Shimmering Splendor Read online

  No, she would not believe that. Aphrodite had not fixed a day and would doubtless imagine her picking up one seed at a time, at which rate it would take her forever to separate the seeds. She lifted the bread to her mouth and began to eat again, less because her appetite had returned than because she knew she needed the food. She tried to bring back her joy in her accomplishment, smiling and chewing with more energy when she thought of the happy accident that had made her notice the first little thief. And then she remembered her promise: as much as this, and more. Psyche got up from the table at once and went to the kitchen.

  There she explained that she needed dry bread, dry meat, and dry cheese coarsely ground. Altogether she would need more than a half stone of the mixture, but not all that day. “It is for the ants,” she said, knowing the servants must have seen them swarming over the courtyard. “They fetched and carried, and not one seed did they keep, poor little creatures. Even a slave is fed for its labor. They must be paid. I will spread their ration today, and each day until they have had what I promised.”

  She was almost happy as she sprinkled what the servants had prepared around the perimeter of the courtyard so the ants would not need to come out into the open and risk being trod on. Then, sweeping away the dead husks and thinking of how hard the little things had worked, a new hope lifted her spirits. Had her notice of that first ant been an accident? Could a kind Mother have directed her attention? Surely it must have been the Mother who granted her strength to cast so many spells and to make them strong enough to last.

  Oh, if only it were true; if only the Mother were guiding her… She surely needed a help and a guide. Her lips had formed into a prayer when suddenly it occurred to her that Aphrodite might come at any time, even today. Psyche gasped. “Oh, thank you, Mother,” she whispered. “Indeed this is no time to waste praying. If Lady Aphrodite does come, the seeds must be gathered and weighed, ready for her.”

  In her workroom, Psyche had delicate scales and squares of thin silk in which she ordinarily packed dried leaves and flowers to be laid among the clothing in a chest to keep the cloth smelling sweet. Each square of silk disturbed the balance of her scale, and she placed a small metal weight in the other pan and noted the amount. Then she fetched a jar, carefully poured the seeds onto the silk, and weighed them. She noted that weight, too, then brought the corners of the silk square together and tied it firmly into a pouch.

  Fourteen times she repeated the process, trying not to think of the total until she was finished. Then, breathing a prayer to the Mother, she added the amounts, subtracted the weight of the silk, and cried out in triumph. Two grains over half a stone! Her scale must be a trifle more delicate than that in the temple of the Corn Goddess—no surprise, since the latter was doubtless used to weigh larger amounts than hers—but she could not be blamed for that.

  Making sure that each pouch was truly tied tight, she set each carefully into a leather bag and tied that tight over the mass so the individual pouches could not shift or rub one another loose. Now, she thought, she had nothing to do but wait for Aphrodite. Full of her triumph and the certitude of the Mother’s guidance, she expected Aphrodite to appear immediately. She took her bag down to the megaron and sat with it on her lap for more than a candlemark before she began to laugh at herself.

  Seemingly Lady Aphrodite was right about her lack of patience. Guidance, even favor, did not imply instant gratification. Likely Aphrodite would not come until tomorrow or even for a day or two longer. There was no sense in sitting and waiting, growing more and more anxious with each minute until she was sure to say something offensive out of pure nervousness.

  The trouble was that Psyche really could think of nothing else to do, until it occurred to her that she must make ready some garments and other necessities if she were to stay in Olympus. She could not take much. Aphrodite would not expend the power to shift a chest of clothes and ornaments. Psyche went to her bedchamber, carrying her bag of seeds with her, and laid out two sets of her most delicate undergarments and two outer gowns that Teras favored. With those, she placed her comb and brush, the fine stone she used to file her nails, and the powder for her teeth. She folded all together and lifted it. She thought it light, but she decided which gown she would wear and which she would leave behind if Aphrodite did not wish to carry so much.

  The morning passed. Psyche forced herself to eat, her joy in her accomplishment fading with the day. Aphrodite had been so angry. She had not promised she would take Psyche to Eros if she completed the task. And Eros must be terribly angry too. Aphrodite had said he might deign to use her as a slave. Slowly she went above and looked at the gowns she had chosen. Neither would be suitable for hard work. Either would soon become draggled and dirty. She would wear the garb in which she had gone gathering with Eros. It did not enhance her beauty, but Eros…Teras…cared nothing for beauty, and that dress would remind him of the laughter and labor they had shared.

  Night came, and morning, and afternoon, and evening, and night again—and Aphrodite did not come. Psyche carried her bag of seeds wherever she went and tried to keep from her mind the dreadful possibility that Eros…Teras…was worse. What sparked those fears was that Teras would know how grief-stricken she was over the harm she had done him. If he knew, he would forgive her and want to comfort her. Could he have been foolish enough to try to come to her? Could he have made himself worse? He had grieved so much when he thought she did not wish to return to him.

  Could he be grieving again because Aphrodite had not told him she had begged to come to nurse him, to serve him in any way?

  Another day passed, and another. Each day, Psyche reviewed every word she and Aphrodite had exchanged. On the morning of the twelfth day, she opened tearstained eyes to a chamber barely gray with predawn light, struggling to free herself from a strange dream in which she ran through a forest searching frantically for Teras and knowing that if she did not soon find him she would lose him forever. She did not feel that the dream meant Teras was in danger. It was she who was in danger of losing his love. But why should she be running through the woods to find him?

  She reached automatically for the bag of seeds set carefully beside her bed and wondered for perhaps the hundredth, perhaps the thousandth time, what Aphrodite meant when she said it would take Eros long and long to recover. Weeks? Possibly months. What would Teras think, fearful as he already was that she did not love him, and that perhaps she had even tried to kill him, if she did not come to him for months? He would think she did not care. Before the seeds sprout, Aphrodite had said. But in the courtyard, not buried in the earth, they would never sprout.

  When that notion had first come to her, Psyche thought Aphrodite had been implying that she would have enough time to pick up and separate the seeds. She still believed her original notion was correct, but since Aphrodite had not come to check up on her industry and progress, the “comforting words” took on a sinister meaning. Aphrodite did not wish to encourage her to finish her task; she would be perfectly content to have Psyche give up in disgust.

  Why? Psyche asked herself. Why set a silly lengthy task and say she would return to see if I were obedient?

  With the dream of struggling through the forest still in her mind, the answer to that was easy: Because it was important for me to stay at the lodge so Aphrodite, who truly loves Eros and would do nothing to harm him, could soothe him by saying truthfully that I was safe and busy. Would Aphrodite go so far as to tell Eros that she had reassured me that he would recover and that I was happy and not worried about him?

  Psyche’s lips folded tightly. It would not literally be a lie. She was happy that Eros would recover, and she was not worried about the care he would receive. She knew that he would be seen at any moment by the best physician who had ever lived, a demigod among physicians, and that if necessary, Aphrodite would nurse him with her own hands. Psyche uttered a frightened sob. But that was not enough. Teras needed a reason to wish to recover quickly, needed to know she cared for him. New
tears spilled down the tracks of the old. If she had been able to think of a way to prove she cared, she would never have needed to try that accursed counter-spell.

  Even if Aphrodite came and accepted the separated seeds and took her to Eros, which she had not promised to do and had not even sounded willing to do, what would that prove to Teras? Might he not think that she came because Aphrodite brought her, as he half believed she had returned only because Aphrodite ordered her to return?

  Rage dried Psyche’s tears and she gnawed her lips with frustration. There was nothing she could do! Nothing!… Oh, yes there was. She clutched the bag of seeds to her breast, her eyes wide with joy and revelation. The chance to prove herself, which had been snatched from her when Teras had returned after his week’s absence, had been offered to her again.

  “Mother,” she breathed, leaping out of bed, “Mother, thank you.”

  That was why she had been running through the woods in her dream, why she felt if she did not quickly find Teras she would lose him. Perhaps Aphrodite had no sinister intention. Perhaps she did intend to take Psyche to Eros, but that would be the wrong thing, entirely wrong.

  With trembling haste she dressed in her gathering clothes. The undergarments and a single dress she wrapped firmly around the bag of seeds and thrust into the bottom of her pack. She combed her hair, dropped the comb into the pack, made braids, wound them around her head, and covered them with a woolen cap that came down over her ears. Then she belted on the long, strong knife and the pouch of useful oddments she carried when gathering, and snatched up bow, quiver, and the two light spears Teras had made for her. She started for the stairs, then bit her lip and turned instead to the book room, where she scribed on a wax tablet that, having completed her task and feeling too worried about Eros to remain idly in the lodge, she had set out for Olympus.

  First she laid the tablet on the table where the servants would be sure to see it. Then she stole softly into the kitchen and filled her pack with cheese, dried meat, some bread, and a bag of flour from which she could, she hoped, make some kind of flat cake she could eat. She took, also, a fire starter and some tinder in a separate little bag and last a small, flat pan, which she laid on the top of her pack before she tied it shut.

  Taking up the bow, quiver, and spears, which she had laid down, she clutched the untidy mess in her arms and went softly out of the house, through the garden, and into the woods, where she set down her awkward burden. With a deep sigh of relief, she went back to the house. Even if the servants should now be awake, she could get away without arousing any doubts in their minds. They would not be surprised by her going out of the house warmly dressed.

  Returning to the kitchen, Psyche began to eat—a bowl full of wheat porridge that was always prepared at night and left to swell and stew in a covered crock on the stove, which she flavored liberally with honey, slices of cured ham on bread, washed down with a cup of wine. She realized as she was eating that she had wakened even earlier than she first thought and hurried less, eating until she was stuffed and could eat no more. Even then the sun was barely tingeing the sky with pink, and when she went upstairs for the last time, she heard movement in the womenservants’ chamber. Still she was able to put on the furred cloak Teras had given her and take a warm blanket from his chamber, so that hers would be on her bed when one of the women came to make it, and get out of the house again without being seen.

  Safe in the woods, she set about arranging the considerable load. When she thought all was secure, she made a wide detour around the grounds of the lodge, set her left shoulder to the brightest light, and began to walk south. Teras had told her that Olympus was south and west, set in a cultivated valley between ranges of high mountains. The lodge, she knew, was on the lower slopes of the northern chain of mountains. She would walk south until the land leveled and then turn west.

  Psyche did not discount the difficulty of what she was doing, nor was she fool enough to think finding Olympus would be easy. She had heard tales of men who sought to speak to the gods and tried to find the valley. None had ever done so; those who returned said the mountains were unscalable and that there could be no valley, that the home of the gods was hidden from weak mortals. Many had never returned. Whether they died on the way, were killed when they arrived, or had been allowed to remain, Psyche did not know. However, she had several advantages: First, she knew the city was real and that “gods” were as mortal as she, although longer-lived. Second, if she met anyone from Olympus, she could say that she had been set a task by Aphrodite and was bringing the finished product. Most important of all, she was coming from Aphrodite’s villa in the hills and was actually in the valley of Olympus already. Thus, if it was spells that deceived searchers, those should not affect her, and if there were guards to kill or imprison common folk who came upon Olympus, she could demand that Eros be told of her arrival.

  She set forward hopefully but did not travel very far that first day. Unaccustomed to carrying so heavy a load, she had to stop frequently to rebalance her pack, trying different positions for the blanket, the quiver of arrows, and the bow and spears until she found a solution that was both comfortable and allowed her to reach her weapons quickly. She stopped to gather, too, winter cress by a small stream she passed near noon and some very young leaves of krambe. She chewed the winter cress with a little of the bread for a meal soon after she gathered it. The krambe she folded into a damp scrap of leather from her pouch. The leaves would add flavor and bulk to the dried meat and cheese when she ate again after she made camp near evening.

  The forest was very quiet and Psyche felt quite at ease in it. Teras had cleared all the dangerous wild beasts from this area, she was sure. Once in a while she heard a rustling and skittering in a patch of brush, but she knew it was only a hare or some other harmless denizen of the woods. Actually her mind was more on keeping her southerly route as the sun changed position by checking the growth of moss on the trees and exposed rocks.

  When she was certain of her path, it was offense rather than defense Psyche was considering. She was trying to decide whether she should attempt to hunt, if she came to an open area where she could lie hidden, or whether she should use most of the supplies first. The safe path was to save the supplies and hunt, although fresh meat would add to her load, but lightening her pack by eating her supplies would permit her to travel faster and she might reach Olympus before the supplies were finished.

  By afternoon she had decided to lighten her load before she hunted. Her shoulders were sore from the rubbing of the straps of her pack, all the muscles of her back were one painful ache, and her arms and legs felt like boiled straw. Nonetheless she went on putting one foot before the other, her right shoulder now to the greatest light, until she found she was having difficulty judging where the lightest area was and realized that the sun, if not set, was down behind the southern range of mountains. It was time to make camp.

  She remembered with a warm rush of love and confidence all the things Teras had told her when they were in the woods together. She knew exactly for what to look and even how to find it and how long to spend looking before she selected a less perfect site. A lighter area above a patch of brush caught her eye and she made her way toward it to find what she sought, a small stream edged with bushes and here and there a larger tree. A little way downstream she found the perfect campsite, a huge tree against which she could set her back, whose lowest branches she could reach and use as a refuge, and whose dense foliage made a shadow that created a clear area around it.

  With a sigh of relief, Psyche shrugged out of her pack and hung it from a low branch. She allowed herself a few minutes to stretch and twist but dared not sit down lest she be unwilling to stand up again before night fell. First down to the stream to carry up enough rocks for a hearth, then to the edges of the brush to cut the driest tops of the grass and scrape dead leaves together to be crumbled with thin twigs, and finally away from the stream into the woods to find windfall, dry branches that would burn. Psyc
he’s first twinge of dissatisfaction came while gathering firewood. She had done it many times when she and Teras gathered together, but Teras had always been there to take the largest burden and to break the sticks for her. She bit her lip. She had forgotten to take Teras’s ax.

  Dusk was so far advanced when she got back to her camp from the third wood gathering that she simply dropped the branches, put her tinder on a flat, dry stone near the dead leaves and twigs, and began to strike the flint against the starter stone. The shower of sparks was bright in the gathering dark, and only a few strikes brought a thread of smoke. Psyche blew very gently and a small core of red formed in the tinder. With great care she tore the unlit tinder away from the burning patch and dropped that into the nest of dead leaves and grass and broken twigs. Another session of careful breaths and a flicker of flame peeped out of the nest. Psyche added thin, dry twigs. The ungrateful flame quickly devoured the nest that had welcomed it and began on the twigs. Now that the flame was well caught, Psyche gathered up the unused tinder and put it away, added larger sticks, and finally, from several directions, thick branches, which she would push forward into the flame as the burning ends were consumed.

  By the time the larger branches were aflame, Psyche was almost too tired to eat, but she got the food from her pack, folded the blanket into a cushion, and unwrapped the krambe leaves. The fresh taste revived her a little, enough to give her an interest in drawing out a stick of dried meat and cutting a chunk of cheese before she returned the food to the hanging pack. She did think of boiling the meat with a little of the flour, but that would mean fetching water from the stream and cutting up the meat, which was just too much trouble. She ate the cheese and sat gnawing on the stick of meat, leaning back on the tree.