Radiant Darkness (4 page)

   Let her tease me. She's got their attention now.

   She lies back on the sand with a naughty smile. She loves it when everyone is staring at her. "No, it's definitely too much for someone of your tender sensibilities."

   "Why?" asks Kallirhoe. "What do the mortals do?"

   "What don't they do! They load up carts with enough food and bedding to camp outside town for three days. Women only, mind you, no men. Men would be too shocked to see how their sweet wives commune with Demeter to get a good harvest. That's why women lie and say it's a somber time, so men will let them go."

   No men. Why am I not surprised?

   "They must use indecent language," prods Ianthe.

   "The foulest, and they dance with total abandon, as if Dionysus himself loosed their bonds with his heady wine. It's out of control. And then there are the pigs."

   "Pigs?" Kallirhoe is incredulous. "What does that have to do with the harvest?"

   "They toss baby piglets into pits for snakes to eat, and haul back up decayed remains from the year before, and mix them with seed grain and prayers to scatter on the earth. Then there are cakes baked in unspeakable shapes, and—"

   "What unspeakable shapes?" asks Ianthe, laughing.

   "
You
know. It is a fertility festival, after all."

   "Wait a minute," I say. "This is my mother you're talking about. She has fits if my dress is too revealing. She won't even let me give up my dolls."

   Admete hauls herself back up to sitting and stares at me like I'm an idiot.

   "When are you going to realize your mother is one powerful goddess? You only see her here in the vale, where she's the mommy and you're her baby girl. Don't you know what she's capable of? Why do you think everyone is so careful to keep her happy?"

   "Hey, I know," says Kallirhoe, sculpting an interesting shape in the sand. "Let's do a little baking ourselves."

   Everyone howls with laughter, and I know they've forgotten all about following the new scent.

   I look at my crumpled clothes. I think I know where I put my saffron chiton for tomorrow. And my tangled hair needs combing.

   I wrap my fingers around a flat, polished stone, hiding it like a secret in the palm of my hand.

T
he sun hangs right above my head and the earth swallows my shadow. Everything feels bare, stripped, open. Naked.

   I'm scared he'll be there.

   I'm scared he won't.

   What am I doing, sneaking up the hillside, keeping him secret?

   I reach the plum trees and pause, peering out from the branches. There he is, pacing like a panther. The sight of him wakes me up to what I'm doing.
"Men are
ruthless and greedy."
I can hear my mother's voice as if she were standing right next to me, whispering in my ear.
"They'll pluck you like a fruit, then toss you aside."

   As if a single male breath would besmirch her realm, tainting it forever. I always thought that was ridiculous. But now—now part of me is frightened. What if this time he grabs me and throws me into his chariot? I can take a step closer—or I can go back home and never see him again. I'd be sitting there weaving dutifully when my mother comes back.

   I step out from under the branches.

   He looks up at me. I should be smiling or something. Make this look easy. Like I do it all the time.

   Even across the meadow his eyes are deep and his hand is opening, reaching forward, and he starts to stride in my direction—

   And stops. His hand closes, pulls back, as if he were tugging on reins. All the power that was surging out of him just got reeled back in. Now he sits on the grass, smiles, and says, "I'm glad you came." As if my coming were the most natural thing in the world. I've never felt so confused in my life.

   So I sit, too, not right next to him, but an arm's length away, and start rummaging meadow daisies out of the grass so my hands will have something to do.

   He reaches his hand forward and I startle. But he just grabs a daisy, breaks it off, and lays it in front of me so I can use it to make my chain. Stem into welcoming stem.

   "Abastor knew the way today," he says. "I didn't even need to tell him where we were going."

   He must think I'm acting like a skittish horse, because he's speaking with the voice he uses for those gigantic black stallions: soft and certain and full of buried power. It's not so much that I hear his voice; I feel it.

   "I know what," I say, looking at my linked flowers. "I'll make this one for you. A daisy crown. But you have to help."

   "Me?" He smiles. "I don't think my fingers will work as nimbly as yours."

   I glance at his broad hands, then turn quickly back to my work. "I'll do the threading, but I need more flowers."

   He leans over to a thick clump of daisies and reaches down, but he stops and waves his hand across the blossoms as if he were clearing away smoke.

   "Bees," he says.

   "Don't hurt them!" I hold out a hand. Three fat, furred bumblebees stop their irritated circling and fly to my outstretched palm. I lift them to my ear so I can hear their sweet buzzing song.

   "Your friends?" he asks, one eyebrow raised.

   "Yes. Here, you can listen, too. Hold out your hand."

   He lifts up a brown palm. I whisper to the bees and they buzz in return, then fly around him once before settling on his hand.

"Raise it to your ear," I say.

   He does, and I see his face gentle as they sing of blossoms opening, of pollen and the laden flight back to the faceted walls of the hive.

   He looks at me in wonder as the bees fly away.

   I lean back on my hands, laughing, happier than I've ever been before. I look up to the sky and close my eyes, feeling the sun on my face. When I open my eyes again, he's looking at me.

   Maybe eternity won't be so bad after all.

By the time I leave, I know I'm not doing anything wrong. He's never going to touch me. Several times he got up and walked over to check on the horses. But he never came any closer to me. So I can come back again tomorrow, and no harm done.

The next day dawns cloudy, the air feels heavy, and the bees are staying safely back in their hives. On my way to the meadow I feel the first drops of soft, warm rain.

   He walks to me, takes off his travel cloak, and drapes it over me to keep me dry. Strong, finely woven fabric. I breathe in a multitude of strange new scents—crisp air from above the clouds, far-off pine trees, the dense smokiness of embers—all swirling around me in a dark, warm refuge. The rain is falling harder now.

"Come under the trees," he says. "They'll keep us dry."

   But I snuggle the cloak around me and laugh. "Let's stay here. I like the rain."

   We sit down in the grass, surrounded by clusters of those intoxicating white flowers; there are so many of them now. Drops gather on his hair, his hands. Warm rain falls harder until rivulets run down his bare shoulders, following the muscled grooves of his arms, and his chiton grows dark with damp and clings to his skin. I stretch out my feet and wiggle my toes in the wet grass and we talk. It's just one more kind of music, like the rainsong, like my hair rubbing against the enveloping cloak, like the gentle clink of the horses' harnesses as they graze nearby.

   Words? We pluck them out of the air, stringing them together like daisies in a chain. How wind feels when horses gallop through clouds, that's what he tells me; the gentle tension you need for reins; what you can tell by watching a horse's ears; the lakes beyond these cliffs, reflecting light that shifts so there's no such thing as one blue. And I tell him how flowers sing when they blossom in your hand, and where the bees hide their honey-rich hives—each word joining the last until the chain encircles us like one more sense, as strong as sight or touch.

   And then there are the important words. "I'll be here the day after tomorrow," he says, "when the sun is high."

   And I say I will, too—

   —Even though it gets harder now. Today's the third day. She's coming back.

   I'll have to be more careful, that's all. She won't notice. She hardly sees me, anyway. Not the way he sees me, his face intent and alive.

   I need to be here. It's not as if I have a choice.

"P
ersephone!" Her voice drifts to my room. "Are you ever going to wake up?"

   I drag myself out of bed and down the hall, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, hoping my groggy face, my rumpled hair, will disguise the change in me. She looks up. I needn't have worried.

   "I brought you something from the Thesmophoria," she says. "A gift."

   I sit down and she pushes an intricately painted box across the table.

   "Go on—aren't you going to open it?"

   I pull off the top and lift out a lump of pink linen. Out

rolls a terra-cotta pig, fat and confident, a smug expression on its snout.

   "There's more! Keep going!"

   Yes, another lump is buried in the fabric. I unwrap a terracotta piglet, a little squirmy helpless thing looking up with pleading eyes. Pig and piglet. A matched set.

   What am I supposed to say? Great toys, Mommy?

   "Aren't they wonderful?" Her voice is bright and eager. "The mortals outdid themselves this year. Such a pile of offerings—one of the biggest ever. I was already inhabiting my statue, waiting to be worshiped, and I saw a woman add these. Once the dancing started, I descended and set them aside."

   She smiles down at the all-knowing pig and her feeble little piglet, then up at my face. Not seeing anything. Not seeing me.

   "I wanted to bring you something special," she says. "I know you've been bored."

   I paste on a smile. "Thank you."

   She gets up from the table and fills a bowl with figs and walnuts, puts it in front of me, then sits again.

   "What a festival!" she says. "I could see the joy in their faces, read it in the looseness of their limbs. How happy women are without men!"

   There it is again.

   I pick up a fig and cradle it in a cupped hand. "You really hate men, don't you?"

   "I don't hate them. It's just that they're . . . irrelevant." She's getting that I'm-imparting-knowledge look. "True power lies in the womb, nurturing seeds and sheltering life."

   She reaches across the table to lift a stray lock of hair from my eyes and tuck it behind my ear. My hand tightens around the fig.

   She sees my hair; she doesn't see me. Doesn't see I'm not the same person she left three days ago. Doesn't smell the new scents his cloak left in my hair, or feel the warmth rising from my skin, or hear the difference in my heartbeat.

   Good.

   "But men are useful for some things, aren't they?" I ask. "You needed one to start me. I wasn't exactly selfseeding."

   She's in such a good mood, she laughs as if my question were a joke between us.

   "Yes, a man 'started' you, and then I found us a home far from men's bullying selfishness, their restraints, their demands."

   She rests a long, cool hand on my arm. I try not to pull away. And then I surprise myself by saying, "Who was my father?"

   It's a question I stopped asking years ago, once I noticed how her eyes always narrowed and how quickly she changed the subject. But this time she gives me what she'd probably describe as a look of understanding.

   "Your father? What does it matter? He saw no reason to be involved in your life." She sits back. Something occurs to her and she smiles. "And I suppose that means he gave us
one
thing to be grateful for: his absence! Let's not talk about him again. There's no need."

   No need. And so there's no need to tell her about the last three days, either.

   I stand and wrap the pigs back in their pink shroud.

   Grateful? Well, she gave me something to be grateful for, too. And it wasn't these ridiculous pigs. She made it as clear as sunlight that I need to keep my secret. She's incapable of understanding why I'd want a man in my life.

   I put the lump in the box and fasten the lid. There won't be any thunderstorms as long as she doesn't know.

   "Thank you," I say again.

   And she beams back at me, so happy we've had this little talk.

"W
here have you been all morning?" calls Kallirhoe. "Come over here fast. Admete's got news."

   They're all staring at her, which is great. This way they won't peer at me. I must look as different as I feel. It's like I used to be a stunted shoot and now that I've had my first taste of rain, I'm sprouting bright green leaves all over the place. How would I explain it to them? A good night's sleep?

   Then I get close enough to see Admete's face and I know. She's in love.

   "When you told us your mother was away," she says, "I decided to go exploring."

   "Wait!" says Ianthe, looking around like an anxious sparrow. "Don't say it again until we're in the rowboat." She gets up and pulls over the old, flat-bottomed scow, and we all pile in. Kallirhoe pushes us off toward the middle of the lake, then settles down with one leg draped over the side so her toes make ripples.

   "All right," says Ianthe, relaxing and turning her face to the sun, "go on, Admete. Start over from the beginning."

   "I was exploring and I found something I never noticed before—a place where my stream flows near a crevice in the cliff. It would be too small for any of you to squeeze into, but I was able to trickle through, and I wanted to see what was on the other side."

   She looks like she's melting, boneless, against the hull of the boat. "There's a path. It goes all the way to the ocean, to a hidden little cove. And he was there."