Bring Down the Sun Read Online Free PDF

for nothing.
    Polyxena waited an endless time for the sun to wander down the sky. The light lingered, it seemed, forever; the day did not want to let go. She slept a little, restlessly, and fed the snake, offering it a newborn mouse. It stalked and throttled and swallowed the tiny wriggling pink thing with single-minded determination.
    When it had coiled in its pouch again, with a lump in its middle and sleep washing over it, Polyxena had no more patience left. There was still a glow of light along the western horizon, but all the priestesses were asleep. Attalos snored softly in his cell across from Polyxena’s.
    She wrapped herself in a dark mantle: the day had been hot but the night was almost cold. Softly on bare feet she slipped out of the priestesses’ house.
    *   *   *
    The sky was wild with stars. There was no moon, though Polyxena felt it coming like the brush of cold flame across her skin. The wind was all but still.
    She passed like a shadow through the grove. The stream was silent, its bed empty as it always was at night. She crossed it, slipping slightly on the still-wet stones.
    The Mother’s tree whispered to itself. Its bronze adornments made no sound, but the broad-lobed leaves stirred ever so gently.
    She had brought a jar of wine and a honeycomb to offer the oracle. She laid the honeycomb on a jut of root and poured out the wine as a libation. The earth drank it thirstily. She fancied she could hear the smacking of lips and the sound of swallowing.
    There was nothing remarkable about the wine, but something about the night and the errand made its fumes so strong she reeled. Her body was as warm as it was in her dreams; her limbs were loose. She let fall her mantle and then her chiton.
    She had done this before in the cold of winter, under a frost-pale moon. These summer stars were much gentler. Their light caressed her.
    The steps of the dance were ingrained in her bones. There was a song, too, a chant, a wild ululation, but a last remnant of caution kept that within, in the safety of silence.
    Divinity was in her. It did its best to rule her. But even in ecstatic trance, she kept a remnant of herself.
    She turned the dance to her own will—slowly, against powerful temptation to let go, to surrender, to become the gods’ plaything. She willed the oracle to wake.
    Her feet stamped the earth before it. Her hands clapped the rhythm. The ringing of cymbals echoed it: a wind had risen to shake the vessels along the branches.
    Then at last she ventured words. “Tell me,” she said in the old language, the language of the Mother. “Show me.”
    The leaves whispered to one another. Bronze rang on bronze. Faint and high and far, the stars sang.
    â€œTell me what you see,” she said.
    The whisper rose to a roar, the ringing to a deafening clamor. The oracle was obedient. It told—everything. Every oracle. Every fate. Every—
    Her hand swept through the hanging vessels, throwing their song into confusion. “My oracle,” she cried. “ My fate. Tell me what I am. Where am I supposed to go?”
    The tumult of voices stopped abruptly. The silence was so complete that she pressed her hands to her ears in dread that the gods had struck her deaf.
    The hatchling stirred in its pouch and began to struggle. She freed it before it harmed itself.
    Once her hands surrounded it, it quieted. When it moved again, it was only to raise its head. Its eyes sparked like embers in the starlight. It opened its mouth and hissed.
    The sound was strikingly like the rustle of wind in leaves. “Mysteries,” it said. “The Mother and the Son. The Mother takes the Bull of Minos to herself and gives birth to the sun.”
    Polyxena looked into those sparks of eyes. They swayed slightly, back and forth, as if with the wind. “That is not an answer,” she said.
    â€œMysteries,” said the hatchling. “Oracles.”
    That was an answer, of a