Dark of the Moon (2 page)

That night, hours after the arrival of the Athenian ships, we walked home from a house that had not been so lucky, where both the mother and her two baby boys, each as small as a fish that I would eat for breakfast, had died. I couldn't put from my mind the sight of those tiny bodies laid out on the dirt floor or the sudden gush of blood that emptied the woman of her life even as she wept over her dead children. Her little son and daughter sat huddled in a corner—the hut was so small that there had been nowhere else for them—the boy stroking his small sister's hair in a vain attempt at comfort as she sucked her thumb. The farmer who was the woman's husband was too stunned to think to offer us the loan of his one donkey. My mother and I slipped out the door, away from the smell of goats and blood and birth, into a night scarcely darker than the windowless shack.

My mother was quiet as we walked, breathing the sweet-scented night air. I didn't try to talk; she was always curt after losing one she had tended, as though angry or disappointed. She knew that the matter was in Goddess's hands, not hers, but each time we saw a mother or a child die, I sensed that she felt she had fallen short of what was expected of her.

I trailed behind. The dust of the road was cool between my toes, and it felt good to straighten my cramped back and legs. My mother stopped and turned, waiting for me to catch up. She slid her hand through my arm and squeezed it, pressing me close to her side, and we continued, hip to hip, my stride nearly matching hers. I took comfort in her warmth.

"They were too small to live, you know." I was surprised to hear her mention the deaths and didn't answer. "Goddess must have changed Her mind about sending the babies into the world. But the mother..." She fell silent. It would not do to criticize Goddess, especially when we were walking under Her. I looked up at the cold white eye staring down at us.

"We don't know why She chose to take the woman," my mother said softly. "We can only do our best." She shook my arm gently. "And you are learning so well, my girl. When it comes my time, you will also do your best."

"Your ... time?"

My mother stopped and pulled her arm out from mine. One of her rare smiles spread across her face, lighting it like the moon coming out from behind a cloud.

"You don't know?" Her smile grew broader. "Look at me." She turned sideways, smoothing her gown. I felt my jaw drop, and her smile grew to a laugh as I stood goggling at her round belly. How had I not seen?

"Is it..." I whispered, and she stopped laughing and shook her head, looping my hair behind my ears.

"Have I taught you nothing? It's been almost a year since the Planting Festival, and the moon will be full three more times before this one comes into the world. No, this baby is not the god's. I was wrong about Ision." The regret in her voice was plain. I, too, missed Ision, the young blacksmith whom my mother had declared the incarnation of the sky god Velchanos at the last Planting Festival. Ision had appeared to enjoy the days that he spent as her consort. He hadn't cried or fought at the end, when his time came to fertilize the fields.

But if this child was conceived months after the Planting Festival, then Ision was not its father, and so he had not truly been the god. This meant that he had died for nothing. I was sorry for that. He had been a sunny and friendly person, and the new blacksmith was sour and silent. I wondered how my mother felt about her error, especially when she saw Ision's wife at work in our laundry.

We resumed walking. We were near the palace now, and dawn was coming, a paler shade of night over the tops of the tall cypress trees that lined the road. The moon followed us, lighting our path. I calculated silently: I was fifteen, my brother three years older. My mother had become She-Who-Is-Goddess at fourteen. So she was now ... what? Thirty-three or thirty-four, at least. I had heard of women who had successful pregnancies and deliveries at that age, but it was rare.
Goddess knows what she's doing,
I reminded myself, but I couldn't quench the little flame of fear that tingled in my belly as the sun's edge poked over the top of the palace above us.

It should have been nearly silent, the only sound that of the guards extinguishing the torches that lit the outer walls. But instead there arose the noise of hurrying feet, shouts, the clatter of weapons. My mouth dried until my tongue stuck to its roof. I had never known the palace to be attacked, but late at night, when they thought I was asleep, the women told tales of long-ago raids. We were so strong now, though, that nobody dared. Or so I had always thought.

We ran toward the palace and then stopped, panting, in the shadow of the enormous tree that marked the end of the road. No armed soldiers were running in or out through the wide gate. And now I could hear that the shouts were intermingled with a familiar bellowing that echoed off the cold stone walls. I said, "Asterion!" and my mother, her voice tumbling over mine, exclaimed, "Your brother!" I scrambled across the big roots, tripped and nearly fell in the semidarkness, and ran toward the gate.

The Minos met us there, barefoot and with his hair disheveled. "Thank Goddess you've returned!" His voice shook as he clutched his cloak. "He has a girl with him and won't let her go."

"What girl?" my mother asked as we hurried together toward my brother's quarters.

"A girl from Athens." I had heard the women whispering that yet another wife for the Minos was among the Athenian tribute. It must be the girl I had seen comforting the little boy down in the harbor. She was pretty, with fine bones and soft-looking brown hair. Asterion liked pretty things, and when Asterion liked something, he sometimes tried to take it apart. I gulped as I imagined what he might do to the delicate girl. My mother, then the Minos, and then I ran down the narrow stairs into the maze of storerooms and corridors under the palace.

The small space outside my brother's chambers was filled with a dozen soldiers, some of them holding blazing torches. Idiots! Hadn't they learned? Some were jabbing their spears through the door, while others shouted and shook their fists. The light from the torches made Asterion's shadow, already distorted, stretch and bob and dance across the wall behind him.

I squeezed between my mother and the Minos, then made my way through the crowd. When I shoved one of the armed men aside, he turned as if to strike me but quickly lowered his eyes at the sight of She-Who-Will-Be-Goddess. Another man noticed me, and then another, and one by one they fell silent.

"Asterion!" I called. He caught sight of me and stretched out one hand in my direction, moaning. His other hand grasped the Athenian maiden's slender wrist. Although she was ashen, no blood was visible. She was even taller than she had appeared from my hiding place above the harbor, although my brother towered over her.

"Go upstairs!" I commanded the soldiers. They hesitated, and a few started to protest. I cut them short. "And take those torches with you! Don't you know he's afraid of fire? Leave me a small lantern." They obeyed. The Minos followed them and then my mother, who shot me a glance that said, "Be careful."

When the small antechamber was empty, I sat down on the floor. "They're gone, brother." He moaned again, and the sound broke my heart. He threw his free arm over his head and roared at the ceiling. I forced myself to sit quietly and wait until his wits, such as they were, returned to him.

My brother had never tried to hurt me. He had not been allowed even to touch me until one day when I toddled away from my dozing nursemaid, Korkyna, and was found, hours later and after a frantic search, asleep on his lap. Asterion had still been a child himself then, though already nearly as tall as a grown man, and he was terribly strong. Korkyna had fainted at the sight of me curled up on my brother's knees, his misshapen head bent over my face. She had thought he was going to eat me, but he nuzzled me and then kissed my forehead.

"What do you have there?" I tried to sound only half interested. Asterion blinked his confusion. I indicated his left arm still stretched behind him, the muscles in his powerful shoulder bulging. The poor girl's wrist would be bruised, if not broken, by that grip.

Asterion looked over his back and seemed surprised to see what he was holding. She opened her mouth. "Don't speak," I said quickly. "Keep still." She started to nod, then clearly thought better of it and sent me a look of comprehension instead. Good. Intelligence as well as beauty. No wonder the Minos was so eager to have me save her.

"That's not yours," I said. Asterion looked from me to the girl and back again. His face, already misshapen with bulging eyes and bony bumps and ridges, grew even uglier as it wrinkled. The girl closed her eyes.

I knew my brother didn't agree. What found its way into his chamber was his, whether it was food or a rat or an Athenian princess. "No, she isn't," I insisted. "She belongs to the Minos. He wants her back."

Asterion pulled the girl around in front of him, where he clutched her tightly, her face to his chest. I started to rise, then forced myself to sit back down, hoping she could breathe. "When you give her to me, I'll go talk to Cook and see what he can send you." I knew better than to say
if
Asterion re-leased her, which would imply that he had a choice.

He loosened his hold slightly, and the girl tilted her head back to take a breath. "I wonder what you would like." I looked up to the ceiling, pretending to consider. Asterion licked his lips, his gaze fixed on me. "I think I saw some..." I drew it out, and he leaned forward, his eyes shining. "I think I saw a pot of honey." His groan was of delight this time. "Yes, I saw some honey, and I think Cook was saving it for the Minos, but when you give me the girl I'll tell him that he has to let you have it instead." Asterion loosened his grip a little more. The girl swiveled her eyes toward me, her brown hair plastered to her head with her sweat or his, or both.

Our mother hated it when Asterion ate honey. He always wound up covering himself in the stickiness, and as he feared water almost as much as he feared fire, it would take me hours to clean it off him. If I didn't, he'd soon be covered in ants, and his roaring as he tried to pull them off with his clumsy fingers would disturb everyone in the palace. But it would be worth it if I could free that girl before he broke something in her slim body.

I stood up and shook out my skirt. "I hope the Minos hasn't eaten it already. He looked hungry when I came in."

Asterion made an impatient sound.

"No, I won't go look. I have to take the girl with me or he'll say that you can't have her
and
the honey. One or the other."

In the end it was that simple. Honey or the girl, and he chose the honey. I held my breath while he considered, afraid that another word or move on my part would make him squeeze her again. But then he released her. He watched sadly as she glided toward me, eyes fixed on the ground. I had been afraid that she would break into a run, but she knew better, and my brother made no attempt to grab her again. She continued through the door.

"I'll be back soon," I promised. Asterion nodded and licked his lips.

"Come on." I caught up with the girl and took her arm, leading her down a corridor and then around a corner. We passed the stairway that I had used to descend into my brother's chambers and headed for another. The girl trotted to keep up with me.

"Where are we going?" She spoke with a musical Athenian accent.

"To the kitchen." I hurried up the stairs. "I just hope there's some honey."

HONEY THERE WAS indeed, in a small stone pot tightly fitted with a lid made even more secure against insects with a layer of wax. I sat with my arms around my knees and watched Asterion as he ate, dipping his clumsy fingers into the golden stickiness and sucking them, his large, wide-set eyes rolling.

When he had finished, he licked the inside of the honey jar until even he could tell that he had scoured it clean. I stood and put out my hand. My brother looked at the round little pot, evidently decided that keeping it wasn't worth an argument, and extended it to me. He couldn't go any farther, so I stepped closer and took it. His fingers closed lightly around mine, and he made a soft sound.

"You want me to stay a little while?" I asked. He nodded eagerly, his long black curls—his only beauty—flopping over his uneven eyes. Of course our mother had ordered his hair cut when he'd turned twelve, but the shearing had had to be done without the ceremony expected when the god's son reached young manhood. I still shuddered when I remembered his screams as the men pinned him to the ground while the barber worked so fast that both he and Asterion wound up smeared with blood. No one had dared approach my brother with shears since then, and his lustrous black hair now hung past his shoulders.

I moved closer so I could reach my brother's face. I stood on tiptoe and pushed his hair back, off his bumpy forehead. He grinned and shook his head so that the shiny curls once more fell forward. I laughed. This was one of his favorite games, to tease me by undoing some small bit of work I had done.

It must have been the lack of sleep, the sight of the pale dead babies and their suddenly blue-lipped mother, or the shock of the encounter with the Athenian girl, for even in the midst of my laughter, tears stung my eyes. I bit my lip and looked away. If Asterion saw me weeping, he would become distressed, and I had noticed no more jars marked with a bee in the storeroom.

To distract him, I revealed the damp cloth that I had concealed behind my back. Better to be angry at a washing than terrified at the sight of his sister weeping. Asterion grunted a protest but allowed me to get the worst of the stickiness off his hands and from around his mouth. When he had clearly had enough, I stopped. I could finish later.

"Good boy," I said, and he grinned again, his crooked teeth showing. He touched one of the gold earrings that dangled almost to my shoulders. "Gentle," I warned, and he lowered his hand.

I stayed only a little longer, and when I left, he didn't try to follow me. A few years earlier, my mother had had him placed here below the palace, where his roaring wouldn't frighten people. She'd had to recast her binding spell several times, winding the black yarn into one complex pattern after another. Finally, the spell worked; he couldn't move from the two small chambers at the heart of the underground warren of storerooms and corridors, but he was not held so firmly that he felt and fought against his invisible bonds. Now he moaned and then bellowed his version of my name—"Adne!
Adne!
"—as I took one turn and then another, his loneliness following me upstairs and nearly to the women's sitting room.