Poul Anderson - The Dancer from Atlantis

“Tomorrow dawn I leave,” she told Dagonas.

Though he had learned the uselessness of protest, he did answer in his mild way, “Deukalion could well return meanwhile.”

For a moment her spirit overflowed and stung, her eyes, at thought of the tall sea captain who was her oldest son. He was gone from Malath more than he was on the island; and when home he spent most time with his comely wife and children, or his young male friends, and this was right and natural. But he had come to have so many of his father’s looks

The stinging made her aware, too, of how Dagonas had always been kind to the boy who was not his. Of course, he was honored in having for stepson the child of a god.

Nonetheless, his goodness went beyond duty. Erissa smiled and kissed her husband. “If he does, pour him a rhyton of Cyprian wine for me,” she said.

Dragonas was eager that night, knowing she would be absent for days. He had never cared for other women. (Well, he must have had them in foreign ports, seeing how long a merchant voyage could become, just as she had taken occasional, men in his absence; but after he retired from that life and went into brokerage, it had been entirely they two.) She tried to respond, but her dreams were on Mount Atabyris and a quarter century in the past.

—She woke before the slaves themselves were up. Fumbling her way in the dark, she got a brand from the hearthfire and lit a lamp. When she made her ablutions, the water lashed her blood with cold until it raced. She dressed in proper style before kneeling, signing herself, and saying her prayers at the household shrine. Dragonas had made that image of the Goddess and the Labrys above, with his own clever hands. Cradling Her Son in Her arms, Our Lady of the Ax seemed by the uncertain light to stand alive, stirring, as if Her niche were a window that opened upon enormous reaches.

Religious duties performed, Erissa made ready to travel. She shed long skirt and open-bosomed jacket for a tunic and stout sandals; her hair she wound in a knot; at her belt she hung a knife and a wallet to carry food. She swallowed a piece of bread, a lump of cheese, a cup of mingled wine and water. Softly—no need to rouse them—she stole into the pair of rooms they had and kissed her four living children by Dagonas farewell. Two boys, two girls, ages from seventeen and soon to be a bride (0 Virgin Britomartis, her age when the god found her!) to chubby sweet-smelling, three. She forgot until she was on her way that she had not saluted her man.

Westward a few stars still glimmered in sea-blue depths, but the east was turning white, dew gleamed and birds twittered. Her house was actually not far outside the harbor city; but steeply rising land and dense groves of fig, pomegranate, and olive trees cut off view of anything save her own holdings.

Dagonas had demurred when she chose the site: “Best we live in town, behind its walls. Each year sees more pirates. Here we would have none to help defend us.”

She had laughed, not merrily but with that bleak noise which ended argument, and replied, “After what we have lived through, my dear, are we afraid of a few curs?”

Later, because he was no weakling, no mainlander who could not cope with a woman unless he had a law making her inferior, she explained, “We’ll build the house stoutly and hire only men who can fight. Thus we can stand off any attack long enough for a smoke signal to fetch help. I do need broad acres around me, if I’m to breed the sacred bulls.”

Having left the buildings behind and taken an inland trail, she passed one of the meadows where her cattle dwelt. The cows drowsed in mist-steaming grass or stood with calves clumsily butting their udders. The Father of Minotaurs was also on his feet, beneath a plane tree whose upper leaves snared the first beams of the unseen sun. She stopped a moment, caught on the grandeur of his horns. His coat was softly dappled, like shadows on a forest floor, and beneath it his muscles moved like a calm sea. Oh, holy! The wish to dance with him was an ache within her.

No. The god who fathered Deukalion had thereby taken away her right’to do it in Her honor; and time, slowing her down, had taken away her right as wife and mother to do it for the instruction of the young.

Otherwise she had lost little from her body. Pebbles scrunched beneath her mile-eating stride.

A swineherd, further on where the unpeopled lands began, recognized her and bent the knee. She blessed him but did not pause. Strictly speaking, she was not entitled to do that. She was no priestess, simply a wise-woman, skilled in the healing arts, in soothsaying, and in beneficent magic. This let her behave as she chose—faring off by herself, clad like a mainlander man—without unduly shocking respectable folk; but it did not consecrate her.

Yet a wise-woman must needs be close to the divine; and Erissa had taken the lead in restoring certain forms of worship among the Malathians; and she had herself, when a maiden,; danced with the bulls of Our Lady; and, while she made no point of having once been chosen by a god, neither did she make any bones about it, and most people believed her. Thus she was no common witch.

The awe of her, waxing over the years, helped Dagonas in his business. Erissa grinned.

Her muscles flexed and eased, flexed and eased, driving her always further inland and upward. Before long she was in ancient pine forest. At that height, under those scented boughs, the coolness of autumn began to grow chilly. She took her noontide meal beside a rushing brook. It widened into a pool where she could have handcaught a fish to eat raw, were she not bound for a shrine of the Goddess and therefore prohibited from killing.

She reached her goal at dusk: a cave high in the highest mountain on Malath. In a but nearby dwelt the sibyl. Erissa made her offering, a pendant of Northland amber which enclosed for eternity a beetle. The Egyptian sign being very potent, that was a valuable donation. Hence the sibyl not only gave Erissa routine leave to pray before the three images at the front of the cave—Britomartis the Maiden, Rhea the Mother, Dictynna the Rememberer and Foreseer—but led her past the curtain to the spring and its Mystery.

The hut was well stocked with food brought up by countryfolk. After they had eaten, the sibyl wanted to gossip, but Erissa was in no mood for it and, because she too had powers, could scarcely be compelled. They went early to bed.

—Erissa was likewise up betimes, and on the mountain-top shortly after daybreak.

Here,, alone in stillness and splendor, she could let, go her tears.

Beneath her the slopes fell away in crags, cliffs, boulders, stone strong and dark against the green of pines, which finally’ gave place to the many-hued fields and orchards of men. Overhead the sky soared altogether clear, holding an eagle whose wings sheened gold in the young light of Asterion, the sun, the Son. The air was cool, pungent with sage and thyme, and cast a breeze to lift the hair off a wet brow. Around the island reached the sea, blue and green shading afar to purple, streaked with a dazzlement of foam. Northwestward, fellow islands stood like white-hulled ships; northward reared Asia, still hazy with night dreams. But southward hung the peak of Mount Ida, where Asterion was born; upon Keft the lovely and forever lost.

There was no sign of Kharia-ti-yeh. There would never be again in the world.

“God Duncan,” Erissa wept, raising to heaven a hand that gripped a piece of earth, “when will you call me back to you?”

And the vortex took her.

They stood in a land that the sun had burnt barren. On brown rock-strewn ground, scored by gullies, grew scattered thombushes. Heat shimmers danced on the southern horizon. To north the desert met waters that shone like whetted metal beneath an unmerciful glare and three wheeling vultures.