Goddess of Yesterday (5 page)

Nicander was the only one of our people left on his feet. He wore no armor. He had been cut several times.

Of course the pirates could have surrounded the king and done away with him easily. But he wished to die well and they wished to kill well, so the enemy did not interfere with the duel, but paused to admire.

I sang my king's praises in my heart: how he thrust and forced himself forward. He had badly wounded the foe, goring him in the side. Blood cascaded down the man's legs. The foe was weakening. My hostage father would win.

It would not change the battle and it would not keep him alive, for another of the enemy would continue the duel, but at least Nicander would die in glory.

And then a pirate stabbed the king in the back, denying him the chance to die as a warrior. He died as a slave dies.

Even the pirates were furious, especially the crossplumed warrior. “You had no right! He was my man!”

“My brother, you are badly hurt. I cannot let you be killed.” The backstabber yanked his dagger out of my king's
back. Tearing strips from his own cape, he bound up his brother's gashes.

No poet can sing of the foe being stabbed in the back. The bard threw up his hands in disgust. His song was ruined. “It is a shivery thing to kill a prince of royal blood that way,” he shouted from the ship. “You will call down the gods' wrath.”

The backstabber shrugged, although it is not good to shrug when gods are mentioned.

The battle ended. There were none of us left to fight. The town burned. The pirates waited for the fire to die down so they could go back for Nicander's treasure. Some of them sat in the sand, cleaning blood and gore off armor and weapons. Others gathered their own dead for a pyre. They sank several ships, which puzzled me until I decided that enough of their men had been killed that they were short on rowers. They were not leaving any ship for survivors to use.

In dories they rowed out those women they were taking captive. They made Queen Petra walk over her husband's body. They did not have Callisto.

The sun slid low in the sky, and the sky turned gaudy red. Great black shadows shot behind the ships.

Grinning, the backstabber kicked Nicander's body. He knew the dead man was a king. He knew kings are sacred. He knew and was glad that a king's body would go unburied, a terrible ending for a fine life.

In the water, circling my legs, was an octopus.

It was not one of the small dainty ones. It was one of the big strong ones, its legs as long as I am tall.

I had a horror of the octopus—its soft swollen body, its hundreds of fleshy sucking cups, its eyes staring in different
directions. I wouldn't eat it, although everyone else loved sliced octopus, fried in oil and served hot and salty with rosemary and thyme.

They say Medusa's hair was made of snakes, but on my idol it is clear that Medusa wore an octopus in her hair, letting the dreadful arms swing about and cling to her skin with their little sticky cups.

As a wanderer on the shore would kick a dead fish into the waves to get rid of the stink, the pirate was kicking the sacred body of my hostage father the king.

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes so no sucker would fasten on them and blind me, and sank down beneath the octopus. Gripping the swirling arms of the hideous creature, I put its cool bloated body right on my head and stood up on the rocks screaming.

I was walking on water, gilded by the setting sun.

Medusa.

“I am Medusa!” I shrieked, in their heavy ugly accent. “I come to take your lives!” With one hand I held the octopus and with the other hand I shielded my eyes to catch the pirates in my stare. Hundreds of men stopped what they were doing and stared in horror.

“Look upon me!” I screamed. “Look upon me and die!”

I thought the pirate kicking Nicander might actually die. He slipped on the rocks, whimpering, and scrabbled away as a snail scuttles from the gull.

My snake hair—my octopus—waved.

From the sand the men leaped up, lifting shields to protect their eyes. Frantic, they shoved the last dory into the water and paddled for the safety of the ships.

“You die!” I screamed. “May your eyeballs be eaten by fish when Zeus holds you underwater!”

The legs of the octopus flailed in the breeze, for the octopus hated air. Its legs found places on my bare skin to grip. Curses poured out of me like lava from the spout of a god. “May the waves hold your face downward and your lungs be filled with sand! May your corpse be cast ashore naked and chewed by dogs!”

Men abandoned everything, flinging themselves into the waves, struggling to reach ships that were already sailing away. Their legs churned the water and those who did not know how to swim learned.

I shook my fist, which itself was clasped by two legs of the octopus. “Die!” I shrieked.

But they sailed safely away, every one of them, even the backstabber, and I stood among the dead.

I sank down into the water.

The octopus let go and swam off.

I was alone.

A full moon came out, casting silver light upon my task. Diving underwater time and time again, I retrieved the sail of a sunken ship. It was surprising that the pirates had not taken the sails. Cloth is harder to come by than wood.

With difficulty I hauled the big soaking piece to shore. In this I wrapped my hostage father's body.

Lying in the sand were shovels from the gold mines, brought by men with no other choice of weapon. I dragged the corpse high on the beach and dug a hole as deep as I could. The same seawater that had ruined the king's gold mine now filled his shallow grave. After I covered him, I swam back out and retrieved an oar. It was not the king's oar, beautifully painted and retired to a position of honor in his throne room. It was just an oar.

I stabbed it into the sand to mark his grave.

So here I stand in the ruins.

Every song must be dedicated to the powers above, and I dedicate this song to the goddess of my birth island.

But it is a song not finished. I swear to my goddess and to Medusa: I shall take my revenge upon the men of the twisted fish.

T
HE DAY AFTER THE PIRATES
attacked Siphnos, I retrieved a second sail and created a tent to shelter myself from the heat. I could not leave the narrow beach. I was trapped there by piles of the dead; by eagles and vultures and gulls come to feast on them.

I kept track of the days by marking a stone with a bit of charcoal that had once been some treasure made of wood. I ate bread and oil from supplies abandoned on shore when the pirates saw Medusa. There was even plenty of fresh water, the pirates having planned to restock their ships with our jars.

By the fifth day, I was out of food.

Rain began on the eighth day, surprising me very much, for it generally does not rain until autumn. We had not had rain in months and the earth would not accept it. Rain ran in sheets down the terraced fields, pulling walls over, flooding the ruined town, changing the ashes of the palace to mud, which slid over the cliff and dissolved in the sea.

Rain to a farmer is joy. Rain to a sailor is the gods pissing through a sieve. I agreed with the sailors. It rained hard all day and all night, but on the ninth dawn, it slowed to a drizzle.

Three is of course a magic number. It is best to call upon
three gods or to call upon one god three times. But on the third day after the attack, I had had no taste for gods who abandoned us. Nine being an even holier number than three, however, on the ninth morning I gathered my courage.

I walked uphill and forced myself to pass through the stumps of the Curved Gate. The courtyard was packed with bodies in various states of decay, all the insects that live on meat feasting on what had once been people. I breathed through my apron.

The pirates had taken the sheep. The goats had vanished into the hills. With practice, perhaps I could get back the skill I had lost weaving in a princess prison and bring down a rabbit. I scavenged among the bodies of fighters to find a sling, a pouch of shot and a knife for skinning and then I went back out the Curved Gate.

The climb was not the usual dusty scrabble. I slipped continually in mud. Part of the path to the ancient olive had been destroyed and I had to walk much farther to get there.

The rain increased.

I faced into the wind and washed my hands in the falling drops. If you do not purify yourself first, the gods will spit back your prayers. “O goddess of yesterday,” I said sadly. “Be with me, for I am full of fear and sorrow.”

I did not know what to do.

I could cross the spine of sharp hills and descend to the opposite coast. Find another village. Beg for help. But a young girl alone is a target. I had no important name to impress strangers. In fact, people would wonder why I still breathed, when no one else survived. Had the will of the gods been sidestepped?

Strangers might finish me off without giving me time to explain. They might not believe the explanation anyway.
How indeed could a twelve-year-old girl drive away a horde of pirates in their swift ships?

O goddess, again I have no family. Again I have no home.

I wondered if the queen was still alive. I wondered if she would rather be dead.

“Goddess,” I whispered.

The rain slackened and became mist, and the sun floated on each drop and a rainbow lifted in the sky.

A nightingale began to sing.

Nightingales will sing both day and night, unceasing, but usually in spring, when finding mates and raising young. I searched for the plain little bird with the beautiful voice, but could not see him. The song seemed to come right out of the sky.

Slowly, I realized that it did come out of the sky. It was the voice of my goddess.

I raised my voice to sing with her, and our voices mingled and my hair began to dry and my hopes to lift.

“I give you all my jewels now, O goddess,” I told her. “I keep none for myself. Be grateful for this, goddess, and care for me properly now.”

Slowly I went back down the hills, walking on the tops of terrace walls to stay out of the mud. I went in the scorched and collapsed side entrance of the palace. Both roof and balcony of the women's quarters had collapsed into a pile of timbers and broken beds. I kicked the ashes, wishing I could kick the pirate who had stabbed my hostage father in the back; wishing I could kick Fate.

And there in the ashes was my Medusa.

Few humans smile at Medusa, but I cried out in joy, kissed and embraced her.

She is but seven inches high. She was darker from the
fire, but unhurt. The nightingale sang on and I turned my back on the carnage and looked at the noble sea.

There were sails scudding toward Siphnos.

Even from so far away, the sailors would know what had happened here. Flags and banners no longer waved from a tower that no longer stood. Walls that had been as white as clouds were black with soot. No ship was moored in the harbor; no women mended nets on the shore.

Whose sails were these?

Good men, allies of Nicander?

Or the very same ships of the very same pirates? Coming back for the loot they had left behind when they were frightened away by a girl and an octopus?

Should I run or should I hope?

If I was to run, the time was now. I could follow a goat path and lose myself in the crags and folds of the island.

Instead, I walked down the narrow path strewn with corpses unburied and treasure uncarried. I put my Medusa in the basket of my apron. I was caked with mud, my clothes stained with ash and gore.

I stood beside the oar of my hostage father's marker. If these were pirates, they would kill me where I stood.

But these sails were black with a white horse—the very famous mark of a greater king than Nicander. The ships of Menelaus, the red-haired king of Sparta, Lord of the Main Land, to whom Nicander himself paid tribute.

The Main Land was a place not surrounded by the sea. I had never seen it. I could not quite imagine it.

Menelaus would not kill me. But he would want to know why I lived, when my king and princess had died; why I was safe, when my queen had been taken into slavery. Who are you? the red-haired king would demand.

I am nobody, I would have to say. Only the unwanted hostage daughter of a minor chieftain on a rocky isle.

It was too much to hope that the king would have me serve gently in his own household. A filthy stinking halfclothed twelve-year-old girl without family has no value. Perhaps Menelaus would parcel me out to a sailor who was short on loot. Although who would consider me a treasure, I could not imagine.

Or would Menelaus send me back to the mother and father who had never spoken my name again? I no longer remembered what Chrysaor and Iris looked like. My brothers would be men. They might be married. They might have children. I might be an aunt.

Would Chrysaor and Iris take me in? Or send their forgotten daughter to live in a shepherd's hut and marry a farmhand?

But perhaps the isle of my birth had been sacked as fully and viciously as Siphnos. Perhaps none of them were alive either.