Dark of the Moon

chapter 18

EVERY SPRING, the priestesses carry clay pots pierced with small holes into the shrine in the palace. As soon as I was old enough, I joined them. The pots always felt strangely alive as the weight in them shifted, and rose and fell. Although no one ever talked of it, we knew what lay coiled inside, their scales glittering, their forked tongues flicking in and out, their fangs ready to pierce the skin of anyone foolish enough to reach in without caution.

The priestesses were led by the Minos, who was robed in red and wearing the huge leather-and-bronze bull's head of the Planting Festival. We would disappear from the sight of the waiting crowd, into the small shrine housing the lumpy rock that held Goddess's essence. In that room stood She-Who-Is-Goddess, dressed in ceremonial robes: a heavy skirt that looped from her waist to the ground and an open-fronted jacket that revealed her breasts. Her face was painted stark white, her eyes and mouth looking like the spots on the moon, and her sash was tied behind her in a sacral knot. Gilded cow's horns glinted on her head.

At that point, my mother had not yet fled from her body, and she looked at me with eyes filled with love and concern. "Don't be frightened," her eyes said. "I'm still here."

We deposited our heavy pots on the floor, trying not to breathe the air, which was thick with the smoke of burning herbs that stung our nostrils and parched our throats. My mother stepped forward and shook a wet cypress branch over us, each cold drop of water falling sharp on our faces. Then the oldest priestess—this had been Damia ever since I joined the group—told the story of Goddess and how She came to us.

Long, long ago, before time was time, the island of Krete lay dead. No goddess or god walked our black beaches; no plants grew in our fields; even the fish deserted our shores. In this wasteland, the Great Mother hid her son Velchanos from the murderous wrath of his own father. When Velchanos grew to manhood, he slew his father and became lord of the sky. To thank the land that had kept him safe in his childhood, Velchanos sent down a star to the people of Knossos. This was the Goddess stone, and the people worshiped it, but still the land lay dead. Velchanos was Krete's father, but we needed a Mother. Velchanos saw our despair, so he returned to the land and became a bull, red and white and black. He traveled the earth in search of his wife so that he could bring her to Krete.

"Blessed be Goddess," we all murmured.

He found her—Europa of the mild eyes—and bore her to us on his back. Europa was Goddess, and she chose twelve women of Knossos to attend her. The land grew fertile. Olive groves spread across the hills, and the fields became golden with the sacred crocus. Fish jumped in the sea and in the rivers.

"Blessed be Goddess."

Now time became time. Europa grew old and then died, and the people were frightened. How could they live without Goddess?Would the land return to the death that had gripped it before She came to walk among them?

"Blessed be Goddess."

The very night that Europa died, as the people mourned and wailed, a new light appeared in the sky. It was as large as the sun, but white and pure. It was the moon. The people knew that this was their Mother and that She had returned to Her husband in the sky, and they rejoiced for Her. But the next night, the people saw that She was more slender, and they wondered. Every night, She grew smaller until She disappeared. Shrieks arose from the people, for they thought that Goddess had abandoned them again.

"Blessed be Goddess."

Then the wisest of the twelve priestesses said in the voice of Europa, "Why do you fear, My children? For I am Karia, your Goddess, who formerly inhabited the body of Europa, and I will always be with you. When I am not watching My people from My husband's abode in the sky, I will walk among you."

"Blessed be Goddess."

Goddess chose a girl to take her former place among the priestesses, so again there were twelve attendants. Goddess then showed the people a bull who bore the mark of Velchanos. She instructed them to open the path of its life to free Her husband. The bull's blood flowed, and Velchanos's spirit flew from it to the body of a man of the village.

"Blessed be Goddess."

Goddess took the man's hand. "Here is My lord Velchanos." For three days they lived as husband and wife, and then Goddess led the man to the brother of the priestess whose body She inhabited. This man was the first Minos. Goddess told him, "Take My husband's blood and spread it on the fields." The Minos did as Goddess commanded, and again the crocus bloomed and the olives fattened and the fish swam. Goddess returned to the sky but came back to Knossos to bear a child that winter, on the shortest night of the year. "This is My daughter," She said. "She will be Goddess." Velchanos returned again the next spring and took the body of another man, whose blood again caused the fields to be fertile. That winter, Goddess bore a son, once more on the shortest night. "This is My son. He will be your Minos," She told the people. "He will help She-Who-Is-Goddess to find Me each spring and will spread the blood of Velchanos on the fields. So you must do every year, my children, or Knossos will fall and Krete will fall and time will cease to be time."

"Blessed be Goddess," we said. We bowed low to my mother, and when we straightened, my mother was no longer there. The eyes that looked at me were Goddess's eyes, and the heart that beat in her breast was Goddess's heart. One by one, oldest to youngest, we backed out silently to join the rest of the people who had been gathering all day and who now kept their eyes fixed on the door we had just come through. I was the last to emerge. People pressed cups of wine into our hands, and we drank while we waited for Goddess to emerge and find Her husband.

My mother told me that before he became too large to control, my brother had always roamed through the crowd at this time, squeezing people he liked in his strong arms, bumping into or ignoring those he didn't. His grunts and babbling were loud and irritating as the afternoon wore on, but he had seemed unaware that he was causing a disturbance. One year, when he had grown big enough for his behavior to worry the Minos, Asterion had been tethered to a stake on the edge of the crowd, but he roared and bellowed until I let him free. The Minos fed him dried figs laced with a sleeping drug, and when he became meek and biddable, my uncle led my brother down to his chambers.

The next year, Asterion was confined under the palace, along with several boys to keep him company. They were so far away that their screams went unheard, and it was only afterward, when torchlight revealed the bloody horror of my brother's chamber, that we discovered how Asterion had amused himself during the long wait. I was only five years old, but still I comforted him and tried to make him understand that the broken bodies could not be fixed.

For a few years, Asterion was left alone during the ceremony, despite the Minos's warnings that the unhappiness of the god's son might cause our father, Velchanos, to frown on us. The people were made so uneasy at this arrangement, fearing the wrath of the god, that finally the Minos declared that the next time tribute-children were sent from Athens, they would provide Asterion with companionship. That way, he would be kept pacified, and my uncle's fierce desire to avenge the killing of his beloved son would be somewhat satisfied. I tried to comfort myself with the thought that their death would be swifter than if they had been sent to the mines, like the first group of Athenians that had landed on our shore.

Together everyone waited, the crowd of shepherds and fishermen and traders and farmers, women and men, old people barely able to walk and children. We waited in the field, regardless of sun or rain or wind. Sometimes we stood for only a few minutes and sometimes for so long that babies slept and woke and nursed at their mothers' breasts and slept again. Once, the year before I became a priestess, the sun had already touched its lower edge to the horizon before the door opened.

But when it finally did open, it seemed that no time had passed. One figure emerged and stood motionless as everyone leaped and shouted, even the tiny children who could not have known what was happening but who were caught up in the general relief and joy. Discordant sounds burst out as musicians played their instruments without attention to what the others were doing. Women and men laughed and shrieked. Some fainted.

Men ran to smother the flames under the pots where lambs, kids, and calves had been boiled in milk into sweet tenderness. They uncovered the enormous pits where pigs had been roasting since the night before. The Minos scattered red wine over the ground to awaken it and to prepare it for the more vital fluid that would come in just a few days.

In all that noise and in the swirling mass of joy, only two figures never moved. One was me, rooted to the spot in fear and misery, staring up the long stairway. The other stood above me in the doorway, a writhing snake clutched in each fist, as She gazed out at Her people with glittering eyes, a frozen smile on her lips. What is She doing? I always wondered. Counting them, to see who has died and how many have been born since the last Festival? Seeking Her beloved husband, whom She hasn't seen for a year? Her cold eyes always passed over me as though I were any other girl, or a dog, or even a tree.

For although the figure looked like Pasiphaë, like She-Who-Is-Goddess, She was not. Something had happened, something to do with the cold creatures that had lain coiled up in the heavy pots and that now twisted and squirmed in Her grasp, arching back and gaping, their fangs curving at the black sky, knowing that in a short time they would be chopped into tiny pieces and mixed into the stew that all the people would share.

No longer did that body belong to She-Who-Is-Goddess, a mortal woman who ate and slept and delivered babies and held me on her lap and sang Asterion to sleep. Tonight She was Goddess, and for the three days until She chose to leave us and return to the sky, Asterion and I would be alone. She was still my mother, but She was also everyone else's Mother, the Mother of each baby and each old shepherd, even of each lamb and rabbit and pig and spring crocus and blade of grass. She looked at me with the same eyes that looked at smelly old shepherds, withered crones, and my childhood tormentor, Kodros.

Everyone else mourned days later, when the first sliver of moon appeared, for it meant that Goddess had departed from among us to be in the sky for the nine long moons until Birth of the Sun, when the days stop shortening and begin to grow long again. I wept along with them. My tears, however, were of relief, not sorrow. Goddess was everyone's Mother, but She-Who-Is-Goddess was the mother I knew, and she was back.