Bull God Read online

  “Oh, don't go yet!” Ariadne cried. “I'll bring you washing water and a comb and brush and a fine brass mirror. And—if gods can eat mortal food—I can bring you bread and cheese and olives and eggs and cold meat and—”

  “Enough,” Dionysus said, starting to laugh. “I am a m— god, not a bottomless pit. The bread, cheese, and olives with wine to wash them down will do to assuage my hunger. But do we have to stay here? Is there nowhere more comfortable? Do I not remember—”

  He stopped suddenly, remembering all too clearly the visits he had made to this shrine in the distant past. His priestess had always taken him into the hillside behind the painting to her chambers, and they had sat and talked, yes, and eaten and drunk wine. And she had explained to him the Visions that tormented him so that they became real things that he could understand or sometimes even act upon.

  “Of course, Lord Dionysus,” Ariadne's voice cut into the memory, and she went toward the door he remembered so well.

  But she wouldn't be there. Tears misted his eyes. He didn't even remember her name ... Dionysus stared resentfully at the child who was holding open the door for him; his lips parted to say the spell words that would carry him back to Olympus—and suddenly he did remember. Her name had also been Ariadne, and she, too, had been very small, very dark, and looked ... why, she looked as this child would look when she was growing old. His soul lifted toward the Mother. Have you given her back to me, Mother? he asked. But there was no answer, no Vision, no touch of warmth.

  “My lord?” Ariadne asked softly, plainly puzzled about why he was standing and staring.

  He didn't answer, merely strode forward toward the door she was holding for him. It wasn't fitting that natives know that their “gods” prayed to a far more powerful divinity, especially when the “god” couldn't even tell whether his prayer had been answered. Dionysus shuddered as he passed from the sunny courtyard shrine to the dim, cool passage cut into the hillside. It was lit with lamps filled with scented oil. He remembered that, too, now, and steeled himself to face the familiar room empty of the presence that had comforted him, steadied him, in a world where he did not always know what was real and what was Vision.

  The door was opened for him. Jaws tight, he stepped past the child who held it and into ... nothing he had ever seen before. Shocked, he turned back and snarled, “Where is the priestess's chamber?”

  “This is it, my lord,” the girl replied, her voice quavering in response to his anger.

  “It isn't what I remember,” he snapped, more angry at himself for frightening her than at her, but as always unable to control his rage or express it.

  She blinked as if her vision had clouded, stretched a hand toward him but without touching him, and then smiled slightly. “No, of course not.” The quaver was gone from her voice. She seemed older. Although her body was still that of a too-thin child, her face was calm, gently amused. “Each priestess furnishes anew, and you never came in my father's mother's time, so you wouldn't recognize the chamber as it is now.”

  Ariadne was utterly bewildered by her own calm words. She felt like two different people locked into one skin, a young girl torn between terror and adoration of a powerful and unpredictable god and a woman, guided by a mist of silvery threads that brought to her a tale of pain and doubt and a need for comfort. The woman had spoken to the god. The girl looked around the room and blinked again.

  She had been brought to see the shrine and the priestess's chambers within it a few days before her consecration, but her mind had been filled with a mingling of fear and resentment—and hope, too—so that she hadn't taken in what she had seen. And when she opened the door for Dionysus, his expression of hurt and anger had struck her like a blow. The shock had again torn open that flower shape, which seemed to surround her heart, and called forth those silvery tendrils that let her understand his distress. His emotion and her response had so absorbed her that she saw nothing. Now the astonishment and distaste on his face fixed her attention outward, on her surroundings.

  Girl and woman came together and she had to bite her lips to keep from laughing. To put it in plain language, her father's mother had been a greedy old bitch, and it seemed as if every gilded gewgaw, every piece of overcarved furniture, every garishly painted chest she had been able to collect was crammed into the room. There was space enough to walk ... barely, if one was careful.

  Ariadne's eyes skipped from piece to piece. Together they were garish and overdone, but each piece alone ... Oh, yes, every single one, Ariadne thought, eyes narrowing with calculation, was costly. It was clear enough where the revenues of the shrine went. No wonder the priests and priestesses looked a bit threadbare—and little wonder that Dionysus didn't bother to visit Knossos. Doubtless the sacrifices to him were cheap and scant.

  Even as she thought it, she knew that wasn't the reason. If he had noticed the high priestess was cheating him—Ariadne felt a sudden chill—there would have been nothing left in the shrine but bloodstained rags. Her Gift told her that she had seen the beginning of that kind of rage when he looked out at the worshipers after he said she was unripe. Terror flicked her and then departed. She had stopped the rage before it blossomed then and again when he saw the room.

  The room. “It is a bit ... a bit too much, isn't it?” she asked uncertainly, realizing that she walked the honed edge of a sword blade with this god. She mustn't offend him and she didn't know how gods lived.

  “A bit?” Dionysus replied, staring around. “I have never seen so much ugly clutter in my life. One can hardly breathe in here.”

  “I'm glad you think so,” Ariadne said in tones of heartfelt relief. “I will have it all cleared out.”

  I'll sell it, she thought, sell it quickly, before mother or father can lay hands on it. I'll attend to the needs of the priests and priestesses so they will look to me as mistress and provider. I'll save the best pieces and offer them to him as sacrifice. And I'll buy ... she looked up at Dionysus.

  “If you will tell me what you remember and what you would like,” she added, “I will make sure that the chamber is refurnished so that you are content when you come again.”

  He shook his head and her heart clenched with fear that he would tell her he wouldn't come again, but all he said was, “It was very long ago. I don't really remember, only that it was ... comfortable, a place two people could talk.”

  A tremor of excitement ran through Ariadne. Far from warning that this would be his only visit, what he said implied that he wished and expected to talk to his priestess and that he did so often enough to desire comfort. Chill followed the warmth of excitement. Did she want him to come, this god in whom rage rose so swiftly, so unpredictably? Through that strange flower within her, Ariadne was now certain that the tales were true, that this god could become a frenzied beast. She glanced sidelong at him, so beautiful, so strong. She couldn't give him up, she couldn't! What could she do to tame and control this wild god?

  Comfort—he had told her he desired comfort. “This place offers no comfort,” she sighed. “However, we can make do for this once. Come, the bathing chamber is through this door. Shall I get water for you, or shall I tell the priests to bring hot water? That will take a few minutes.”

  His lips quirked. “I can get the water and heat it too. What I need is food. I'm starving.”

  “At once, my lord.”

  Rather than retracing her steps, out the door and through the corridor to the priests' and priestesses' quarters, Ariadne went into the bedchamber. A glance told her that it wasn't much better than the reception room, but what she sought was beside the gilded and ornate bed—a twisted cord that hung down from the ceiling. She pulled it and heard, just beyond the wall at the head of the bed, a bell ring. The door in the corner of the room opened almost at once and one of the elderly priestesses, still gray with pallor, looked at her with wide eyes.

  “Lord Dionysus is washing,” Ariadne said softly. “He's hungry. Bring bread and cheese, olives, wine, honey cakes if th
ere are any.”

  “For a god?” the priestess whispered, trembling. “What we have is coarse, common food.”

  Ariadne remembered Dionysus' laughter when she offered what was common to breaking the fast in her father's house. He didn't seem surprised or disgusted with her suggestions, only amused. And he was a big man, with solid muscles. She felt a spasm of doubt about the tales of nectar and ambrosia and a little more sure of cheese and olives.

  “Hunger is the best spice,” she said. “Bring the very best you have and I'll explain to him, if the quality is less than he expects, that we were unprepared.”

  The priestess got even wider eyed at the calm with which Ariadne said she would explain to a god, but she bowed and hurried away. Ariadne seized two pillows from the huge bed and ran back into the reception room. A quick survey showed a corner minimally less cluttered than the rest of the room. Left of that corner, a horizontal shaft had been cut to make a large window. Near it was a chair with a footstool and a small table beside it. Ariadne wove her way through the clutter, dropped the pillows beside the chair and began to carry and push away other tables and chairs to make a space.

  She was struggling with a high-backed, armed, double bench when from the doorway Dionysus said, “That's too heavy for you. Where do you want it to go?” And came and took it from her.

  “Is it fitting for gods to move furniture?” she asked doubtfully.

  Dionysus, hair damp, eyes calm, grinned. “The nice thing about being a god is that anything we wish to do is fitting, so you can stop asking me that. Where do you want me to put this?”

  “Oh, I don't care. I was just trying to make a little space around that chair so you would not feel so crowded. I don't want anything to disturb you, my lord. The more content you are, the longer you will stay.”

  He looked at her and a slight frown creased his brow, but Ariadne stood still, face raised to his steady gaze, until he sighed and put the bench down with its back to the chair she had prepared for him. She had already moved three chairs and two small, gilt tables and the space near the window was now open and well lit but without glare. Gently, Dionysus touched her hair; then he went and settled into the chair.

  The light from the shaft well was soft, despite a sky of aching blue without a cloud, because the direct light of the sun was blocked by the deep inset. Dionysus looked out over the terraced vines that climbed Gypsades Hill. He knew he couldn't read hearts like Aphrodite, but he had no doubt that Ariadne truly desired him to stay. That eagerness to be with him made him uneasy. Few, even among the Olympians, sought his company; rather they looked at him sidelong, asked what he wanted, gave it to him, and waited for him to go. And natives were only trouble, he knew that—even his own dear priestess, who had died.

  What would this priestess ask for, he wondered cynically. Natives prayed and sacrificed, but they expected a return. She had already asked him to bless the vines and the wine. He shifted in the chair as if he would rise, but he remembered that his dear priestess had asked that of him too, and, indeed, it was little trouble, actually a joy, to make the grapes full and sweet and the wine rich and potent.

  A small tinkling drew his eyes to the doorway and he saw Ariadne go quickly and take a tray from a kneeling priestess so she could serve him herself. He remembered suddenly how she had said, “I—I love you,” and an odd sense of peace came over him, until it was tinged with pain because his priestess would never again come and sit beside him. But Ariadne was very young, he told himself. There was little danger of losing her for many years—only ... could she bring him the peace that his old priestess provided?

  He watched Ariadne's coming with the tray. She set it down on the table beside him and sat on the pillows near his chair. He reached for the wine, tasted it, and winced.

  “Please forgive us for the coarseness of the provisions,” Ariadne said. “You have been too long away from Knossos, Lord Dionysus. The wine is not what it once was.”

  “I was angry,” he replied softly, took a bite of cheese, an olive, and some bread. When he had swallowed, he said, “I thought my priestess had turned away from me because she no longer Called. I didn't realize she had died...”

  “And you didn't hear the new priestess?” Ariadne shook her head and looked troubled. “Something must have been forgotten in the ritual.”

  “No, I don't think it was the ritual,” Dionysus said. “I think it was the priestess herself. Some don't have the power to Call, some do. You do.” He ate in silence for a while, then noticed her watching him. “Are you hungry, too?” he asked.

  She smiled. “I was offered food and I was too frightened to take any. But you've been so kind, and I'm not afraid any more. Yes, I am hungry.”

  He laughed. “Then bring your pillows around to the other side of the table and eat. There is surely enough here for two ... or three or four.”

  “Thank you.”

  Ariadne obeyed him promptly and took some cheese and olives, but there was only one cup. She looked around and soon noticed a small decorative bowl. Setting down her food, she took that and, after wiping it, filled it for herself and sipped from it. The wine was terrible. That was wrong. The best should be offered to the shrine of the god of wine. And she would see that it was—if Dionysus kept his promise and the vines blossomed well. She looked up at him.

  “You won't forget, Lord Dionysus? You will come to bless the vines?” she asked anxiously.

  “If you remember to Call, how can I forget?”

  “Is it true that I can Call you?”

  “You did this morning, but if you doubt it, why don't you try again?”

  “But you're here beside me.”

  He shrugged. “Go to the end of the room and Call me, silently, with your mind only. I'll close my eyes so I can't see from the expression on your face when you Call. Let's see if I hear you.”

  He had said it wasn't the ritual, but Ariadne filled her bowl with wine and carried it to the far end of the room. There she looked into the bowl and in her mind Called, “Lord Dionysus, hear me.”

  Dionysus started and winced. “Stop. I hear you.”

  Ariadne almost dropped the bowl because his face had appeared in it and his voice seemed to come from it. “Oh,” she breathed. “I saw you in the wine. And I heard you speak from the bowl. I do—I must have the power to Call you.”

  He watched her come back toward him. She walked more lightly, more gracefully than his old priestess, but oddly the spirit in her seemed to have more weight. He thought she had more power. That “hear me” had rung like a blast of brass horns in his head. And she was very young. He wondered what more she could do than Call to him.

  When she was settled on the pillows beside him and had eaten some cheese and bread and a few olives, he said lightly, as if it were of no importance, “I've had the strangest dream. I've Seen a white bull, huge and very beautiful, walk up out of the sea and come, all of its own will to a man in a lordly gown, wearing a crown. It walked with him into the land and went, without being led, to a great shrine. There it knelt at the altar, ready to be sacrificed, but he who wore the crown did not pick up the double axe laid ready. Instead he urged the bull away, leading it some distance to a green field upon which grazed a herd of lovely cows.”

  He paused a moment when he heard Ariadne gasp, but she had bowed her head so that her face was hidden. He waited expectantly for her to speak, but she didn't, and he was bitterly disappointed. He was wrong, he thought, she wasn't Mother-sent; but a kind of desperation seized him, a need not to give up, and he went on, “And the bull ran out to the cows and coupled with them, but it was as if what should have made him content cast an evil spell. A man's head appeared under the bull's horns and he turned on the cows and gored them, and then he trampled the herdsmen who came to drive him away. Finally he ran into the countryside and wrought more destruction, tearing up gardens, overthrowing houses, and killing those within . . . whom he tore apart and ate. Day by day he grew larger and stronger and more vicious...”<
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  Dionysus' voice drifted away and he shook his head, beaten by her silence. “It doesn't sound like anything.” His voice was no longer light and he shivered hard, once. “I cannot say why, but there is a sense of horror about it, like a doom drawing closer and closer ...” He shook his head again and he sounded angry and resentful when he said, “I hate it! It's awful because it doesn't make any sense, and yet I have dreamed it over and over for nearly a year.”

  Torn by conflicting loyalties, Ariadne had at first been afraid to speak, but Dionysus' need was too powerful for her to resist. She lifted her head. “I know what it means,” she whispered. “Well, not all of it, but—”

  He had turned away after his painful confession and had been staring out of the window. When she spoke, he twisted his head sharply to look at her. “You've gone all pale,” he said.

  “The bull from the sea, it was here on Crete that it came ashore.”

  “A real bull? Out of the ocean?”

  “Yes, a real bull, all white, as you said, came out of the ocean. I saw it myself.”

  “How? Why?”

  Ariadne caught a glimpse of the intensity of his look; she thought that if he could have eaten her with his eyes, he would have done so. However, she felt no fear; her attention was distracted to a whole mist of silvery threads that played about her, rising and falling, touching her, touching him.

  “The bull came to my father. He was the eldest son but his brothers Radamanthys and Sarpedon wouldn't agree that he should be king of all. They wished to divide Crete. My father knew that although he and his brothers would manage well, in the future that division would cause great harm. Still he didn't wish to fight his brothers, nor, to tell the truth, did they wish to fight him, so my father went to the shrine of Poseidon and prayed to the god to send him a sign that he, and he alone, was meant to be king.”