Chapter 3 Shadows on the Isle of the Moon

She strode through the sharp frosted morning air to the empty shell of the Hut of the Chosen One. This was to be her home when it was completed. Cybele, first leader of the Temple of Ceres in a living memory, was keen to get started on her mission.

She had felt a little cheated, being Chosen by Ceres before she had even had the chance to complete a quest. She felt the need somehow to prove her worthiness, even though there were none who challenged her right to lead.

Having missed the years of training and ritual through which other Initiates must pass, Cybele felt she had much to learn. She did have some teachers, however. Her childhood friend, Dreeana, had been sworn as a Priestess on the same night as Cybele herself, and was now keen to share with her the experiences of her time as an Initiate and an Unsworn Priestess. Cybele had longed to ask her friend of the mysteries earlier, but as an uninitiated Novice, Dreeana had not been permitted to tell her anything. Now, they had long conversations of where Dreeana explained each ritual eagerly and in great detail.

Although Dreeana told her of her own Initiation with a mulberry-stained Herm, and a score of other secret ceremonies, Cybele felt that there was still much that Dreeana did not know. She had also spoken with Ria, an older Priestess who had been like a mother to her and the other Novices. But Ria seemed to also have only a limited knowledge of their own Temple of Ceres, and even less knowledge of the Temple of Priapus.

She had determined that she would speak to some of the Old Ones and the Priests of Priapus, but when she asked them direct questions, each seemed to claim to have only what knowledge they needed to play their own part, or else answered her in vague and intangible terms.

She could not even discover how decisions had been made before she became leader of the Temple. For example, who decided when it was time to procure more young girl- children from the mainland, and who was responsible for their ruthless indoctrination? Why were there no boy-children so procured? Why was the path of the Goddess so much more difficult than that of her Consort? She supposed it had to be, as she had never heard of the Isle-born boys failing to become a Priest of Priapus, and yet only the most worthy of women could become Priestesses.

It was as though she were being expected to read a book through a heavy veil, or swim without disrobing. All on the Isle were willing to follow her instruction, it was true, but how could she properly instruct them when the world around her still felt strangely controlled by formless others?

Well, it had only been two weeks, and perhaps she was expecting to know too much too soon. After all, she had not even been a Priestess for a full lunar cycle yet. The full moon approached, when finally she would witness the Great Marriage of the Goddess and her Consort. The other rites with the stained Herms as god bared little significance in comparison to that of the coupling of real godflesh with the Goddess.

She had chosen Dreeana to be the Goddess at the full moon fires. It was probable that many of the Priestesses thought she herself would take the role, as like Dreeana she was a new full Priestess. But then, somehow in the improvised making of Cybele as Ceres' highest Priestess, she had failed to be Sworn to the Goddess, or even Initiated. Of course, as all present had believed that she was the Goddess herself in earthy incarnation, such fealty was considered pointless. But as a result, Cybele felt that something was missing.

She had still not determined even what colour robe to wear. They had given her the Silver Sickle brooch rather than the gold, as only Old Ones wore the gold and to be a Old One, you had to live beyond the final flux. In rank, she was higher herself than the Old Ones, but then in some ways, they were no longer of the earth, so her leadership meant little to them. They spent their days in pursuit of their own spiritual truths, and at night, they could rise out of their bodies to fly among the stars. They were very wise, but had little reason to share their wisdom as their life was now their own and their days of tending the Temple had ended. They could come and go as they pleased, and very rarely attended any ceremonies.

As her old robe of Noviciate had been discarded, and she had no other, she still wore the Gown of Initiation which had been placed upon her when she became a Priestess. It was very beautiful, embroidered finely in gold and silver threads, but it was mulberry- dyed, which was inappropriate for a full Priestess, and inappropriate for a virgin not yet Initiated. There were so many contradictions in it all that her mind swam in circles.

Something so simple as what to wear could not be that difficult. What had the previous Chosen One worn? Had she only had one robe, or various different ones for different occasions? This got her thinking of her predecessors. Who were they? Had there always been long times with none Chosen so that the Temple had to be ruled by mysterious council from within? Or had something happened to break a long chain? More questions which none would or could answer, she thought. Finally, she thought of the Priest Cabirius. Like her other teacher Thomias, Cabirius was wise. Where Thomias was old and cautious, however, perhaps Cabirius could be persuaded to reveal what he knew of the Isle's past. He was forever writing in great thick books himself, so it followed that others had done the same in the years before, and he should have access to such books.

As Ceres' Chosen One, she felt achingly conspicuous. Where before she had wandered the island easily without so much as a blink from others, everywhere she went now Priests, Priestesses and even layfolk bowed their heads to her in respect. There was no way that she could contrive to simply happen to meet Cabirius, so she had to think of some other way. She returned to the Temple which was her temporary home until her own hut was completed, and called to her one of the Initiates, the quiet young Annia.

The poor child seemed in awe of her now, when only days before they had been equals in the Hall of Novices. Of course, as she was living in the High Temple of Ceres itself, and sleeping behind the very altar, she conceded that it could be a little imposing for the girl.

Cybele told Annia that she wished to meet with Cabirius. He was an attractive young man, and as Novices they had all longed to be with him alone after classes. None of the Novices had ever been with him in the way of the flesh, however, so perhaps he was bound to a trial of celibacy. She told Annia that now she had been Chosen, perhaps she would be more able to coax the modest Cabirius to affirm his manhood with her. Annia agreed to fetch him, with a small shy smile.

As she waited, Cybele thought that her ruse was not so far from the truth. Cabirius was indeed a beautiful man of quiet depth and careless beauty. Despite the titterings of the girls when he gave their lessons, he seemed unaware of the appeal of his perfect face and tall lithe frame, and buried himself in reading when he could have pursued the teachings of the body.

She wondered if it were right to use her new-found power in this way, and determined that she would assure him that once alone in the room, they were no longer Priest and the Chosen, but only a man and a woman.

She poured a half-cup of strong red wine from a flask, and swallowed it one draught.

There was a soft call from behind the heavy wooden door which had been left slightly ajar. 'Umm.. Your holiness..?' Annia seemed unsure how to address her. Cybele emerged from behind the curtain and looked across the Temple to the door.

'Yes, Annia, enter. Come in.' Cybele tried to be as gentle as possible with the child. The situation was so new to all of them, and no-one seemed to know the rules. Annia entered, followed by Cabirius in his heavy brown robe and with a small book under his arm. Cybele wondered if this book was for her, or merely something secure for the man to hold onto. He seemed as nervous as the child.

'Cabirius..,' Annia announced awkwardly. Cybele smiled.

'I know,' she said. Annia stood looking a little stunned. 'You may go, Annia.' The girl scampered out of the door as quickly as a rabbit, leaving Cabirius standing alone by the door in the huge cavernous Temple.

'Greetings, teacher,' she said in a mischievous tone. He looked decidedly uncomfortable, so she approached him across the room and offered him her hand. He bent to his knee and bowed his head.

'Chosen One..,' he murmured. She gently shook her head and held her his chin up to face her.

'No, call me by my name if you remember it, Cabirius, and I shall call you by yours. Stand please. I am the same girl who sat in your class only a moon past.' Cabirius rose to his feet, and she realised how tall he was, almost a head taller than her. And she was taller than most women. Never had she stood so close to him, and she felt her breath deepen. She could not let herself forget that she had called him here for intelligence, not for this.

'But you are now more than that girl, you have been chosen by Ceres,' he said, his familiar voice resonating in the empty hall.

'I have worn the mark since birth. The other signs were simply to assert whatever birthright the Goddess gave me. Am I really so different to your quiet clumsy pupil of weeks ago?' she asked.

He smiled. 'Cybele, you were never clumsy. You would have been the brightest pupil in the class if only you would have let yourself shine.' She was close enough to feel the heat of his own breath in the openness of the Temple.

'It is cold here, come and sit with me in the room behind the altar. It is small, but there is a fire and it is warm.'

He allowed himself to be lead by the hand to the nook behind the altar. This was usually a place for storing the items used in the rituals, the spare robes and Herms and such. It had been cleared now, and there was a wide soft bed and a table with stools beside a fireplace that looked particularly out of place in this most holy of buildings. He could not help thinking that her little place looked more like a small farm hut than a room of the High Temple.

'Yes, it is homely, isn't it?' she asked, as though she had stolen his very thought. 'Perhaps you can see me now as a person, not a Goddess.' He looked at the ground again, and she felt a veil fall over his mind. She wondered if he thought her blasphemous, and she asked him so.

'How could you insult the Goddess when you are she? Whatever you do and say is borne of her, and so could be of no insult,' he spoke in his usual serious tone.

Cybele laughed. 'So you think? Yes, I like that explanation. You are very wise, Cabirius, and good counsel. That is what I wish - for you to be my counsel.'

Cabirius stammered. 'Me? But why not Thomias, or one of the others? I am only young and still have much to learn myself.'

Cybele smiled at him. 'With the hours that you read, I have no doubt that you have already learned as much as other men who have lived to old age. And Thomias is closed to me. Like most of the Priests, he feels me a threat. But I do not want to change the way of things, only to know. Besides, Cabirius, I like your company.' To this, he blushed. 'Tell me of yourself' she asked gently.

'There is little to tell. I am like most Priests in all ways. Isle-born, Temple-raised. I have no great talents, and simply serve the Goddess and her Consort as I am instructed.'

She reached over to him and touched her hand under his chin. Cabirius did not flinch, but raised his eyes to look directly into hers for the first time. 'You have talents, Cabirius, be sure of that,' she told him. 'And your book-learning is the least of it.' She stood up from her place on the other side of the small wooden table, leaned across it and kissed him fully on the mouth.

'No,' he said hoarsely 'I cannot. I will be your counsel if you really wish it, but I can not be your consort.'

She sat down heavily, feeling as though she had been winded. Was she really so repulsive to him?

He realised her distress, and tried to explain. He roughly grabbed her hand under the small table and pushed it to his own groin. She could feel his swollen manhood through his cassock. 'Its not that I do not wish it.,' he whispered in a desperate tone.

'Then why?' she hissed to him harshly.

'It is not for me to touch you. You are for another, and none of us can have you but him,' he said with a little control returning to his voice.

'The god? Don't be foolish. Most girls have lost their maidenhead long before meeting the Herm-god at Initiation.'

'No. Well, yes. The god, but not in the way of the others. You are Ceres, and your Consort has been Chosen as surely as yourself.'

'What do you mean, Cabirius? Speak to me in real terms, not in terms of the spirits. Who is the Consort?' she demanded.

'I have said too much already,' he said, draining of all colour.

Her grey-green eyes filled with fire. 'If I am really the Goddess, how can you keep knowledge from me? Do you not serve me above all others, even above your own precious Priapus?'

'Yes, but there are things of which we are told never to speak. If they are spoken, then the Goddess herself will shower wrath upon us,' he explained urgently.

'Am I the Goddess or not? If not, then why do you not taken me as a woman, here and now?' She had pushed the small table aside and reached down and pulled his cassock up to his chest, revealing his nakedness beneath. He stared at her wide-eyed. She dropped to her knees and took his throbbing phallus in her mouth.

'Oh, God of the Temple, oh, have mercy... oh.... oh.... ' He could not move as her golden hair brushed his thighs and she sucked heartily on his member. Reasons to stop her seemed to have disappeared from his mind altogether. After all, this would not affect her own maidenhood, and he had protected his own virginity thus long for no good reason. Oh, yes.

He spilled into her mouth quickly, and let out a tortured groan. She choked slightly, but swallowed his seed.

He was immediately remorseful, and apologised to her, pulling her up from his red and softening phallus which she had continued to suck.

'Why should you be sorry? You cannot question the will of the Goddess,' she said deeply. She kissed him again on the mouth, and he tasted his own seed on her breath. She was rubbing his member, and to his amazement it immediately began to harden again. He kissed her deeply, his tongue licking at her own, hungrily taking back his own seed, warm and salty in her mouth.

'The Goddess wants Priapus to break down the door of her maidenhead,' she whispered.

'I am not the God,' he said, although it clearly wounded him that this was so.

'Then who is?' she asked quietly. 'Who is the Consort, Cabirius?'

Suddenly, it came to him clearly that this had been her intention all along, to probe him for the secrets of the Priests. He pushed her away. 'You want my counsel, Cybele? Leave well alone what secrets your Goddess does not tell you.'

He felt used, and pulled down his robe, rising to his feet. But his member still ached for her touch, and it was difficult to tear himself from her when every fibre of his body wanted to enter and thrust into her like a rutting stag. It was a human urge, though, and there was no hand of the gods in it. He would be filled with regret forever if he gave in to it. 'I must leave. I am sorry, Cybele, but I cannot tell you what you want to know.' He hurried from the room without looking back.

Cybele climbed to her feet. She felt abandoned - well, she was abandoned, after all. She wiped a trickle of his seed from the side of her mouth. It was sweet and salty, and she had not expected the explosion of it into her mouth. After all, a Herm did no such thing, but then a Herm could not get a woman with child. This must be the seed with which a child is made in the womb. She wondered if the seed could travel from her mouth through her blood to get her with child. But then, if it was so, he would not have been so reluctant to couple with her, as what they had already done would have meant the same thing.

She gagged a little as the seed refused to leave her throat, and then drank some wine from the flask which had fallen to the ground.

What did Cabirius mean, that her Consort had been chosen? Was she to have one mate, like the albatross? Or did he mean that the Priests chose their own vehicle for the god as she had chosen Dreeana as Goddess at the next full moon fires? The Priests seemed to have no hierarchy like the Priestesses, but then she knew so little of what went on in their own Temple. Perhaps they had their own leader who disguised himself with the robes of the rest.

Cabirius's body had been clean and unadorned, so he could not have recently been painted with the woad serpents of Priapus. All Priestesses but those not yet Sworn wore the symbols of Ceres, freshly painted in blue at each ritual where they coupled with the god's Herm. Initiates wore the same symbols in mulberry-stain, but these came off at the next washing.

Priapus's symbol was the snake, coiling around some of the Priest's wrists, and probably their phalluses. It was so on the Herms of ritual, so it was likely to be so on the flesh-and-blood Priests who coupled with Priestesses in the Great Marriage.

Her first witness of the Great Marriage would be soon. The full moon was the time of this coupling, as that was when the Priestesses were at their most fertile, having had their flux at the time of the crescent moon. Her friend Dreeana would be the Goddess, and the Consort would be one of the Priests. She wondered who it would be - clearly not Cabirius, the poor reluctant creature. Perhaps Ioin, or even Thomias.

She had not known who held the Herm for the Initiations and Vows at the recent ceremonies of the crescent moon. He had been heavily veiled, as had the Priestess who stood with him. His voice was deep in ceremony, so she could not tell if it was familiar. He had even worn a heavy cloak which had hidden his build, but from the height she knew it not to be Oannes, who was smaller than she herself. He had been tall, that much was certain.

She wondered if the Priests would accept her authority were she to choose the Consort as she had chosen Dreeana. It seemed unlikely, given Cabirius's response to her attempt to choose even her own consort in him.

It seemed to make sense that like the Priestesses, the Priests took it in turn to be the god, perhaps relying on some small sign or auger to decide who was next.

There were so many things she wished to know. She went to the washing bowl on the sill beside her bed, and splashed water over her face and throat. Yes, she could still taste Cabirius's seed in her mouth, despite the wine. It was strangely unpleasant now that her passion had cooled, and she cupped the water into her mouth to wash it away.

She smoothed her long hair back off her face, and thought vaguely it was time to have the locks which fell over her eyes cut back.

She could hear a sound of hammering outside, and she thought that it must be the laywomen working on her own hut. It would be a relief to be out of this Temple, which seemed so hollow and forbidding when there was no ritual taking place.

As she tidied the things which had fallen on the floor when she had pushed the table aside, she found the book that Cabirius had been carrying. It was no larger than her hand, and filled with a script so hurried and tiny that she could barely read it. She recognised it from lessons as Cabirius's own hand. Perhaps it was meant to be copied out more properly later, and was written in this messy form to keep pace with ideas as they flowed from his mind.

She sat on a stool at the table and began to read.

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