Despite the Angels (2 page)

“What is she saying now?”

“Same as ever. That everyone else who took a vow in her sanctuary managed to keep it and that our two are letting her down.”

“Four thousand years later.”

“Yes, she’s unusual, all right. Her guide works on her, but she keeps coming back to it. I knew it was a bad idea when she said it. Somehow I just felt it.”

“But we want Lucy and David to get together anyway. They have such good energies when they do, remember when they were Alessia and Danthys in Crete? You never know what they or their children might achieve.”

“We must get on with it. There is no guarantee that this world will last forever and then where could we send them? It could take millions of years for another planet as good to be ready and what would we do with them, not to mention all the other souls hanging around at Home here, with no lives to go to? The thought is unbearable.” Jotin slumped, his usually large energies contracting as he looked forward into a future he did not relish.

“Yes, and them being in different soul groups here makes it worse. They see so little of each other,” Trynor was fluttering on the spot, wondering how to cheer his friend, “so what can we do?”

“I do have a ‘Plan B’ for this life, if you’ll work with me and hold off till Lucy is old enough to marry. Kathleen is helping on this one, though she doesn’t know it. Her guide told me about the outline plan for Kathleen and it works well for our needs too. So promise me - no more flowery T-shirts for the moment. Let your Lucy be a child, and enjoy it.”

“Oh, she does. You know, she still loves her Noah’s Ark, even though it’s only plastic. Still occasionally makes it new plasticine animals. I’ll work on her Dad about the bike. Now, are you going to explain your plan?”

So Jotin did.

Trynor sat in the sun at the palace in Malatos, nearly two day’s walk east of Knossos, allowing it to freshen his energies. He watched fondly
as Alessia chattered happily to her friend the scribe, who worked next door to Mikolos’ gold workshop. They had got into the habit of bringing their lunches to a shady corner of the courtyard, protected from the midday sun.

“There’s no point going to sit at the viewpoint with the others,” the scribe had explained to Alessia the first time they had lunch together, “when I can’t see the sea.”

“But I thought-” Alessia started, but she was cut off-

“No I can see it of course, but just as a big blue blur. It is frustrating when everyone else is pointing out the diving birds and the fishing boats. I have never seen a bird fly, they are always too far away. That’s why I learnt to write, it was close enough to see. Even so I have to put my nose so close I get clay on the end of it. I could have learnt goldsmithing like you, except for the times where it has to be melted. My hair would have gone up in flames. Cooking is dangerous enough.”

“Have you caught fire?” asked Alessia.

“Oh, yes, a few times. I eat mostly raw food, it is safer. And I fall over things I can’t see.”

“But you can see? You are not like Filos?” Filos was an old blind fisherman, whom the whole town supported because he could predict storms by smelling the air.

“No, I can see perfectly when I come close, like this. Oh, you have the prettiest freckles on your nose!”

“Have I?” Alessia rubbed her nose, suddenly self-conscious. She changed the subject. “Is there a spirit for writing like there is for gold?”

The scribe considered this for a while. “I do not think so. No-one has ever told me so. The marks all have meanings and if you know them you can share information, that’s all. Why do you ask?”

“I thought everything had a spirit, I never met anything that didn’t. I talked with the spirit of the clay I worked with back home in Tylissos; and on my way here to Malatos I learnt how to talk to the earth spirit. I would be lonely without the spirits to talk to. Are you not lonely?”

“No, I am too busy. I can hear the voices of the other scribes whenever I read the tablets, then I put my voice in the clay for them. I have friends in other towns who I have never met, but we can talk to each other.”

Alessia’s eyes shone with this new idea. “So your tablets do have spirits, they have yours,” she said, taking the scribe’s hand, “put in there by you. That is truly magic!”

“Would you like to learn how to do it?”

“No thanks,” said Alessia. “I do not need to, I can talk to you for real. And I am busy learning gold. Talking with the spirit of the gold is like talking to the sun spirit, because gold shines like the sun and lasts, too. But the pieces with beads sometimes sparkle like water, so maybe I should learn the water dance too.” She fluttered her hands as she spoke.

“Do you know other dances?”

“I learnt the ‘earth walk’ while I was travelling here from home. I came with the bull dancing troupe, you know, and wanted to learn to dance with the bulls, but Hetrion, their owner, said you have to start that when you start to walk. So he told one of the dancers to teach me the earth walk. It’s a slow dance  in honour of the earth and if you do it right you can feel the little movements the earth makes when she is restless.” She shuddered with the memory of the first time she had been led in that slow sensuous dance and blushed slightly. The listening woman saw the colour change but said nothing. She could always pretend to see less than she did.

“They let me join in when they danced at the Grand Palace at Knossos on the way here.” Now Alessia’s eyes were shining. “It was worth having to leave home to experience that. Helping to thank the earth’s spirit for the Queen!” Alessia grew silent as her own words struck home to her. The scribe put out a hand and stroked her shoulder.

“It is hard, to leave your home. I know, I had to come here to be able to work. No-one needed writing in my village and there was nothing else I could do.”

“I could. I was a good potter, my parents’ best apprentice,” said Alessia. “And I liked working with the clay spirit, it is soft and yielding, a feminine spirit. But then I met Mikolos when he was passing through and he talked of the gold things he creates here. I just felt I had to come, I don’t know why.”

Trynor smiled to himself. “I know why, my darling girl, it was because I suggested it. You should have known too by now, but Danthys is away selling his bangles at a fair in Sitia. When he returns the story can continue.”

“My mother cannot write, but she can make pictures. She gave me one to bring with me, it is my whole family on a clay tablet just like yours, as though they were pushing their faces out through the clay. So I have a little piece of their spirit with me. I miss them, especially Paslona. She is so little and maybe will have forgotten me when she sees me again. I do not know how long that will be,” Alessia grew silent.  She didn’t miss everyone in the village. She had been glad to get away from Niklon. He was a real nuisance, thinking Alessia was interested in him, trying to touch her and assuming she would bring him something gold when she went home because he heard her promising trinkets to her girlfriends. Niklon had shadowed her and she had come away largely because of him.  There was something about him she didn’t like. She shuddered
,
Trynor stretched out his energies to smooth Alessia’s, trying to remove the unwanted memory.

“Not to worry, love. You don’t like him because you know him from two hundred years ago, when you beat him in a fight. He wants to get his own back. I managed to persuade his guide Roki that you should not be together in this life and I hope Niklon will get over it without ever needing to spend a life with you.  Your Danthys is coming soon. I was talking to Jotin not long ago.”

“Did I not tell you,” Trynor had asked Jotin, “about Alessia going up to see Planidi before she came here?”

“No, who’s Planidi?”

“The local oracle near Tylissos, her home place. Wretched woman, got herself a reputation for reading the stones, so now no one there listens to their guides at all. Alessia didn’t trust herself to make up her own mind even though I’d told her what to do. No, it had to be Planidi. It was a lovely evening when she went, just at new moon. That’s a good time to ask the Mother Goddess questions, you know.”

“Oh really? Why?”

“Because they think it means the Mother Goddess is returning and all will continue well so long as the moon behaves as normal.”

“Well, that’s probably right, anyway.” Jotin laughed and Trynor joined in.

“Yes, of course, but not for the mystical reasons they think.” He paused and looked around, “Where was I?”

“Going to see an oracle,” said Jotin.

“Oh, yes. Lovely night.
Thyme scented air, moonlight, the works. Gorgeous, but she didn’t pay it any attention, just rushed on up to the top of the little hill.
I would have tripped on the loose stones if I’d had to do it in a body, but
she was young and nimble.

Planidi was waiting in the circular sanctuary making her preparations. She raised a bronze rod towards the waxing moon and held the double-headed axe at its end so that from her viewpoint its points touched those of the moon. She closed her eyes and started an incantation to the Mother, who she assumed watched over her and everybody else on the island.  When Alessia arrived Planidi drew a circle in the dust with the end of her rod and motioned the girl into it, where she knelt, her face raised to the crescent of light that showed that the Mother was listening.

“Ask your question now, daughter, while Diktynna’s light shines on you. The Mother will always answer those who seek her wisdom in the right way.” She put nine polished marble pebbles into Alessia’s hands and Alessia raised the Speaking Stones towards the moon, as she recited the old familiar words:

“Mother of all, mother of all your daughters, who guides us and gifts to us all our power, which is your power, help me now.” She paused, searching for the best words to use, although she correctly suspected that the ‘Mother’ already knew what was in her heart. “Help me now to decide should I go? Should I study under Mikolos of Malatos, to craft the precious gold?” She stopped again, wondering if that was enough, “or should I stay and continue to learn from my father? I think I would be better with gold than clay.” She stopped, aghast at having given her opinion to the Mother, who she thought knew far more than her.
Of course we do!
Planidi had divined the answers to everything for all of Alessia’s sixteen years. “I ask this humbly and that I may play my proper role in harmony with the spirits of the places where I will belong, and for the greater wonder of all children of the mother. I will follow your decision. So be it.” She bowed her head.

“Well said. Now throw the stones.”

Alessia raised her face and hands to the moonlight and tossed the pebbles up in the air. They fell around her except for one, which fell between her bare breasts and nestled there gleaming. Planidi gasped and her hand flew to her mouth.

“Don’t say it” I said. I was standing just outside the circle, invisible to the living humans, drawn into the proceedings despite my best intentions. “Don’t tell my girl anything about stones to the heart, or about the one that fell outside the circle either.”
Planidi’s head swung round and when she saw the stone lying behind Alessia, outside the circle, her grip on her rod tightened and she raised it towards the moon as though to defend herself.

“Oh, goodness, stop this now,” I said, “There’s no need to tell her nonsense. The stones mean nothing, you know that. You’re just well tuned in to us. So listen again, please, and stop inventing superstitions. Just tell her to go to Mikolos’ studio. She’s right, she would be very good with intricate work. Don’t let a good skill go to waste. It’s a straightforward life for her this time, it’s all planned, but she’d be more fulfilled and happy with the gold than with clay.”
Planidi said nothing. Her black curls moved a little in the night air and we could all hear the crickets in the valley making the soft air loud.

“Guide of Planidi the Oracle, we need you!” I moved to stand nearer to the motionless woman. As I passed Alessia I murmured to her, “don’t worry, we’ll get her talking in a moment. Be patient.”

As soon as I spoke I could see a deep purple light forming at one side of the sanctuary and moving forwards towards Planidi. “How can I help you, Trynor?”

“Make sure Planidi doesn’t dramatise her stones again. Nothing bad will happen to Alessia, it’s all arranged. She should go to Malatos, she’d be right at home with gold and there’s someone waiting to meet her there.”

Planidi’s guide stepped towards her and whispered in her ear.
Planidi concentrated, her eyes rising towards the moon, as slowly her hands and arms relaxed and she rested the end of the bronze rod on the ground. She leant it against her so that the double axe was over her shoulder and stretched out her arms to Alessia.

“The Mother has spoken, my child. The answer is simple, the stones show us that you should train with Mikolos. You must craft something in honour of the Mother, who will guard and watch over you.”

Alessia jumped to her feet, the pebble fell from between her breasts and rolled out of the dust circle, where it lay making a pair with the one which had fallen there earlier. Planidi watched it go and shivered. Alessia raised her arms to the moon and gathered an armful of moonlight to her chest.