The Sweet Girl (19 page)

“Not beautiful,” another says. “But perhaps she can be made so.”

“Clear skin,” a third says. “Dark, though. She’ll need powder.”

Next, we talk about money. Normally my family would be expected to buy me the kind of position I’m asking for.

“Her father was renowned,” the head priestess says. “She brings prestige.”

They spend some time discussing my role in the life of the cult. Weaving, water-bearing, fire-tending, cooking, cleaning; each a sacred ritual. Holy housework. They decide on water-bearing. Because I have no cash in hand to purchase my position, I’m in no position to choose.

No one asks about the household I’ve abandoned.

The work is unexpectedly hard and I lose myself in it. I talk as little as possible. The goddess is a lamp in a labyrinth; I can’t think about the darkness that is her absence. It hurts to think about much at all. My hands blister and peel; I bind them with rags and keep working. There’s a spring behind the temple, and I spend my days carrying pots back and forth. I wear a ponytail and a knee-length dress and boots, like the goddess. In the evenings I sit on the steps at her feet, gazing at her. The priestesses have sewn her a dress of fawn-skin and she carries a fine bow and leather quiver of arrows. Huntress, virgin, goddess of the moon. And of childbirth.

At night, when the other priestesses are asleep, I ask her why the baby had to die. Her face is stern. I tell her they could have given him a chance to suck, they could have fed him from a spoon. Couldn’t they have fed him from a spoon?

Babies drink a drop at a time
, she tells me.
Their tummies are the size of grapes. He would have choked off a spoon. You know this
.

I’ve seen adults with harelips, though. Some of them must survive.

Many more die of starvation
. Now her face is sad.
Have you seen a baby die of starvation? Have you heard one cry and then cry less? I have. You know it can take a week or more?

She wants my tears, I think sometimes. I give them to her, weep on her feet and don’t wipe them away. She puts pictures in my head and takes her price. During the day, mothers bring their sick babies to her. They leave offerings, all kinds of things. There’s no set price. Gold, cloth, meat, leather, pots, coins, jewellery, beans, oil, perfume, cosmetics, knives, wheat, corn, paper, musical instruments, tools. If they can write, they write
notes. The older priestesses take these things to the storeroom, a room I’ve never entered. They sew clothes for the goddess, wash and change her every few days. They put cosmetics on her face, anoint her, scent her, polish the gold chains that bind her hair, rub her tired feet, oil the leather quiver to keep it supple. On holy days she wears purple. I’ve seen her naked, all white marble and ivory, and find her most beautiful then, though the making and mending and cleaning of her clothes is one of the highest callings in the cult.

“You’re happy here,” the head priestess says to me one day. “Content.”

“Yes.”

“You work hard. I’ve been watching you.” She picks up my hands to look at them as she did the first night. Bound now in rags. “The goddess is pleased with you.”

“I love her.”

The head priestess nods. We affect the seriousness of the goddess, we priestesses, and rarely smile. I hope my cousin will come to Chalcis soon. He’ll pay the debt and understand that I belong to the goddess now, and can never leave the temple. Marriage is out of the question. He’ll feel the spark of her in me when he touches me. He’ll burn his hands. He’ll understand.

At night she whispers to me and touches me. I can’t make out the words. She comes when I’m almost asleep, when I’m about to let go. She tells me the baby is in another place. He can smile, now, and laugh, and gum a rusk, and drink from a cup. He has a puppy to cuddle and sleep with. She strokes my hair and kisses my cheek and holds me until I’m asleep.

I wake one night to use the pot and hear women’s voices from the storeroom, hear laughter, and see light outlining the door. I go closer. Through the crack I see the priestesses filling sacks with the votive offerings.

“No, that’s mine,” one of them says, snatching a gold bracelet from her sister’s hand. “You always take the best for yourself.”

“I have four children,” the other whines. “You only have two. They’re expensive to feed.”

“Take the meat, then,” the first one says.

“It’s already high.”

“The salt fish.”

“Oh, the salt fish. They’re sick of salt fish.” She makes another grab for the bracelet, but the first priestess is taller, and holds it out of her reach. The others laugh.

In the morning I ask the head priestess about what I saw. She tells me I was dreaming.

“No,” I say. “I wasn’t dreaming.”

We sit at the goddess’s feet.

“Think, Pythias,” she begins. “Think about how things were when you were a baby, a toddler. Think about the people who mattered most to you. Your father, your mother, your nurse. Your love for them was huge and simple. Your love was a massive block of uncut stone. It was featureless, and nothing could shift it.”

That’s beautiful.

“Now think, Pythias. Think on a few years. You’re a little girl now. You like some foods better than others, some toys
better than others, some people better than others. You remember?”

I remember.

“That big block of stone, it’s chipped away a little now at the edges. It’s starting to take on a form.”

It’s smaller.

“It’s more refined. More interesting. Now you’re of age. What does the block look like now? You chip away and chip away, don’t you? It takes almost all your time, all your days. You’re working at it in a fever. What does it look like now?”

I look at the goddess.

“Yes,” she says. “It could end up looking like her. One of her servants. Or it could end up looking like something else entirely.
You
could end up as something else entirely. Something not so lovely, maybe.”

“Are you threatening me?”

She smiles. “Just a little. You have to understand, it’s a privilege to be here. Would you abuse that privilege?”

“Have I?”

She pats my knee. “Only with the tip of your big toe.”

“Because of what I saw?”

“Even once you’ve carved your stone,” she says, as though she hasn’t heard me, “you keep chipping away. Your love for your parents changed, didn’t it, over time?”

I think about that.

“Your love for the goddess will change, too. Life is long, Pythias. Over time your love will grow deeper, or smoother, or however you’d like to imagine it.”

“My father,” I say slowly, “would have said you were telling
yourself a pretty story to make your life bearable. That there are no gods, no blocks of marble.”

“No parents?” the head priestess says, still smiling. “No children? No love?”

“It’s not
such
a pretty story, surely. To think that we’re all chipping away, chipping away, our loves getting smaller and smaller until we die. Is that really what you believe?”

She shrugs. “I believe in change. I believe love changes over time.”

“Even for her?” I point my chin at the goddess.

“Even for her.”

“Grows less.”

“Grows different.” She stands. “Becomes clearer.”

“And deeper, and smoother.”

We’re both standing, facing each other now. Fighting stance.

“More forgiving,” she says. “We’re not very forgiving, when we’re young.”

“What should I be forgiving?”

She puts her palm to my cheek.

Hours later, the goddess is pale in the moonlight. I tell her I’ve always been lonely.

So have I
.

Even with so many to care for you?

Even so
.

Are my sisters in the storeroom?

Go see
.

The baby, I say, tell me some more about the baby.

He’s sleeping
.

She’s so lovely, adorned in moonlight. She needs nothing else. I reach up to finger the hem of her short dress.

Go see
.

I tell her I don’t want to leave her.

You will leave me
, she says.
And another will take your place
.

No.

They wear my jewels
, she says.
They try on my clothes. They eat my meat and drink my wine. They perfume themselves and make themselves lovely in my image. They hide my gold in their clothes and give it to their families. Where else do you think my offerings go?

No.

You’ve always known
.

No.

You can do the same
.

No!

Child
, she says.
Let me care for you. Let me feed you and clothe you. Let me shelter you. Let me love you
.

I put my hands over my ears.

Daughter
, she says. I can still hear her, long after I’ve left the temple and am running, running, trailing the spark of her until it’s extinguished behind me.

The house is cold.

Leaves have drifted into the rooms from outside. The walls are cold to touch, and damp; my fingers leave snail trails of the
thinnest wet. A chair lies on its side in the inner courtyard, in front of a table crowded with empty wine cups: someone’s party ended clumsily. There’s no one in the kitchen, though the tables are crammed with dirty dishes. There’s green scum in more than one bowl. The door to the storeroom hangs by a single hinge to reveal chaos inside, food looted and spilled. What is there to feel? They left me; I left them. We’re all fending for ourselves now.

Someone is saying words in one of the rooms. Daddy’s room. Primly, my ears refuse the shape of these words, keys that won’t fit those locks. I follow the sound of them, though, and hold the heavy curtain far enough to one side, with a single finger, to see their fierce proclaimer: Thale, naked on the bed, Simon holding her ankles in the air at an angle that must—at her age—hurt. He’s pumping her. I let the curtain go but what I’ve seen will stay with me for hours, flashing like after-images when you’ve stared at the sun: the meat of his back, the slop of her breasts, their open mouths, the rhubarb-y business I glimpse between Simon’s legs on the out-stroke. Thale’s hair on Daddy’s pillow, and the filth she’s spewing into the air he breathed when he slept, the self-same pocket of breath.