Stones and Serpents
by Michael Hawley
by Michael Hawley
The approach is pleasant to the hill here. See? The path falls gently among rocks and cypresses. It winds through a field of moonlit poppies, then mounts abruptly in wide easy stairs leading up one side of the waterfall. Banks of lavender and wild irises breeze in waves to the ruins of the sanctuary. Smell! The air is draught after draught of lavender.
My home was once a temple to Cybele. What remains are a few broken pillars and a hole in the ground. If it had a roof, it was long ago pillaged for firewood. When I first came here, the hole was filled with rocks and broken statuary. I pieced some of the larger totems together. You can see them around you, demarcating where the missing pillars once stood.
I also discovered, as I cleared out the hole, what remained of hundreds of carved wooden phalli. I found two that were made from bone or boar tusk. One had a serpent’s head, one a frog’s.
It took me a week to clear out the hole, a natural crevice thirty hands deep and seven across, reinforced in places with beams, and coated all over with pitch. A series of pegs and footholds are built into the side. There’s an opening at the bottom just large enough to crawl through, a short tunnel that leads to a sizable chamber. I had expected to find a burial vault, but the room—except for a long stone bench—was empty and clean of debris. I claimed it as my own. My room. My refuge. My lair.
There was a time I preferred sunlight to darkness, but it is best for me now to go out at night. My vision is nocturnal, for one thing. The light of even the cloudiest day heats quickly through my eyelids. I have the same transparent protective membranes that birds and lizards have. After so many years, I still find their constant flicking a nuisance.
But my primary reason for resting in the day is to avoid encounters. Even in these parts, isolation is not assured; the Sea is too close. Thieves, explorers, victims of shipwreck. If you looked in area, you could find examples of each: one in the courtyard, one by the waterfall, four together in a clearing of the woods.
People are everywhere sooner or later. I am convinced there is not a leaf on earth that has not been bruised by human fingers, not a stone unmuddied by the feet of men. When you spot a twisted root in the forest, you can be sure that some fool tripped over it. Even the clouds have a sullied quality, seem to take the shapes of man’s inventions. Or have I just lived too long?
The man you passed on the steps is a Tyrian pirate. He sits with his head turned toward the top of the stairs. Did you notice the lovely curve of his neck? I removed his tunic to more easily admire it, all the more beautiful for being stone. Two years ago, when he first sat down, his bags were loaded with coins and chalcedonies. The Naiads of the waterfall soon claimed the trove. They were like jittery squirrels making off with fruits.
The warrior in the courtyard hails from Cnossos. A double-headed axe is embossed on his shield. You can see him, eyes wide, lance raised, lips pressed together to speak my name.
So be warned: Resist curiosity; bind the eye; trust me to tell you what I do, where I move, what I wear. Be content with these things. And be assured that just as you imagine them, so they are.
I pull a scarf around my head and knot it loosely at the neck. When the movement under the fabric settles, I put on a cloak of the same material—soft blue linen—and begin my scramble to the world outside. Moonlight illuminates the uppermost pegs.
I often wonder what the initiates of Cybele felt emerging from this hole. It might been a single experience, a mystery lived only once at puberty. I like to think it was for women only, but I do not know. Neither do I know how the old goddess feels about such a creature having usurped her womb.
In scarf and cloak I emerge from the hole. Look at the night. It’s a fine one, warm and humid. The salvaged statues seem almost self-conscious, ashamed of their broken appendages, their mismatched segments, the vines fastened to their knees and ankles. They don’t seem especially protective tonight. I put them there out of reverence and to instill reverence. They can be quite effective on a stormy night. In the daylight they have a more comical aspect—all breasts and hips, with vaginas for eyes. Beside the younger, more fashionable gods, Cybele is the senile grandmother exposing herself at the well.
Right here was the entrance to the temple. Seven stones form the crumbling threshold. You can see the fields, river and forest below. Two deer, maybe three, are standing beyond the second curve of the river. Wings beat in the distant air—owl or night hawk. The deer have moved into the woods.
Such a heavy dew has settled. The hem of my cloak brushing over the lavender absorbs it readily. This is my hour, deep night, the only time it feels safe to roam.
Go on. We will take the stairs down. I can tell by your gait that you are not a sailor. Your hands are delicate, your sandals those of a city dweller.
The spray at the top of the waterfall moves like a mist of diamonds in the moonlight. The Naiads are sleeping on the riverbank. I see one cradled in the root of an oak, her head dangling into water. These delicate creatures are extremely nearsighted. Not once have they noticed my passing. Content with the shimmering baubles of the stream—the silver-gilt fishes and polished stones—these Naiads know little of the torments of men.
I pull the scarf gently tighter. The crown of vipers secretes its complaint, twists, throbs and settles again beneath the linen.
I rank in reputed ferocity with the basilisk, the hydra and the Nemean lion. Children who dream about me freeze to stone in their beds. So they say. Especially vulnerable are those between the ages of seven and twelve. The preventative charm, I have heard, is a snakeskin nailed above the bed. Blindfolds are used as further protection, and securing their hands away from their genitals.
But I haven’t the ability to move through dreams. I can scarcely plod along in this physical world, where my every movement is so woefully exaggerated.
My eyelids slide up, locking invisibly against the breeze. The Naiad must have slipped into the water. Let’s continue down the slopes to where the pirate has sat for two years.
I was surprised one evening by a fire on the grounds. He had built a small altar and piled it with deer fat. Evidently, the Tyrians still venerate Cybele; they call her Astarte and she is one of their two chief deities. He told me this. We conversed all night, exchanging tales, I in my hole and he above. I was amused by his assumption that I was the goddess. He stood inside the temple ruins and sent his seed into the crevice, praying for many children, a friendly wind, and a safe return to Tyre. I promised all three. I had no wish to harm him. When I thought he had departed, I came up to hunt. It was almost dawn. He was here, sitting on the steps. I startled him. He turned.
The sight still saddens me. I have spent hours looking into his eyes, recalling our exchange, trying to penetrate his thoughts. I have learned the rhythms of the language of stone. In time, perhaps, I will know its vocabulary. It contains no verbs, just a handful of monosyllabic certainties. They are repeated in a fixed sequence, the order of which determines—has always determined—the positions of the stars, the hierarchy of gods and the length of the period for human gestation. So I’m told by my companions. Their continual song aspirates in my ears. Even under the scarf, I can hear them mumbling, lisping, declaiming some minutia about the history of the world.
They tell me many lovely, strange and ominous things. Once, while I lay in my underground room, they confided that I had been dead for centuries, for millennia, that my skull was locked in a vein of copper ore. Surprised, I asked if sleeplessness and hunger were a part of death. They claimed they were. When I then asked if stones were alive or dead, they said, laughing, that stones were the only living things.
Dead or alive, I must eat. My prey are the swans that sleep on the riverbank. They look like soft rocks in the moonlight, their heads tucked comfortably under their wings. The river is very still right there, narrow but deep. Do you see that half-circle of aspens? Those are the ones that, as saplings, gathered to shade and fan the young Orpheus as he sang on the grassy bank.
I recall the first time I came to this place. It was a rainy winter’s night. I may have tunneled claw and fang beneath the mountains to get here, or have been spat from the roiling clouds. I don’t know. I just remember throwing myself on the ground by the aspens and pleading for peace with the land and the river.
I had been leading a renegade’s life, subsisting on fish heads and stolen bread. I moved from doorway to doorway, always at night. Daylight found me on trash heaps, in culverts. Once, I hid for two weeks in a rancid granary infested with weevils as big as my toes.
As careful as I was, I seemed always to leave signs of my passing—warriors, lepers, bandits, philosophers. Both public squares and rural byways are littered with my handiwork.
Men with dogs and axes tracked me over many leagues until, in a guise of mourning, I joined with a caravan of salt merchants and escaped to the foot of Mount Atlas, where my sisters lived. But rumors had preceded me even there, and the servants chased me from the house with firebrands. So I lived in the foothills, naked with the beasts, until Perseus came. He led a host of Theban warriors that streamed through the countryside, burning forests and fields to rout me out. They set traps. They banked thousands of arrows before them as they went. I escaped to delirium and woke up here, by this river, by these trees, pounding my head on the muddy rocks and screaming at the rain.
The swans on the bank look completely forlorn, placed about like the pieces of an abandoned yard game. I am lucky to find them so close to the hill. My eye is on the male nestled in the leek patch. He looks about two years old, a full meal, but tender still. Six long strides will take me there.
My excitement makes the vipers restless. They have nearly undone the scarf. One slips down to the nape of my neck; one nudges my earlobe. I tuck them quickly under the linen and tighten the knot again. Breathing slowly, I sever from thought all peripheral distractions. Only absolute grace will gain me that swan, grace that holds no hesitation—as when a god decides to take a young girl.
You may listen, but you may not watch. What do you hear? Six quick steps and a muffled snap. Not even a squawk. The difficult task is making off with the bundle. The head lolls against my thigh as I stagger along, one of its wings still twitching.
I crouch in the shadow of a large rock and bite at the mound just under the neck. Hot blood spills over my knees. I spit out the feathers and bite again. I bite and tear and suck and swallow, my lips burrowing into the chest of the swan. The flesh is richer deep down: dark tender strings of sweetness. There comes an ecstatic whispering above me, tongues stabbing gleefully, lauding my abandon.
The owl calls from a tree nearby, the sound a warbling coo. A jackal slinks among the cypresses. He and his brothers will wait until we leave, then claim the remains of the bird.
Meanwhile, sit. It is early yet. The moon is still high. Around us the world lies quiet, but active still, like a ripe fruit ripening further. It is a good time for the telling of tales. After all, isn’t that why you came? By the way you sit, even with your back to me, I can tell you are a poet. It is evident in the tilt of your head and the way you hold your knees. You are no warrior, no bandit, no seasoned adventurer.
So listen. I will tell you a story about a god and a girl. There are many such tales, but this one I know best. And perhaps, in the towns of your people many years from now, they will be singing this story to words you have
given it.
* * *
On a certain shore of a mountainous kingdom is a place where the Sea reaches under the cliffs—a shallow, high-vaulted cavern facing west. By late afternoon on sunny days it looses it gloomy and forsaken aspect. The sun glitters red in the black quartz dome and the waters beneath are the color of gold. The beach is cut off at the cavern’s mouth, but a ramp of stone blocks reaches up to a ledge hewn into the wall and follows the concavity clear to the outside edge with an open view to the Sea. Here stands a shrine to Minerva built decades ago by sailors or fishermen. At the time of this tale, it was seldom visited, the graybeards that managed to remember its location too decrepit to risk the treacherous descent from the clifftop villages to the shore.
This beach, however, was the favorite haunt of a particular young girl. When the days were warm and her chores completed, she would tie her goats to a scraggly juniper and dare the steep path down the side of the cliff. Each day she ventured a little further up the shoreline. She would cast off her tunic and prance naked in the surf, imaging herself to be a daughter of Nereus or an exiled Libyan queen.
On such a day, a hot blue day, someone saw her walking on the sand near the cavern. She was nothing special, a girl walking, a girl of twelve with long hair and brown eyes and a head of foolishness.
He had quit his throne in the depths of the Sea and hurtled up to explore the many fathoms of his realm. Fish tumbled in the churning waters, fleeing for shelter to the nearest caves. Sea serpents veered from his path. Tentacled horrors kept still in their holes; they cowered, watching as he cleft the water in silver strokes, strewing a train of pearls behind him. All the treasures and secrets of the Sea were his, and as immeasurable were the reaches of his power in these lands. Yet, spotting the girl alone on the shore, he diminished himself—contracted, simplified—and rolled inconspicuously onto the beach in the form of a small conch shell.
The shell was no bigger than the girl’s hand when she stooped and picked it up. It was the color of polished ivory. She laughed at its smallness, its gleaming perfection. When she held it to her ear, what she heard was not the hum of the Sea but the echo of her own heart’s yearning. It was a gift from the Nereids, she was sure, and kissing it for luck, she tossed it back just as generously. She had to laugh once more for, several steps onward, the conch rolled up at her feet again. She returned it, this time with a wish. It appeared a third time. She made another wish. It came back. In this way, she proceeded further and further up the shore until, by late afternoon and without a wish left, she stood at the edge of the mouth of the cavern. The waves rushed into its stony embrace, their sound magnified in the hollow.
From where she stood, the girl couldn’t see to the back of the cave. The surface of the rock inside reflected the rays of the western sun. In the roar and dazzle, she forgot about her goats and her duties. For the moment, she even forgot the conch in her hand. Without hesitation, she mounted the ramp of stone blocks. She crouched as she went, keeping close to the rock as the water sprayed and spattered beneath her. She made her way to the ledge, which kept rising, growing less slippery as it went and curving around the inside of the cavern. Though the ledge was much narrower than the ramp, a curb almost two hands high calmed her fears of pitching over the edge. Continuing toward the overlook, she kept her eyes lowered so as not to spoil the view when she reached it.
The boom of the waves and the flashing light brought to mind stories of Vulcan. She pretended she was entering his workshop, expecting at any moment to feel the heat from his furnace. She played the part of Venus, his wife, bringing a draught of brewed herbs and ichor. Out of modesty, she averted her eyes. She would convince him, through a spell of love woven into the tea, to break from his labors and spend a tender hour at her side.
The path ended at an altar-like block of cut timbers, its surface littered with seashells and bird bones. Beyond it stood a figure in silhouette against the sinking sun. The girl gasped and fell back, dropping the conch at her feet. At first she thought this was Vulcan himself, but when she gathered her courage and looked up again, she could make out a woman’s figure: breasts, hips and unbound hair. She was leaning on an oval shield and faced the glittering Sea. But her hair did not move; the figure was a statue hewn also from the black stone of the cavern.
Slowly, the girl rose to her knees. She bent forward and kissed the ground, then backed down the ledge a respectful distance, where she laid herself prostrate on the rock. Minerva was the patron goddess of her village, the goddess of war and wisdom. The girl blushed at her lack of preparation. She had nothing to offer, not even her clothes, for she had left them in a pile far back on the beach. She had only the conch. It was a beautiful object and contained, after all, the wishes for a lifetime; she hoped it would be an acceptable gift. Lying on her stomach, she reached out with both hands, but the shell lay beyond the touch of her fingers.
Since one does not turn one’s back to a god, the girl retreated further down the ledge, searching for the shell all the while. She touched it at last but, so doing, sent it sliding further down the slope. She was glad for the generous curb on the ledge, but it threw its shadow over her, all the darker for being set against the almost blinding backdrop of the water. This contrast also leant a quality of subtle animation to the statue of Minerva. One moment it seemed made of stone; the next, it appeared to be moving slightly, shifting the position of its limbs, hair lifting in the breeze.
The girl felt the conch at her ankle. She laid her hand on it. It was bigger than she remembered. Slipping her fingers into the opening, she tried to pull it forward. Instead, it clasped shut. It was not a conch at all but a large cold hand gripped firmly to her own. Struggling up, she tried to pull free, but as she did so she thought of the wishes she had made on the beach. Each far-flung hope of the afternoon seemed suddenly, inexplicably, close to fulfillment. Her feet slipped from under her and she would have fallen had not another hand, placed squarely beneath her, lowered her to the ground.
The presence of the god rose over her. His breast gleamed with the colors of abalone. His eyes reached out to her, depthless, all-seeing. She forcefully turned her gaze away, but couldn’t maintain such resistance. He smiled. His lips were a boy’s lips set in a boy’s eager face, but his brow was that of a man, creased once—deeply—on the forehead and surmounted by wet curls of silver hair. As if in a dream, she reached up to touch them. The cavern around her fell away and the air of the Sea burrowed into her senses: the smells of seaweed, of barnacles; the sights of emerald-colored eels and aquatic trees; the sounds of the tide; the taste of salty foam. She cried out softly as he laid himself on her. His hands, though soft, were less tender now. They stroked her arms roughly and pulled at her breasts. Her ribs ached under his oscillating weight. Yet she returned his caresses in her own girl’s way, sought to draw out the kindness that she had glimpsed in his smile. She could scarcely breathe. It was as if she were choking on briny silt in the deafening roar of the waves. She was turned about, maneuvered to her stomach. One moment, with her head wrenched to the side, she thought she could see the statue of Minerva, hot black in the sunset, turn and look at her.
* * *
We should move along. The family of jackals is getting impatient. It is best to let them have the carcass before their barking brings the wolves. This path will take us into the woods. Watch your footing. The ground has been pocked by the hooves of white boars known only in this region. It is said that Persephone vanished nearby, snatched into the earth by the hand of Pluto.
But come. I want to show you the group I was telling you about. Here, in this clearing: four warriors warming themselves by a fire so dead that it has started sprouting alders. These are same Thebans who organized the hunt at Atlas and tracked me into these hills. Their clothes, as you see, have nearly rotted off. I think they were roasting grouse on those spits. I forget which one is Perseus. They might all be idiot brothers, the way they have been preserved. Their jaws hang open, stone tongues protruding. You can tell that their brains have not quite processed what has caught their eyes bright wide. The taste of tomorrow lies dead on their lips—a tomorrow that has long since passed.
Cybele would be pleased with this grove of statues. She would snort with merriment at their erect members, frozen stiff in the fear of the moment. She would measure and laugh.
Cybele reveals herself in my dreams. Like me, she walks the valleys of the night. She moves with a full stomach, breasts flouncing, hips rocking, with no purpose other than to look at the moon. She communicates in leonine growls and belches. She does not seem to care that her rites have been forgotten. She is not like the other gods, her younger counterparts. She is not like Minerva. She encompasses, forgives.
But I want to finish my story. We will cut through the woods back to the hill and wash at the waterfall. I have seen werewolves there this time of the morning, nervous creatures, all hair and teeth. They are nothing to fear. They want only a glimpse of the Naiads.
* * *
The god left the girl shuddering on the rock, her body fouled with a stinging resin, a yellow foam with the smell of bad meat. She scraped it from under her armpits, from between her breasts and her buttocks. Then she lay still, aching with bruises and too weak to move. She did not know where she was or how she’d come there. She stared at the roof of the cavern, at the distant facets of gold and red shimmering above her. She heard the steady crash of the water, the rising tide below.
The first things she remembered were her her goats, three rust-colored nanny goats that she had raised from birth. She had tied them to the juniper tree with tethers made from knotted rags. Then she had climbed down to the beach. She thought of the conch, how the surf kept returning it, how it had led her to a strange place. What place? She turned her head until she could noticed the figure behind her silhouetted against the sunset.
“Minerva,” she whispered.
Seeing the altar, she forced herself up. Nothing seemed to have changed. The goddess stood leaning on her shield and looking out to Sea. But wait! The tresses of her hair and the edges of her tunic were rippling ever so slightly, and her hand appeared to tremble as it gripped the top of the shield. Either the hand was shaking or the glare on the water only made it seem so. Then the shield slipped from Minerva’s grasp and disappeared over the precipice. All sounds in the cavern ceased. The girl waited for a splash that never came.
The goddess turned. She spun slowly about with all the dignified and portentous spectacle of a cyclone. Though changed to flesh, her skin retained the sheen of the rock. Her features seemed to illuminate themselves, to glow from within. Her eyes were small and closely set beneath the arched brows. Her nose joined with her upper lip, which was stiff and hooked like the raptor’s beak. She did not look at the girl. She kept her eyes on the surface of her altar and opened her mouth in a violent protest of what had just transpired. It was a scream that the girl could only feel. It was a cloying pressure inside her ears, and evidently felt by the cavern itself, for bits of rock started falling from the ceiling.
For an instant, the girl glanced out at the Sea. She didn’t know what she was seeking, or whom. Someone had come from there and returned. Strong arms and silvery skin, a boy’s imploring look; she looked for these. She searched for a sign, the slightest splash, a single gull winging toward the horizon—an inquiry met by the gilded, seamless surface of the water. The waves refused to yield account.
With a sweep of her arm, Minerva pointed a finger at a drop of blood on a corner of her altar. She pointed to the pool of bloody water and foam in front of it. She threw back her head and rocked the cavern with the power of her curses, with the incantations of irreversible magic.
Already the girl was running down the ledge. The pressure in her skull had worsened. Her eyes burned in the light of the sunset, burned as if salt were eating them away. There was movement in her hair, febrile roots taking hold and pushing up through her scalp, twisting, curling. She was too distracted to notice. It took all of her attention to keep her balance as she descended the ledge to the wave-beaten blocks of the ramp. Twice she was nearly snatched into the Sea.
By the time she reached the shoreline, its margin had narrowed considerably. Even running close to the cliff as she did, the waves were breaking at her knees. There was no time to consider her lack of clothing or feel the deep ache in her loins. She ran, her mind and body thrust completely into the effort of escape.
It was dark by the time she finished the steep climb up from the beach. Her knees were scraped, her fingers ragged. There were bruises on her knees and cuts in her shins and ankles. Panting and gasping, she looked for her charges. In spite of the hour, she could see the distant walls of her village almost as clearly as if it were daylight. She saw the juniper tree by the edge of the cliff, and the tethers dangling from its branches. The goats had chewed through them and wandered off. She called to them. She shouted their names until her voice wore thin, until, stumbling half-way around the village, she turned her ankle in a rodent’s hole and collapsed on a patch of grass. She lay there unmoving, oblivious to her nakedness, to the restless pillow under her head.
A numbness like sleep settled over her mind. Within that sleep, she watched the movement of the stars with a calm and implacable abandon. They did not seem like stars. They formed no recognizable constellations; no beasts, no heroes. They moved in what appeared to be random gusts, dragging into and out of nowhere. She listened. A hiss of voices rose in her ears. They were as cool and supple as morning mist. They told her secrets about the world, things that she had never suspected: that the wind around her was the substance of love; that the grass beneath her was the product of love; that the stars above her were shiny-winged ants—just ants—streaming endlessly up the dark side of a rock.
My home was once a temple to Cybele. What remains are a few broken pillars and a hole in the ground. If it had a roof, it was long ago pillaged for firewood. When I first came here, the hole was filled with rocks and broken statuary. I pieced some of the larger totems together. You can see them around you, demarcating where the missing pillars once stood.
I also discovered, as I cleared out the hole, what remained of hundreds of carved wooden phalli. I found two that were made from bone or boar tusk. One had a serpent’s head, one a frog’s.
It took me a week to clear out the hole, a natural crevice thirty hands deep and seven across, reinforced in places with beams, and coated all over with pitch. A series of pegs and footholds are built into the side. There’s an opening at the bottom just large enough to crawl through, a short tunnel that leads to a sizable chamber. I had expected to find a burial vault, but the room—except for a long stone bench—was empty and clean of debris. I claimed it as my own. My room. My refuge. My lair.
There was a time I preferred sunlight to darkness, but it is best for me now to go out at night. My vision is nocturnal, for one thing. The light of even the cloudiest day heats quickly through my eyelids. I have the same transparent protective membranes that birds and lizards have. After so many years, I still find their constant flicking a nuisance.
But my primary reason for resting in the day is to avoid encounters. Even in these parts, isolation is not assured; the Sea is too close. Thieves, explorers, victims of shipwreck. If you looked in area, you could find examples of each: one in the courtyard, one by the waterfall, four together in a clearing of the woods.
People are everywhere sooner or later. I am convinced there is not a leaf on earth that has not been bruised by human fingers, not a stone unmuddied by the feet of men. When you spot a twisted root in the forest, you can be sure that some fool tripped over it. Even the clouds have a sullied quality, seem to take the shapes of man’s inventions. Or have I just lived too long?
The man you passed on the steps is a Tyrian pirate. He sits with his head turned toward the top of the stairs. Did you notice the lovely curve of his neck? I removed his tunic to more easily admire it, all the more beautiful for being stone. Two years ago, when he first sat down, his bags were loaded with coins and chalcedonies. The Naiads of the waterfall soon claimed the trove. They were like jittery squirrels making off with fruits.
The warrior in the courtyard hails from Cnossos. A double-headed axe is embossed on his shield. You can see him, eyes wide, lance raised, lips pressed together to speak my name.
So be warned: Resist curiosity; bind the eye; trust me to tell you what I do, where I move, what I wear. Be content with these things. And be assured that just as you imagine them, so they are.
I pull a scarf around my head and knot it loosely at the neck. When the movement under the fabric settles, I put on a cloak of the same material—soft blue linen—and begin my scramble to the world outside. Moonlight illuminates the uppermost pegs.
I often wonder what the initiates of Cybele felt emerging from this hole. It might been a single experience, a mystery lived only once at puberty. I like to think it was for women only, but I do not know. Neither do I know how the old goddess feels about such a creature having usurped her womb.
In scarf and cloak I emerge from the hole. Look at the night. It’s a fine one, warm and humid. The salvaged statues seem almost self-conscious, ashamed of their broken appendages, their mismatched segments, the vines fastened to their knees and ankles. They don’t seem especially protective tonight. I put them there out of reverence and to instill reverence. They can be quite effective on a stormy night. In the daylight they have a more comical aspect—all breasts and hips, with vaginas for eyes. Beside the younger, more fashionable gods, Cybele is the senile grandmother exposing herself at the well.
Right here was the entrance to the temple. Seven stones form the crumbling threshold. You can see the fields, river and forest below. Two deer, maybe three, are standing beyond the second curve of the river. Wings beat in the distant air—owl or night hawk. The deer have moved into the woods.
Such a heavy dew has settled. The hem of my cloak brushing over the lavender absorbs it readily. This is my hour, deep night, the only time it feels safe to roam.
Go on. We will take the stairs down. I can tell by your gait that you are not a sailor. Your hands are delicate, your sandals those of a city dweller.
The spray at the top of the waterfall moves like a mist of diamonds in the moonlight. The Naiads are sleeping on the riverbank. I see one cradled in the root of an oak, her head dangling into water. These delicate creatures are extremely nearsighted. Not once have they noticed my passing. Content with the shimmering baubles of the stream—the silver-gilt fishes and polished stones—these Naiads know little of the torments of men.
I pull the scarf gently tighter. The crown of vipers secretes its complaint, twists, throbs and settles again beneath the linen.
I rank in reputed ferocity with the basilisk, the hydra and the Nemean lion. Children who dream about me freeze to stone in their beds. So they say. Especially vulnerable are those between the ages of seven and twelve. The preventative charm, I have heard, is a snakeskin nailed above the bed. Blindfolds are used as further protection, and securing their hands away from their genitals.
But I haven’t the ability to move through dreams. I can scarcely plod along in this physical world, where my every movement is so woefully exaggerated.
My eyelids slide up, locking invisibly against the breeze. The Naiad must have slipped into the water. Let’s continue down the slopes to where the pirate has sat for two years.
I was surprised one evening by a fire on the grounds. He had built a small altar and piled it with deer fat. Evidently, the Tyrians still venerate Cybele; they call her Astarte and she is one of their two chief deities. He told me this. We conversed all night, exchanging tales, I in my hole and he above. I was amused by his assumption that I was the goddess. He stood inside the temple ruins and sent his seed into the crevice, praying for many children, a friendly wind, and a safe return to Tyre. I promised all three. I had no wish to harm him. When I thought he had departed, I came up to hunt. It was almost dawn. He was here, sitting on the steps. I startled him. He turned.
The sight still saddens me. I have spent hours looking into his eyes, recalling our exchange, trying to penetrate his thoughts. I have learned the rhythms of the language of stone. In time, perhaps, I will know its vocabulary. It contains no verbs, just a handful of monosyllabic certainties. They are repeated in a fixed sequence, the order of which determines—has always determined—the positions of the stars, the hierarchy of gods and the length of the period for human gestation. So I’m told by my companions. Their continual song aspirates in my ears. Even under the scarf, I can hear them mumbling, lisping, declaiming some minutia about the history of the world.
They tell me many lovely, strange and ominous things. Once, while I lay in my underground room, they confided that I had been dead for centuries, for millennia, that my skull was locked in a vein of copper ore. Surprised, I asked if sleeplessness and hunger were a part of death. They claimed they were. When I then asked if stones were alive or dead, they said, laughing, that stones were the only living things.
Dead or alive, I must eat. My prey are the swans that sleep on the riverbank. They look like soft rocks in the moonlight, their heads tucked comfortably under their wings. The river is very still right there, narrow but deep. Do you see that half-circle of aspens? Those are the ones that, as saplings, gathered to shade and fan the young Orpheus as he sang on the grassy bank.
I recall the first time I came to this place. It was a rainy winter’s night. I may have tunneled claw and fang beneath the mountains to get here, or have been spat from the roiling clouds. I don’t know. I just remember throwing myself on the ground by the aspens and pleading for peace with the land and the river.
I had been leading a renegade’s life, subsisting on fish heads and stolen bread. I moved from doorway to doorway, always at night. Daylight found me on trash heaps, in culverts. Once, I hid for two weeks in a rancid granary infested with weevils as big as my toes.
As careful as I was, I seemed always to leave signs of my passing—warriors, lepers, bandits, philosophers. Both public squares and rural byways are littered with my handiwork.
Men with dogs and axes tracked me over many leagues until, in a guise of mourning, I joined with a caravan of salt merchants and escaped to the foot of Mount Atlas, where my sisters lived. But rumors had preceded me even there, and the servants chased me from the house with firebrands. So I lived in the foothills, naked with the beasts, until Perseus came. He led a host of Theban warriors that streamed through the countryside, burning forests and fields to rout me out. They set traps. They banked thousands of arrows before them as they went. I escaped to delirium and woke up here, by this river, by these trees, pounding my head on the muddy rocks and screaming at the rain.
The swans on the bank look completely forlorn, placed about like the pieces of an abandoned yard game. I am lucky to find them so close to the hill. My eye is on the male nestled in the leek patch. He looks about two years old, a full meal, but tender still. Six long strides will take me there.
My excitement makes the vipers restless. They have nearly undone the scarf. One slips down to the nape of my neck; one nudges my earlobe. I tuck them quickly under the linen and tighten the knot again. Breathing slowly, I sever from thought all peripheral distractions. Only absolute grace will gain me that swan, grace that holds no hesitation—as when a god decides to take a young girl.
You may listen, but you may not watch. What do you hear? Six quick steps and a muffled snap. Not even a squawk. The difficult task is making off with the bundle. The head lolls against my thigh as I stagger along, one of its wings still twitching.
I crouch in the shadow of a large rock and bite at the mound just under the neck. Hot blood spills over my knees. I spit out the feathers and bite again. I bite and tear and suck and swallow, my lips burrowing into the chest of the swan. The flesh is richer deep down: dark tender strings of sweetness. There comes an ecstatic whispering above me, tongues stabbing gleefully, lauding my abandon.
The owl calls from a tree nearby, the sound a warbling coo. A jackal slinks among the cypresses. He and his brothers will wait until we leave, then claim the remains of the bird.
Meanwhile, sit. It is early yet. The moon is still high. Around us the world lies quiet, but active still, like a ripe fruit ripening further. It is a good time for the telling of tales. After all, isn’t that why you came? By the way you sit, even with your back to me, I can tell you are a poet. It is evident in the tilt of your head and the way you hold your knees. You are no warrior, no bandit, no seasoned adventurer.
So listen. I will tell you a story about a god and a girl. There are many such tales, but this one I know best. And perhaps, in the towns of your people many years from now, they will be singing this story to words you have
given it.
* * *
On a certain shore of a mountainous kingdom is a place where the Sea reaches under the cliffs—a shallow, high-vaulted cavern facing west. By late afternoon on sunny days it looses it gloomy and forsaken aspect. The sun glitters red in the black quartz dome and the waters beneath are the color of gold. The beach is cut off at the cavern’s mouth, but a ramp of stone blocks reaches up to a ledge hewn into the wall and follows the concavity clear to the outside edge with an open view to the Sea. Here stands a shrine to Minerva built decades ago by sailors or fishermen. At the time of this tale, it was seldom visited, the graybeards that managed to remember its location too decrepit to risk the treacherous descent from the clifftop villages to the shore.
This beach, however, was the favorite haunt of a particular young girl. When the days were warm and her chores completed, she would tie her goats to a scraggly juniper and dare the steep path down the side of the cliff. Each day she ventured a little further up the shoreline. She would cast off her tunic and prance naked in the surf, imaging herself to be a daughter of Nereus or an exiled Libyan queen.
On such a day, a hot blue day, someone saw her walking on the sand near the cavern. She was nothing special, a girl walking, a girl of twelve with long hair and brown eyes and a head of foolishness.
He had quit his throne in the depths of the Sea and hurtled up to explore the many fathoms of his realm. Fish tumbled in the churning waters, fleeing for shelter to the nearest caves. Sea serpents veered from his path. Tentacled horrors kept still in their holes; they cowered, watching as he cleft the water in silver strokes, strewing a train of pearls behind him. All the treasures and secrets of the Sea were his, and as immeasurable were the reaches of his power in these lands. Yet, spotting the girl alone on the shore, he diminished himself—contracted, simplified—and rolled inconspicuously onto the beach in the form of a small conch shell.
The shell was no bigger than the girl’s hand when she stooped and picked it up. It was the color of polished ivory. She laughed at its smallness, its gleaming perfection. When she held it to her ear, what she heard was not the hum of the Sea but the echo of her own heart’s yearning. It was a gift from the Nereids, she was sure, and kissing it for luck, she tossed it back just as generously. She had to laugh once more for, several steps onward, the conch rolled up at her feet again. She returned it, this time with a wish. It appeared a third time. She made another wish. It came back. In this way, she proceeded further and further up the shore until, by late afternoon and without a wish left, she stood at the edge of the mouth of the cavern. The waves rushed into its stony embrace, their sound magnified in the hollow.
From where she stood, the girl couldn’t see to the back of the cave. The surface of the rock inside reflected the rays of the western sun. In the roar and dazzle, she forgot about her goats and her duties. For the moment, she even forgot the conch in her hand. Without hesitation, she mounted the ramp of stone blocks. She crouched as she went, keeping close to the rock as the water sprayed and spattered beneath her. She made her way to the ledge, which kept rising, growing less slippery as it went and curving around the inside of the cavern. Though the ledge was much narrower than the ramp, a curb almost two hands high calmed her fears of pitching over the edge. Continuing toward the overlook, she kept her eyes lowered so as not to spoil the view when she reached it.
The boom of the waves and the flashing light brought to mind stories of Vulcan. She pretended she was entering his workshop, expecting at any moment to feel the heat from his furnace. She played the part of Venus, his wife, bringing a draught of brewed herbs and ichor. Out of modesty, she averted her eyes. She would convince him, through a spell of love woven into the tea, to break from his labors and spend a tender hour at her side.
The path ended at an altar-like block of cut timbers, its surface littered with seashells and bird bones. Beyond it stood a figure in silhouette against the sinking sun. The girl gasped and fell back, dropping the conch at her feet. At first she thought this was Vulcan himself, but when she gathered her courage and looked up again, she could make out a woman’s figure: breasts, hips and unbound hair. She was leaning on an oval shield and faced the glittering Sea. But her hair did not move; the figure was a statue hewn also from the black stone of the cavern.
Slowly, the girl rose to her knees. She bent forward and kissed the ground, then backed down the ledge a respectful distance, where she laid herself prostrate on the rock. Minerva was the patron goddess of her village, the goddess of war and wisdom. The girl blushed at her lack of preparation. She had nothing to offer, not even her clothes, for she had left them in a pile far back on the beach. She had only the conch. It was a beautiful object and contained, after all, the wishes for a lifetime; she hoped it would be an acceptable gift. Lying on her stomach, she reached out with both hands, but the shell lay beyond the touch of her fingers.
Since one does not turn one’s back to a god, the girl retreated further down the ledge, searching for the shell all the while. She touched it at last but, so doing, sent it sliding further down the slope. She was glad for the generous curb on the ledge, but it threw its shadow over her, all the darker for being set against the almost blinding backdrop of the water. This contrast also leant a quality of subtle animation to the statue of Minerva. One moment it seemed made of stone; the next, it appeared to be moving slightly, shifting the position of its limbs, hair lifting in the breeze.
The girl felt the conch at her ankle. She laid her hand on it. It was bigger than she remembered. Slipping her fingers into the opening, she tried to pull it forward. Instead, it clasped shut. It was not a conch at all but a large cold hand gripped firmly to her own. Struggling up, she tried to pull free, but as she did so she thought of the wishes she had made on the beach. Each far-flung hope of the afternoon seemed suddenly, inexplicably, close to fulfillment. Her feet slipped from under her and she would have fallen had not another hand, placed squarely beneath her, lowered her to the ground.
The presence of the god rose over her. His breast gleamed with the colors of abalone. His eyes reached out to her, depthless, all-seeing. She forcefully turned her gaze away, but couldn’t maintain such resistance. He smiled. His lips were a boy’s lips set in a boy’s eager face, but his brow was that of a man, creased once—deeply—on the forehead and surmounted by wet curls of silver hair. As if in a dream, she reached up to touch them. The cavern around her fell away and the air of the Sea burrowed into her senses: the smells of seaweed, of barnacles; the sights of emerald-colored eels and aquatic trees; the sounds of the tide; the taste of salty foam. She cried out softly as he laid himself on her. His hands, though soft, were less tender now. They stroked her arms roughly and pulled at her breasts. Her ribs ached under his oscillating weight. Yet she returned his caresses in her own girl’s way, sought to draw out the kindness that she had glimpsed in his smile. She could scarcely breathe. It was as if she were choking on briny silt in the deafening roar of the waves. She was turned about, maneuvered to her stomach. One moment, with her head wrenched to the side, she thought she could see the statue of Minerva, hot black in the sunset, turn and look at her.
* * *
We should move along. The family of jackals is getting impatient. It is best to let them have the carcass before their barking brings the wolves. This path will take us into the woods. Watch your footing. The ground has been pocked by the hooves of white boars known only in this region. It is said that Persephone vanished nearby, snatched into the earth by the hand of Pluto.
But come. I want to show you the group I was telling you about. Here, in this clearing: four warriors warming themselves by a fire so dead that it has started sprouting alders. These are same Thebans who organized the hunt at Atlas and tracked me into these hills. Their clothes, as you see, have nearly rotted off. I think they were roasting grouse on those spits. I forget which one is Perseus. They might all be idiot brothers, the way they have been preserved. Their jaws hang open, stone tongues protruding. You can tell that their brains have not quite processed what has caught their eyes bright wide. The taste of tomorrow lies dead on their lips—a tomorrow that has long since passed.
Cybele would be pleased with this grove of statues. She would snort with merriment at their erect members, frozen stiff in the fear of the moment. She would measure and laugh.
Cybele reveals herself in my dreams. Like me, she walks the valleys of the night. She moves with a full stomach, breasts flouncing, hips rocking, with no purpose other than to look at the moon. She communicates in leonine growls and belches. She does not seem to care that her rites have been forgotten. She is not like the other gods, her younger counterparts. She is not like Minerva. She encompasses, forgives.
But I want to finish my story. We will cut through the woods back to the hill and wash at the waterfall. I have seen werewolves there this time of the morning, nervous creatures, all hair and teeth. They are nothing to fear. They want only a glimpse of the Naiads.
* * *
The god left the girl shuddering on the rock, her body fouled with a stinging resin, a yellow foam with the smell of bad meat. She scraped it from under her armpits, from between her breasts and her buttocks. Then she lay still, aching with bruises and too weak to move. She did not know where she was or how she’d come there. She stared at the roof of the cavern, at the distant facets of gold and red shimmering above her. She heard the steady crash of the water, the rising tide below.
The first things she remembered were her her goats, three rust-colored nanny goats that she had raised from birth. She had tied them to the juniper tree with tethers made from knotted rags. Then she had climbed down to the beach. She thought of the conch, how the surf kept returning it, how it had led her to a strange place. What place? She turned her head until she could noticed the figure behind her silhouetted against the sunset.
“Minerva,” she whispered.
Seeing the altar, she forced herself up. Nothing seemed to have changed. The goddess stood leaning on her shield and looking out to Sea. But wait! The tresses of her hair and the edges of her tunic were rippling ever so slightly, and her hand appeared to tremble as it gripped the top of the shield. Either the hand was shaking or the glare on the water only made it seem so. Then the shield slipped from Minerva’s grasp and disappeared over the precipice. All sounds in the cavern ceased. The girl waited for a splash that never came.
The goddess turned. She spun slowly about with all the dignified and portentous spectacle of a cyclone. Though changed to flesh, her skin retained the sheen of the rock. Her features seemed to illuminate themselves, to glow from within. Her eyes were small and closely set beneath the arched brows. Her nose joined with her upper lip, which was stiff and hooked like the raptor’s beak. She did not look at the girl. She kept her eyes on the surface of her altar and opened her mouth in a violent protest of what had just transpired. It was a scream that the girl could only feel. It was a cloying pressure inside her ears, and evidently felt by the cavern itself, for bits of rock started falling from the ceiling.
For an instant, the girl glanced out at the Sea. She didn’t know what she was seeking, or whom. Someone had come from there and returned. Strong arms and silvery skin, a boy’s imploring look; she looked for these. She searched for a sign, the slightest splash, a single gull winging toward the horizon—an inquiry met by the gilded, seamless surface of the water. The waves refused to yield account.
With a sweep of her arm, Minerva pointed a finger at a drop of blood on a corner of her altar. She pointed to the pool of bloody water and foam in front of it. She threw back her head and rocked the cavern with the power of her curses, with the incantations of irreversible magic.
Already the girl was running down the ledge. The pressure in her skull had worsened. Her eyes burned in the light of the sunset, burned as if salt were eating them away. There was movement in her hair, febrile roots taking hold and pushing up through her scalp, twisting, curling. She was too distracted to notice. It took all of her attention to keep her balance as she descended the ledge to the wave-beaten blocks of the ramp. Twice she was nearly snatched into the Sea.
By the time she reached the shoreline, its margin had narrowed considerably. Even running close to the cliff as she did, the waves were breaking at her knees. There was no time to consider her lack of clothing or feel the deep ache in her loins. She ran, her mind and body thrust completely into the effort of escape.
It was dark by the time she finished the steep climb up from the beach. Her knees were scraped, her fingers ragged. There were bruises on her knees and cuts in her shins and ankles. Panting and gasping, she looked for her charges. In spite of the hour, she could see the distant walls of her village almost as clearly as if it were daylight. She saw the juniper tree by the edge of the cliff, and the tethers dangling from its branches. The goats had chewed through them and wandered off. She called to them. She shouted their names until her voice wore thin, until, stumbling half-way around the village, she turned her ankle in a rodent’s hole and collapsed on a patch of grass. She lay there unmoving, oblivious to her nakedness, to the restless pillow under her head.
A numbness like sleep settled over her mind. Within that sleep, she watched the movement of the stars with a calm and implacable abandon. They did not seem like stars. They formed no recognizable constellations; no beasts, no heroes. They moved in what appeared to be random gusts, dragging into and out of nowhere. She listened. A hiss of voices rose in her ears. They were as cool and supple as morning mist. They told her secrets about the world, things that she had never suspected: that the wind around her was the substance of love; that the grass beneath her was the product of love; that the stars above her were shiny-winged ants—just ants—streaming endlessly up the dark side of a rock.