Ivan Yefremov - Thais of Athens

The priestesses belonged to different nationalities, but looked similar to each other, not only in hair color, but also in the regularity of their features, the perfection of their strong bodies and their height, which was no taller than an average Helenian woman.

The women on the left had dark bronze skin and black hair, and were dressed in thicker nets of black yarn with belts, bracelets and neck straps of red bronze. Their penetrating, luminous eyes shone with savage light. Gold dagger hilts could be seen in the heavy knots of their long hair. The priestesses examined the famous hetaera curiously. Thais smiled at them, but didn’t receive a hint of response in the dark gazes of the servants of Astarte-Rhea-Kibela.

The red priestesses stood with their hands held at shoulder level, their palms turned forward. The black ones rested their palms on their curvy hips with their fingers spread out.

The rightmost red priestess carefully handed a small gold vial to the high priestess. She dipped her pinky into it and rubbed some red oil with spicy fresh scent over Thais’ eyebrows. The Athenian’s head spun a little after that. She vaguely recalled a story she had heard somewhere about Ashtoreth’s red oil. It was said one drachma of the oil was worth a fortune.

A black priestess on the left held forth a chalcedony cup. Only now did Thais notice that both the black and the red priestesses’ nails were covered with sharpened bits of electron, sparkling like little mirrors. The high priestess took a little bit of dark ointment from the cup and drew a cross between Thais’ breasts, then underlined the breasts and circled the nipples. The skin became bluish. Thais became worried about whether the stains would last.

Still silent, the high priestess unclasped the necklace with golden stars, examined it and smiled for the first time. She took off an incredibly beautiful necklace made of sky blue berylliums, encased in pale gold. Thais made a gesture of protest, but the priestess paid her no attention as she put the beryllium necklace around the Athenian’s neck. She put her arms around the hetaera’s slender torso and put the star necklace around her waist.

One more sweep of delicate fingers, and a blue arrow was drawn over Thais’ belly. The priestess stepped back and clapped her hands. She was Immediately handed a wide cup with a drink of some sort. She tasted it, let Thais have some, then the cup was passed among all of the red and black priestesses. There were eighteen priestesses, nine on each side. Thais felt awkward under the intense eyes surrounding her. They lacked judgment or approval, sympathy or animosity.

“Something remarkable has happened,” the high priestess suddenly said in Helenian, with a clear Aeolian accent. “Our guest wears the ancient sign of feminine mystery and the power of letter mu,” she said, pointing at the star necklace she had moved to hetaera’s waist. “For that reason I initiate her at the highest level. Take her to the apartments already prepared for her in advance.”

With these words the priestess kissed Thais with her hot, dry, almost feverish lips and repeated the same instructions in a language unknown to the Athenian.

Two priestesses, one black and one red, from the outer ends of their rows, approached Thais, bowed respectfully, pinned up her chiton and carefully took her arms. Thais laughed, pulled her arms out of their grasps and walked between the two women, remembering to bow to the statue of Rhea on her way out.

A long hallway cut through the thick walls sloped gently down. It reminded the hetaera of the Egyptian temples. For a moment, grief for her past, still so alive in her memory, cut through her heart.

At the end of the hallway the faint light of an oil lamp lit a massive copper grate which blocked the passageway. The black priestess made a hissing whistle. A chain clinked and a woman appeared near the grate. She looked like a black priestess, but without the net, belt or bracelets, and with her hair in disarray. Covering her face, she opened the grate and jumped back toward the wall. Thais noticed that the woman was shackled to the wall with a light chain.

“Is she a slave?” the hetaera asked, forgetting that her companions might not know the language of Helenians. “She looks like …” Thais pointed at the black priestess.

The black one smiled slightly, but it was the red one who responded, picking out the words of Coyne with difficulty. “She is a priestess, punished.”

A heavy oak door blocked the exit from the corridor. The red priestess knocked three times and the door opened, blinding them with daylight. It was opened by Za-Asht, who was nude and had her hair down.

“Forgive me, Mistress, I had no time to dress. They brought me in here through the lower temple and took my clothes.”

“What for?”

“They examined me as if I were at a slave market.”

As if to confirm her words, the red priestess walked over to the Finikian and felt her shoulders and arms. Thais pushed the woman indignantly, gesturing for her to leave.

All of the hetaera’s possessions had already been laid out on the carpets in the second room, which opened onto a terrace. A staircase descended toward the road under the tall pines. Thais’ dwelling was located on the outside of the temple walls, while the passageway with the grate apparently pierced the entire thickness.

Thais breathed in the dry air, saturated with scents of pine resin and wormwood. She felt sick. This never happened to her. She was dizzy, and her breasts and belly, where they had been anointed with the blue stuff, were burning. She could still taste the tart temple potion in her mouth. Shivers ran down her spine.

Thais returned to her rooms. Vaguely, as if in a dream, she noticed Za-Asht’s strangely luminous eyes and wanted to ask whether she had been given anything to drink at the temple, but before she could say anything she was suddenly engulfed by a strange kind of languor. She fell on the bed among strangely-scented pillows and throws, falling asleep instantly. She woke up several times in alarm, then collapsed into sleep again.

A series of visions and uncommonly strong sensations, more vivid than life itself, was torturous. The bewitching ointment or the drink or both of them combined brought forth sexual desire of unbearable power. A frightened Thais sensed her own body as something separate, filled with wild cravings, trapping her mind and willpower, and focusing all the powers and senses of the body in the essence of its feminine nature.

The deepest, hot darkness with nary a glint of light or breath of coolness, wrapped itself around Thais. She tossed, moaned and twisted in the monstrous nightmares she couldn’t have imagined in her most feverish moments. The terror before the abyss that opened within her made her wake several times.

Thais didn’t know of an antidote to the poison given to her by the priestess. The drug possessed her, and fire raged in her body, burning from the ointment. Thais descended lower and lower in her desires, incarnating into the primitive mythical heroines: Leda, Philarrenippa, Pasiphae … The hetaera was exhausted under the burden of the dark forces of Anteros. Had it not been for her spiritual training, acquired from the Orphics, she would have rushed to the temple of Rhea to beg the goddess for release. During yet another period of wakefulness she stumbled to her medicine chest, rocking and shaking, and managed to crush a few bits of dried poppy flowers in some wine. Having downed an entire goblet, Thais soon fell into a foggy sleep with no memory and no visions.

Wind, pure and cold, flew in from the eastern plains, burst through the open door and windows and woke up a chilled Athenian. Thais barely contained a moan, feeling sore in every muscle as if she’d galloped for twenty parsangs without a stop. Her bitten lips were swollen, she didn’t even dare touch her breasts. Thais found Za-Asht in the next room on a woven reed mat, spread out as if in a fever. When she woke the girl, Za-Asht couldn’t seem to come to her senses, glancing at her mistress with either fear or rage. Thais herself was growing coldly furious. She mentally sent to the ravens [27] To hell. the temple rituals she was so interested in, and the cunning priestesses of Astarte, who had purposely given her the horrible potion in order to force the servant of Aphrodite to feel the power of the Great Mother.