Shimmering Splendor Read online

  “Six days,” Beryllia said. “Tomorrow morning we must take you up the mountain.” Her voice was still flat, but tears filled her eyes and then spilled over as she added, “I hoped…I hoped you would not wake, that you would not need to be afraid—” And then she hid her face and moaned, rocking back and forth. “To lose a child is hard,” she sobbed, “but to know that child is afraid and be unable to offer comfort… I cannot bear it. I cannot bear it.”

  Psyche knew what her mother meant. She remembered a little brother’s death and how her mother had sat with him while he slipped away, smiling, assuring him that she was there and that there was nothing to fear.

  “Well, I am afraid, mother,” Psyche said, touching her mother’s shoulder. “But remember how frightened Enstiktia was when she was bearing her son.” She pressed her sister’s hand, which had been extended toward her. “And she came through that fear into great joy. Who knows? Perhaps what the peasant women whisper to each other is true. Perhaps there will be a kind Mother waiting to welcome me.”

  It was not much to cling to, a belief that the noble families laughed to scorn. But Psyche remembered that the wise woman who taught her had spoken of the Mother from Whom, she swore, she received the power she used. Psyche had not believed her; and when she tried to tap that source, she could not find it. Now, sick with fear, she reached for any lifeline and found a little thread of hope.

  Between that and the fact that she felt ashamed of weeping and wailing for herself, she found the strength to make herself busy. She spent the evening gathering up and apportioning to others her possessions. Usually for the youngest daughter that would be a light task—a few gowns, a few ornaments. But Psyche had been the recipient of lavish gifts from suitors for several years. She had rejected those that she could, but many she had to keep to avoid offense. In addition, during her studies and explorations she had accumulated valuable recipes and a knowledge of herbs that she did not wish to be lost because of her death. Nor did she wish to leave behind her bitterness and envy by giving too much to one or by giving the wrong thing to the wrong person.

  The jewels took most of the time. She worried so much about arousing enmity between her sisters or envy in their husbands that she forgot the purpose of dividing her possessions. And she was so weary when at last she felt almost content with her decisions that she was able to sleep until her mother woke her at dawn.

  The shock of seeing Beryllia with her hair full of ashes, her face and gown streaked with tears and dirt, froze out fear, froze out all emotion. Like a soulless simulacrum, she explained to her mother how she had apportioned her goods and begged her to give them to the designated persons. Fresh tears washed some of the ash from Beryllia’s cheeks, but she thanked Psyche for saving her the pain of deciding whether to keep or distribute her possessions, and she promised the packets would go to those she had named.

  Then her sisters, ash- and tear-smeared and with rent garments, entered to help her dress. For a moment, emotion stirred in Psyche as she prepared to resist being dressed as a mourner, but she crushed the faint stirring of resentment, fearing that any feeling, even rage, would unloose the hounds of terror that would tear her apart.

  Her distaste for being presented as a penitent was not challenged, however. Enstiktia’s and Horexea’s hands were clean, and they helped her into the garments she had prepared without protest. She needed neither breast band nor girdle, for her full breasts were also firm with youth and exercise, as were her belly and hips; nonetheless, she donned them to keep her chiton from clinging if her body grew wet with fear. A simple white chiton, embroidered with a single row of leaves in a clear violet, came next, and above it, a violet peplos embroidered in white.

  When she had tied her outer girdle, Beryllia said, “There is food—”

  Psyche nodded, and Horexea went away and returned with a tray. What was in the dishes, Psyche never knew. None had any taste and all smelled of the ashes that covered her mother and sisters. Nonetheless Psyche ate heartily, wondering as she chewed and swallowed whether that was how the dead perceived food, all dusted with the salt and ashes of grief.

  When she was done, she rose and said, “I am ready.”

  Enstiktia placed a large, thick cloak of soft wool over her shoulders. When her sister’s hand brushed Psyche’s, she thought that Enstiktia must have a fever, so hot was her skin, and then she realized that Enstiktia was not specially warm: her own hand must be cold as ice. But she did not feel cold. And when she wrapped the cloak around her, several layers of thick wool, she did not feel any warmer. Was it the goddess’s mercy that she could not feel, Psyche wondered, and then thought, no, it is the Mother’s mercy. Aphrodite may be kind to those who please her, but she is not merciful.

  Whoever had given her the gift of unfeeling was merciful enough not to withdraw it. The strongest emotion Psyche felt all that long day was one quiver of surprise at the very beginning of it when her brothers closed around her to lift her into the open litter that would carry her up the mountain. Not that she felt anything about that, not even when Damianos kissed her cheek and wet it with his tears. It was the fact that there were four litters that surprised her.

  The open one was hers, so all the people could see that it was she who was brought to Pelion and set upon the altar. One closed one held her father—she could hear his heavy weeping—and the other was for her mother. Her sisters and brothers were walking, her brothers among the bearers who would carry her litter, so who— A low grunt answered her unfinished question. Psyche thought if she could feel anything, surely she would be amused. The sow was in the fourth litter, and her father was probably weeping more because he could not ride with the beast than because he was going to lose his daughter. She suspected that moment could not come soon enough for him, both because it would banish his dreadful compulsion and because her death would solve a great many political problems for him.

  She said as much to him when he marveled at her courage because she ate a substantial dinner at the little village where Atomos had asked for help in skinning the bear. “No, I do not grieve,” she said, curving her lips as if she were smiling. “I am consoled by knowing that giving up my life will make your life and my brothers’ so much easier.”

  Her older brothers did not react, though Damianos’s breath caught, but her father had grace enough to lower his eyes and murmur, “I never wished you harm, Psyche.”

  She thought that was probably true and knew, too, that most of her father’s stupid overreaction in the temple had been in a sense her fault. If she had not felt such loathing at the idea of being priestess to a goddess of what she abhorred, she would not have been rejected by Hyppodamia. But she felt no remorse for what she had said, and when they set out again, she actually fell into a doze from sheer lack of interest.

  Even arrival at the summit did not break her calm, nor the final farewells, nor the heaping of the altar with comforts for her ‘journey’. Psyche sat, blank of mind, dead of heart, watching with indifference as the sun sank behind the lower mountains to the west and twilight faded into dark.

  The first break in her stupor of indifference was caused by a mild sense of surprise when she found she had broken open a jar of olives which had been left as an offering for the dead and was munching on a handful. That reminded her with what appetite she had eaten her own funeral feast, and she burst out laughing.

  The sound was shocking in the silence, but not nearly so shocking as the voice that echoed her laughter and then said, “So you hate love and beauty enough to laugh at your fate? Your monster has come to fetch you, Psyche.”

  She jumped to her feet, whirling to face the faintly familiar voice, but the brief hope she had felt fled, pursued by terror. She could see nothing except a blacker blackness stirring at the edge of the forest. “Monster?” she repeated faintly.

  “Did they not tell you what your punishment for rejecting love and beauty would be?” The familiarity of the voice was lost in mocking laughter. “You are to be the bride of
a monster.”

  Then the blacker blackness detached itself from the edge of the forest and flowed toward her, and all the fear that had been suppressed throughout the long night and the longer day rose up and fell down upon her, crushing her. She was so terrified she could not draw breath to scream, and a blackness within her drowned her senses and flowed outward to meet the shadow that stalked her. She felt herself falling but had not strength enough to put out a hand to save herself, but she never seemed to reach the ground.

  * * *

  When Psyche’s eyes opened, she saw stars. Not the kind of stars that might bedazzle her eyes if she had hit her head after falling off the altar on which she had been standing, but the small, distant stars of a night sky. Nor was she surrounded by blackness. She lay, wrapped in her warm cloak, on soft grass in a glade well silvered with the light of an almost full moon. For a moment she wondered whether she had fallen asleep in the woods of Iolkas and all the horrible events had been a dreadful nightmare. Breath catching on hope, Psyche hurriedly untangled one of her arms from her cloak and pushed herself upright so she could look around.

  Hope died instantly. Although she was no longer on top of Mount Pelion, she knew her father’s obsession and her appointment as a sacrifice had been no nightmare—nor had the blot of blackness that had spoken to her. Somehow, she had been transported from the altar on Mount Pelion to…where? One glade in a forest might look much like another, but she was certain she had never seen this place before. This was no forest glade in Iolkas; it was trimmed and pruned, forest tamed into a garden, and—she drew a sharp breath. There was a house just beyond a fountain, whose burble and splashing she had thought must be a stream.

  A house. The bride of a monster. Was it waiting in the house? She sat and stared at the place. She could run away. She shuddered. To have that flowing darkness following on her heels would surely be worse than confronting it. And if she ran, would Aphrodite consider that a violation of the terms of lifting the curse from her father? She had expected to die. What could the monster do to her worse than that? But she knew there were worse things than death—slow torture, pain, and humiliation for days, weeks, months, years. Running away would not spare her that. There was only one thing she could do. Psyche bit her lip and got slowly to her feet. She could enrage the beast until it struck out at her and killed her.

  It took her a long time to get to the house. She kept stopping and trying to find an alternative to what she was doing, but she knew there was no escape for her. And sometimes her limbs trembled so much she had to stop just to keep from falling. Most horrible of all, the door of the house stood open, creating a warm, inviting, golden pathway of lamplight. In Iolkas, such a pathway promised a safe haven against the terrors of the night. Here… Psyche shivered as she stepped into the golden glow, but a kind of hysterical desire to be finished, to be done with waiting, made her hurry. She hesitated only once, when she actually stepped across the threshold, and that was out of astonishment; she had walked into a total anticlimax.

  No monster waited for her, no pall of blackness covered any part of the small courtyard, which was paved with a beautiful mosaic and well lit with lanterns hung from polished wooden columns which supported the gallery of the upper story. Four old servants, two men and two women, stood in the courtyard, and apparently they had been waiting for her, because all smiled and bowed respectfully and one woman gestured for Psyche to step into the long vestibule. That, too, was brightly lit, and at the end to the right was the open door of a reception room in which Psyche could see a chair and bowls and towels for washing a traveler’s feet.

  “Where am I?” she asked, turning back to look at the servants who had followed her in. “Who are you?”

  All four pointed to their mouths and shook their heads. Mutes! Servants who could never tell what they had seen. Psyche’s heart clenched and she glanced fearfully over her shoulder, but the courtyard was empty, not a shadow anywhere. And the servants did not look frightened or haunted, as those who had seen monstrous cruelty surely must.

  “Where is the master of the house?” she asked then.

  This time the men shrugged. One tried to convey something in signs, but Psyche could make nothing of It. Meanwhile, the other man and one woman went into a doorway a bit to the left of center and the other woman went into the reception room, laying out the towels and beckoning Psyche to come to her and sit in the chair. Almost immediately, the other old woman came in bearing a pot of steaming water and the man followed with a pitcher. The first womanservant poured the water, tested it, and washed Psyche’s feet. When they were dry and her cleaned sandals had been replaced, she was led to the andron, which in a private house such as this served the purpose of the megaron.

  She braced for at last confronting horror when she saw where she was being taken, but the chamber was empty and the servant gestured for her to sit or recline. In moments a manservant brought a table to the couch and the first course of an excellent meal arrived. Like an automaton, Psyche began to eat, wondering whether her placement on the central couch in the chamber usually used by the master of the household was supposed to mean that she was the mistress here.

  Her mind could not come to grips with the facts; she had endured too much stress and was too exhausted to try to reason out an answer to the question. She found herself nodding over her food and gratefully followed the old woman who came to lead her back out into the courtyard and up the stair to the gallery. Two doors faced the stairhead. The one on the right was opened by the maidservant to show a handsome bedchamber. The other old woman was waiting. Together they removed her clothing and she slipped into the bed and slept.

  If she dreamed, she did not remember. Psyche woke pleasantly to sunlight, to the sound of birdsong and the distant tinkling of the fountain, and, when she saw the strange room, to a heart pounding with renewed fear. Only there was nothing to fear. Her heart steadied but did not lift. She felt at the same time foolish and weighted with dread.

  There was a bell on a small table beside the bed. One of the old women came in answer to its silvery peal and opened a chest full of handsome garments—all new, all made to the measure of her tall, well-fleshed body. Many garments. Did that mean she would live in this house for many days? Weeks? Months? Years?

  She chose the simplest among the rich chitons and peploses and dressed. She went downstairs to find breakfast waiting. She ate. She wandered out into the garden. No one stopped her. No one came after her when she went to where she had awakened and beyond that into the woods. But she knew there was no escape. For one thing, she had no idea where she was. For another, the freedom granted her made her very sure that she could be easily found and brought back.

  Shrugging, she returned to the house and began to examine it. When she came across a servant, the woman or man smiled and nodded at her, making her welcome wherever she appeared. It was a lovely house, every room beautifully furnished and decorated, but she could take no pleasure in the tastefulness and convenience. There was nothing to fear, but something constricted her throat and lay so heavily on her breast that she could barely breathe. And then, having been in every room on the ground floor, she climbed the stair, opened the door on the left of the chamber in which she had slept, and stood transfixed.

  She had found a long-unfulfilled dream—a real book room. Psyche stood blinking in the doorway, the heaviness in her breast lightening as she took in the deep shelves stocked with scrolls, the racks of wax-filled frames for writing notes or first drafts that needed correction, the wide table on which were supports for three sets of brass rods for holding open the scrolls and a stand for styli. For the first time since reentering the house, she hesitated before crossing a doorsill. This was too good, too much what she desired. Could it be a trap?

  But the room was very well lit. There was no shadow, no corner in which a blackness might lurk. Psyche stepped in, walked quickly to the shelves, and pulled a roll from the top. No black shadow appeared, no voice protested. Psyche untied the ri
bbon and unrolled the top half, expecting to see squiggles she would not recognize. Her heart leapt when she recognized the symbols, then sank when she could not understand the words. She took another scroll from the shelf below, but that, too, was unintelligible. Sighing, she rerolled and retied both scrolls, replaced them, and turned away.

  She did not leave the room, however. After a moment of standing irresolute, she shrugged and went back to the scrolls. What else had she to do? It was better to be busy, even only rolling and unrolling scrolls, than to spend the long hours dreading every moment.

  By the time she had been through the highest shelf, Psyche had begun to doubt her reasoning. It was just as boring, she thought, to keep looking at gibberish as to do nothing at all. Nonetheless, she did not want to leave the book room. Something about it—perhaps the well-worn chair in which she was sitting; whoever heard of a monster that sat in a chair and read books?—was comforting. She moved another unintelligible scroll from right to left, untied a new one, and gasped with joy. Here at last was something she could read. It was not very interesting, a treatise on beekeeping, which she was certain she had seen or heard before, but it proved there were some works in her own language.

  The fourth shelf, the one that could be reached from the chair merely by stretching out a hand, was her reward. Most of the scrolls were in familiar dialects and, the greatest of treasure troves, there was also a listing of equivalent words in several dialects, and in one language totally unfamiliar. Psyche stroked the thick book—four scrolls rolled together—as if it were a living creature she wished to praise and make docile, but she put it aside, eager to see what else she would find.

  There were several texts on hunting, a text on philosophy, and one on birds with charming sketches. She was startled when one of the menservants scratched on the door and then entered with a tray of food—bread, a bowl of olives, three different cheeses, a pitcher of wine, and another of milk, and cups to drink each. He set the tray down beside her as if it were the most ordinary thing for him to bring food to the book room. Psyche almost smiled. Did the monster eat bread and cheese and olives while it read? But the thought brought a chill with it, a memory of that black nothingness flowing toward her, and she reached hastily for another scroll from the pile.