Amber and Clay

by Laura Amy Schlitz

  Melisto staggered in circles. Her head was tipped back, her arms flung wide. Her heart pounded. She loved the night and the round moon; she loved Korinna; she loved the goddess Artemis with all her heart.

  The song reached its end. Korinna scooped up handfuls of water from the spring and dashed it into the girls’ faces, laughing as they flinched and squealed. She pivoted and crossed the stone bridge, the dogs leaping after her. The girls followed in a rush.

  Elpis caught up with Melisto and grabbed her hand. Melisto squeezed hard. They tumbled forward, toward the sanctuary. Old women with oil lamps poured out of the building. They greeted the children with kisses and smiles, and ushered them inside.

  Inside were more lamps, and rooms lined with dining couches. The rooms were like Arkadios’s andron, which puzzled the girls: banqueting halls were for guests and men, important men. Still the women urged the children forward, settling them onto the couches. There was a mouthwatering aroma of food: not wild plants, not porridge, but bread and cheese and roasted fish. For that night, the girls would feast as men did, half reclining.

  Melisto climbed onto one of the couches; Elpis scrambled up beside her. The table in front of their couch held deep cups of water. Melisto gulped hers and found it laced with wine.

  Hungry and thirsty, she ate and drank. The wine lulled her and made Elpis tipsy. After the first pangs of hunger had been satisfied, Melisto untied their himations. She covered Elpis with one, and the little girl curled up next to her, falling asleep at once.

  Melisto stayed awake. With her thumb, she smeared goat cheese and honey on bread, craving the salt and the sweet. She saw the other girls stretching out and covering themselves, accepting the dining couches as beds for the night. The older women passed back and forth, gathering up bowls and cups. They blew out the lamps. The rooms were still bright; moonlight spilled between the columns, painting white stripes on the floor.

  Melisto unfolded her own himation. She pulled it over her shoulders, grunting with satisfaction as she snuggled down, warm and fed. She was almost asleep when she brought her half-closed hand up to her throat.

  Her neck was bare. The amber sphinx had been left behind, on the opposite side of the bridge.

  4. SANCTUARY

  She left it there.

  Her life at the sanctuary was a new world. It was as if Artemis had plucked her from her native soil and shaken the earth off her roots. At Brauron, Melisto was transplanted, watered, and refreshed. She was not homesick at all. Her world had not been turned upside down, but right side up; Brauron agreed with her, and she thrived.

  There was little supervision during the day. Though the priestesses and their handmaids had the power to correct the girls’ behavior, they seldom bothered. Melisto rose late; she liked lying in bed, tangle-haired and lazy; she liked watching the sunlight glow against the dormitory wall. When at last she got up, she went in search of bread — some of the girls, for reasons Melisto could not imagine, liked baking and cooked for the others. Melisto would snatch a loaf and go to eat on the stone bridge.

  Often she sat for hours with her feet in the bubbling spring. She dropped crumbs for the fish, caged them between her fingers, and let them swim out again. Leaning back, she squinted against the blue sky; flopping over, she was spellbound by the play of light on water. One morning she was moved to strip off her chiton and bathe. No one criticized her, and she made a habit of ducking into the water and splashing herself. She kept on good terms with the nymphs of the spring, honoring them with cleanliness and prayer.

  Her skin blistered, peeled off in flakes, and darkened to a ruddy brown. No one objected. When her hair grew too matted to comb, she persuaded Elpis to cut it. She began to understand that at Brauron, the ordinary rules of life were suspended. As long as she kept inside the boundaries of the sanctuary, she was like Artemis, a free child of the woods and marshlands. No one threatened her or shamed her. No one put a distaff into her hands.

  As spring turned to summer, she explored the woods. She shinnied up the trees, and ventured out on the flexible branches, daring them to break. Korinna provided flint and iron, and Melisto spent hours striking sparks onto tinder, building small fires and extinguishing them with earth. She gathered food plants and gnawed them determinedly. She wove garlands for the wooden statue of Artemis and scattered seed and salt for the animals that visited the sanctuary.

  The construction of a rough shelter absorbed her for weeks. She dragged fallen trees into a lean-to, lashing them together with vines and willow boughs. By the time she finished, her arms and legs were crosshatched with scratches, but she was proud of her work. The girls were encouraged to make such shelters. There were festival days when elders and priests came to banquet at Brauron, and on such occasions the dining couches belonged to the men. The little girls took their bear-cloaks and camped outdoors. During a squall, Melisto’s shelter proved surprisingly weather-worthy. She had built it on a knob of rising ground, and it did not flood; it rocked a little when the wind gusted, but it kept her and Elpis dry.

  For some weeks, Melisto avoided the open-air spaces where the girls pitched their looms. She knew that at some point, she would have to weave one of the bear-cloaks for another Bear, but no one ordered her to begin work, and she put it off. When she snagged her yellow chiton on a tree limb, it ripped from hem to neck, and she knew she would have to make another one. Grudgingly she set up her loom under the stoa. She strung the warp threads, bundled them, and tied clay weights to the ends.

  She had woven four inches when Klotho, the handmaid in charge of wool work, called the girls over to admire the even tension of her weft. Melisto listened with her mouth ajar. Neither Thratta nor Lysandra had ever praised her: they were perfectionists. Now she saw that their strictness had served her well. Her pattern was good, and her hands were deft. Melisto took up her beating pin with a light heart. If she was going to be good at weaving, she might not hate it so much. With a thrill of insight, she understood that what she had really hated was the confinement of the weaving room. She had been too close to her mother.

  Now she was free of Lysandra. She could wield her shuttle without having to brace herself to duck or dodge. No matter what she did at Brauron, no one yanked her hair, or shook her breathless, or stung her with poisonous words. If sometimes she missed Thratta, there was Korinna, who could be adored from a safe distance. If she grew lonely, Elpis was always underfoot, sometimes a joy, more often a nuisance, but never a danger.

  Such happiness could not last. At the age of ten, Melisto was one of the oldest Bears. She would not serve Artemis for long. Once she began to turn into a woman, she would be sent back home, and Arkadios would find her a husband. The rest of her life would be spent indoors. There would be endless wool work, slaves to command, and children to bear. She was the daughter of a wealthy man, and this was the life to which she was entitled. All the same, she did not want it. She peered under her arms for the first shadowing of hair, and pinched her small nipples, dreading the day when her breasts would begin to swell. So far, so good: her round and sturdy body was still a child’s.

  She almost forgot about the amber sphinx. At the back of her mind was the knowledge that she would have to go in search of it, though it lay outside the boundaries of the sanctuary. The necklace belonged to Artemis. It was Melisto’s duty to deliver it. Her mother must not die in childbirth, and her father wanted a son. The last thought hurt like biting her tongue or touching a sore place in her mouth. If Lysandra gave birth to a son, Arkadios’s affection would be divided. She, Melisto, would be eclipsed.

  There was yet time. Lysandra’s child was not due until midwinter.

  The nights at Brauron were different from the days. On moonlit nights, the Little Bears went to bed knowing that their sleep would be interrupted. One of the priestesses would enter the dormitories with a torch, summoning them to worship. No disobedience, no delay, was tolerated; the girls rose in a rush, stifling their yawns, knotting the belts around their tunics, finger-combing
their hair.

  Melisto never knew what to expect on those nights. It seemed to her that there was no pattern. She knew only that disobedience was unthinkable. She, who had been the most wayward of girl children, never opened her lips to ask a question.

  The children gathered around the altar outside the Temple of Artemis. Some nights there was a sacrifice, usually a goat. One night it was Melisto who was chosen to distract the animal with handfuls of grain so that its throat could be cut. The goat was affectionate, nibbling Melisto’s fingers. Its innocence pierced her heart, and she clenched her teeth to keep from crying. All her life, she had seen animals sacrificed. It was a woman’s job to shriek when the priest wielded the knife and the blood began to flow. Now she learned to catch the blood in a bowl, to cut up the carcass, to impale chunks of raw meat onto skewers for the feast. She did not like it, but she willed herself not to flinch. The sacrifice was for Artemis. It was an honor for the animal to be sacrificed, and an honor for her to stand by.

  On other nights, the altar was used as a finish line for races by torchlight. Strong though she was, Melisto was not built for speed, but running with fire excited her, and she jumped up and down and screamed with the other girls.

  The races strengthened the girls for one of the most vital of their duties. As Bears of Artemis, they marked the boundaries of the sanctuary with their naked feet. They were wild and pure, and Brauron was the borderland of civilized Athens: if the frontier remained holy, the core would hold. By circumscribing the boundaries of the sanctuary, the Bears safeguarded the city.

  So they ran, following Korinna’s torch: beginning at the altar and spiraling around the sanctuary buildings. They crossed the stone bridge and beat a trail through the wetland, filling the air with their moist breath, flattening the dew-soaked grass. They carved a path through the trees, sometimes circling the low akropolis or passing down to the bay where the ships were anchored. In their early days at Brauron, the girls ran in short sprints, stumbling, wheezing, halting. By the next full moon, their pace had quickened; they had grown sure-footed and hardy. Even Melisto thudded along steadily, her fists clenched, her eyes fixed on Korinna’s torch. Somehow, she managed to keep up.

  More difficult for her were the dancing nights. The girls sang hymns and paraded toward the altar, bearing wreaths and palm leaves tied with ribbons. Their movements, stately at first, grew wilder; they spun like tops and leapt into the air, arms outstretched. Melisto was self-conscious when she danced. She could not lose herself. She felt as if her feet were caught in a net.

  The most difficult dance was the Bear Dance, the oldest and most sacred dance of all. It was composed of subtle gestures and circling steps, and the sequence was baffling. A girl who mastered the Bear Dance would find favor with the goddess; Artemis would protect her during childbirth. Melisto knew that her survival might someday hinge on how she danced the Bear Dance, but that only kept her from learning it. She watched jealously as the other girls practiced, holding their hands like claws. Sometimes a girl was possessed by the spirit of the bear and threw off her tunic to dance naked, no longer a child, but a wild animal, one of Artemis’s own. Melisto averted her eyes from the ecstatic girls. She could not imagine dancing like that.

  She was happiest on the nights when Korinna led the girls down to the bay so they could bathe in the water. The children raced across the narrow beach, breathless and damp from running. Melisto splashed and squealed with the rest, but as soon as she could, she broke away from them, going deeper into the bay. She knelt down until the water lapped her chin, and let the small waves lift her, so that she was half afloat. She stared. The sky was flecked with stars, and the moon scattered white light over the water. When the black waves crested, there was glitter and foam and a noise like breathing. Melisto fell into a trance. She spread her arms and bobbed up and down, weightless. Something frantic and trapped inside her was laid to rest. She became invisible to herself. She knew only the rhythm of the rising waves, and the taste of salt on her lips.

  5. THE BEAR

  “What has sharp claws and feet like a baby?”

  Melisto sat on the curving branch of her favorite olive tree. Elpis reached up and tickled her feet. “What has sharp claws and feet like a baby?”

  Melisto sighed. She wished she had never taught the younger girl about riddles.

  “What has feet like a baby’s, but sharp — ”

  “I heard you the first time.” Melisto swung down from the tree. She reviewed her knowledge of animal feet. Most tame animals had hooves, not claws; hawks and owls had talons; foxes and dogs had round paws. She remembered Elpis’s love for rabbits and tossed out, “A rabbit.”

  “Rabbit feet are tiny. The animal I’m talking about has big feet.” Elpis’s eyes gleamed: there was nothing she liked better than baffling Melisto. She held her hands apart. “Wide and fat.”

  Melisto eyed the space between her hands. “A goose.”

  “Geese don’t have claws.”

  Geese did not have claws. “A tortoise, then.” Melisto recalled the tortoise that lived in Arkadios’s courtyard. Its feet were round, tipped with horny nails. “That’s what it is! A tortoise.”

  “It’s not a tortoise. Do you give up?” Elpis waited; Melisto did not concede. “It’s a bear! I’ve seen it! It’s a baby bear, and it sits on its bottom like a baby, and its feet are wide and fat, but the claws are like needles. Korinna has scratch marks. She made the men take the muzzle off. She says we girls have to keep away from it, because in the Brauron story, a bear killed that girl and — ”

  “Where is it?” interrupted Melisto. She had once seen a painted bear on a jar. It was something like a wild cat with a pig snout.

  “It’s chained up in the stable. A pair of hunters brought it. For sacrifice. In honor of Artemis. They killed the mother and chased the cubs into a net. They brought them in a sack, but one of them died. We can look in the stall, but we can’t go in.”

  Melisto broke into a run. She expected Elpis to dash past her; Elpis was light on her feet and could easily outrun her. But once they had cleared the strip of woods, Elpis spotted two other girls and veered off to share her news with them. Melisto doubled her pace. She wanted to look at the bear by herself.

  The stables at Brauron were not elaborate. There was an open shed where the goats were milked and a three-sided shelter for the donkeys. There was also a barn with four stalls, reserved for the mounts of honored priests or patrons. Melisto leaned over the top rail of the largest stall. The contrast between the brilliant sunlight and the dimness of the stall baffled her eyes. Her first idea was that Elpis had gotten it wrong: the prisoner in the barn was not a bear, but a child. A shadowy, shaggy-haired boy stood with his head bent and his arms curled inward. Her mind flashed to Arkadios and the brother whose birth she feared. In an instant, she conceived that in some unseen world there was a brother she might be able to love.

  She blinked. The naked boy took a step and fell backward, landing on his bottom. He uttered a cry of discontent, a raven-like screech from the back of his throat. The noise was animal, not human, and all at once Melisto realized that she was seeing the bear. It was not at all like a cat or a pig. It was and was not human. It sat on its rump with its back legs splayed. The back paws had five toes and leathery soles that tapered into heels.

  The bear lifted its snout. Melisto caught the liquid spark in its eyes. The bear’s face was not human, but it was indisputably a face. It wore an expression she could not decipher. They stared at each other.

  As Melisto’s eyes adjusted, she saw the cub wore a rope harness, looped tight around the neck, crossed between the front legs, and knotted over the shoulder hump. A chain through the knot connected the harness to a post. The stable floor was littered with a broken bowl and a sack of rough wool. A bucket of water had been knocked over.

  The bear rolled its eyes at her. Melisto swung her legs over the top rail of the stall door and jumped down. The bear rose up, snuffling. It studied her with intense
curiosity, but without fear or rancor. Then it dropped on all fours and circled her. Melisto squatted, stretching out her hands. Reason warned her that the bear might attack, but she was ruled by desire, not reason. She felt the bear’s rough fur and inhaled the ripe, gourd-like smell of its body.

  The bear’s reaction was immediate and forthright. It let out a noise that Melisto chose to interpret as friendly. She watched its nostrils flare as it tasted her scent. A long tongue swept out of its mouth and found a patch on her dress where she had spilled a bowl of porridge that morning.

  “You’re hungry,” Melisto murmured. Her mind went ahead to the bread she would steal from the kitchen, the cheese curds, the roots she could dig in the woods. The bear set one paw on her thigh — she winced as the claws sank in — and began to lick the stain. Its tongue looked too big to fit inside its mouth. Melisto stuck out her own tongue and examined it cross-eyed. Her tongue was the same color as the bear’s.

  The bear leaned in, determined to extract every atom of flavor from the wool of her tunic. The weight from the paw was painful. Melisto set both hands on the bear’s shoulder and rocked it away from her. The bear lost its balance and skidded sideways. It rolled over and bounced back. Melisto gave it a tentative shove. The bear raised a paw and smacked it against her forearm. They were playing. Both of them understood this at once.

  The bear played rough. Melisto was too fascinated to mind. She wrestled and tumbled, shoving the bear onto its back. The cub was far smaller than she was, but its strength more than matched her own. The babyish roundness of its body was deceptive. The bear was swift and agile and tireless. It climbed on top of her, mouthing her, rooting at her dress and pawing at her hair. One claw left parallel scratches across her collarbone. Melisto gave a cry and sprang to her feet, claiming the advantage of height. The bear wheeled around, springing from its muscular hindquarters. It squealed: one back paw was caught in the chain. At once Melisto was on her knees. She pushed the bear sideways to gain slack and lifted the paw free. The bear whuffed, plopped down on its rump, and regarded her intently.