Weighing Shadows

by Lisa Goldstein

  Damate turned toward Ann and Franny, who helped themselves to fish and lentils and wine. The fish was seasoned with that sharp spice that Ann had smelled all over Knossos, a tang like newly cut wood warmed by the sun. Even the wine tasted spicy.

  The children ate voraciously. When they were finally finished they sat back and started asking her and Franny questions. “Where are you from?” “Do you have any pets? I have a frog.” “How many children do you have?” “Do you know any songs?”

  There were only four of them, Ann saw—there had just seemed to be more. She looked at Damate helplessly, but the other woman made no move to stop them.

  “We’re from Egypt,” Franny said. She turned to Damate. “Where’s your husband?”

  Ann frowned at her.

  “I haven’t found a husband yet,” Damate said.

  “Then how do you—”

  Ann hurried to interrupt her. “Don’t you have any—” She wanted to say “jails,” but stopped when she realized she didn’t know the Kaphtoran word for it. “—any places to put people waiting for the queen’s justice?”

  “Here,” Damate said, clearly not understanding the question. “They stay with people until it’s their time to see the queen.”

  “What if they’re, well, what if they stole things? Or killed someone?”

  “Those people are not the queen’s concern. If someone steals something, she has to work to pay it back. As for a killing, that would depend. If it’s an honorable killing there’s no need for justice, of course. And if it isn’t, well, the killer has to pay for that too. The queen is only brought into it if there is some question over the penalty.”

  Honorable killing? “But—aren’t you worried about bringing us into your house?” Ann asked. “You don’t even know what we’ve done.”

  “I can take care of my family,” Damate said. She looked at the corner of the dining room, and Ann, following her gaze, saw a spear as tall as she was. “The queen wouldn’t allow me to receive guests otherwise.”

  She had said it without boasting, but she did look as if she could defend herself. She was stocky and muscular, without the wasp waist of the women on the frescos, and her hair was piled up on her head instead of falling in ringlets. She wore a long robe of patterned cloth, tied with a sash at her waist.

  Suddenly one of the children pointed to something above Ann’s head. “Look,” he said. “The little golden lady is here. She wants to tell you something.”

  Ann turned. At first she could see nothing there, and she thought, annoyed, that the boy was having a joke at her expense. Then a bee buzzed by her head, and she ducked away.

  “Don’t touch her!” Damate said. Then to her son, “What does she want?”

  “She has a task for her, for the visitor.” The bee flitted away, out an open window. “She goes,” the boy said. He sounded sad. “She’s gone.”

  All the children were staring at Ann now. Damate brought her fist to her forehead, and the rest of them did the same.

  “It was just a bee,” Ann said. She hated being singled out; it never meant anything good.

  “You outlanders are very strange,” Damate said. “Don’t you recognize Our Lady of Honey, bringing you a message?”

  “Well, but how do you know? When is it Our Lady, and when is it just a bee?”

  “He tells us,” Damate said, indicating the boy who had pointed to the bee. He hadn’t been one of the children asking questions, Ann realized; he had kept to himself, quietly eating his food. Now she saw that he had a tattoo of a snake on one cheek, coiling up from his neck to next to his ear.

  “He’s very—” She used a word Ann didn’t know. “He’s dedicated to the goddess.”

  The boy looked up and mumbled something. “What?” Ann asked.

  “She has a task for you,” he said. He sounded matter-of-fact now, as if a visit from the goddess was an everyday occurrence. Maybe it was, for him.

  “What kind of task?” she asked.

  The boy looked to each of his shoulders, in the shrug she had seen before. “Good lady …” he began.

  The others joined in; it was a prayer of some kind. “Good lady, garbed in green earth, we thank you for this favor, and for all your favors given. We live within your blessings.”

  The meal ended soon after. Damate took them into another room and showed them their beds, and then went downstairs. Ann had the idea that she usually slept in the room she had given them but that she had moved to her workshop to be close to the door, ready to come awake if they tried to escape.

  Her legs shook as she got ready for bed. A part of her noticed it almost clinically, but another part still felt trembly, as if she had experienced something mysterious, numinous. It couldn’t have been, though—she hadn’t believed in a god, or a goddess either, for a very long time.

  LIGHT COMING IN THROUGH the high windows woke her, and she stumbled into the bathroom. The Kaphtoran toilet had amazed her when she had first seen it at the inn: a wooden seat above two stones with a hole between them, leading down to sewers and out to sea. It could even be flushed, by moving a lever and allowing water to fall on the contents.

  Damate was already up, opening cupboards and setting the table with plates and pitchers and a loaf of bread shaped like a coiled snake. The family and Ann and Franny ate breakfast together, and then Damate went downstairs to work.

  The children headed downstairs as well, and Ann followed them. The workroom had a fresco along the wall, a line of women dressed in beautiful patterned cloth, and there was a small ivory statue of a goddess in one corner, with beads and silver charms in a bowl in front of it. Damate’s bed stood in the center.

  She had wondered how Damate supported herself and took care of the children without a husband, but she seemed to manage without any problems. A woman came to collect the boy who was dedicated to the goddess, perhaps to take him to the temple, and a girl and boy played with loom weights and some animals carved out of wood. Another girl scooped a frog out of a pitcher and watched it hop around the floor. They ignored Ann and Franny, who had not sung for them or given them interesting answers to their questions.

  The girl with the frog had lighter skin than the other children, and Ann realized that they had had at least two different fathers, maybe more. What would that be like, to be able to choose your partners, to have children with whoever you wanted? To choose your husband—or not, if that was what suited you?

  About an hour later a man knocked at the door. At first Ann thought he was the police, that the queen had sent for them at last, but he ignored her and Franny and rounded up the remaining children instead. Damate tried to explain where they were going, but Ann couldn’t form a clear picture of it; it seemed to be a combination school, playground, and museum.

  Transformations Incorporated had stressed over and over again that they weren’t to offend the people in whatever era they found themselves, the ones the company called the time-bound. That was why Ann had scowled at Franny the night before, when the other woman had started with her personal questions; she didn’t know how Damate would take being asked about not having a husband. Now, though, she was so puzzled by the arrangements here, and so tired of their forced idleness, that she was ready to ask her own questions. If Damate didn’t want to answer she could always say so.

  “Was that their father?” she asked.

  “My brother,” Damate said. She continued to work at the loom, not looking up, the shuttle moving in and out of the threads like a car darting through traffic.

  “But what—why is he taking care of your children?”

  “Well, he’s my brother.”

  What on earth did that mean? She tried to feel her way toward an answer. “So … he’s more important to you than a father of a child would be?”

  “Of course. Your first family is always the most important.”

  “And if you had a husband …”

  “A husband isn’t blood. Not the way a brother is.” She seemed to sense Ann’s confus
ion; she stopped working and stared across the room, frowning. “Look,” she said finally. “The woman makes the child, right?”

  Ann said nothing. How much did these people know about biology? If they hadn’t figured out the father’s role in conception she certainly wasn’t going to tell them, wasn’t going to risk altering history that much.

  “Well, of course the father does his part too,” Damate said, to Ann’s relief. “But the woman shapes the child within her, just as Potnia shapes the world. So the brothers and sisters shaped by your mother are the ones who give you gove.”

  There was that word again, the one Arudara had used. Ann was beginning to get a better sense of it; it meant a feeling of harmony, of rightness.

  Franny had come over sometime during this conversation. “Don’t you want a husband, though? I mean, don’t you get lonely?”

  “Lonely? With all these children?”

  “I mean lonely for adults. Adult conversation.”

  “Well, but I have my brother and the rest of my family, my sisters and my mother. And my friends, of course.” She parked the shuttle in among the threads, seeming to settle in for a long discussion. “I did nearly take a man once though, my younger boy’s father.”

  “What happened?”

  Damate sat back against the wall, a distant look in her eyes. “Ah, he was a fine man, with beautiful eyes and a wonderful smile. Not handsome the way the bull-leapers are handsome—more of a dreamer. A good love-maker, though.”

  Franny grinned, as if Damate had acknowledged she’d been right all along. She was a romantic, Franny, Ann thought. “What did he do?” Franny asked.

  “Do? He’s like his son, dedicated to the Goddess.” Ann heard the capital letter as she pronounced the word.

  “No, what I mean is—how did he earn his living? Support himself?”

  “He doesn’t. I just told you—he’s dedicated to the Goddess. He lives at the palace, in Her temple.”

  “So you couldn’t get married? Because they wouldn’t let him out of the temple?”

  “What does where he lives have to do with it? No, I didn’t take him because—well, partly because he asked me, he didn’t wait for me to ask him. I’m too traditional that way, I know that. All my friends say so, anyway. But also because the day he asked me was unpropitious—it was the day of Kore’s death and descent to the Underworld.”

  “You didn’t marry him because—because he asked you on the wrong day?”

  “Not just the wrong day—the most dreadful day in the calendar. The longest night of the year, and what was worse, on this night the moon had gone to the Underworld too, and had not yet come back. We were at the temple, celebrating the mysteries, and, well, he couldn’t wait to ask me. Perhaps if he’d left it for another day—ah, well. It’s too late now.”

  Franny shook her head. “I don’t get it. You loved him, right?”

  A knock sounded at the door, and Damate opened it to a woman wearing three feathers in her hair and carrying a spear. The police, Ann thought. She had almost managed to forget them. Her heart jolted and then sped up painfully.

  “I’m here to take your guests to the Lands of the Dead,” the spear-woman said.

  The words sounded as unpropitious as anything Damate’s lover had said, but Ann had never felt as relieved in her life. She and Franny hurried to the door.

  “I can only take one of you,” the woman asked. “One must stay behind, as a pledge for the other’s good behavior.”

  Ann didn’t know what to hope for, to go with the woman or be left with Damate. Franny was closer to Greg and should see him buried, but on the other hand Ann was heartily tired of being cooped up indoors.

  The woman pointed with her spear to Franny. “You, over there. You’ll stay here.”

  “No!” Franny said. “No, I have to go. Greg and I, we were—we were dating.” The woman’s expression did not change, and Franny added, “We were in love.”

  The spear-woman looked one way and then the other, shrugging. “That’s nothing to me,” she said. “You.” She pointed to Ann. “Come.”

  “No, she should go,” Ann said, much to her own surprise. “I’ll stay here.”

  “I’m not used to having my commands disobeyed,” the spear-woman said. “Come along.”

  Ann looked at Franny and shrugged. “Thanks anyway,” Franny said in English, and Ann followed the spear-woman out the door.

  The cemetery was in the opposite direction from the palace, though as she followed the spear-woman through the streets she noticed that the houses here looked the same, the artists’ wares spilling through the open doorways. She saw another shrine by the side of the road, this one with a fire burning within it, and after that she spotted them all over, small ones tucked into corners, big ones almost the size of houses, standing in a plaza or where a group of roads met. They were all different, with different offerings: cloth, small double axes, goblets, necklaces. Were there many goddesses, or just one with many names? That strange boy had called the one who had visited her Our Lady of Honey.

  And now that she was looking for it she saw men and women with the same tattoo on their faces, a snake spiraling up from their necks to their cheeks. Other people were gazing at them with a combination of wonder and longing and fear, moving closer to them, even walking in circles around them. Were they hoping for a message from the goddess? But the men and women dedicated to her mostly ignored these people, and some of them were obviously crazy, muttering and gesturing to themselves.

  Ahead of her the spear-woman turned onto another path, a winding road that led away from the city. The houses grew smaller and shabbier, and finally stopped altogether. “Here we are,” the spear-woman said.

  They had come to a flat rocky field. Two men were digging between stone walls about a room’s width apart. Noises sounded behind them and she turned to see another spear-woman coming up the path, with Walker following her.

  “Good to see you,” Walker said in English, nodding. “How are you doing? Are they treating you all right?”

  Ann blinked; Walker had never said anything remotely as pleasant to her before. “Better than I expected. What about you?”

  “I’m fine. Where’s Franny?”

  “They kept her at the house, in case I tried to run away.”

  Walker looked at her significantly, but she said nothing more. They stood for a long while in silence, watching the men dig the grave. The heat beat down on them, and sweat poured down her sides and pooled between her breasts. For the first time she wished she could wear one of those light open blouses.

  Walker looked around her. “When is it going to start?” she asked.

  “No one can hurry the Goddess,” the spear-woman guarding her said. It sounded like a proverb.

  Finally they saw something riding up the path to the cemetery, a chariot drawn by horses. No, not horses—pulling the chariot were two animals with the bodies of horses and the faces of birds—and with open wings, though they weren’t flying. Griffins, like the ones on the frescos.

  Ann drew in a breath. Had they—gone extinct? But surely someone would have found fossils, bones … She looked at Walker, who was smiling.

  “Where did they come from?” she whispered.

  “We brought them hern. They’re bioengineered.”

  “But then—why hasn’t anyone found evidence of them?”

  “We didn’t bring very many. Just for the priestesses. We had to trade for certain … concessions.”

  Now she saw the priestess sitting in the chariot. She wore a robe made of animal hide; a pendant of a snake swallowing its tail hung at her breast. Her hair was down and her eyes were enormous, staring at something only she seemed to see. She looked otherworldly, numinous, as if she had just returned from the Lands of the Dead.

  Then Ann realized that it was Arudara, the woman they had met at the House of Return. She wondered how many marvels her head could hold in one day.

  A drum sounded, deep and complex. A horn blew. A waft o
f smoke drifted past her, a heavy smell. The priestess stood and began to speak.

  “The year waxes, the year wanes. The snake grows thick and blind and seems to die. A man’s life plays out like a thread and is cut.

  “But spring returns, and the snake comes forth from her skin. The man finds rest in the arms of our Lady. Our Lady of the Evening Star, Our Lady of the Snake.”

  The odor of smoke grew stronger. It curled around her, disappeared, returned—like the year, the snake, the recurring rhythm of the drum.

  Her thoughts blurred. She understood something important, fundamental, but when she tried to grasp it it vanished. Like smoke, like life …

  The priestess rose into the air and hovered over the open grave. A snake was wrapped around her waist, and another coiled at her throat like a necklace. The gravediggers went to the chariot, brought out the body, and took it down into the hole.

  Ann peered inside. The two men set the body on the dirt floor, folding it carefully so that its knees rested under its chin. Arudara dropped the statue of the cat inside the grave.

  Ann looked up again. The priestess was holding her arms straight out to the side, like wings. Suddenly she screamed, a high fierce scream that went on and on, that echoed from every part of the cemetery. She was no longer a priestess, no longer Arudara; she had been taken by the living goddess, the ruler over life and death. Ann shivered.

  Finally the scream stopped. “The sacrifice seems good, and is accepted,” the priestess said. Her voice, her gestures, had changed completely, as though someone had slipped into her body as casually as pulling on a glove. “The man is at rest in the arms of our Lady. Our Lady of the Clod of Earth, Our Lady of the Worm. Now begins the time of growth, the time of the ear of grain.”

  The gravediggers were holding their fists to their foreheads, the same salute Ann had seen before. It seemed less a ritual this time, more an attempt to protect themselves from the radiance of the goddess.

  The drum stopped. The men lowered their fists and bent to shovel earth into the grave. Ann looked up, and saw that Arudara had returned to her chariot. Or had she ever left it?

  The smoke had mostly dissipated—and now that it was gone Ann understood that it had been some kind of drug. Well, of course, she thought, annoyed at herself for being so slow.