I watched as the women lined up according to age in front of the bathing tent. They each held a clean, folded tunic in their arms. Two women carried the old woman on a stretcher, but she was left alone in the tent to purify herself. When she finished, two women went back inside and carried her out. I didn’t notice any difference in her appearance.
Then the women, one by one, disappeared into the tent and reappeared a few minutes later with wet hair and a fresh dress. They had discarded their leather clothes for beautifully woven robes.
I was interested, and asked Demos why they hadn’t changed before. He told me that the woven clothes were used only during the festivities. As today was officially the height of summer, they could change out of their casual wear and welcome in the solstice. I imagine they were happy to do so. It had been hot and the leather must have been sweltering.
The women wore long dresses. Intricate designs were embroidered on them in the Celtic style. Little girls wore short dresses with pretty patterns. The colours were beautiful – deep yellow, red, sky blue, or dark blue. When the women finished, the tent was taken down by three men and another tent was erected. Then it was the men’s turn to wash and purify themselves.
The women gathered in a circle and started to chant. Children seemed free to do as they liked, but I noticed that none of them approached the druids or went near the sacrificial animals any more. Before the purifying ceremony they’d petted the goats and made them garlands. Now they stayed away from them.
The women sang, but appeared nervous. I noticed that one or two were even crying, although they wiped their tears away quickly. I could tell from their expressions that they were upset. When I pointed this out to Demos he shook his head.
‘I think I can guess why.’ Demos pursed his lips but wouldn’t elaborate. ‘Get ready to move. When the men finish purifying themselves you must go into the valley. Don’t try to get to Paul until we enter the village, is that clear?’
‘Perfectly.’ I nodded and crawled away. I eased from the edge of the precipice and crept down the narrow path. I was careful to walk as quietly as possible, stopping now and then to listen. I stayed on the faint path and soon found myself on the shelf of rock where we’d first spied on the village. Plexis was there. He was watching the village with a rare concentration, and when he turned to greet me I saw the traces of his tears.
‘Don’t worry, he’s tougher than he looks,’ I said quietly.
‘I know, but it pains me to see him like that. He hasn’t moved. I’m so worried,’ he said. ‘My arm is useless; I can’t even go down there to save him.’
I took him in my arms and held him tightly. He tucked my head under his chin and I pressed my cheek against his throat. He’d shaved, I noticed. Axiom must have brought a razor with him.
A razor. ‘Plexis,’ I whispered. ‘Where is your razor?’
‘In my pouch.’
‘Give it to me.’
Plexis didn’t ask why. He opened his leather pouch and carefully pulled out the iron razor. It had a short handle, a blade as wide as my hand, and was easily as sharp as a modern atomized ceramic razor. It was wrapped in a piece of soft leather. I unwrapped it, held it in the palm of my hand, and sliced a neat cut in my skirt.
‘It works,’ I murmured.
‘Well, of course it does. I never knew a better razor-sharpener than Axiom. He’s always kept Alexander’s blades perfectly honed.’
‘I have to go now,’ I said.
‘Be careful. I’ll wait right here for you and Paul.’ He leaned over and kissed me on the lips.
I sighed deeply. ‘Wish me luck, Plexis.’
He almost smiled. ‘Go now. And save Alexander.’
The trip down the mountain was easy. I had already done it once, and I was careful to keep low to the ground and stay behind deep cover. I watched where I put my feet, avoiding dry leaves and sticks. If I hadn’t known someone like Plexis, I would have thought I’d done a good job, but compared to him I must have made a racket. Luckily, the women were singing and covered the noise of my descent.
They chanted so loudly that I could have shouted all the swear words I only muttered in my head, when I accidentally grabbed a clump of nettles. I thought them very loudly though. One of the druids frowned mightily and swung his head from side to side. I figured he was like Plexis – he could pick up thoughts as an antenna picks up radio waves. I immediately brought to mind the trees and plants around me, crushing a handful of wild thyme in my hand and inhaling deeply. I tried to imagine I was a rabbit, hopping around looking for food. The druid grew even more suspicious, stepping out of line and looking over the women’s heads in my direction.
I was hidden in a little bush. It was small but dense. I was roughly thirty metres away. The land sloped steeply downwards. The vegetation became thicker and thicker until it met the hedge of nettles. The nettles kept everyone at bay, including the druid. He stared suspiciously into the forest, but I made my mind as blank as possible. Finally, he went back in line.
Voltarrix had noticed though, and he went to see the druid himself. He was watching everything, I thought bitterly.
The two men spoke briefly, and then Voltarrix turned and faced me. He held himself absolutely still. But now I was onto him. I crushed some more thyme and breathed deeply, flattening myself to the ground, waiting for the air pressure to change around me. I don’t know how he did it. How can anyone concentrate enough to create a sort of vacuum?
I’m sure he had some simple explanation for it, and I’d understand it as clearly as he would if I tried to explain to him just how a floating crystal video worked in my time. Three thousand years of scepticism and incomprehension separated us. I was a sceptic, but the air changed around me just the same.
My ears rang and my head felt as if it were full of helium. I dug myself deeper into the soft earth and took fast, shallow breaths. I was closer to him now, so the feeling was more powerful. The women felt it too, because one began to wail and a child screamed in fright. Soon all the small children started to cry.
This must have caused Voltarrix to lose his concentration. The last time he’d done this trick, I remembered he’d been practically alone in the village. Now the air whooshed back with the familiar ‘pop’, and my heart slowed to normal. The children were still crying, and I stole a glance at Voltarrix.
He was looking angrily at the group of women and children huddled together. The smaller ones had all run to their mothers and were seeking refuge in their arms, but the women were acting strangely. Instead of comforting them, they were pushing them away and speaking to them urgently. I was close enough to hear, but because I didn’t speak their language, I didn’t know what they were saying.
I soon found out. Voltarrix, after one last piercing look in my general direction – although not straight at me, which made me think he hadn’t been able to use his powers as well he’d have liked – pointed at the women and barked some orders.
Immediately an icy silence fell over the group. Even the sobbing children seemed to understand the gravity of the order, because they stopped crying and stood still, some still hiccupping miserably.
In the quiet, Voltarrix’s words fell like an axe.
‘You,’ he said. ‘And you and you.’ I divined the meaning of his words. He pointed as he spoke, and the children he pointed at stared at him with round eyes. Their mothers flinched as if they’d been struck. Three druids, their wolf-skin capes flapping around their bare legs, broke away from the circle and strode over to the three children. Without a word, they seized the children by their arms and dragged them away. The children struggled and cried in high, piteous voices, but the men held tight.
The women screamed, tearing at their hair and clothes and ripping their flower necklaces off. I felt a wave of heat rush over me. The children were being led to the place where the bull and the three kids were waiting. They were sacrificial victims as well.
Once before I’d seen children sacrificed, but it had been in a place far a
way and the memory had mercifully faded to a blur. This was here and now, and the three children were not more than five years old.
Two were boys, dressed in yellow tunics with copper bands around their arms. They were twins and held onto each other, eyes wide with terror. They didn’t cry, but their mouths trembled violently. The other was a little girl. Her hair was full of flowers, her face was streaked with tears, and she held her thin arms out to her mother and screamed and screamed.
Chapter Nine
I felt faint. I was certain I’d pass out, so I pressed my head to the earth and tried to breathe deeply, but my chest was too tight. Desperate, I reached over and grabbed a briar branch. The thorns made me gasp, but I got my breath back. Then I made my way down to the edge of the nettle hedge and carefully parted the leaves, looking for the tunnel I’d worked on. I didn’t have to worry about making noise. The women were wailing right on the other side of the nettles, and the noise they made covered any rustle that I might make.
I slithered through the tunnel, getting stings and welts again, but the pain was welcome. I needed it to keep me from shivering into a faint. Shock was making my hands and feet icy. The burning pain worked. By the time I’d made it to the women, I was as clearheaded as I’d ever been.
‘Psssst!’ I said nervously. This was either going to work or it wasn’t. ‘Psst!!’
One of the women heard me and broke off her wailing. She shook her head slightly and looked into the nettles. When she saw me she opened her mouth to say something, but I put my finger to my lips in the international all-through-time sign to be quiet. She nodded, her eyes wide. Then I motioned her nearer. When she was close, I asked in a whisper, ‘Does anyone here speak Greek?’
I could only speak Greek with these people. I knew no Celt, or Keltoi, as they called it back then. ‘Find a woman who speaks Greek!’ I commanded. ‘Please!’
She didn’t speak Greek, but she got the gist. She moved back into the group and made her way to another woman’s side. This woman was older, perhaps forty, and she looked darker than the usual Valerian. She eased over to me. When she saw me her eyes grew very wide, but she didn’t give me away either.
‘I want to rescue my son and husband,’ I said, without preamble. ‘And if you help me I believe we can rescue the children, defeat the druids, and free all of you. The people of Orce have an army hiding in the woods.’ I was exaggerating a little about the army, but I meant it about trying to rescue the children.
‘Who are you?’ she asked, her eyes narrowing suspiciously.
‘Some call me Persephone, daughter of Demeter,’ I said, putting swagger in my voice. Now I knew how Clark Kent felt when he opened his shirt and let the big red ‘S’ peep out.
She stepped back as if I’d struck her. For a second I thought she would scream and call the druids to me, but I’d misjudged her reaction. Her eyes filled with tears and she leaned towards me again. ‘We will help you,’ she said, her voice breaking with emotion. ‘Tell us what to do.’
‘Continue singing as usual. Can you get me a dress? I’ll join you. Do the druids know every one of you by sight?’
‘No, they don’t know us. They come once a year for the ceremony. They kill three children and three men. It has been so for generations. Afterwards, they call the Eaters of the Dead to come. We must feed them, otherwise they will kill us all.’
‘I don’t understand. The druids call the Eaters of the Dead? Who are they? Where are they?’
‘Voltarrix is their master. He controls them. They come out of their lairs when they smell the blood. If they are hungry, they sometimes come at other times during the year. However, they always come for the summer solstice. Always.’ She shivered.
‘Perhaps it would be best to leave before they come,’ I said.
‘Many have tried, but The Eaters of the Dead live in the forest and know it by heart. They hunt like wolves, and if you flee they run you down. No one has ever succeeded.’
‘There are enough of us to fight against them and win this time,’ I said.
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I will give you a dress. We can only try. We have been slaves here far too long.’
‘Why didn’t you try to fight them before?’
‘The druids are armed. If we rebel, Voltarrix said he will turn us into goats.’
‘Oh.’ I frowned. ‘Do you think he can?’
‘He can stop time,’ she said seriously. ‘That’s what he does the best.’
Stop time? I doubted that. But he was dangerously close to changing time. I waited for the woman to fetch me a dress. She came back with one hidden under her clothes. She sat with her back to me and passed it to me through the nettles. I had a rough time dressing in the thicket. When I finished I was burning with nettle rash, but I was wearing a lovely blue robe with green and yellow trim. I crawled out and knelt next to the woman. Immediately, several others came and surrounded me, absorbing me into the group and hiding me from sight.
Hardly any of them spoke Greek, only two or three, but it was enough. I explained in a low voice what was happening, and they spread the word as casually as possible that there was going to be an attack. When that happened, they must grab their children and rush up the mountain slope away from the village.
Some women broke off their chanting and stared at me with wide eyes until the cleverer ones elbowed them sharply. None of them made the slightest move towards the druids, so I imagined they were all glad to be planning an escape.
Most women knew the legend of Persephone, and I suppose I looked like someone who’d just crawled out of the underworld through a thicket of nettles. In all likelihood, that’s what the real Persephone would have done.
The woman who’d given me the dress eased over to my side and spoke without looking at me. ‘We know that human sacrifices are an abomination to you, but the druids and the Celts have bloodthirsty gods. I was born in Athens as a slave and sold to a Keltoi. He took me to Orce and married me. One day, while I was gathering nuts in the forest, the people of the reindeer stole me. They took me to their village, but soon after, the Eaters of the Dead came and massacred the tribe. They took two other women and me as slaves and brought us to this valley. Voltarrix, the druid, comes once a year. He is the master for the Eaters of the Dead.’
‘How terrible,’ I said softly.
‘I have prayed to Zeus every day for three years to deliver me. Today he has sent you, Demeter’s daughter. My prayers have been answered.’
‘I hope so,’ I said nervously. I glanced into the forest. Where was everyone?
The sun was sinking.
To me it seemed as if it were falling towards the horizon. I wanted to push it back up into the sky, to slow it down. Its edges shimmered and turned blood-red.
I searched, but I couldn’t see Paul. He was still in the deep pit with Yovanix and Nearchus. My eyes were drawn back to my husband, and I shuddered. Alexander still hadn’t given any sign of life. Then a drum started beating. The sound came from all around us; it echoed off the tall cliffs on either side of the valley and filled the air with a deafening throbbing. The women turned to face the druids. In front of us, lined up on the other side of the standing stones, were the few men from the village. They wore their finest clothes; brightly embroidered tunics over yellow leggings and sandals. Everyone slowly kneeled, eyes wide with fright.
‘What’s happening?’ I asked, kneeling next to the Greek-speaking woman.
‘Voltarrix is going to sacrifice your husband. His death will last forever, and when his soul has had enough of suffering, Voltarrix will capture it in your husband’s blood. The person who drinks that blood will then inherit the soul.’ Her voice was so low I could hardly catch her words, but I heard enough.
‘Alexander said he felt as if his soul were already gone.’ I said to the woman.
‘But it is still his own. A soul can leave a body and still belong to that person. However, if he dies slowly enough the soul can be captured. Voltarrix can make death la
st for hours.’
‘I have to save him,’ I said brokenly. ‘Alexander!’ I was halfway to my feet but the woman pulled me down.
‘No. The druids are armed with sacred iron. They will kill you before you can pass the outer circle. There is nothing you can do, even as a goddess. Time obeys Voltarrix.’ She spoke harshly, gripping my arm hard enough to bruise. Sacred iron, I knew, meant it had come from a meteorite. The people of that time thought it was a gift from the gods. I closed my eyes and breathed a prayer to any god within hearing to spare my husband.
Nothing I had ever experienced prepared me for what happened next.
The sun came to rest on the edge of the valley. On one end of the valley the shimmering sun hung like the bronze shield the Greeks used. Paul had a shield like that. It used to be Alexander’s but Apollo had ordered him to give it to his son. Paul had it now, if he hadn’t lost it.
On the other end of the valley, the full moon glowed fat and silver, casting its own pale light. The shadows lengthened, met, criss-crossed, and vanished. Voltarrix stood next to Alexander and raised his arms.
The air crystallized around us, all sounds were lost in the vacuum. I heard an eerie clicking. Voltarrix raised his knife and cut Alexander’s throat.
Time stood still.
It was as if someone pushed the ‘Pause’ button on the floating vid display. The air hardened into solidity. Everyone around me was caught, frozen, in a moment of time that Voltarrix had somehow stopped. Everyone was caught, except me. I found myself running towards Alexander. It was a purely reflexive action; my legs had launched me before I could think. All I could feel was rage and sorrow.
Chapter Ten
As I ran, I caught sight of someone else. It was Paul. He clambered out of the pit and dashed towards his father. His mouth was open in a silent scream. Everyone else was turned to stone.
I was moving, but it was a struggle. I felt as if I were in a dream. I was running, but it felt more like swimming. I breathed in great gulps.
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