sort.
âThe Mother and the Son,â it said. Its body coiled tightly. With no more warning than that, it struck her palm.
There was a brief, burning pain, then a slow and delicious languor. Polyxena had no desire to fling off that tiny, unexpectedly venomous thing. She was not afraid. Even if she died, that was her fate.
Better dead than moldering away in this grove. The hatchling twitched itself free with another but more distant stab of pain, and slithered back into its pouch.
Polyxenaâs knees gave way. She did not mind. She knelt with her cheek against the rough bark of the oak. Above her head, leaves murmured. They were full of secrets, if she cared to remember them.
She lowered her hands, the one that stung and burned and the one that felt nothing, and pressed them flat to the mould of leaves. The earth breathed beneath. Small blind things crawled and ate and bred. They knew nothing of the sun but that it burned.
And yet they fed the oak that stood so high under heaven. Without them it could not have thrived.
The smallest thing had meaning. The priestesses had taught her that. In order to read oracles, one had to look far down below the surface of things. One had to see and feel and smell and taste, and above all understand.
In order to perceive the full light of the sun, one had to immerse oneself in darkness. The Mother was the earth and all that lived in it, and the sky and the sun and every light of heaven. The Son wasâwhat?
That was the mystery. The world changed. The moon grew old. The Mother never died, but She might choose to withdraw from Her creationâto rest, to amuse Herself, who knew?
Polyxenaâs awareness spread like roots through the earth and grew like a sapling toward the sky. She reached for the sun, drawing it from the womb of the night. She cast it above the horizon.
Five
When Polyxena touched the sun, its fire leaped through her. It struck like a bolt of the gods.
The earth shook. The oak swayed as if in a gale. The mountains trembled; deep in their hearts, fire called to fire.
Too late Polyxena snatched at the powers she had loosed. The ground beneath her pitched and rocked. Somewhere perilously close, she heard the cracking of stone.
The sun reeled in the sky. Human voices cried out; an ashen rain began to fall. Rivers of mud and fire ran down the mountainsides. The earth yawned, gaping to swallow them all.
Polyxena had no spells or incantations, not even a prayer for this. Her wits barely sufficed to fling her flat while the world went mad around her. She had never expectedâshe could not have imaginedâ
âPeace,â said a voice so soft, so ordinary, that it struck more powerfully than the braying of trumpets. âBe still.â
One last time the earth heaved before it sank back into stillness. On the mountain above, even as the fire died, a steep slope crumbled; a fall of rock roared down into the valley. The air was full of noise and dust and terror.
Yet again Promeneia spoke, clear and steady above the tumult. âIt is done. Rest now. Sleep.â
In the silence that followed those gentle and impossibly powerful words, not even a bird sang. Polyxena ached in every bone. She would gladly have lain buried in ash and tumbled earth until her mind and self all went away, but her body insisted on rising unsteadily to its knees.
The oak had a slight but distinct tilt. The ground had risen on one side of it, forming a new if shallow hillside. The temple stood intact, but a crack ran slantwise from top to bottom of the wall. The stream beside it was as empty as it was at night; no water bubbled in it.
Polyxena staggered to her feet. All three priestesses stood watching her. The younger two were haggard but hale. Promeneia had aged years.
She leaned heavily on the white and silent Attalos. Her body shook with a palsy, but her eyes were clear and quiet. There was no anger in them.
Nor was there in Nikandraâsâand that was