Dark of the Moon

Dark of the Moon - By Tracy Barrett

Prologue

It isn't true what they say about my brother—that he ate those children. He never did; he didn't even mean to hurt them. He wept as he held out their broken bodies, his soft brown eyes pleading with me to fix them, the way I always fixed his dolls and toys.

Tonight is the new moon, and I dance.

I couldn't fix the children, of course. They were dead, their heads flopping on their necks, their arms and legs pale and limp. My mother ordered the slaves to take them away and give them a proper burial, and I held my brother as he sobbed over the loss of his playmates.

My feet remember the complicated patterns that my mother taught me. She guided me, the cow horns on her head mimicking the shape of the crescent moon above us. She held my hand and laughed encouragement as I followed her, my bare feet marking the black sand strewn over the cold stones of the dancing floor. In the morning, women would crowd around its edge and try to read what our steps had spelled out, the signs made by the feet of She-Who-Is-Goddess mingling with the smaller patterns made by She-Who-Will-Be-Goddess.

When the replacement children died as well, my mother said: No more playmates. My brother wailed and roared in his loneliness, deep beneath the palace, until the Minos took pity and said: Just once more. But not children from Krete. The people would stand for it no more, he said.

And so they came in their long ships.

I dance.