Weighing Shadows

by Lisa Goldstein

  Walker headed toward the chariot. She’d been affected by the drug too, Ann saw; she seemed to be forcing herself through some medium thicker than air. Before she could reach Arudara, though, the priestess picked up the reins and rode away.

  Walker turned to the gravediggers. “Do we—do we have to pay for the ceremony?” she asked.

  The men continued to work, saying nothing. Finally they finished, and one of them spoke. “Pay? Pay to return a man to his Goddess? You people from Egypt have some peculiar customs.”

  “Come,” Ann’s guard said. “Time to go back.”

  They started down the hillside. The drug had not worn off completely, and everything seemed strange, heightened. She felt as if she understood the mysteries of life and death—no, more than that, as if life and death were the same thing, and it was only a foolish misunderstanding that had made her think they were different. When she followed the thought, though, when she tried to put it into words, the feeling grew confused, drifted away like smoke. But for a brief while, as they walked through the twisted streets of Knossos, it seemed as if death had no power to frighten her.

  “She didn’t really fly out of her chariot like that, did she?” Ann asked as they neared Damate’s house.

  “Fly?” Walker said. “I saw her turn into a—a lion, I think. Her face, anyway.”

  “It was a drug. They drugged us.”

  “I’d already guessed that, thank you.”

  Walker touched her hand. Ann looked down, saw that she was holding something small between her fingers. She opened her own hand to receive it.

  “Don’t look,” Walker said. “We have our own drugs. Put it in your host’s drink, and leave the house with Franny tonight, after everyone’s gone to sleep.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a sleeping pill. Why? Did you think I wanted you to poison her?” She laughed harshly. “Meet me …” She looked around. “Over there, by that shrine.”

  “I thought we were going to wait for the queen,” Ann said.

  “I don’t think the queen’s on our side.”

  “What? Why not? Did the Minos say something?”

  The two spear-women looked up at the word “Minos.” “Hush,” Walker said. “I’ll explain everything tonight.”

  They were coming up on Damate’s house now. “Okay then,” Ann said. “I’ll see you.”

  “Goddess show you your path,” her guard said, and knocked at the door with her spear.

  FRANNY WAS SITTING IN the downstairs room, waiting for her eagerly. “How was it?” she asked.

  “Pretty amazing,” Ann said. She tried to tell her about the priestess, the drug, that final scream, but nothing she said managed to convey the wild strangeness of it, or that brief moment of understanding.

  “I should have been there,” Franny said when she’d finished. “I knew Greg better than any of you.”

  “You should have.” She lowered her voice, though they were speaking in English. “Walker gave me a sleeping pill, for our host over there.” She nodded at Damate, working at her loom. “We’re supposed to escape tonight.”

  “A sleeping pill? Where’d she get it?”

  “That bag of hers, probably. Do you think you’ll be ready?”

  “Definitely. Another day of this and I’ll go crazy. But why doesn’t she want us to wait, see what the queen says?”

  “I don’t know,” Ann said. “She said she’ll tell us tonight.”

  That evening she held the sleeping pill in her hand, and when they went to dinner she stayed close to Damate and sat next to her at the table. “Do you think your friend went on to the fields of the dead?” Damate asked her, after she had spoken her words and poured the wine to the floor.

  What did she mean? “I don’t know,” Ann said. “Are there—does the goddess ever reject anyone?”

  “Don’t you know the tale of Kore?”

  Kore was another name for Persephone, Ann knew. “She was kidnapped by Hades and taken to the underworld, wasn’t she?”

  “Kidnapped? You people have some strange ideas, truly. She was bitten by a snake and died, and became queen of the underworld.”

  “And so she ruled over those who had died,” the boy with the tattoo said in a bright clear voice, “either sending them on to the green fields of the dead, or keeping them with her in the gloom a while, until she judged that they had the wisdom to go on.”

  Damate looked at him fondly. “I’m sure they don’t want to hear that old story,” she said.

  “No, it sounds interesting,” Ann said. If everyone was listening to the boy she could slip the pill into Damate’s wine unnoticed.

  “Go on, then,” Damate said.

  The boy nodded. “A long time ago the Lady Kore wandered away from the bull games and walked a while in the fields, gathering flowers,” he said. He spoke very well, for someone so young. “But a snake came swiftly and secretly through the flowers and bit her on the ankle, and she descended to the Lands of the Dead.”

  Kore became Queen of the Underworld, said the boy, and took as her consort a bull that had been sacrificed in the games. Ann’s hand was sweating now, and the sleeping pill inside it felt sticky; she hoped it still had some potency left. She leaned closer to Damate.

  “But Kore’s mother the Lady Demeter was worried about her daughter, and traveled the world looking for her,” the boy said. “And while she searched she neglected the fruits and flowers, the living things of the fields, and they withered and died.

  “Then Demeter learned of her daughter’s fate. She descended to the Lands of the Dead, and she saw her daughter sitting on a throne and crowned with stars, and the bull sat next to her. And Demeter said, ‘I have looked throughout the world for you, my daughter, and I have found you at last.’”

  Damate was concentrating on her son, love and pride in her eyes. Ann’s heart had begun to pound so loudly she could barely hear the boy’s voice. She dropped the pill into the wine. Damate turned toward her and Ann met her gaze, forcing herself not to look down at the cup. Damate looked away, and when Ann glanced at the wine the pill had dissolved. Damate lifted the cup and sipped from it.

  “But Kore said, ‘If I go with you, who will judge the dead, and tell them when it is their time to go? And I have taken the bull as my consort, and cannot go back to your house.’ Then Demeter saw how it was, that her daughter was a woman grown, and had taken a consort.”

  Damate drank more of the wine as the boy went on. “Demeter said, ‘I will allow it, but for six months only. For six months you will dwell in the Lands of the Dead with your consort, and you will judge the dead, but for six months you will live with me in the world above, and all the living things of the world will grow and flourish.’”

  The boy stopped; that was the end, apparently. “That was very good,” Ann said, taking a long drink of her wine.

  Damate took another sip as well. “Do you see now? The Goddess doesn’t reject anyone, only decides when to send them on to the fields of the dead. Do you think your friend was ready?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “Well, he was young, you said, and his death was unexpected. It may take him a while to understand what has happened to him. He will stay with Kore a while, I think.”

  Ann nodded. “I guess so.”

  Damate yawned. “You’ve walked a long way today, but I’m the one who seems to be tired.” She stood. “I’m going to sleep—I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  SHE WAS IN A chariot pulled by griffins, flying over the streets of Knossos. The goddess came toward her in another chariot, this one drawn by an enormous bee. “Our Lady of Honey,” she said, putting her fist to her forehead. “I thank you for this favor. Please, tell me what I must do for you, how I can fulfill your commands.”

  “The grain grows,” the goddess said. “The grain is cut, and dies.”

  “What? I don’t understand.”

  The goddess’s voice blurred, grew indistinct. Suddenly she heard a loud clanking noise, and
she looked down to see her chariot separating from the griffins that pulled it. “No,” she said. “No, wait! Help me—”

  She opened her eyes. The room lay in darkness, as black as the hole they had put Gregory in. Something clattered, and she realized the noise she had heard was Franny, trying to make her way through their room.

  “Come on,” Franny whispered. “It’s time.”

  Ann had gone to bed fully dressed, with her bag next to her. She stood and picked it up, then moved carefully through the bedroom and downstairs to the front door.

  She reached out for Franny, making sure she was still there, then felt along the wall of the workshop, trying to avoid Damate’s bed at the center of the room. She had seen a torch by the door, which Damate had put out before going to bed, and when her fingers found the door she backed up, looking for it.

  She felt the torch, reached for it—and it fell from the bracket and dropped to the floor. It was only wood, but the noise it made against the stone floor sounded loud in the quiet house. Damate stirred in her sleep, and an instant later one of the children cried out from their bedroom. She and Franny stood silent, waiting for Damate to wake up, to discover them unmoving by the door …

  Nothing happened; the child must have gone back to sleep. Ann picked up the torch and they stepped outside, feeling the fresh air in their faces. She closed the door behind them.

  “Do you know where we’re going?” Franny asked.

  “Yeah,” Ann said. “Just let me get this torch lit first. There’s a shrine around here … There it is.”

  They headed toward the fire they saw flickering in the distance. Somewhere far away a dog barked. A ridiculous number of stars shone overhead, more than she had ever thought were in the sky, and a great crescent moon sailed among them.

  “After that, though,” Franny said. “Because I want to see Greg.”

  “Greg?” Had Franny lost her mind, on top of everything else? “He’s—”

  “At the cemetery, I mean. I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.”

  “We can’t go to the cemetery! Walker’s waiting for us.”

  “So what? She didn’t say what time she wanted us to be there, did she? Do you remember how to get to the cemetery?”

  She did, but she didn’t know if she should say so. Still, Franny deserved to see the grave—and this might be her last chance.

  She lit the torch from the fire in the shrine and looked around. No one else seemed to be outside.

  “All right—I think I can find it,” Ann said. “But you have to be quick.”

  “Great,” Franny said. “Thanks.”

  They walked for a while in silence. Was this Franny’s last chance to say goodbye? Walker seemed to be saying that they had failed, that they would have to leave quickly, before the queen passed sentence on them. And what would happen once they got back to the company? How would that look, to have your first assignment recalled, to have that failure on your record? Well, she had always known it was too good to be true.

  Something ran across the path in front of them. It was shaped differently than a dog or cat—a fox? For the first time Ann heard sounds in the night around them, rustling and chittering, loud in the silence. The Kaphtorans called Knossos a city, but it was really much smaller than that, groves and farms close around it.

  Beside her Franny wiped her eyes, and Ann realized that she had been crying. You moron, she thought. She knew she had trouble guessing what other people were feeling, but any idiot could have figured out that Franny would be upset.

  She should try to comfort her, but how? “I’m sorry about Gregory,” she said finally.

  “Thanks. You know, you’re the first person to say anything.”

  “Well, nobody knew you were together. And Walker probably read your file, saw you were married.”

  “My file, right.” Franny laughed bitterly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What’s in those files, do you think? If they can go back in time, how much do they know about us? How much privacy do we have?”

  Ann thought of Franny as she was when she’d first met her, a woman who had laughed often and easily. She’d been another of those people who cruised through life, Ann had thought, with nothing to worry about, nothing to hide.

  Now she saw how wrong she had been, that they had more in common than she’d thought. “Look,” she said. “I— well, I grew up in foster homes. That’s what they know about me. I think—I think they’re looking for people who aren’t connected to the present, our present. People who might be unhappy there, who would jump at the chance to leave.”

  She couldn’t remember the last time she had volunteered anything about her life. Franny stayed silent, though, and Ann cursed herself for opening up, all for nothing.

  “My husband used to hit me,” Franny said finally. “He stopped, though. Well, he said he’ll stop. He said that before, though.” Her voice broke, though she was no longer crying.

  “So I thought, well, if I got together with Greg, maybe I could leave him,” she went on. “Maybe I could really do it this time. Okay, I knew it wasn’t serious, that it probably wouldn’t come to anything. It was fun to think about, though.” She took a deep breath. “So, anyway. That’s what they know about me. That I’d do anything to get away from my life. Anything they wanted.”

  Ann didn’t know what to say. She wanted to ask why Franny had stayed with her husband, but she remembered all the stupid questions people had asked about her life, all the things they didn’t know. She thought that Franny’s story must be like that, something no outsider could understand.

  “I’m sorry,” she said finally.

  “Yeah,” Franny said. “Well. I’m sorry too. About you, I mean. The foster homes and stuff.”

  They had reached the cemetery. “Here we are,” Ann said. “It—who’s that?”

  “What?”

  “Over there. Someone—it looks like someone’s digging up Gregory’s grave.”

  They began to run. The person—a woman—looked up and saw them, but to Ann’s surprise she stayed at the grave and continued digging. There was a light on the ground, a steady yellow like … a flashlight?

  “Who are you?” Ann said when they had gotten close enough.

  “Meret Haas,” the woman said.

  “From the company!” Ann said, feeling relieved. She had forgotten that Transformations had sent other agents to Knossos. “Can you help us? Did you hear what happened with the queen, and the Minos, and—”

  “Wait a minute.”

  Meret picked up the flashlight and straightened, and Ann saw her clearly for the first time. Her wig had been knocked askew while she was digging, exposing short tight curls, black mixed with gray.

  She had a strange expression, an amused half smile, as if she had just told Ann a joke and was waiting for her to laugh. Was she mocking them, did she feel somehow superior to them?

  “Why are you digging up Greg’s grave?” Franny asked.

  “It’s a long story. Have you ever wondered—well, what do you think about the company?”

  “What do you mean?” Ann asked. “I think it’s terrific. I mean, time travel.”

  Was it that terrific, though? Weren’t they in a lot of trouble? What would the queen do if she caught them?

  “But don’t you wonder what they’re doing?” Meret asked. “What their ultimate goals are?”

  “They told us—they’re trying to make things better.”

  “That doesn’t explain what they’re doing hern. Things seem pretty good in this tace, pretty stable.”

  “Not for the Minos.”

  “Not for the Minos, no. And all I know about your assignment is that you’re supposed to contact him somehow. But why does the company want to come in on his side, someone so unhappy with the way things are? The only allies he could get would be from the mainland, Achaeans, warriors, people who worship Zeus, a thunder god. And Kaphtor’s goddesses are peaceful, Potnia, Eileithyia, Kore … They haven�
��t had a war in hundreds of years.”

  Professor Strickland had said the same thing. The Kaphtorans were safe behind miles of ocean; they had no walls around their palaces, no forts at any of the harbors. They had a strong fleet of ships, but their only security on the island was a few guardposts, the ones the Minos wanted them to disrupt.

  “But we can’t possibly know everything,” Franny said. “I’m sure there are bigger issues here, more than they’ve told us.”

  “We can’t know everything, you’re right,” Meret said. “But I’ve been with the company longer than you have, and I’ve seen some disturbing patterns. In nearly every case I know about the company’s sided with warriors, with patriarchies, with hierarchical societies. Have you ever wondered why matriarchies have pretty much disappeared from the world? People say it’s because they can’t possibly work, but you know that isn’t true—you’ve seen Kaphtor. A peaceful, prosperous, flourishing society that existed for thousands of years.”

  “Well, I’m sure they’ll tell us everything when we get back.”

  “But that’s strange, too, isn’t it? That they don’t even explain things until afterward?”

  “Because we’d act differently if we knew,” Ann said.

  “Never mind that,” Franny said. “You never answered my question. What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I was wondering about Gregory’s death. Why he died so suddenly. As if they wanted to get rid of him.”

  Franny looked stricken. “Why would they do that?”

  “Because there are other people in the company, lots of us, who are starting to wonder about their policies. About the things they’re changing, and why they’re changing them.”

  “Was he—was Greg one of them?” Franny asked.

  “I don’t know. We don’t know everyone who thinks this way. It makes it easier if we get caught—we can’t give the others away.”

  “You make it sound like it’s some big conspiracy,” Ann said.

  “It might be. To be honest, I don’t know how many people there are.”