Chapter 1 Initiation on the Isle of the Moon

Approaching her sixteenth year, by which age many maidens of the Temple of Ceres are full Priestesses, Cybele had finally experienced her first flux. This meant that she could be initiated into the Temple and commence her years of training to become a Priestess.

She had long felt trapped in the world of children, able only to tend the gardens and perform menial tasks. She longed for the honour of serving in the High Temple, maybe even giving the Office of the Sword and Scabbard herself one day. And now, she was on the threshold of discovering the mysteries of the Temple. She was filled with an exhilarated awe, tempered with a little fear. Dreeana, her friend since childhood, was in her final stages of training. It was difficult to think that they were the same age. Physically, there was little difference between them - if anything, Cybele was taller and more fully developed, but then Dreeana carried herself with a woman's confidence and had the commitment of one who knows their path in life.

After three years, Dreeana had only a few more trials to pass before becoming a Priestess. Of course, these could not be discussed, even if Cybele was soon to start the training herself. But Cybele did know that you had to undertake a quest before you could take your final vows - Would it be a moon of silence? Would it be surviving on one of the barren small islands for a season? Would it be to find some secret truth of which only the Old Ones knew? Each person's quest was their own, and designed test her own particular weaknesses.

Cybele knew that a quest of silence or isolation would never be for her, as she sought these things herself by choice, and so they would be no trial to her. But Dreeana? She was a slight and fragile creature, and a winter on the Isle of Hebe could be fatal.

Ceres was a demanding Mother. Only the toughest and most perfect of women could become Priestesses, and the Old Ones were as wise and strong as the Goddess herself.

Failure to become a Priestess did not mean banishment from the Isle of the Moon. In fact, only about one in three passed the many demanding tests. There were many other lives and paths available outside the Temple, and the villages of the Isle were thriving and self-contained. It could not be denied, however, that the villages were there purely as a support to the Temples of Ceres and Priapus, and the Priestesses and Priests respectively were the central figures on the island.

All children born on the Isle were required to be brought up by the Temple. Although there was no social stigma attached to childbirth, the removal of children seemed to act as a deterrent for those who were not Priestesses of the Temple. Perhaps the trauma of having one's child torn from the breast could only be borne by women who served the Motherhood of the Temple before the Motherhood of their own womb.

As a result, the population of the Isle would have been forever shrinking and there would be no sure supply of worthy Priestesses were it not for the practice of acquiring children from the mainland. Whether these were purchased, stolen or bartered for was of no great concern, although girl-children were becoming of less and less value in the mainland world, and indeed were sometimes considered to be a burden to their families, and therefore pledged to the Isle at no cost.

Cybele was mainland-born. She had no recollection of her life there, as the indoctrination process had been very thorough, and only a few of the Old Ones were ever permitted to return to the mainland. But this was her life now, and it was all she knew.

It was autumn, and the skies were heavy and threatening. Like all of the Novices, she was a little afraid of the unknown tests and rituals which she would have to pass to become a Priestess. What she was mostly afraid of, however, was failure. She had always felt that her calling was to Ceres, and the sickle-shaped birthmark on her thigh was a clear sign that the Goddess had chosen her.

What if she, who had been called, failed? It would be so much more shameful than if she had been like some of the others, ambivalent about whether they served in the Temple or the bakery. To them, an early failure in the trials was an early release from the rigours of the Temple into the gentler world of the village. Cybele thought that sometimes, they failed on purpose, and were happy to spend their lives with their wits being no more challenged than planning how to keep the mice out of the flour.

She wanted to be a full Priestess. Or to be given a quest so long and difficult that it would not be completed until the day she died.

She had told the Priestess Ria of her flux with great excitement. After so many years of expectant waiting, Cybele had been beginning to think that she was barren. This would have ruined her dreams of serving in the Temple, as fertility was sacred to Ceres, and so her Priestesses had to be able to bear the fruit of the womb.

Ria had told her that her initiation would be at the next new moon, when Ceres was at her most powerful. She explained that once Cybele was living in the Hall of the Initiates, her flux would gradually change into the rhythm of the rest, at the time of each crescent moon.

The week after Cybele, two other Novices had also had their first flux. Out of seventeen Novices in the Hall, all girls aged between ten and fifteen, it was unusual that three would leave in the same moon. The other two, Jai and Annia, were younger than Cybele, and terrified of what would happen. Jai was thirteen, but little Annia was only in her eleventh year. She seemed so young. Cybele never failed to wonder why the Goddess sent the sign when some were still such children, and held it back from others when they were otherwise well into womanhood.

There was no questioning the will of the Goddess, Cybele supposed, and maybe the whole point was the uncertainty and apparent injustice of it. After all, without faith we would be like the fishes in the sea, or the hens in their coop.

Although Ria was in a way like a mother to the girls, she did not live in the Hall of the Novices, and to a large extent they were left to their own devices.

Even the younger children slept without adult company, in the Hall of Eire. There, from the time children were weaned until they were ten, they slept in large beds, boys and girls together. They had classes with the Priests in the daytime, and by night, they would play around the large fire, the younger toddlers being tended by the older children. Cybele had fond memories of her time in the Hall of Eire. She had arrived on the Isle as a sullen and silent child of seven, but being immediately made responsible for the care of younger children had meant that she did not have time to dwell on her own problems. Teaching an Isle-begotten toddler of two the dangers of getting too close to the fire was a full-time task, and she had little energy left for her dreams of a life elsewhere.

Moving to the Hall of Novices was one of her unhappiest days. She missed having the care of the youngsters, with whom she had spent so much of her time. She was suddenly landed in a world of budding breasts, gossip and secretive friendships. She did not much enjoy company of her own age, and although she had got on well with several of the less outgoing girls, she had felt like an outsider for much of the time. It was here that she had come to realise how strange her own looks were. There were others pale of skin like her, but none shared her flaxen hair, high cool cheeks or gentle grey-green eyes. She wished that she had the intense dark eyes of Dreeana, the thick raven hair of Jai and Fionna, the rosy red cheeks of Kelle. Only little Annia shared her flaxen colouring, although the poor child was slight and fragile as a flower, so unlike Cybele with her strong Saxon frame and tough constitution.

Some of the other Novices were cruel to her beyond measure, simply because she was not like them. They taunted her that she was the product of rape, due to her Saxon looks. Women held power on the Isle, and the charge of unconsenting intercourse was considered one of the most serious crimes. So of course, to be called a product of such a crime was the worst of insults, and one which she could not in all honesty deny, as she had no knowledge of her background.

Despite her ignorance, however, she constructed an elaborate tale of a noble Saxon Prince who had wandered for a year and a day on the Primrose Path in the Land of the Lily Lea. He had there met a Faerie Queen who then bore her as a result of a forbidden love across the worlds. It may have been a complete fabrication, she supposed, but it sounded far better than an ugly story of pillage, rape and disgusted disposal of the progeny nine moons later.

As the new moon approached, Cybele found her apprehension disappearing as surely as the leaves on the trees around her. She was the oldest Novice to ever enter the Temple, Jenna the healer had told her. She therefore had no reason to fear, and far more reason to celebrate. She had the mark of Ceres, and would shine bright as the Harvester Moon in the trials before her.

Annia had crawled into her bed last night, full of fear. Cybele had comforted her with kind words, but what did any of them really know of the Temple, other than what they had seen in the public ceremonies. A lot of chanting and incense and words of hope for fruitfulness. The Great Marriage of the Goddess and Her Consort, although they had never seen it. And those Priestesses who became with child would go to the Hall of Kore, returning shortly after the birth. The child would remain there until it was off the breast of the wet-nurses and of an age to enter the Hall of Eire.

Cybele worried that Annia was little more than a babe herself. But then, the years of training could be long, and by the time Annia became a Priestess, if indeed she ever did, she would be far closer to being a woman than the child who lay beside her now, whimpering in the darkness.

On the afternoon of the Crescent Moon, Annia, Jai and Cybele were taken from the hut where the lame Priest Thomias gave them instructions in letters and other worldly matters. Cybele had noticed that several of the Priests of Priapus were crippled, which would preclude a woman from ever becoming a Priestess of Ceres. But then no male- children were ever brought onto the island, and Isle-born children were few, so Cybele supposed that the Temple of Priapus had to take what it could get. Certainly, it seemed that the demands of their Temple-training were very few, and basically all of the men on the island were Priests, so clearly it was pretty hard to fail. The competition to become a Priestess, on the other hand, was very strong, and the trials to prove your worthiness were comprehensive.

Cybele's trials were about to begin.

The Priestess who led the three girls to the Hall of Priestesses wore a heavy veil, like that worn by the Priestess who had sunk the Sword into the Scabbard at the Cerealia feast. Cybele wondered if it was Ria, but when she addressed her, she was met with silence, and gestures to remove their clothing. The Priestess then left, and the three were alone in the empty building.

This hut was no larger than their previous home, with enough bedspace around the edges for about ten or fifteen, she guessed. That would mean that the Hall of Initiates must consist of more than one hut, she calculated in her usual sharp manner. After all, there were at least a hundred full Priestesses on the Isle, and about half that number in both stages of training. That would mean about twenty or thirty Initiates, and about the same number of Unsworn Priestesses. If training takes three to four years, and twice as many fail as pass... Her calculations were cut short by the entry of a group of veiled Priestesses. Or not quite Priestesses - even in the flowing robes, their bodies still had the narrow ankles and waists of youth. They were Unsworns, she knew from their light cream robes.

Cybele noticed for the first time a raised slate-lined pit beside the fireplace, which tapered down to a drain leading out of the hut. It was to this that the Priestesses silently led a naked and trembling Annia. Cybele felt an aching need to protect this small hairless girl, whose chest was still flat as a boy's. But the women were gentle with her, and filled soft cloths with warm scented water from a heavy iron pot beside the fire and scrubbed her tiny body. When they had lathered her body with foaming scent, they then ladled water from another pot over her to wash off the suds. To Cybele's amazement, the water they ladled onto her disappeared out of the hut through the drain. No need to carry the soiled water out to the gardens, how astonishing!

When it was Cybele's turn, she was so intrigued with the self-draining bath that she barely noticed the hands of the women washing her. When one of them kneeled to wash her legs, the Priestess let out an exclaimed gasp and whispered, 'the Sign of Ceres'. The others also kneeled to see, gently prising apart her thighs to see the blessed mark. They whispered in hushed tones of awe. Cybele angrily thought that these girls were no older than she, what right had they to study her like an insect or a book?

When they had been washed, they were left standing naked in the room.

The large fire was burning heartily, and the evening was unseasonably warm, but Cybele could not feel comfortable unclad and vulnerable as she was. As an overly modest child, she had not joined in games of cavorting nakedness in the Hall of Eire or later in the fields.

The three of them did not speak, although they had not been forbidden to do so. They shuffled awkwardly in the deepening twilight of the uncovered door. After a time that seemed too long, Dreeana entered the hut. She wore a fine cream-coloured robe with the copper crescent brooch of an Unsworn Priestess. The fabric was so light it looked like it could not have been spun and woven by human hand. She smiled at them, but it was not a smile of recognition, it was the smile of a Priestess to three children. Cybele wondered if her friend was present, behind those dark unreadable eyes.

She had three gowns for them. All were the same size, shapeless grey shifts, of finer stuff than their children's heavy homespun, but inappropriately sized. One hung loosely on Annia like a sack on a scarecrow. Jai's was somewhat fitted, but Cybele's own squeezed her tender breasts painfully, and she writhed within it trying to make it a little more comfortable. Dreeana smiled. 'Don't worry, its not for long. The Gown of Initiation isn't usually in such demand, so you'll each need to take turns in it when the time comes.' She poured each of them a cup of warm sweet red wine from by the fire. 'Blood of the Goddess' she explained.

The sky outside was darkening quickly. Twilight was brief at this time of year, but the moon would not rise for some time. When they were dressed, Dreeana left briefly, and then returned with the others who had bathed them earlier. They were still heavily veiled, and each one was carrying a small oil-lamp which burned with three flames.

They each took a place sitting on the edge of the bed around the room, facing in toward the fire in the centre of the hut. The three girls huddled together in their clumsy grey gowns opposite the door. Dreeana sat furthest from them, and did not speak. The only light by now was from the fire and the small lamps. Cybele silently counted those present, as though she were sizing up an opponent. Including Dreeana, nine of them. Three for each initiate, three flames on each lamp, three faces to the Goddess. As they chanted, her mind floated back to her lessons with Thomias, three times three times three, twenty seven flames. She realised that time was somehow slipping, she was unable to tell minutes from hours. The flickering light, the droning chant, the heavy air, the warmed wine that tasted of spices she couldn't quite recognise. She did not feel drowsy so much as detached, as though merely bearing witness to her own experience.

She was barely aware that Annia had been led from the room by Dreeana and two other Priestesses before she slipped back into a trance. She had begun to murmur along with the others without realising. She did not resist the urge to follow the chant, and as she raised her own voice and it became lost in the communal drone, she felt herself standing up and starting to sway. Her body started to spin, turning in small circles as her feet led her in a larger circle around the fire, around the hut. She felt herself spinning faster and faster, but she felt no dizziness. Her mind was filled with images of the three faces of the Goddess - virgin, mother, crone. The circle of life - birth, growth, death, spinning, spinning, spinning, until the chanting reached a feverish pitch and then.. stopped. As suddenly as water being thrown on a fire.

Her mind and vision were sharp and clear for just an instant, but in that instant, she saw that Jai had also been taken from the room. She was alone but for three remaining Priestesses, and they were bidding her to drink another cup of wine and then follow them. She did so eagerly. The ecstasy of the dance was still whirling in her veins.

The night air was brisk and chill after the heat of the hut. Cybele breathed it so deeply that she felt the swell of her lungs stretch her ribs to their full extent. She laughed without knowing why, a full almost macabre laugh that filled the night around her and made the Priestesses who led her seem like the Initiates, and she the Goddess.

The Temple. Never before had it seemed so alive. The very stones of the foundation seemed to shimmer. Perhaps it was the wine, but no. It was the earth making its power be felt by all, shaking the most solid stone as though it were soft new curds.

The Unsworn Priestesses who were leading her murmured to each other in awe. 'Another sign. The mark, the dance, and now the very earth moves.. What does it mean? The Goddess spoke only in whispers, and now she shouts so loud that our ears cannot hear.'

As Cybele came to the door of the High Temple, her confidence faltered slightly. The cavernous hall seemed larger than ever, with beams hewn from trees so huge that they must have been felled by the gods. She had only ever been to public ceremonies, she told herself, when the whole population of the Isle was crowded into the Temple, making it seem much smaller. Now, there were only the Priests and Priestesses present... and Annia and Jai.

How small they looked. They now wore the green-dyed gown and iron and enamel brooch of a new Initiate, but they still looked like children - stunned, lost and alone. Cybele felt strangely distant from them, as though she were no Initiate herself, but a seasoned Priestess controlling the whole ritual around her. She wondered vaguely if they too had felt this, before the spell had been broken and they had returned to find how little they had truly been changed by the Initiation.

She saw Dreeana beside Annia, with her hand on the young girl's shoulder. Cybele realised that officiating at Annia's Initiation was probably Dreeana's own final rite of passage, and that she would become a full Priestess on this night and get her gown of deepest blue and the silver sickle brooch. She was glad that her friend's long journey to become a Priestess had ended as her own begun.

The three Priestesses who had led her to the Temple now melted away like the last snows in Spring. She was left standing in the doorway. This building, unlike the others on the island, was rectangular. The great door through which she had entered was made of wood with hinges, unlike the heavy curtains of other doorways.

Far down the other end of the long building was a stone altar, stained with dark blue and mulberry red. Behind the altar was a huge tapestry, covered with delicately embroidered pictures of every beast and bird on the Goddess's earth.

There were two stone figures on each side of the altar, which stood as high as a child of ten. One was Sheila-na-Gig, a woman with huge breasts and a swelled pregnant belly, holding her most private parts open. Her eyes were rolled up to the sky, but her wide smile made it clear that it was not with pain. On the other side was the Herm, whom Cybele had thought dwelt only in the Temple of Priapus. These figures were always covered during the public ceremonies, although she had seen smaller versions of them both before as common fertility charms in the farmhouses of the layfolk. The Herm had a huge phallus with a split tip, which he held with his tiny hands as though it were nothing out of the ordinary. Like the Sheila, he wore a wide grin and had his eyes rolled in pleasure.

The number of Priests and Priestesses who ringed the walls were roughly even. The Priests all wore brown robes, whether they were boys of twelve or greybearded elders. They appeared to have no rank, all were the same under the rites of Priapus, she assumed. The Priestesses, on the other hand, were grouped definitely by status - the Green and Enamel of the Initiates; the Cream and Copper of the Unsworn; the Blue- black and Silver of the full Priestesses; and the rare Purple and Gold of the silver- haired Old Ones who could soar out of their bodies in a trance.

There were two huge, beautiful ornate lamps burning on stones beside the altar, three- flamed lamps for the Goddess. They burned with richly scented oil that filled the Temple with the perfume of night jasmine and roses and cedarbark.

Instead of the droning chant that had so entranced her earlier, there was a high clear singing from the Initiates and Unsworn Priestesses. Their voices sailed about the beams of the ceiling like nightingales in flight, pursued by a Priest's strong merlin. She looked about the room to find the source of the merlin that followed the nightingales so swiftly but in a deeper tone.

It was a Priest whom she had not seen before, younger than herself she guessed. Wouldn't she know him from the Hall of Eire? He was not so different in age to her, and there were so few boys on the Isle. But then she had never paid much attention to any of the boys as they held court among the more numerous girls when they lived together as children. And then, when the older girls had played with the boys from the Hall of Priests, cavorting in the water's edge on long warm summer evenings, she had retreated to the furthest corner of the Isle.

She felt an unfamiliar anger in her gut when she thought of the younger girls, safely tucked in their beds tonight in the Hall of Novices, having played meaningless and playful games with this boy. Was it jealousy? He sung like a god, and she could see that everyone was rapt with his soaring voice and the ease with which he could follow the darting sopranos of the girls.

His eyes were wide and his skin as pale as a babe's. In fact, he looked strangely like a babe, or a girl, with his soft full mouth and impossibly long eyelashes. How could he be a stranger? But then it had been six long years since she had left the Hall of Eire, perhaps she had simply forgotten him. If she had listened to the girls in the Hall of Novices, then she would probably know his name, as such a youth would be prime material for their giggling gossip.

Some of them may even have coupled with him in their later Noviciate, for such things were not forbidden and he was an undeniably attractive and talented youth. In fact, if she had to make the Great Marriage, she wouldn't mind if...

Oh, dear Goddess, when is the Marriage? At the swearing of the Vow? Earlier, at the first affirmation of the path to Priestess? Or at the giving up of the Green, on Initiation? Surely every girl knows - every girl except her, Cybele. Surely someone would have told her if only she had asked. It was too late now too ask anything, too late now to waste any effort supposing anything.

From behind the large Herm and Sheila-na-Gig, a cloaked and veiled Priest and Priestess appeared. Perhaps they had been kneeling all this time behind the statues, or perhaps she had simply been distracted by the singing and her own silly wondering to notice them move into position. They were beckoning her forward now. Two of the Unsworn Priestesses who had led her here now reappeared at her sides, and reached down to pull her dull grey robe over her head, leaving her naked in the sight of all.

The Priestess came from behind the Sheila and approached her with a purple-red robe. It was not the rare and almost un-natural purple of the robes of the Old Ones, it was the familiar purple-red of the summer mulberries that the laygirls of the villages sometimes dyed their gowns with. This robe was far finer than that of any village girl, though. It had beautiful twirling patterns embroidered all over the throat in threads of gold. There were beautiful buttons of pearly shell all down its front, and they put it about her like a cloak, rather than over her head like any other gown. It was like the robe of a Faerie Queen, and the veiled Priest now offered her a golden coronet, and a bunch of lilies.

Her head was swimming with exhilaration. She tried to focus on something real - the hands of the veiled Priestess as she fumbled to attach a brooch to the gown, they were the hands which had earlier led her here. So she was to play a part in the making of an unknown Priestess, just as Annia had for Dreeana.

Yes, this veiled Priestess was more nervous than she, and was also being tested. Look, the silly thing had put a silver crescent on her rather than the iron-and-enamel of an Initiate or even the copper of an Unsworn Priestess. How could she let her know her mistake without drawing too much attention to the error? They were being tried together, it seemed only reasonable to help the other also pass this evening.

'But it is silver' she murmured as quietly as possible. But the singing had stopped suddenly, and her whisper echoed around the Temple as loudly as if she had shouted. Someone giggled, she thought perhaps it was Jai. How terrible for this poor Unsworn, now everyone would see her mistake. But then she heard the voice of the veiled Priest.

'No, there is no mistake. The Goddess has spoken clearly this evening, and we would be fools indeed to ignore her when she raises her voice to spin you like a top and shake the very ground on which we stand.'

Cybele was incredulous. Did they mean her just to have the silver brooch of the Full Priestess, or all else that went with it? She had not even been given a single test, so how could she have shown her worthiness? What of the Quest? Or the Great Marriage? This was all wrong, not what she had expected, not what had happened to the others. Who could she turn to for an answer? She looked desperately about the room, looked for a familiar face, someone of authority.

She broke away from the veiled couple and ran to Ria, but Ria sank to her knee and bent her head to Cybele. 'No, rise up Ria!' she cried. 'You are higher than I! Why would you bow to me?'

Ria did not raise her head, but she spoke with a quiet warmth. 'I always knew you were special. Did you never know? It was in the stars that a golden woman with the mark of Ceres would come to lead, and the Goddess herself sent us the signs tonight to make sure that we could not miss that it was you. It was always going to be you, Cybele, even when we didn't know it.'

'But Ria, I am so young!'

'Only last moon, you complained that you were too old to be a child.'

'But to be this? To be the Goddess on Earth?'

'We Priestesses are all at some time the Goddess, my sweet one, even the Initiates - you can ask your friends over there. It is just that you will hold the spirit of the Goddess at all times, and so you shall be our leader.'

'But what of the Priestesses and Old Ones? Whom would I usurp?' Cybele pleaded with genuine concern.

'We have had no leader for three generations, Cybele. The Old Ones are wise, yes, and you can learn much from them, but they have their own paths to fly. They cannot lead those of us who are still bound to the earth. We have been waiting for you'.

Suddenly, Cybele felt hundreds of eyes staring at her expectantly. She realised that her robe was still open at the front, revealing her nakedness. She struggled to button it herself. 'What am I to do, then?' she asked Ria quietly.

'Lead us. Do what you see is right.'

'But, I am so new here. I do not know what it is that you normally do.'

'Well, then instruct that we continue as normal, perhaps. After all, the Temple has functioned very well leaderless for fifty years, it will take as much time to get used to you as you will to it,' Ria whispered evenly.

'You have always given such sensible advise, Ria. Rise up.' She pulled Ria to her feet, and the two women smiled at each other.

Cybele turned to face the gathering. An alien confidence filled her veins, and she knew just what to do. 'Let us continue with the ceremonies!'

The gaping crowd started to hum in localised conversation, then the veiled Priestess raised her voice. 'The Swearing of the Vow by Dreeana.'

Cybele was pleased. 'Yes, Dreeana's Vow. Where is her new gown and silver sickle?' Another Priestess now moved toward the altar with a midnight blue robe draped over her arm. Yes, this and many other rites had already been planned for the night. Only her own small miracles of the spinning trance and quaking ground were unscheduled. From now on, Cybele merely had to flow with the tide until she was ready to create her own swell.

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