Chapter 9 Third Face of the Goddess on the Isle of the Moon

The knowledge had touched her when Attis recited the words to the Office of the Sword and Scabbard, the Great Marriage. The Goddess herself had had a hand in the two deaths. She was speaking to them in the voice of Hecate, the face of inevitable decay and destruction of all that has flowered and borne fruit. Virgin, Mother, Crone. The Three Faces of the Goddess.

There were many questions unanswered still, but she felt sure that her feeling was true.

How long had they lain here together? With the heavy wooden doors of her hut and the darkness of the raging storm outside, she could not tell if it were still morning, noon or early twilight. All time had suspended while she coupled with the boy who now lay beside her staring at the roof. She half thought of Cabirius. Would he understand why she had done this with his closest friend? Attis was the Consort, it was true, but this had been no ordained ceremonial coupling as they had been required to do before. This had been hard-driven passion, the exploding fire of longing and lust. And certainly, it had something to do with their mutual love for he who had not been present.

She thought of their own small trinity - She, Cabirius and Attis. So many questions unanswered there, as well. Where would it go from here? She could not begin to guess.

There was a lull in the storm, and she became aware that there was some commotion in the village outside. She reached across and pulled on a gown. Attis remained motionless, staring at the ceiling as though in one of his trances. His naked body was smeared with the blue woad crescents of a Priestess.

'I think that they have found Arithea,' she said, throwing him his own gown. 'We must play along with the pantomime. You should take care to hide those marks, I think that your fellow Priests would have some difficulty with one of their own being Goddess.'

They had left the child Arithea's small body dashed on the rocks of the northern bay, in the hope of better uncovering the deception which shrouded the death. Cybele had expected a long wait, as no-one would be walking on that wild shore in this weather. But then, perhaps many hours had since passed. Perhaps Cabirius had somehow contrived to raise an alarm without suspicion when he had left this hut. Perhaps they had been in this bed for a half-moon. Nothing seemed quite real. There was so much to understand.

Attis sat up and walked over to her wash-bowl with his gown and the Herm that they had used. He washed the woad from his body, but traced outlines remained, vague designs on his white skin. He then pulled the robe over his head.

'They will surely come for me soon. Mind you being found here as my lover as well as Consort?' she asked him.

He made no move to answer, and she realised that his attitude to her had little changed as a result of their intimacy. 'Attis, look to me.' She waited until he turned his head to her. 'How then are we to behave to each other now? Maybe as enemies no longer, but uneasy allies? Or as rivals still for Cabirius's touch?'

Attis took some time to answer her, and looked her up and down like a farmer choosing a new cow. 'Why not as lovers?' he asked, although his tone had no trace of tenderness.

'What do you mean?' she demanded.

'What I said. We could continue as lovers,' he said in an emotionless and calculated voice, as though he had been thinking on this in the time they had lain together after the coupling.

'You bear me no love, though, Attis,' she said in reply.

'What do you bear me?' he asked.

'I know not. You are a greater puzzle to me that all the Goddess's mysteries put together,' she spoke in an exasperated tone.

'That seems only fair when I am a puzzle to myself.'

'What mean you by lovers, then? You want to continue our own private ritual with you as Chosen One and me as Consort? It tastes of mockery to me,' she said. 'Somehow the once seemed to have a purpose, but.. '

He interrupted her to finish her words. 'it would mean nothing to do it again. I know. It was my Initiation only. I planned it not then, and I would seek it not a second time, unless the Goddess commands of me so again.'

'The Goddess told you what to do?' she asked disbelievingly.

'Yes, when I knelt at your shrine.'

'You say it as though the Goddess speaks to you often!'

'She does,' he said simply. 'Her voice is always in my head.'

'She speaks to you in words, as though she were a person in the very room?' Cybele asked sceptically.

'You are Chosen One, does she not speak to you?' he asked.

'She directs what comes to my mind, and when I pray to her, she shows me what to do, but not in words such as you suggest. Her hand is far more subtle with me.'

'She told me that we are bonded, you and I, as Chosen Ones together.'

'She told you this? What of our love for Cabirius? Had she any wise words on this subject? Or what of tomorrow's weather? Will this winter be mild and will the crops grow tall?' Her tone was one now of open sarcasm.

'You may mock, Cybele. Of course Ceres does not waste on me words of petty augury. But she has told me clearly that we are bonded, you and I, as Chosen Ones together. I will press you not. We are both her true instruments, and she would not contradict her own instruction. I need only wait for her to tell you in your own more subtle language.'

'You sound very sure of yourself.'

'She has talked directly in my ear for these four years, and I understand her more well than I understand any mortal.'

'Well, if she speaks to you not of this subject, tell me what you think of it yourself: What of Cabirius?'

'Let him look to us bonded and suffer as he was willing to cause my suffering.'

'We are very different tools of the Goddess, Attis. I know not your hardness, nor your hunger for retribution.'

'But you know not my intensity, nor my depth. She needs us both if she is to survive even one more generation. Do you still think me a boy, Cybele?' he asked, as she had earlier that day called him so.

'No, Attis, I do not. But I now think you frightening if you wished me harm. Is that a more accurate opinion?'

They were interrupted by a sharp call from the door. It was Kelle. 'Chosen One ! You must come quickly ! There has been a terrible accident !'

'Enter, Kelle,' Cybele called back. The door had been left unbolted when Cabirius had taken flight a lifetime ago. The door burst open, and the panting Novice entered. She looked at Cybele, then at Attis, then back to Cybele. Attis deliberately turned to the wash-bowl and rinsed the Herm, although he had already done so and now merely wanted to confirm to Kelle that he was an intimate visitor in this hut. Kelle seemed to forget her errand for a heartbeat, but then came quickly to her senses.

'There has been an accident,' she panted between gulping breaths, 'Little Arithea. She ran from class this morning to hide - she was a new Novice and still fretting for the Hall of Eire - and when the storm died, and we went to seek her, she was found on the rocks of the northern shore.'

'Is she injured badly?' Cybele asked, although she knew already the truth.

'She is... dead, most holy one.'

'Where then does she lay?'

'At the hut of Jenna the Healer, although she is well past being healed!'

'Who found her?'

'Well, we were all looking, three score of us, in every corner of the Isle. We came to call you earlier, but got no answer...'

'I must have heard you not for the storm.'

'Surely, Chosen One,' Kelle said respectfully. 'Well, each went in pairs to search the Isle, and we came upon some other sign, then two found her body - Cabirius and Thomias, methinks.'

'What mean you of another sign, Kelle?'

'Um.. I know it forbidden, but we were told to look everywhere for the child, and so I, I mean Tasma and I, went to the clearing in the west wood.'

'The ancient circle? You know you must not go there.'

'Yes, I know it is forbidden, but Arithea could have gone there for refuge in the storm, we thought.'

'Or you thought, an opportunity to see that which is not allowed.'

'But why is it not allowed? It is just an old ring of flagstones covered in grass.'

'If it is just and old ring of flagstones, then what was the sign?'

The girls eyes widened and she paused for dramatic effect. 'The blood. It was everywhere. We thought surely Arithea had been killed and the blood poured from her neck like wine.'

'What did you do, then?' Cybele asked.

'We ran back to the village in fear for our own lives and told all who we could find of our discovery.'

'And then what? Who returned there with you?'

'No-one.' Kelle said in an exasperated tone. 'By then, Arithea had been found and brought back to the village. It is true that her neck had not been cut as Tasma and I had supposed, but we still thought they would come to see the blood. But everyone said to us that we had imagined it through fear in that forbidden place in the storm. No-one would come to see. And now, the storm would have washed it all away.'

'Perhaps it was ghost-blood, Kelle,' she said supportively. 'Many generations ago, that place was used for sacrifice to Ceres. That is why it is now forbidden.'

Kelle was agog. 'They killed poor dumb beasts there?'

'Not only beasts, if you trace far enough into the past. Know you the third face of the Goddess? She once did call for the blood even of innocent babes.'

'Truly !..,' Kelle gaped.

'I will come to Jenna's hut soon. Give me time to change into a robe suitable for a ceremony, then we shall take Arithea to the Temple and pray that her spirit may have a safe journey to the Mother.'

Kelle nodded, and disappeared back out the door, leaving it wide open. Cybele walked to the door and closed and bolted it as though she had no intention of following quickly.

She turned accusingly to Attis. 'What speaks the Goddess to you now?' she demanded.

'What do you mean?'

'Cerridwen has returned. Hecate. The Third One. Don't pretend your voice would neglect to tell you such an important detail! The blood was of no phantom past. It was new and real, of that the Goddess tells me to be sure. What would we find if we went there in the next heavy storm, when there was rain enough to clear the evidence?'

'If the Goddess had spoken no such thing to you until this fancy you take now, why would she have spoken to me?' he argued.

'Because I see only her Second Face, but I am sure that she comes to you in all forms. And I grow accustomed to you evasions. You cannot lie to me, so you simply do not answer. I will ask you clearly again. Knew you that the cycle of the Goddess was returning to the Crone?'

Attis blinked at her. His eyelashes were longer than those of any girl, and they beckoned her to swim in his eyes of dark fire.She pulled herself back with a start. 'Do not use on me the sorcery of young maids. You will answer me true.'

'Then, yes. She has been trying to break through for a hundred Summers. But too much has changed, and if she insists on completing the cycle to Destroyer, then she may be destroyed herself by a world squeamish at blood and death.'

'You are for Hecate yourself?' she asked, suspending her judgement.

'No. It is better that the Goddess survives as two forms than perishes as three. The conflict that has eaten secretly at the Temple for all these generations is coming to the surface. If Hecate tries to assert her place as Goddess, the likely victor is the New God who needs no Goddess.'

'The God of the mainland? On the Isle of the Moon?'

'Think you that Gods and Goddesses know boundaries as we? The Goddess has not kept the shores free of visitors all these centuries with some invisible wall to protect her chosen followers, as you were taught to believe. Mainlanders do not come because they are convinced that on the Isle of the Moon, we drink the blood of strangers and slit babies' throats at the Harvester Moon.'

'Not only at the Harvester Moon, perhaps, but in any good storm,' Cybele gloomily suggested of the blood in the stone ring.

'Do not despair that all is lost, Cybele ' Attis suggested practically. 'If you and I can work together, it is possible that we can return the Isle to another thousand seasons of Hera's rule. We are Consort and Chosen One working together for the first time in generations. That at least should be in our favour.'

He approached her and held out both his hands. She took them reluctantly, but then managed a small smile.

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