Two months past, during the Moon of Fertile Willows, her blood cycles had finally begun. Countless prayers and offerings, answered at last. For years, Rhené had subjected her to examinations and vile concoctions designed to stimulate her womanly parts, but nothing produced any effect other than cramping and nausea.
Yet, in the Lady’s own time, a full four years later than most girls, Aridela’s body succumbed to the relentless pull of the moon. Yesterday, her mother had granted permission for Aridela to take her place among Kaphtor’s women. In four months, at the new planting season, she would join the others in the grove rites. She would walk among the oaks and lie with a male of her choosing.
Now she could concentrate on her other long-cherished desire.
“Athene my Mother,” she said, “let me again enter the bullring. I ask you here, on the summit of your most hallowed mountain, where my voice rises without hindrance. Grant me this, Mother. I swear you will not see me fail again.”
Shivers trailed across the back of her neck. She cupped her hands so the moon appeared to float on her fingertips like an opalescent bead.
“Give me this, Holy Mother. I vow to bring you glory.” She kept her voice low, knowing if anyone overheard, the lectures and punishment would be severe.
Iphiboë, Themiste, Selene, Queen Helice and eight priestesses emerged from the nearby wood. They formed a circle around the bonfire, and Aridela, with one last look of entreaty at the moon, joined them.
Themiste lifted a narrow-throated jug, formed from the thinnest clay, painted with bright red whorls. She chanted a blessing and handed it to the younger princess.
Aridela kept her eyes downcast, fearful the oracle could read her secret desires. She knew better than to underestimate Themiste’s powers.
This year, when wheat and barley seed was sprinkled into the moist furrows of the earth, the grapes were crushed and the apple crop collected, she would join in the festival of fertility. Her friends had dressed up and gone off into the night for years while she remained in her bedchamber like a baby, for Helice continued to forbid it, every year, with the excuse that Aridela’s body wasn’t yet ready, and no amount of tears or pleading moved her.
Carmanor’s name drifted through her mind as it always did when she thought of the sowing festival. Tonight especially, for this was the same clearing to which she’d brought him so he could commune with Athene. Such agonies of anxiety and frustration had she suffered when that handsome warrior’s son from the mainland put his arm around white-haired Selene and disappeared through the palace gates. Like herself, Selene was an insignificant younger child, but she received the respect of a woman and enjoyed the freedom to do womanly things as she wished. Aridela would have given her birthright to accompany Carmanor the night of the sowing festival six years ago. But with the passage of years his face had grown indistinct and she’d fallen in love with another.
Lycus, Kaphtor’s premiere bull leaper.
Lately he’d begun returning her glances, and even went out of his way to speak to her. Last night, his greeting outside the feasting hall seemed flirtatious. She hoped so, for she meant to talk him into helping her sneak into the bullring again. Perhaps they might even perform the bull dance together.
Yet even if she did dance with a bull, even if she and Lycus loved each other in the oak grove, no true glory would be offered. She would still be sent into seclusion in the caves and would only be allowed to emerge for festivals and state occasions.
There had to be more. Every fiber of her skin, every breath and pulse beat, told her so. If she was locked away in the shrines, how could she avert the carnage and assaults in the dreams Athene sent? The dreams were warnings, she was certain of it, with commands woven through. She, not Themiste, spoke the prophecy that became popular legend. Yet Themiste often voiced worry over Aridela’s inability to use the laurel leaves or cara mushroom without becoming violently ill.
Helice beckoned. Aridela tipped the jug, pouring wine combined with drops of blood, that which was called kaliara, into a silver bowl.
The queen used the mixture to trace an upturned crescent moon on Iphiboë’s forehead. “With the life-giving blood of women are you consecrated,” she said. “Twenty-four years ago, you were born from my union with Valos, who accepted three golden apples and lay his life upon the sacrificial altar. Now he resides beyond the north wind, in Hesperia’s everlasting orchard of green. If we follow Goddess Athene’s design, we will one day join him there.”
“Please the Lady,” the rest chorused.
“As our Goddess is threefold, so are women. Your maidenhood is set to pass, for you’ve resolved to enter the oak grove with your sisters. You will soon enter the phase of the mother.”
“Please the Lady,” Iphiboë whispered.
Those were the first words Aridela had heard her sister utter since they’d left the palace. Yesterday, though, Iphiboë had confided her fears.
“You’re lucky to be the youngest, Aridela,” she’d said. “At least you have a chance for peace in your life.”
“You mean a chance to avoid men,” Aridela returned. “I wish I could be in your place. Men don’t frighten me.”
Iphiboë rubbed her temples. Her narrow, fragile shoulders slumped. “Whatever man wins the Games earns the right to claim me.” Her eyes were huge, apprehensive.
“No one would dare harm you.”
“What if I bear a child?”
Iphiboë saw a woman die while giving birth a few years ago and never forgot it. The idea of coupling with a male was too brutish for her as well. She probably believed men mated as mindlessly as bulls. If the chosen consort were an invisible spirit who met her in a grotto and conducted a communion of souls, Iphiboë would no doubt embrace her obligations with more enthusiasm. For Kaphtor’s heir, one foot rested in the ether of fantasy; the other, though anchored to this life by duty, shrank and shriveled as though thrust in snow.
If only she, Aridela, Shàrihéid, euan Velchanos Calesienda, daughter of the Calesienda, were the oldest. Goddess would grant her numerous children and Kaphtor would grow ever stronger. “It would be a singular blessing,” she’d said aloud, unable to stifle a note of petulance.
Iphiboë cringed. “But who will he be? What will he do?”
“By Velchanos, you make me tired. He’ll do what men do best. Why have you insisted on this? Mother said you didn’t have to go into the grove. The very idea of it makes you sick. Now she’s devised a special night just for you, at your demand. We’ll all be humiliated if you change your mind.”
Again… hung in the air unsaid.
Her sister’s mouth tightened. “The people will never truly accept me unless I fulfill the rite. Besides, sooner or later, I have to lie with a man. I’d better accustom myself to it.”
“That’s true.”
“And Mother….” Iphiboë’s voice broke. Tears filled her eyes.
“Don’t let that concern you. She’ll get well.” Aridela spoke with a confidence she didn’t feel. Their mother had gradually become more and more tired. Some days she could hardly rise from her bed. The flesh under her eyes was fragile and dark and she’d lost weight. The healer, Rhené, was dosing her with different remedies, but none seemed to do much. Although she hadn’t said so openly, everyone believed it was because of this lingering malaise that Helice had made the decision to put Iphiboë on the throne.
Iphiboë brushed at her tears. “How has she done it? Man after man. Did she love them?”
“Of course. She loved them all,” Aridela said.
“Swineherds, smelly farmers. They leer at me. I see their evil intent.”
“If Athene wishes to make a swineherd consort of Kaphtor and father of your royal daughter, at that moment he will be no swineherd but Goddess Athene’s chosen one.”
“Oh, Aridela. Aren’t you ever afraid of anything?”
Peering into the night sky at the summit of Mount Juktas, the three-pillared shrine hidden in the wood behind her and women chanting on
either side, Aridela breathed in musky incense and fire smoke and remembered Iphiboë’s half-admiring, half-envious question.
Did she fear anything? Yes, being cheated of her desires and resolves. Life must be drawn close and savored. Iphiboë carried fear enough for them both. Yet here the timid girl stood, consecrated blood on her brow, receiving the queen’s blessing. The purpose of this sanctification was to strengthen her, to mystically prepare her for her night in the grove. But Aridela knew it wouldn’t work.
Helice drew three bold vertical lines under Iphiboë’s eyes. “May Athene bring us glory for another thousand years,” she said.
The priestesses, one well advanced in pregnancy, crowded around the fire and passed a bowl filled with Kaphtor’s potent wine and crushed cara, which had steamed in a cauldron for several hours to increase its power. Sea-faring traders introduced the mushroom long ago from faraway lands by way of the Black Sea. The proper dosage gifted those who chewed it with visions, and wasn’t so dangerous as laurel leaves and serpent venom, which could bring divine madness, sometimes death.
Each sipped the potion. They held hands and waited.
Aridela closed her eyes as her flesh shivered with wave upon wave of sensation. She imagined cascades of ivy sprouting from her scalp. Standing as still as she could, as still as the marble statue of the god Velchanos, she savored the earthy stimulation that increased with each breath. Her blood pulsed. Her hair tumbled river-swift, twining through the grass, splashing over the edge of the precipice. A murmur rose in her head, earth voices calling, singing from blades of grass, from stones, from the soil and the nearby wood. Laughter tumbled as uncontrollably as the riotous bubbling of a mountain waterfall.
“The moon grows larger,” one of the priestesses, her voice catching, cried through the silence. She pointed into the sky. “She comes to us.”
Another priestess grabbed Iphiboë and kissed her. “Velchanos compels me. You please him, my princess,” she said. They clutched each other, both giggling.
Helice smiled indulgently.
The moon ascended higher, into a sky crowded with stars. The brightest of them, known as Dala, settled close beneath it, like a child with its mother. Crete’s stargazers claimed this alignment wouldn’t occur again for centuries. Themiste believed this embrace of the moon and star offered powerful blessings, and was doubly profound because it occurred only one night after the honey gathering.
The earth slowed. Each beat of Aridela’s heart echoed. Lady Athene was close. She brought answers.
Selene threw more wood on the fire and coaxed it into a high blaze. She and Iphiboë adorned each other with necklaces of ivy and hyacinth blossoms. They danced to the beat of drums, reeds, flutes, and clapping. The others joined, singing the songs of birth, growth, aging, death, and renewed birth. Aridela closed her eyes, reveling in explosions of crimson stars and circles floating across black space.
Firelight glanced off Helice’s silver crescent crown. Raising her arms, she spoke, meeting the eyes of each woman in turn.
“Look upon the creamy egg of night,” she said. “Remember the creation of our world. Athene, she who comes from herself alone, relation to none but Gaia, lifted her hand. Behold, foamy Sea and starry Sky did form. Out of the potent north wind Our Lady created Makanga, father serpent who sheds and renews his skin. Velchanos, beautiful god and divine son, came from this union. Athene carved the people of the old world from Makanga’s teeth and charged them to honor her and her first consort. In the finest of love’s awakenings, Athene took Velchanos as her lover and gave birth to Niachero, of the star Iakchos. Mounted on wings of flame, Niachero drew our wondrous island up from beneath the waves. She landed on Ida and from there beckoned, attracting our people with her bright fire. This is where we were taught her mother’s secrets of tin and copper, of forming clay, the grafting of olives and the art of weaving. Niachero bade us construct our civilization, and as she left, she set a holy lamp in the night sky to remind us of her mother, white, eternal Goddess. Athene gave her son to fructify the olive and barley with his sacred blood. As she knew he would, as with all living things, Velchanos’s death made its circle into rebirth and resurrection, bringing warmth, growth, and rain. In continuation of this blessed gift, our bull-kings take his title, Zagreus. They give their earthly lives as he did, for a brief moment in time, and are restored to eternal life, eternal glory.”
The dancing and laughter grew ever wilder until all were exhausted and the fire again subsided into embers.
Time to rest, to dream the dreams of moonlight.
“Bless us, Mother, shepherd of the stars,” Helice said. “Bring divine revelations. Gift us with knowledge. Grant us answers to life’s secrets. Show us what we can achieve.”
Snuggled close under covers of soft embroidered wool, the women drifted to sleep in a circle around the dying fire.
Go into my child, to she who will be queen. Enter the mother of the future, the Goddess-of-Death-in-Life, and Life-in-Death.
Aridela sat up. Her blood still hummed with the warmth of cara. A cricket’s late chirping echoed in her ears. Next to her, a priestess gave a small sleepy sigh and rolled over.
Silence.
Moonlight silvered the clearing.
A beautiful, familiar voice woke her, yet as she examined the open space, her sleeping companions, and the dark edge of the wood, she realized no one was there.
Another sound brought her gaze back to the clearing’s edge, to the line of trees.
Again she heard it. The slow grate of stone.
Something or someone stood there, within the trees, still and white, shaped like a human.
Oh Athene. What is it?
Then she saw. At the forest’s boundary, the statue of Velchanos, Athene’s Holy Son,
…moved.
Marble scraped as his head swiveled. He stepped from the pedestal. Shadows of moonlight through leaf-ruffles speckled him in arabesque.
A voice floated through her mind. My love.
She pressed her hands to her temples.
He left the trees and crossed the open space to stand over her, his marble-pale hair spilling over his shoulders, sparks of light glimmering within like miniature stars. Shadows crept across his chiseled face.
Excitement overran terror as he knelt, stiff-kneed, before her.
Save me, Aridela. Open your heart.
Hesitantly, she reached out and touched the cold unyielding cheek. “Calesienda?”
He leaned closer. Aridela fell back between the sleeping priestesses, even as she wondered if this was a cara dream. The god lay on top of her. She wrapped her legs around his hips; cold stone softened into flesh, melted against her skin, warm as a drench of scented oil. His hands gripped her shoulders and his hair, now soft and dark, fell around them, secluding them from the others. How blue, his eyes, fire-lit divinely, from within. They glowed like an iridescent sea.
“Carmanor,” she murmured through his kisses. “I’ve missed you. Why have you come to me through Velchanos?”
I wish we could avert what comes, my sister. His mouth traced across her jaw and he spoke into her ear. This I vow: for longer than you can imagine—
Sound and sensation disintegrated beneath an ear-shattering crack and a flash so blinding and sudden she couldn’t defend herself. Everything blackened then leaped crazily in crimsons and greens before clearing, softening, returning to the cool night and this otherworldly lover who still lay on top of her as though nothing had happened.
A new voice echoed from the night. Make the future queen burn for you as I do. She will keep you from harm.
It was the strangest voice she’d ever heard, like gravel being shaken in a clay jar. It made her throat itch.
She felt the weight of her lover, tasted his flesh and the saltiness of tears on his face, saw the divine spark in his eyes.
Yet they were no longer blue. Now they were green, as luminous as the rare green marble quarried on the mainland.
Shadows deepened on e
ither side of his lips as he smiled. – I will be with you, in you, of you. Together we bring forth a new world. Nothing can ever part us.
A faint cry interrupted him. “The princess….”
“Wake up, child,” someone else said, but the voice came from a distance, soft enough to ignore.
He shook his head; sparks flew, like scattering sunbeams off the surface of a forest pool. He was now more fanciful beast than human lover, like an Egyptian sphinx, a gryphon. No, a lion, with tangled mane, sharp teeth, and the cold eyes of a predator. She never tired of hearing tales of those creatures, and always pestered the mainland ambassadors to tell her more. Her mother kept a mated pair in her zoo outside the palace.
For longer than you can imagine, I will be with you, in you, of you. Together we bring forth a new world. Nothing can ever part us. Believe, no matter how many try to turn you against me.
She wanted to fill her hands with his bright hair, but her fingers kept rising, pushing through his cheeks as though they were fashioned from mist. “Nothing can ever part us,” she repeated. “I won’t forget. I promise.”
“Aridela.”
Her lover evaporated into three anxious female faces. “Why do you disturb me?” she cried.
The priestesses glanced at each another. Behind their shoulders in the sky, a shadow-smile stretched across the moon’s face, the star beneath like a dimple.
“You dreamed some vivid thing, isoke,” Helice said. “I feared you were having one of your nightmares. You called out….”
She sat up, blinking. She lay alone on her bed of wool and pine needles. No god peered down at her.
Selene touched her shoulder. “You’re with us. You’re safe.”
“Velchanos came to me.”
Startled astonishment passed across their faces.
Aridela pushed them aside and stood. “From the trees, over there. The statue.” Tremors ran through her as she remembered the feel of his stone body. “It was him,” she said. “Velchanos.” If she could show them, if she could prove it, the council might choose to make her queen. Kaphtor would be saved, and her poor sister could be what she wanted, a priestess. Aridela wheeled and ran to the sharp lip of the precipice.
The Year-god's Daughter (The Child of the Erinyes) Page 15