Dark of the Moon

chapter 34



I STARED STUPIDLY at the pile of grayish powder that sifted through my fingers, until the priestesses's shrieks of horror brought me to myself. I looked up. Pero and Kylissa clutched each other like drowning women, and Athis's vomit splashed onto the stone floor.

Perialla supported Damia, whose lips had gone so white that they were nearly invisible in her wrinkled face. One bright red spot glowed in the middle of each of the old priestess's pallid cheeks, and her eyes burned like embers as she glared at me. "I knew it!" she croaked. "I knew she was no daughter of the god! See how he shows his disdain!" Her crooked finger trembled as she pointed at the ugly pile of desiccated wool fragments mixed with worm droppings that lay at my feet, and she shook with a weird cackle, torn between laughing and screaming.

"Silence!" Thoösa was so red as to be almost purple. "There's no one else! Would you have Knossos fall?" Damia fell silent midcackle, her bony hand still flung toward the ruin of the Goddess ball. She lowered it but continued piercing me with her faded eyes. The only sounds were Pero's sobbing and Kylissa's murmurs of comfort. The priestesses all stared at me, their eyes wide with terror.

Outside, the conch squealed. It was not an order for me to appear—nobody could order me now—but a reminder that the people were gathering. I knew that the Minos was standing in the sun, and although the air was merely warm and not yet hot, the heavy bronze bull's head on his shoulders and his red woolen robes must be stifling.

Still they looked at me mutely, and I made a decision.

"Bring me wool," I ordered. "One—no, two—skeins of undyed wool, the whitest and finest you can gather in a hurry." They stood like stones. I stamped, and Kynthia started, looking awakened from a dream, and scurried out the door. I addressed the priestesses. "Show me your hands." Looking dazed, they all thrust out their arms. Athis's fingers were the smallest, and I remembered that she had been skilled at the games we had played as girls, when we would pass looped-up lengths of yarn from one to the other in increasingly complex patterns. "You are to help me," I told her.

Kynthia reappeared, bearing two skeins of decently smooth and decently white wool. I took one and sat on a stool. I held the spindle between my knees. It twirled as I wound fluffy yarn quickly into a sphere. No time to work the central knots; that part would be concealed by succeeding layers, and making it right would have to wait until after I had become Goddess and then turned back into myself. I'll do it with all reverence, I promised Goddess. Just help me now.

I didn't know what the people would do if I appeared in front of them without the Goddess ball in my right hand, and I didn't want to find out. They would be terrified at the sacrilege. I wouldn't be surprised if they tore me to pieces to please Goddess.

She must be angry with me to have caused such a disaster—or maybe it was a test. This thought gave me a sliver of hope. Maybe the Pasiphaë part of Goddess would forgive me for her own mistake if I could make my fingers do the work correctly. Someone had made the ball, and that someone must have been She-Who-Is-Goddess who was my many-greats-grandmother. My mother was now Goddess along with that ancestor, and I had to trust that she loved me too much to condemn me for a sin she herself had committed.

Help me now, I begged again. I nodded at Athis, who was sipping a cup of honey water. She still looked shaky, but she put down her cup and pulled up a stool to face me. She sat on it with her hands out. "Spread your fingers," I commanded. Manners, too, would have to wait. I made a loop and hung it over her middle finger, then made another, twisted it, and hung it next to the first. I closed my eyes, willing my hands to remember my mother's motions as she tried to puzzle out the mystery of the Goddess ball.

The conch sounded a more urgent note. I opened my eyes, smiled reassurance at Athis, and continued.

Soon, a white ball of the correct size lay in my right hand. As far as the people were concerned, this was the same Goddess ball that my mother had held and all our mothers before her. Still, I wanted it to be correctly made, not for their sake but for the sake of Goddess.

I stood. "We must hurry." I was surprised at the firmness of my own tone. "The Minos is waiting."

Once we arrived at the inner chamber, shielded for now from the view of the people, everything moved swiftly, one step following another as smoothly as in one of Daidalos's strange mechanisms. I didn't have to think; I knew exactly what to do.

The air was heavy with aromatic smoke pouring from censers hanging on the walls. It felt harsh in my throat, but with a purifying harshness, scouring something from me. I nodded, and the door to the portico swung open. People would be standing on the festival grounds straining to see in, although it was impossible, outside in the sunshine, to make out what happened inside the dim chamber.

The room darkened further as a form loomed in the doorway. I knew it was my dear uncle, my brother, the Minos—but even so, my courage failed me for a moment. The figure was formless, a mass whose horned head I saw only in silhouette against the spring sky. He moved, taking one slow step, then another, then another, until he stood facing me. He cradled a bronze cup in both hands. I eyed it uneasily and then searched the impassive mask. He could not have been looking through the eyes of the bull, which were set with shining black stones and which in any event were too high up and far apart for a man to use. Then I spotted two small holes in the bull's neck, directly under its chin, and looked at them.

The Minos spoke the ritual words of greeting in the ancient language, "Blessed is Karia," and I answered, as I had been taught, "Blessed forever."

I caught a glimpse of the familiar hands of the Minos for just an instant before he put the cup down on the table, tucked his hands into his sleeves, and stepped back. He opened the door again and the priestesses filed out, only to return almost immediately carrying the heavy clay jars, each woman placing one hand on the pot-lid in case its contents were lively, and taking care not to cover the holes pierced around the top. No sound came through the door, although I had the sense of a large crowd waiting tensely outside.

One by one, the priestesses deposited their jars at my feet. For an awful moment, I was afraid that Damia would be unable to rise again unassisted, but she managed, and then she joined Thoösa, who already waited at the door. Orthia followed, then Kynthia, and then the others, in order of seniority. Athis, the youngest, put down her jar. She seemed ready to faint with relief as she took her place next to Perialla. I reached out my hand, and as I knew she would, Damia placed the cypress branch in it. I dipped it in the sacred water, brought down from Goddess's mountain spring at the last dark of the moon, and shook drops of it over them.

Thoösa spoke, her cracked old voice sounding as loud as a bull's roar in that silent room.

Long, long ago, before time was time, the island of Krete lay dead.

She told the story of how Karia had come to Krete—how I had come to Krete. I closed my eyes, hearing the priestesses intone "Blessed be Goddess" at all the right moments. WhenThoösa finished, I opened my eyes. Was I Goddess now? How would I know?

The priestesses backed out, careful not to ruin everything by tripping. Athis cleared the door and turned, relief shining from her like a light as she nearly skipped across the portico to the stairs.

The door closed behind them, silencing the noise from the crowd: excited voices, hushed laughter, what sounded like questions. The priestesses would be giddy with relief that their part in the ritual was over. People would be asking them how I had behaved. Don't tell anybody about the Goddess ball, I silently reminded them, even though I knew they would not. Someone might proclaim that the only way to cleanse the Goddess stone after such a disaster was with the blood of the priestesses. Even the most pious among them would hesitate to risk this.

Now the Minos and I were alone. This was the moment I had been dreading most of all; for the first time since my arrival at the shrine, I had no idea what would happen next. I stood with my hands clasped in front of me like a little girl, bowed my head, and said the only words that came to me, "I place myself in your hands."