the belly of the earth
lighting the pool I stand in
with the neglected rock altar
waiting for gifts.
I have no gold
or bronze or precious things –
nothing except myself –
like the fish-bitten diver
who took his agonies to the deep
and gave his life to the sea god.
The fishers will care
for Mama and Nunu;
there’s no trade to be done
for a disappeared land –
and a purple slave
is no use to anyone.
And yet
there’s a difference between
living a life that’s no use
and leaving it forever.
I’m more afraid
than when the house fell
or the gods fought
or we fled the palace
because I can’t see a priest or a knife
and I don’t know how
the goddess will take me –
I only know
that I don’t want to die.
‘Great Mother,’ I plead,
and for that moment of loving life,
I forget my misery,
the fatigue and fear of a purple slave,
‘let me live to serve you –
if not as my clan, then however I can.’
Standing in that pool, in the light
with deepest darkness all around
waiting for death, or a sign
I go beyond fear;
the world spins,
my head so light it might float
my gaze goes black
and my body limp,
falling and knowing that this is the end.
Waking spluttering, shivering
in the cold pool of tears –
adding mine to them –
my bumped head so real I must be alive.
I need to learn why.
Weak as a newborn,
I drink and bathe
in the great mother’s tears;
life flows through me, quick and strong,
my ears so sharp I hear each drop
trickling through caverns,
my eyes so bright I see
under the water,
around the base of the neglected altar
pretty pebbles and shells, left for the goddess
who doesn’t need gold or jewels
but a perfect offering from the heart.
‘I have nothing,’ I’ve said,
but that’s not true.
In a knot at the end of my sash
is the sea-polished pebble,
Pellie’s gift that speaks
of laughter and love,
and friendship beyond death.
This, the most precious thing I own,
so small an offering
on the great rock altar –
till the shifting sunbeam
shines it like a jewel.
‘Well offered,’ says Pellie, in her oracle voice,
‘and –
back in the sunlight and the world –
when the purple, the white and the red are one,
you will thrive too,
for you have faced death’s darkness
and will enter life new.’
I climb back up the dark tunnels in a dream. Daylight blinds me as I step outside, and the sun’s heat is on my skin, drying my clothes and warming my blood. Pellie-oracle said life would start new, and I feel it pulsing through me, strong as dark wine, rich as a feast. My feet are strong and sure on the rocky path; the smell of thyme is clean and sharp under my feet. I don’t fear wild animals or guards – I know I am safe.
Mama and Nunu are siesta-dozing in the shade of the hut, Chance at their feet. He thumps his tail but is too hot to bother getting up; Mama and Nunu don’t stir. Love warms through me as I look down at their sleeping faces, Mama’s more peaceful than it ever was before the house fell; Nunu’s worn and tired. She tries not to show that weariness to me, soothing me as if I were still a child when I return from the purple.
Yet I’m not a child – and Nunu, no matter how I feel about her, is not my grandmother. She was bought by our family when she was young, to be fed, clothed and housed in exchange for her labour.
She’s working still, and we give nothing back. I’ve seen her lift food to her mouth – last, always last, after Mama and I have eaten – only to have Mama snatch it for herself. And yet Nunu is the one earning food from the fishers. She doesn’t need us.
My heart twists as she stirs and wakes.
‘Nunu…’ I can hardly get the words out. ‘Do you want to stay here?’
She snorts, gesturing to the ruin-rock hut with its roof of branches. ‘It’s not as if we have choices.’
‘But you do, Nunu. I can’t ask you to stay. You’ve looked after Mama and me our whole lives, and we can’t even feed you now.’
I’m not saying this very well. Her face is incredulous, then ferocious.
‘Goddess leaping, girl! Who will look after your mother if you throw me out?’
‘I’m not throwing you out, Nunu! But you can choose – if you want to live with the fishers, or try to find the craft-folk from home…or stay with us. You’re free.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. Free! You and your mama are my family. Am I a kicked dog, to desert you now?’
I feel as deflated as a wrung-out sponge.
‘Do you think I can call myself free?’ she demands – and despite all the humphing and snorting, her eyes glint with unshed tears – ‘when my Swallow Clan granddaughter is living as a slave?’
Granddaughter.
Nunu calls me child, calls me by name – calls me frog with the sense of a fish – but she has never been free to call me granddaughter.
‘Thank you, Grandmother,’ I say, and salute her.
I can’t explain, to Mama and Nunu or myself, why I won’t go to the fishers’ midsummer celebration that night. I’m still wearing my ceremonial skirt, and Nunu’s afraid that means I’ll go to the town feast instead and try to mingle with the priest-folk there.
‘I know it’s where you belong,’ she says. ‘But not no
w.’
‘By the great mother’s breath,’ I swear, ‘I don’t want to join the priest-folk. I’ll celebrate the goddess alone, as I did this morning at the peak.’
Nunu studies me for a long moment, then takes my head in her hands and kisses my forehead. ‘They may have tricked you into being a purple slave, but there’s more of the goddess in you than in all the priests here.’
I don’t remind her that she hasn’t met any priest-folk here. I am too close to tears. And when Mama imitates her, kissing my forehead and each cheek, crooning, ‘Leilei, Leilei,’ the tears spill.
‘You’ll be here when we return?’ Nunu asks as they leave for the fishers’ beach at sunset.
‘Till dawn. I need to be back for the headcount.’
Her face clouds. ‘By the look of you – I hoped that the goddess had answered your prayer and you wouldn’t have to return to that foul pit of a place.’
‘I hoped so too,’ I admit. ‘But for now, I have to.’
Standing in line for the headcount, the last traces of joy evaporate. I’m trying not to choke as I look over the pots of murex still to be smashed, the heaps of empty broken shells, the pots of rotting purple slime stewing for three days and the tripods waiting to cook the ripest…
Pignose looks at me and smirks. ‘Over here, Not-A-Priestess! You think you’re too good for the purple stink?’
‘No,’ I say, trying not to breathe. One day away and the stench is even more sickening than usual.
‘You want to get away from it?’
My heart leaps. It can’t be true – a new life starting with kindness from Pignose?
He sees my instant of hope and starts to laugh. He laughs till he chokes, because these fumes are stronger even than him. Wheezing, he points to a rough sledge heaped with empty shells. ‘Take those to the potters.’
I’ve seen men hauling these sledges – never a girl or woman. The men grunt and strain as if they’re about to collapse.
He thinks I can’t do it – he’s still punishing me for being who I am. He follows me as I put the rope around my forehead and lean into it, because he thinks I’ll collapse; maybe even die.
He could be right. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to shift it at all.
Of course I can – another tug, and it’s moving! The goddess’s joy may be gone, but I can still feel her strength. Whatever the Pellie-oracle meant, it wasn’t dying in a sledge harness.
Are you sure?
The further I go the less sure I am. Oracles are tricky – after all, Pellie’s mother, when she became the Lady, thought the oracle meant that the time of death was over and our home was safe. I’d be dead too if Dada hadn’t read it differently.