Dark of the Moon

chapter 28

PROKRIS GRABBED my shoulders. "What is it?" she asked, but I was sobbing. The cloud passed by, leaving nothing more than a shimmer in the air and the faintest whiff of something rank. I was in a cold sweat, and my mouth was as dry as the sand of the dancing floor.

"What did you see?" Prokris asked, darting quick glances around the room. "Did someone come in? Was it—did you see your mother's spirit?"

I grunted a negative as the room swam around me. Prokris lowered me onto a sofa before the blackness had a chance to swallow me. Footsteps thudded down the corridor, and someone burst in. I didn't dare raise my head, but out of the edge of my eye, I saw the flash of striped cloaks.

"What happened?" It was Gnipho, and I heard the clean slish of a sword being drawn.

"It was my fault," Prokris said before I could answer. "The princess was overcome with grief as we talked about her mother and was taken with a fainting spell."

"Mistress?" Gnipho sounded doubtful. I had never been subject to fainting.

I raised my head and tried to smile. "I'm fine. My brother's wife is seeing to me." Gnipho's concerned face swam in front of my eyes, and I lowered my gaze again. After a moment, I heard the guards leave, but I noticed that their footsteps did not go very far down the corridor.

Prokris asked again, "What did you see?"

The vision gripped me once more, but faintly, and as I tried to examine it, it fled. "You must be careful," I said. "There's something evil near you. I don't know what it is, but it's very powerful. And I think it's threatening Theseus as well."

"Something evil, you say?" She cocked her head, and a smile played around her lips.

"Please," I begged. "Please be careful."

"You don't have to worry," she said. But I did worry. The Athenians didn't take things seriously, and my life had suddenly become very serious.

As if to remind me of this fact, a shadow appeared in the doorway. I knew without looking that it was Thoösa and that she was coming to take me back to my lessons. I sighed and stood. Only two days remained until the Planting Festival, and I had not eaten since the day before. I could have told the priestesses that fasting was not necessary. I had no need to create a space for Goddess; the loss of my mother had left a huge, gaping hole in me. But I had no appetite, so fasting was not causing me distress.

"Come see me when you can," Prokris whispered as I embraced her.

I didn't know how I would find the time, but more than anything, I longed for a few hours' peace with no lessons and no old priestesses screeching at me when I turned to the right instead of the left or when I forgot the ancient words of the prayers, whose meaning was hard to grasp and thus almost impossible to remember. So I whispered back, "Yes," and then followed Thoösa to the room where my mother had died and where the other eleven priestesses were now waiting.

They were still at their midday meal, dining on roasted waterfowl. I wasn't tempted at the sight of the crisp brown skin on the ducks and geese or the sounds of the women sucking morsels off the bones. The smell of the herbs and rich fat sickened me. My mouth didn't water, and my stomach remained silent. Damia glanced at me with what looked like surprised respect.

Don't admire my restraint, I thought. It's not due to self-control. I couldn't eat if you forced it down my throat.

After the meal, the next step was for the priestesses to practice dressing me in the robes of She-Who-I s-Goddess. Each had a task, from taking off my everyday slippers to putting on the new hard shoes, from pinning up my hair to tying my sash in the ritual knot. I could not wear the real garments until the actual ceremony. The women stripped off my ordinary clothes and pretended to re-dress me in the stiff l inen-and-wool skirt embroidered with golden thread and encrusted with gems, and the vest that would leave my breasts uncovered in front of all those people.

"Don't worry," Damia said, who was looking at me as I stared down at my chest. "When the time comes, you won't care. You won't really be you. Your body will be there, but what makes it move will be Goddess. You will feel what Goddess feels, not what a girl feels." I was unconvinced.

Thoösa barked her unpleasant laugh. "You'll see." She rummaged in a cloth bag on the table. "Here, take this." She held out a ball of undyed yarn the same size as the white Goddess ball that lay in its special casket inside the box at the foot of my mother's—now my—bed. I held the practice ball in my right hand. I turned to the left and took the thirteen steps that would, on the night of the Festival, lead me into the inner chamber, where the Goddess stone would have been anointed with oil and draped in precious cloth.

And then we stopped. This is where we always stopped. What came next I didn't know. I didn't ask, and they didn't offer to tell me. Once I was inside the chamber, the Minos would come in wearing his bull mask. This I had seen at every Planting Festival. When I later emerged holding a snake in each hand, I wouldn't be Ariadne. I would be Goddess.

But this night, I was impatient and tired of secrets. "What does the Minos do in the chamber?" I asked no one in particular. The priestesses exchanged glances but said nothing. Surely they knew. They had to leave the inner chamber when the Minos arrived, but they must have learned something about that part of the ritual.

I tried again. "What is the Ordeal of the Snakes?"

"Where did you hear about that?" Thoösa snapped.

"Never mind." I tried to imitate the tone my mother had always used when dismissing complaints or questions from the priestesses. "It is enough to know that I have heard of it and that I want to know what it is." I looked around at them as they stood mute. "Damia?" She stared at the ground. I turned to the others. "Zita? Kynthia? Will no one tell me?" Nothing. "Perialla?"

She raised her eyes and glanced at the others. I thought I caught a shrug from Thoösa. "We can't tell you, Mistress," Perialla said. "Goddess-Who-Was should have told you. I'm sure she would have if she'd known she would be leaving you so soon," she added hastily, clearly not wanting to cast aspersions on my mother's memory. "But it isn't our place. The Minos will have to explain it."

"Very well," I said. "I'll just go ask him." They protested, and Thoösa even tried to block my exit, but I pushed her aside and strode away. If I didn't breathe air that hadn't already passed into and out of the bodies of so many people, I would burst like an overripe pomegranate.