The Great Goddess Gazes South
In the end, there is no opposing Her.
(Read the prequel: https://link.medium.com/VjWcZav3gDb)
Her face is an orchard of fruitless, harsh lines abreast the dead pools of her eyes. She shakes her head forcefully at me and informs us in no uncertain terms that the Council of Priestesses had decided there would be no postponing until next year’s sailing season.
“Chief Shipmaster, as you are well aware, no tin has made it this year from the West, and the Repository’s copper lays useless on the shelves, a playground for mice and spiders. The Great Goddess urges three ships to depart South forthwith.”
Her dilated pupils stare straight through me, her white-painted visage a mask patterned with ceremonial crimson, her breast heaving.
We all know the court of the Double-crowned King will release both tin for bronze-making and His abundant gold, so crucial for the jewellery workshops, when our shipment arrives of woollen cloth, sturdy timber, goat horns, silver ingots and opulent jars with spiced oil. The Son of Ra’s treasury, the world’s envy, is laden with riches unimaginable.
Our galleys will have to make the dangerous late autumn run under the strong northerlies directly to the delta of the Black River of the Desert, and we shall, by experience, lose at least one.
The resulting quiet in the chamber of blue-pale leaping dolphins is deafening. Even the high priest of the Earth Shaker has the excellent sense to inspect the tabletop while the two younger female servants of the Snake Deity touch their tresses nervously. The junior captains sit still, faces ashen as they take in the pronouncement of a possible death sentence.
I study the intricate beige spirals that prevent the carefree marine animals from escaping the magnificent wall’s confines. They remind me of my position as the most senior mariner in the Land of the Bull: valued, indeed treasured, but nonetheless captive to unyielding tradition.
I had inherited some of my mother’s clairvoyancy; while mine is occasional, she used her full ability fruitfully as a servant of the Potnia Atemia, goddess of wilderness, the hunt and young ones.
I can feel the familiar tingling down my spine; the spirals fade, and the frolicking dolphins flee from the fresco, to reveal the naked body of a grey-haired man who has been washed onto the storm-swept sandy beach, his empty eye-sockets staring at the departing clouds.
“Of course, Mistress of Diktina, we shall sail as She wishes,” I finally proclaim, standing up immediately after she does, breaking protocol — but I don’t care anymore — following her closely out of the room and down the stairs and corridors into the waning afternoon and gusts of the courtyard.
I slow down, and the woman with the tall crown and multihued flounced skirt moves away, her shoulders letting go, hips loosening. For an instant, it seems as if she will stop and turn, but then her figure tightens under the weight of her own shackles, and she retreats faster.
Memories of a sensual girl, soft around the edges of a priestess initiate, and our prohibited meetings in the olive groves beneath a smiling moon spear my heart as I admire her for the last time.
Turning away from the palace, I forgive the Gods for their gift and walk towards the dusk of the Lower City and the encounter with that distant beach.
The above texts were first published on Twitter and are © 2023 by David Pahor.
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