by Jo Graham
He gulped it down, his hands still on the tiller while I held it to his lips.
“We’re back,” I said.
He nodded. “There’s where we burned Anchises. Right back where we were. A lot of effort for nothing.”
Behind us I saw both Seven Sisters and Pearl loping along. “At least nobody seems to be damaged. I would guess that the Lady of the Sea wanted us to return. That there is some unfinished business here. But I do not know what it is.”
“You don’t?”
“No,” I said, forestalling him. “And no, it’s not a curse! I just think She wants us to do something. I need to find out what.”
THE GOLDEN BOUGH
When the rain ended Neas built an altar of tumbled stones on the beach and sacrificed to the Lady of the Sea. We had no lambs or goats, so it was flame and some of the myrrh Basetamon had given me. I assured Neas that myrrh was perfectly suitable for the goddess, and that in Egypt this was her accustomed food. Just to be safe, he poured out wine in libation as well.
“Great Lady,” he prayed aloud. “Merciful mother of the seas and all the creatures therein, of all the birds that fly above it, You have brought us back to this place and we do not understand why. If You will show us, we will do our best to fulfill whatever it is that You ask of us. We will stay here nine days in Your honor, as we did for Anchises, and at the end of that time we will sail with Your blessing.”
Nine days, I thought, would surely be enough for the wind to change. And surely long enough for Her to manifest Her will.
And so we rested.
On the second day Wilos came to me while I was helping Tia clean fish for roasting. He stood shyly beside me and waited until I looked up.
“Yes, Wilos?” I asked.
“I found something,” he said. “And I don’t know, but it might be the thing.”
“The thing?” I asked.
“The thing we’re here for,” he said. “I found it. I think it’s a cave where a monster lives.”
“A cave where a monster lives?” I frowned. There were some shallow caves up on the headland, and along the steep banks where the stream came down to the sea, but we had stayed here eleven days in all now without seeing anything more dangerous than a fox. Perhaps there were bears, but with all the hunting we had been doing, if there were bears surely our men would have seen signs of them by now.
Wilos shifted from foot to foot. “Will you come and bring my father?”
I brought not only Neas but Xandros, Kos, and Bai too, all of them with their swords and a couple of hefty spears. Bai also brought his bow. Neas didn’t want Wilos to come, but I pointed out that he had to show us the way, and Xandros said that he wasn’t too young for a bear hunt, provided he stayed well back, and he couldn’t be any more trouble than me. Which was true. I was getting close to seven moons gone, and growing heavy and uncomfortable.
Quietly we went up the course of the stream. The day was warm, and we walked for more than an hour. The sound of the sea faded into the distance. I began to wish I had reconsidered coming. Along the banks of the stream it was mostly rocks here, and the trees were small and stunted.
“There,” Wilos said, and pointed.
The stream flowed through a small ravine, and up on the sides of the slope there was a grove of oak trees, their young leaves casting a dappled shade over the opening of a cave. I waited beside the stream with Wilos while Neas, Xandros, Kos, and Bai climbed up and investigated. They were gone a long time before Kos came out and called to us. “It’s safe. You can come up!”
“What’s there?” I called. If there was nothing, they would have all just come back down.
I climbed up. It was getting hot, and I was glad of the shade at the top. Wilos ran up ahead of me.
“What have you found?” I asked.
“It’s all right,” Neas said. “There’s nothing alive here.”
“The bones of a monster,” Xandros said. He looked like he wished he were somewhere else.
“Come and see what you think,” Neas said.
I stepped forward, letting my eyes adjust to the dim light. On the floor of the cave was a skeleton, the legs and feet still buried in the floor of the cave. It had ribs like a man, and I would have thought it was human if I had not seen the head. I knelt down beside it. Its skull was enormous and bulged in all the wrong places, with massive ridges of bone above its eyes and a jaw that jutted forward, a few worn square teeth still intact. I reached out and touched it very gently. The bone was as smooth and as cold as stone.
“See here?” Bai said. He lifted a stone that had laid beside it, sharpened on one side, whorls of white marking the striations in the flint. “It’s some kind of ax or chopper.”
I reached for it. “It is,” I said. “I’ve seen people use stone choppers way up in the mountains above Pylos. Poor people who can’t afford bronze.”
“There isn’t any metal here that I’ve seen,” Neas said.
I turned back to the skeleton, pushing the dirt away from the ribs with my fingers. It looked like a man, almost.
“What is it?” Xandros said. “A Cyclops?”
“Maybe,” I said. “But he had two eyes.” My hands touched one rib, traced the reddish stains across it. “And he had friends. They sprinkled his body with ochre and laid him out.”
“How do you know that?” Neas asked.
“The stains on his bones,” I said. “It’s how we bury priests. And the servants of the Lady of the Dead. We do not go to the fire, but sleep in the deep caves just like this.”
They had laid him out. No corpse just fell into this position of repose, lying on his back with his ax beside his hand, his body sprinkled with ochre. Perhaps they had combed his hair on his shoulders, laid flowers around his body, cut locks of their hair to place on his breast. I could almost see it, and for a moment I thought I did. Strange, ugly people, but with drums and the wailing of women as they laid him here in the cave. Someone’s lover, someone’s father, someone’s son. Had someone sung the Descent?
Xandros was edging toward the door. “I don’t think we should be here,” he said.
“If this is a sacred grave spot, we shouldn’t be,” Neas said. “The last thing we need is for the Lady of the Dead to be displeased with us.”
“She will not be,” I said. “If you want to go out you can. I will rebury what is left and sing the Descent for him.”
“I’ll help you,” Wilos said.
“No,” said Neas.
“I found him,” Wilos said, looking up at his father. “And you can’t expect the Lady to bury him by herself. She’s pregnant!”
Neas’ mouth twitched, but he couldn’t refute his son’s gallantry. “All right. Help Sybil, if you will. Is that fine with you?”
“Wilos will be a big help,” I assured him. “And there is no danger.”
Xandros looked clearly skeptical, but they all went out. The bright sun shone in through the cave door, lighting Wilos’ fair hair in an aureole around his head.
“Thank you for staying, Prince Wilos,” I said. “If you can help me move the dirt from that corner over here so we can cover him.” I put his ax back beside him.
Wilos started digging with a will, carrying dirt in his tunic. I was certain that Lide would have something to say about laundry, but I said nothing.
The boy helped me pack the dirt down over his ribs and chest again. His little hands were brown and strong. “Do you think he was killed?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t see any broken bones or anything splintered. And he’s missing most of his teeth, except a few that are very, very worn. See?” I showed him as we worked. “I think he was an old man.”
“Like my grandfather,” Wilos said.
“Yes,” I said. I knew that he missed Anchises greatly. And that was no bad thing. Anchises was missed because he had been loved by his only grandchild.
“Do you think he was a king?”
“He might have been,” I said. “Or a priest.”
“I wish I could be a priest,” Wilos said.
I looked up at his composed child’s face, watching his own hands as he worked. “Do you?” I asked quietly. He was her grandson as well, Lysisippa the daughter of Priam who had been servant to the Lady of the Sea.
“Uh-huh. But I have to be a prince instead.”
“You could be both, you know,” I said. “Some of the gods have priests who do other things. And a king has to be a little bit of a priest.”
“Will I be a king?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Someday when you are as old as your father is now, you will be our king and you will keep the People safe like your father does.”
“That sounds really hard,” he said, mounding the dirt softly over the skull’s eyeholes.
“It is,” I said. “Being a king is really hard. But you’ll have people to help you.”
“Like who?”
“Like Kianna,” I said.
Wilos snorted. “Kianna’s a baby. She’s not much help.”
“She won’t be a baby then. She’ll be Sybil, the Handmaiden of the Lady of the Dead. And she’ll help you like I help your father.”
He thought about that for a minute. “Will she be pretty?”
“I imagine so,” I said. Kianna was a beautiful child, as I had known she would be, with red-gold hair and great gray eyes, creamy skin freckled in the sun.
“Lide says she’s a smart baby,” Wilos said. “Maybe I should marry her. I mean, if she’s smart and pretty and she’s going to help me be king.”
“Those are very important things to think of,” I said, wondering how much talk Wilos had heard in Egypt, and how much Anchises had said. “It’s important for a king to marry the right person. But I don’t think you can marry Kianna, because she’s going to be Sybil.”
I patted the last of the dirt down. “Now I need to sing the Descent. Can you drum on the ground with your hands and help me?”
Wilos nodded, and I began the Descent, the long high part that comes at the beginning, and then the lower part of the lament. When I got to the change, Wilos came in singing above me, his little boy’s voice as true and as clear as his father’s, soaring over mine like a skylark. We finished together.
“I didn’t know you knew that,” I said.
He shrugged. “I’ve heard you sing it a lot.”
“I suppose I have.” I got ready to stand up. Too many times to have sung the Descent in so few months.
“Can I be a priest too? Besides a king?” he asked.
I looked down at him sitting in the stray sunbeams, shaking out his dirty shirt. His grandmother was Cythera, and his great-aunt was Kassandra, perhaps the greatest oracle the People have known. It was in his blood, in his very bones. And he was the firstborn, born to be a prince. Such things were not done in the City, but we were in the City no longer.
“Yes, Wilos,” I said. “You will be a priest too. You will be a priest of the king of the gods, and king of the People as well. There is no reason why you can’t do both at once.”
I reached for his hand and we walked out of the cave together.
In the grove of trees outside the men were practicing target shooting. Bai had his bow out, and they were taking turns trying to hit a particular tree trunk. Xandros was fairly horrible, and they had stopped and were standing around joking while Xandros hunted in the underbrush for his arrow.
He found it and brought it back to Kos. “You do better,” he said, thrusting the arrow at him.
“Easily, my friend, easily,” Kos said, fitting the arrow to the bow and aiming up at the tree.
Neas grabbed his arm. “Wait!” he said.
There was a flash of white in the trees. A pair of white doves flew circling through the air, alighting on the branch they had targeted.
Kos lowered the bow, and we all let out a breath.
“Doves,” Neas said in a hushed voice. “We asked My Mother for a sign. There was a pair of white doves that nested in the eaves of the Great Temple of the Lady of the Sea where I was as a child. I remember them. I used to feed them pieces of bread and they would come to me. One of them would even land on my shoulder. It’s the sign. She knew I would remember.”
The doves sat on the branch, looking down at us. Then they took wing together, fluttering through the leaves and coming to rest a little ways away. Neas walked forward. They did not startle, only waited until he came near.
When he was beneath them he looked up. “What is it you are here to show me?” he asked.
They took off in a flurry of wings and he followed.
Six times they took flight and flew a little ways before alighting again, and six times we all followed through the sun-dappled wood, into the shade of a great oak as wide around as Neas and Xandros standing together. The doves alighted in its lower branches. I looked up. The doves cooed.
Twined around the branch were pale green leaves, a cluster of hanging golden berries, delicate and small.
“The golden bough,” I whispered.
Neas looked at me.
“It is for kingship,” I said. “To pass Night’s Door into the Underworld and return unharmed we need those berries, for they are sacred to Death’s Queen. They do not grow in Egypt, and only rarely in Akaiawa. You must get the bough without harming it. This is what the Lady of the Sea has brought you here to do.”
“It’s five times the height of a man up in the air!” Kos said. “There’s no climbing that tree.”
Neas’ eyes went to Wilos’ dirty tunic, then to the tree above.
“Son,” he said, “take off your tunic and hold it between your hands the way you carried dirt, and stand beneath that branch.” He reached for Bai’s bow.
The doves took off, spiraling from the grove into the sky.
Carefully, Neas chose out the straightest arrow. None of us breathed while he fitted it to the string and pulled the bow taut.
The arrow flashed upward. It pierced the stem of the bough where it held to the oak, and the bundle of leaves and berries dropped into Wilos’ shirt.
Kos let out a cheer, joined by the others. Wilos whooped as Neas lifted the bough from the cloth and held it up.
I smiled. “Oh, well done, Prince Aeneas! Well done!”
With a triumphant smile he gave the bundle into my hands. “For you, Lady. Until the time comes to use it.”
“That will not be long,” I said.
WE SAILED AGAIN at the end of the nine days. This time the seas were calm and the winds were fresh but not strong, and two days later we came to the town that watches over the straits where they say the Charybdis lives. Messyna is a good-sized town with strong walls built on the headland, and the harbor is below with a village around it. I was worried at the reception we would find there, and for good reason, because by the time our ships came into the harbor they had assembled all the men of the town to repel us.
Neas had us put our bows below and Xandros called across to them in Shardan. The language is not the same, but it is similar enough for Xandros to make them understand the word “trade” rather than “give us your women and your food.” After that they relaxed somewhat and let small numbers of us come ashore, though they did not unbar the citadel and the people who had fled there remained. Some of the men came down however, and were willing to trade.
Xandros, whose Shardan was best, did most of the talking. From them he learned that pirates were frequent on these coasts, and that there had been a group of Achaians here a few years ago who had made a great deal of trouble. Xandros told them what had happened with the great fleet in Egypt, and that it wasn’t likely the Achaians would be back anytime soon.
We traded Egyptian beer for wine and olives, a fine bronze dagger for foodstuffs, and part of the bag of frankincense I carried for a considerable amount of grain, peas, and lentils, enough to keep us for several weeks. Their temple had had none for a year, with trade so poor. Indeed, we were the first foreign ship to come this sailing season, though we were getti
ng into early summer.
We stayed a week, in the end. They had good port facilities, and Maris wanted to recaulk part of Pearl’s bottom where she had a small leak. It wasn’t a big leak, but better to avoid trouble.
“A leak like that could open in a storm,” Kos said. “Best to retar it before it gets worse.”
So I sat, getting heavier and heavier, trying to stay away from the smell of the molten tar that threatened to make me sick. In truth, it was a lovely place to sit, with the air thick with summer and the warm sun playing on the ocean. I sat on the beach, Kianna grubbing in the sand, while Tia dug for clams to make a soup.
Neas came and found us there. He came and sat beside me, stretching his long legs out on the sand, burying his feet in the warmth.
“Another day,” he said. “And then we’re off again.”
“Where?” I asked.
“Shouldn’t it be me asking you?” he said.
I shook my head. “You are the king to be, and as you’ve pointed out, I know nothing about sailing.”
He shrugged. “Northward along the coast, then. They say there’ve been no merchant ships at all this summer. I’m going to take some extra cargo aboard and take it north. We should make some good trades. And also, I want to find out where the swords come from.”
“The Shardana swords?” I said. “They come from here?”
Neas nodded. “Northward up the coast are a people who have the knack of making them. If we’re going to use them we need to know how to repair them and where to get more. They use them here, but they don’t make them. What do you think?”
I spread my hands, my belly burgeoning beneath. “I see nothing. I haven’t these several weeks, since we left the cave on Scylla. The child is taking everything now. I don’t think I’ll be able to see until she’s born. I am too given over to life.”
“A strange mystery,” Neas said.
“Yes, but I have heard it is often so,” I said. Bearing life, I was banished from Death’s kingdom, dwelling above the ground as the Lady does when She casts off Her dark cloak and walks forth into the sunlight, flowers growing beneath Her feet. I had not imagined what it would be like to walk thus, to feel the bright summer air with no hint of the caves beneath it.