Chapter 14 Wanderer on the Isle of the Moon

Two long seasons passed, and it was full Summer and headed for the Harvester Moon, when crops were cut late into the night by the eerie light of the Full Moon. This was the time of the most joyous of the Goddess Ceres's festivals - Cerealia. Wild bonfires would be lit and even the lay-villagers would participate in rites to give thanks for the fertility of the harvest. But this was no time of thanks to the Goddess for Cybele.

Cabirius, whom she loved, was still a prisoner for the crime of rape. His supposed victim had pointed no accusing finger, but then Kelle wandered still like a dumb and senseless beast.

After so many moons of confinement, Cabirius was becoming in many ways like her, staring blankly at the peat walls of the hut when Cybele tried to speak with him. The bond between Cybele and Attis had changed, without Cabirius in the triad as her gentle second lover. Attis showed her no more affection than before, which was little enough, but she craved it more and more. This made her increasingly more impatient with his mockery of her sensitivities and his cold hard assessment of Cabirius's situation as hopeless.

The coupling between them, however, had lost none of its intensity, and now they were spending even more time together in violent embrace. Cabirius, at least, was not likely to discover their secret now, from his remote place of confinement.

Attis had suggested to her one last avenue of investigation for Cabirius's release - Kelle herself. Pointless, Cybele had said, when the girl now had less intelligence than a newborn lamb. Although he was maddeningly vague as always, Attis had then explained that he meant she should look instead to Kelle's past. But nothing more. Why did he tell her some, but then not tell her all? She swung from trusting him completely to not at all, and back again. Cybele took hold of this last hope, and pieced together what she knew of Kelle. They had been Novices in the same class for several years, and Kelle had been an outgoing and boisterous pupil, but Cybele had known little of her personally. Cybele herself had been quiet and studious, so she was not in the confidence of one so popular as Kelle.

Kelle had long teased Cabirius as Teacher, she remembered, but he had been confidently skilful at controlling those who caused disruption in class. Although, she had heard rumour that in that Winter, his classes had had little discipline and Thomias had been taking measure to remove him as Teacher for awhile, even before the crime.

A memory came to her dim and vague. A small incidental connection between Kelle and Thomias. She had seen them together somewhere, she thought, when her mind had been filled with more serious matters. She asked Attis if he would have some idea of where or why Kelle could have been with the old Teacher outside the classroom. He replied that nothing would surprise him, that the manipulative little bawd would take anyone to her bed for her own ends.

His bitterness at the now mute and helpless girl had shocked her, but then she had remembered that Attis had some more intimate experience of Kelle before the crime. The night of the Great Marriage, it had been an eager Kelle who had taken Attis unwilling in the Trial of Priapus. Now that she thought to it, something of significance came to her - Kelle had been present at that ceremony, but had never been more that a Novice. Only those Initiated were allowed in the Temple in that most secret of holy ceremonies, and Kelle had been there in the green gown of a child for all to see, yet gone unchallenged. Why? She thought she had even spoken to the girl herself and thought not to ask why she was there.

It was as though some charm had been placed over all, or perhaps it was simply that the events of that night were so strange that a Novice's presence drew little notice. Ioin, failing as Consort, then running out into the night. Thomias's open challenge of her own authority, the Trial for new Consort, and then the Great Marriage itself. No wonder one girl in a robe of the wrong colour was not noticed. She had, after all, been no younger than many others present, and she had sought Attis with the confidence of a Priestess.

Cybele wondered if she could induce Attis to discuss that night. He had been in a deep trance for much of the Trial and afterward, but he could well have some memory of significance from earlier in the ceremonies.

She asked him not when they were abed, as he grew even less receptive to discussion there. Their coupling was always the hard rutting of beasts of the forest, and felt just as impersonal. He was truly the King Stag, despite his incongruously young body. Cybele waited until they were walking in the forest on a moonless night to raise the subject. She had taken his hand, and he had surprisingly not pulled it away, but allowed her to walk with him.

They often walked in the forest when there were none to see. The King Stag roaming his territory, she thought. But it was their time of most intimacy, as he shed his cloak of hard disregard at the forest's edge.

'Why did Kelle choose you for the Trial?' she asked him gently. She felt his hand tense slightly in hers at the unwelcome question.

'I know not.'

'Surely you must have some thought on the subject? Can you think of no reason?' she urged tenderly.

'Perhaps she lusted for my body,' he offered sarcastically.

Cybele shook her head. 'You cannot dismiss my question so easily, Attis. Priests may well have sought your then-boyish frame, but I think not a girl such as Kelle. Grown men were more to her taste.' Attis stopped walking and released her hand, then turned to lean against a large oak. He turned to her with his now well-muscled arms crossed in front of him. She smiled at him in the faint moonlight.

'Yes, I know you have the build more and more of the Stag you represent. But it was nine moons ago, and you were little more than a child then.' She ran her hands over his arms, which were naked in his light summer robe. She felt his manhood swell against her thigh, but he made no move, and she pulled away. She wanted not to lose this moment's tenderness for the sake of yet another impersonal act of passion. Although, they had never coupled in this place. She wondered if he would be any different here in this wood, where he felt so comfortable with himself. At this moment, though, it was not worth the risk - he seemed close to telling her what she so wished to know.

'Why did she choose you, Attis?'

'I told you, I know not for sure.' He turned from her, and in one quick movement which she could not quite follow in this dim half-light, he had leaped up to sit on a lower branch of the ancient tree. He swung one leg over the branch to anchor himself, then offered his hand to Cybele, to pull her up onto the limb with him. She took it, and he swung her up to sit beside him. It was so strange, she thought. In the nine moons of their coupling, he had never shown her one heartbeat of friendship, and now he was suddenly making a display of what approached affection.

'But then, you have some guess,' she continued.

He nodded. 'I have thought on it long myself, and can think of several reasons, but each seems to contradict the other.'

'What mean you?' she asked.

He answered her with another question. 'Think you she meant me to win or lose the Trial?'

Cybele was intrigued. 'I know not. She sought you so eagerly, but that could have been for either reason - to help you to win, or to prevent your being chosen by another who may have helped you to do so.'

'I do not intend it as a boast, Cybele, but think you that she looked like she was trying to help me win during the Trial?'

Cybele laughed. 'No, certainly not. I'm sure no other could have lasted as long with such attentions. The other contestants had far more gentle encouragement, whereas she suckled you so fiercely that any other would have spilt in the blink of an eye.'

'That was what I thought at the time. And her hands were covered with some unfamiliar salve that burned my skin like pepper in the mouth. I could have spilt in no time, as you say. I thought then that she had chosen me in order to be sure that I would lose, which is why I made myself hold when I had no desire to win the contest anyway.'

'I would trust no other as Consort, so I am well glad that you did. But then Kelle also seemed overjoyed at your victory - why?'

'I think that was her own pride overshadowing her instruction to make me lose.'

'Instruction? But none could have known before then that there would even be a Trial.'

'But think you who was present. And who was most reluctant for a Consort he had not picked himself...'

'Thomias ! Of course.'

Attis swung one leg back over the limb, to dangle them like a mischievous child swinging in an apple tree. He changed the track of inquiry. 'But I could be imagining intrigue where there is none. There is another far simpler explanation.'

'What is that?' Cybele asked.

'Small and petty personal revenge.'

'Against you? Had you dealings with her before? She seems even less your type than you hers!'

'I had met her before, briefly. But it was not me against who the revenge was intended.'

'Who, then?'

'I have told not of it before, because it would seem all he more incriminatory, perhaps even to you.'

'Cabirius, then? Had he coupled with her?'

'Yes. And she assumed me to be also his lover, and wished to make him jealous by forcing her attentions onto me in front of his very eyes.'

'Why did she not seek out Cabirius himself, then, as partner for the Trial, if it was as simple as that? One would think she would have grasped at the opportunity.'

'Perhaps she had not time to reach him.'

'Or perhaps she was under instruction. See, we have come full circle.'

'There is no sure answer, Cybele, or surely I would have acted on it before. There is only mystery and mystery ever deeper. And we seem to accomplish little by seeking to uncover it.'

'There is one who could answer all, if only she could speak for herself.'

'No, Cybele. Do not get false hope. It has been half a year, and she has not improved at all. She has a mind no longer, even if her lips were able to speak or her hands to write.'

He reached for her own hands, and raised them to his lips to kiss them tenderly. It was not Attis here with her in the tree, she thought, but another in his body. But she would complain not, as this one was so much more of what she wanted than the black-hearted companion of her bed.

'Do you ever think that perhaps it is true, that Cabirius was responsible, and that the others who all believe his guilt are right?' she asked.

'Do not give in to despair, Cybele. I have thought not once that he would have caused her pain, beyond that which she craved anyways. He was not the gentle lover with her that you have described, but I do not believe that he would have caused her any fear. They coupled much as we do, without tenderness or reserve.' It was odd that as he said this, he held her hands with such tenderness that they ached.

'How know you this? Were you too a participant in their play?' she asked without judgement.

He shook his head softly. 'Only an accidental onlooker. I know that he hated himself for using her that way, so perhaps that is why he has accepted punishment for her current state. I believe that he has always been fearful of his own passion, or else I would have had him to my own bed easily, before ever he met you.'

They sat for a time quiet in the tree, and he stroked her hand gently. 'Who are you?' she whispered, even though there was no other to hear in the whole wood. He smiled without looking to her.

'Myself.'

'You are not the Attis I know.'

'Like you not this Attis, then?'

It was her turn to smile. 'Too well, that I would never leave this tree,' she breathed. He turned to her and kissed her on the lips. A kiss so light and gentle, but it sent a fire through her that she had never known, even in her most wild abandon with him.

'Sing to me,' she asked him quietly.

'Here? I have not sung since I became Consort. I would feel a fool,' he laughed, with a self-consciousness that she had never before seen in him.

'Not a fool. We are birds here in this tree. Can a bird feel foolish?'

'Who can know? But if you promise not to laugh at me, I will sing to you and to the birds.'

'I have heard you sing but once before, and you were more bird than person then, even though you were not in a tree. I would not laugh at you.'

He smiled and started to sing softly a hymn to the Goddess. As he slowly raised the level of his voice, she heard it take flight from his body and float through the canopy of the wood. A merlin, she had thought, when she first saw him and knew nothing of him but his voice. A falcon on the wing. Now he was more a haunting mournful bird of the night. She was entranced, and when he finished the song, she could hear that all of the noises of the wood had stopped, as thought the very leaves of the trees had paused to listen to him sing. They sat then again in silent contemplation, holding each other's hands in the deepening darkness. There was a soft sound below them, and a figure floated past, gentle as a ghost. It was no ghost, though, but Kelle, wandering in the night.

'Kelle...' Cybele called, but she did not even break her step.

'She hears you not,' Attis said tenderly. She disappeared into the distance as lightly as she had come, and left not even a print from her step.

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