*

Debts Discharged

by Sam Crain

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“She’s the sense she was born with, as any canny broker would see.” It was long past sundown, and I was not supposed to be listening.

“You are right, husband. But only think: allow her sense—and the rest of her—to ripen, and she will fetch yet more.”

“Enough to cover her food and clothes and nurse from now til then? And what of what we owe?”

Nurse had put me to bed long since, but I had wanted a glimpse of my lady mother, if only silhouetted by the oil lamp, and so I had crept to their door. Hearing them haggle over me, my knees went weak, and I prayed. Already I had learnt that the Lady Athena was the goddess of wisdom and the law. It was wisdom I needed then, so I might learn what to do. There was no artistry about my prayer, then: it was wrung from heart and guts as a prayer ought to be:

Lady Athena, tell me what I must do. My parents mean to sell me to slavers. Help me, goddess, please!

I returned to my chamber. It was a hot summer’s day, yet I shivered under my coverlet with fear of discovery on the one hand and of abandonment on the other. Goddess, please!

(they are not your true parents, child. your parents died of plague while you were too young to remember it.)

I heard the voice somewhere between my mind and my ears, as if she had whispered from one to the other, and I held still under my covers to listen.

(you must find the temple. the priestesses will shelter you there.)

I felt her voice leave me, and I went limp as if my cords had all been cut. Cords. They would bind me with those to take me for a slave, for I was surely too small to chain—

The Lady had told me to find the temple, but I could not go now, in the dark of the night. I must wait for morning.

Your parents are dead. This should have made me sad, young as I was, but all I could find was relief that the two voices that had weighed my worth in cold silver edged in darkness did not belong to my father and mother—that I was freed thus from any duty I might have owed them otherwise.

Father. Mother. I knew not how to pray for them yet, except to whisper silently, May you find peace in the Kingdom of the Dead.

The Woman sent me next day with the servant to fetch back fish and olive oil for supper. “It will be good practice for you,” she said, feigned ignorance of her meaning, holding fast to lent scraps of knowingness and of courage. I followed the old servant down the streets of stone and heard her groan—she had rheumatism, so that walks of any distance were a plague to her, even with the hot breath of summer wafting from the street stones. The fishmonger was in one corner of a square. As the servant inspected his offerings, I peered around, spotting a narrow lane that led out of sight and uphill. The temple on the hill I would have to reach, and before dark. As the old servant paid down her coin and accepted fishes wrapped in river reeds, I broke into a run, my sandaled feet quiet on the smooth stone. I heard my name from her mouth just once as I slipped away: “Medusa!”

Through the narrow alleyway and up the hill I ran. I came barely to the waist of the some men I passed, so it stood to reason they’d no glance to spare for me. The temple gleamed in my mind before it touched my eyes, and I dodged men, women, and the occasional donkey-cart. My sandals slapped the street in time with my heartbeat, never halting. But there were other children running here and there, and to an outside eye, an undiligent one, I looked no different from any of the urchins who reveled in the joys of sun and fresh air and honest, uncomplicated exertion.

The hill of our acropolis was a hard climb for one so small. I would have been weary, but fright spurred me on until I was in sight of our temple to Athena.

Women in white garments tied with leather cord stood to either side of the temple’s entrance. I saw long knives at their waists and fear pressed chill fingers to heart and skin both.

“Lost, are you, young one?” The woman who spoke had a startlingly deep voice.

“No, priestess.” I ducked my head and panted to catch my breath.

“Why then do you come? You would make an offering to the goddess all alone?”

“The Lady bade me ask for sanctu—”

“Sanctuary?” the priestess’s eyes sharpened, her brows rising. I nodded. “Which lady bade you, child?”

“The Lady Athena.”

Another priestess had come. “Is all well, my sister?” The first priestess stared hard at me. “This is no prank from you?”

“No, lady. I must have sanctuary, please.

“Very well. I will take you to the High Priestess of our temple.” I bowed to her. “Never mind that. Come,” said the deep-voiced priestess. The other remained as door-ward.

The High Priestess was quite old, even when I met her. She wore her hair half-down, the other half tied behind with a leather cord. Her hair was almost all grey, with white strands as common as black. One of her eyes was milky white, but the other burned brown-black out of her lined face.

“What is this?”

“The child says the Great One spoke to her and bade her come to us for sanctuary.”

“Hmm.” The Head Priestess could burn a hole in me with her gaze, I was sure. She would not need two seeing eyes for it. “This is true?”

I knelt. “Yes, lady.”

“You are no urchin, not in your fine-sewn clothes. You are well-fed. What need have you for sanctuary?”

“Last night, I heard them, planning to see me into slavery.”

“Your parents?”

I shook my head so my hair fell into my face, and I brushed it away. “They are not my true parents. My parents are dead, the Lady said.”

“Your foster-parents meant to sell you?”

“Yes.” Tears pricked at my eyes like bone needles but I could blink them back for now.

The Head Priestess’s look was hard. “That is grievous indeed. Children ought to be valued above silver.”

I shook my head again. “There were debts,” I said, and her eyes on mine sharpened. I wondered at myself: was I seeking to defend them?

“What do you know of debts, child? Or do you merely repeat the word?”

“Debts must be paid.”

The Head Priestess’s smile looked like it would cut through cloth and skin to meet bone. I shivered from my place on the cool marble floor. I waited, my knees beginning to ache.

“You are precocious enough, Medusa. But you will learn how true your words are, if you enter the temple now.” She half-cocked her head at me. “It is no easy life, to serve a goddess.”

“You will not have been accustomed to work, I think? What did you like best to do?”

“To run,” I said without hesitating. It made my face hot. “I was not supposed to.” I had run round and round the courtyard, but when the servant and I were allowed out—“ Like today, I thought.

“It has made you strong, it seems. If our goddess has indeed called you, you will follow me.”

I fell the first time I stood, my knee burning as it struck the floor. She was already halfway across the chamber, the Head Priestess was, and I ran to catch her up. We passed from the vestibule into a far larger chamber, perfectly clean, with high ceilings and floors of the same grey marble as the main temple had been. Tables of olive wood were spread. It was the noon meal, and twenty or thirty women and girls, all dressed in a simple kirtle shared bread and oil and fish and fruit—oranges that gleamed in sunlight pouring from high windows. They drank what looked like wine mixed with water.

“Your sisters. But we must have you attired properly before you meet them. Come.”

I would learn later that the Head Priestess saw to the robing of all newcomers, that she preferred to be present at the moment of transition and tied the cord for each new priestess, however young.

“This way.” Off the main hall, she led me into another long room, tidily kept but full almost to bursting. “Our principal storeroom. The people bring offerings, and what is of use is kept here, along with what we make for ourselves.”

Stopping halfway through the storeroom, she took down a small white garment from a stack of scrupulously clean linens. The cords were beside it. From there, she brought me to a small, dim room. “Put this on,” she said, laying the garment over my arm. The cord she kept. “Bring the clothes from your old life back with you.” She waited outside.

I stripped away the dove-grey tunic-robe and its wine-dark overrobe without the slightest pang of regret and snatched them up again, letting them hang wadded from my fist once I wore the white priestess-robe.

What I had judged a cord was a kind of knotted belt. This the Head Priestess bound about my waist. “Once you begin the training, you will get your knife,” she said, and she tugged my robe straight. She led me out into the courtyard. Olive trees grew there, and spring flowers were about our feet though a high wall ensured we stood in shade.

“Kneel,” she said, indicating a patch of moss. “The hair you bring with you must be offered to our goddess. It will grow again, a sign of how far you have come. When it is this length again, you will be one of us in truth and not merely in cloth.” She touched the white linen that covered my shoulder.

I knelt at once. The moss was soft and the air was warm, even in the shade. The Head Priestess cut away my hair one strand at a time, and I was lighter, freer, with it gone. Without being told, I gathered it up. A beam of sunlight fell upon the hair as we left the courtyard, coaxing a reddish hue from what was otherwise black. Straightening the hair into a smooth bundle, I followed the Head Priestess once more into the temple. At its center was a great altar of olive wood edged in gold, piled high with offerings. On one bare spot, I spread my hair.

“It is done,” said the Head Priestess, as we regained the great hall. Without another word, she swept away.

The sun had just begun to dip in the sky. My clothes were burnt and my hair shorn away, an offering now to Athena. I was a priestess-to-be. Perhaps the servant still looked for me.

A woman left her table and came to me. She was young, and her eyes, the color of new olives, seemed kind. “You have just joined us, little sister?” I nodded. “Your name?”

“Medusa.”

“I am called Annys. You must be hungry. I remember how it was my first day.” She put an arm around my shoulders, drawing me gently toward the others and out of myself. I felt like a mussel bereft of its shell, but the air on the new softness was as welcome as dangerous.

“How many summers are you, Medusa?” Annys asked.

“Nine.”

“So few. I was already twelve when I came, and now I am fifteen.”

“We’ve a new little sister now,” she said as we reached her table. “Medusa, meet the others. Several priestesses shifted on their bench so I might join them and passed loaves and oil. I broke bread with my sisters for the first time.

Annys kept me under her wing as we moved the light tables aside and one of the elder priestesses sat upon a stool to sing. Her voice had lost its smoothness, but as Annys explained in a whisper, that did not matter. It was a song all the priestesses must know. To this end, the elder paused between staves her listeners repeated her words. Another priest played the lyre to accompany.

I worked to echo the singer’s words, the lyre-notes thrilling against my ribcage.

*

That first lesson in singing was only the beginning. Priestesses did much, in all of which I was expected to take part: song-poetry, prayer, how to wield knife and spear—for our bodies were sacred to the goddess to whose wisdom we had pledged ourselves, and to that end, we learned what we might do to protect that sacredness.

There was also the more businesslike work of the temple: cleaning, cooking, and such,. Nor could the offerings on the altar be left to rot, and so we burnt them ritually when necessary. But other offerings, of grain, of olive oil, of cloth and such-like, we gave our own thanks for and made use of. These offerings fed our sisteren and clothed them.

By the time my hair had grown, I had no fear that I had made the wrong choice. I belonged with my sisters, in the service of Athena Herself, and every day that passed was a gift, bringing me closer to the woman I had always been fated to be. Athena did not speak to me directly again, but I had found my place and was content. After a time, the curiosity about me as a newcomer wore off: I belonged.

In some ways, it was like a dream. Calm study interspersed with the frantic energy of offering fires and of the occasional trance, to say nothing of our weapons practice. Annys and I remained close friends and once I was no longer relegated to children’s quarters, she and I slept near each other, that we might whisper in the smooth darkness.

I grew to think that the certainty and the peace—not stasis but stability—of that temple was my birthright. And I grew also to love the temple, its every corner and stone, and each leaf and branch of its garden. So thinking and so loving, I passed into womanhood.

*

On a day like any other in spring, a man came to our temple. At first, I thought it was to leave an altar offering, and so I did not mark him. But, his face paler than was natural, he drew near me to beg an audience with the Head Priestess.

Unsure of him but bound by our custom, I went to the Head Priestess, who swept into the temple from her own chamber. If I were less than certain, it was nothing to her skepticism. “You would speak to me?” she asked, not bothering to give this odd-looking man any honorific whatever.

“I would, priestess. I must enter the service of the Great One you yourself serve.”

“To be a priest of the goddess Athena? Why should you seek this?”

“She has chosen me. I heard her voice in my mind, bidding me come here and offer my life in supplication.”

Neither seemed to notice I stood still in a corner of the chamber, thinking hard. It was possible for Athena to choose men. I had heard the stories, sung the songs that told of such men, all favorites of hers.

“Why not go out to sing songs in her name like Tiresias?” The Head Priestess’s eyes were hard.

“I fear it is not my fate, lady.” This had some more humility in it, I thought. “I’m not much of a poet.”

“Will you put your hand in fire?” she asked. “This temple would not be standing still if I took the word of every man I spoke to.” She was deliberately offensive, I saw that plainly, but the pale man did not flinch.

“I will, lady, if you wish it.”

It was before the night’s bonfire, with all of us ritual-clean and made eager as only fire could do, that the Head Priestess put this new man to the test. “Your name?”

“Calix.” He was so pale he was practically blue, but the crackling fire scattered shadows over his bare skin.

“You are prepared?”

“I am.” He spoke from a face all but still. His eyes were unreadable, sunken in dark.

At this, all we priestesses began to chant, breathing smoke now impregnated with the ritual herbs. The goddess would come to us now, if it was meant—

The Head Priestess took Calix by the wrist, thrusting his hand into the flame. “Tell us, Great Lady, is this Calix one of yours—one of us?”

Calix knew enough to hold still, even as his flesh began to stink with the burn that grew in it.

We waited for our Great One to answer us, all panting between verses we chanted from our very bones.

If the Great Lady did not answer, we were within rights to kill Calix.

A thin scream came, not from Calix but from my sister Hali, who began to dance on the brink of the fire itself, taken up by Athena even as we watched.  “He is mine, his soul in my fist!” Two sisters caught Hali before she fell into the flames proper.

“So be it.” The Head Priestess plucked Calix’s hand from the flame. His skin was heat-reddened, I could see, but unburned.

Calix we took back and initiated, his hair shorn away and left on the great lady’s altar. I watched it happen from my eye-corners, watched him lay his hair where mine had lain more than ten years since.

“There have been men sworn to our Lady before,” the Head Priestess assured those bold enough to voice their concerns. Her eyes were on me as she spoke. I nodded my acknowledgement but did not leave off watching. I wanted this man to go away—he was a discordant note in the song of the temple, a knot in the thread I spun—one that had not been there before, and I could not untie it myself.

Yet he was respectful. He had been given a small corner, practically a closet, to call his own, and he did not complain. The Head Priestess saw to it also that he bathed separately from the sisteren and kept him away while we bathed. He broke bread among them or sat to the lessons of a new initiate, he was deferential, clear-eyed.

He learned as I had done, and an odd sight he made, hunching over his lessons with a knot of half-grown girls when he was a man already.

“Does he ever hurt you or touch you?” I asked one of the little ones.

“No, sister,” said the tiny girls, meeting my eyes.

“He is a rare one, this man,” the Head Priestess said. “We have made the road as stony and bethorned as we might, and his devotion to our lady carried him through.” We were at supper, and she spoke in my ear.

I looked down the table to where Calix was filling his water cup, in quiet conversation of his own. “Yes.”

“It is not for us to second-guess our Lady’s choice without cause.”

“No,” I said. I knew the truth for what it was—a stone, river-smooth on one side but tearing-sharp on the other.

We were thrown more together after he became a full priest. I was able to observe his deftness at the loom and his gentleness in his dealings among his sisters. His voice was weak in the singing, but his mind was nigh as nimble as his hands, a brother in the service of Athena, and I learned to value him as such.

#

Dawn fell to the three of us one night in the dark of the moon: myself, Annys, and Calix. We would watch in the temple and pray from dark til sunrise. Few lay devotees came at such times, and so it was a time of quiet contemplation. I knelt on night-cool marble, head bowed as I prayed. I’d learnt by then to pray according to occasion, and I used the devotionals I’d been taught—pretty things and full of meaning, too. Once I’d finished these, I prayed from the core of myself, my voice rising as I felt the presence of the Great One in my mind. I am yours, Lady Athena. By your counsel was I delivered from slavery, and in my gratitude I serve your interests.

It was a good night—not cold but cool, and the quiet wrapped around me like a light shawl. Such times of unbroken peace were precious to me. The prayer thrilled through my body, and I was filled with the sensation of being just where I was meant to be, so that I rose from my knees and danced. No one disturbed me—it was not the way. All were allowed to experience their goddess in their own ways, provided they harmed no one.

The ecstasy passed through me, like water through earth, and I sank back to my knees, quieted. I breathed in the peculiar silence of the hour before dawn, my heart thudding in my chest. Athena had not spoken to me directly then, but I’d felt close to her and it was enough. It would do. I was ever open to her goddess, but I expected nothing. I was one priestess in a temple of many.

“Medusa.” The sound of my name raised the hairs on my arms and legs. I was primed for my goddess to reach me, and the voice was low enough I thought it must be she. If the night’s devotions had pleased my Lady—

“Medusa.” The voice was still low but urgent now.

“Speak, Lady. Tell me what you seek.”

Hands grabbed my shoulders and my eyes flew open. Opening my mouth to cry out, one hand was clapped over it. I could hardly breath and my vision was blurring, but I felt the night-cool marble under my back. The back of my head ached suddenly.

Calix. But where had Annys gone?

Lady Athena. My lips fluttered against Calix’s mouth. We’d both taken oaths to serve her—

The words were not coming, but words were not the problem now. He’d pinned me to the floor, and I could feel him in a way that made my gorge rise.

Help me Lady were the only words on the surface of my mind then. Under them were briar-tangles of utter confusion.

My knife—if I could reach it, I would do it for myself. My Lady would not save me, and I must do it. Oh, goddess, he’s inside me—

He held me down too well. My gullet had filled with unvoiced screams that should have torn my throat to bleeding.

He went limp on top of me then, and I worked a hand beneath him, gaining the hilt of my knife. He sat up, his hair brushing my face as he caressed my face, full of apparent tenderness. “Medusa?” he said. “I’ve wanted you so long—” I’d gone so quiet that perhaps he no longer saw a need to pin me down, easing himself down beside my body. “I knew you felt it too,” he murmured and gazed into my eyes even as I drove the blade of my knife between his ribs. The air left his lungs, and I stabbed again, feeling his blood cover my hand.  

He said my name again as he died, his body splayed half-across me, his eyes going dark and face falling as if I had betrayed him. I heard my blade hit the marble floor and knew no more.

*

Roused by hands shaking me, my eyes resisted opening, crusted shut with dried blood.

Not mine: my first thought.

“Medusa, what have you done?” I struggled to sit up, for now I was awake, no one would touch me. The Head Priestess had drawn away and was wiping her hands on a wetted cloth.

“He—forced me.”

The Head Priestess’s face lost the blood of anger. “Then you are twice profaned. As must be those who house you.”

My mouth was dry and my insides burned, and I perceived I was alone, even as my sisters surrounded me. “I did only what honor demanded.” My voice did not shake, but my hands did.

“You shame our Lady and yourself as you do. Keep your forked tongue behind your teeth.” I ought to have bowed my acquiescence, only I could not. In the service of the Lady, I had lived. The man we had all trusted, all made much of, had stolen from me, and I’d avenged his theft, using the iron and the teachings of the temple.

“To kill you would  be just, but I will not dirty our temple a third time. Get you gone and never return.”

The marble was stained brown-red to match my robe as I unstuck myself from it and reclaimed my knife.

I didn’t think as I passed the temple’s threshold for the last time. It was just past dawn now, and the alleys past the temple quiet, to be alone and wash—a stream, a pond, anything.

I was on the edge of the town, and none had accosted me. The stones of the path bit my bare feet, but I pushed on to reach the woods that lay beyond. Leaves and tree-needles were gentler than stone, and I walked still onward. A stream sang to me, and I knelt in it, allowing the water to rush over cloth and skin equally. I dipped my hands and watched the blood of my rapist dilute and wash downstream.

It cooled me, that water, and I could pray then. Athena, my goddess, my sisters have driven my forth. I have no one but you, great lady. Always I have honored you in heart and deed. Once more, I beg your help.

“Medusa.” A woman—but not a woman spoke. She faced me. I thought I’d fallen into her eyes just by looking on them. They were like wells, only their darkness was neither cold nor dank. Her hair was black and coiled artfully.

“You know who I am.” And this was true. As Athena drew nearer, the colors of the robe she wore made the trees she passed dull in comparison. Yet she did not glow.

“I know, goddess.” Swallowing hard against the lump in my throat, I bowed my head.

“Give me my name. And look at me.”

“Lady Athena.”

“How came you to be here?”

“I—needed to bathe, lady. I cannot return to the temple now.”

“So I saw. I find I owe you an apology. A man I chose defiled a maiden of mine. It is from me he stole, as much as from you. You slew him for it, and his body has been left for the crows to eat. Would you have  me command your sisters to take you back?”

To go home. The thought was like an abrupt sunrise in my mind. And yet—I had been half-pinned to the floor, weak and weary, and none had come to me. Not even Annys had had pity. I knew the love I’d been taught: this apology by my goddess was no little matter. I glowed to know I mattered so much to her.

“I am not of them any longer.” It hurt to admit.

“Wise as one of mine ought to be. Even my word would not buy your absolute acceptance now.”  I knew the truth of it, and it cut deep. “I can grant you a gift, Medusa. It will ensure you are left unmolested.”

I nodded, bowing again. “I want only to serve you, lady, without interference from any.”

Athena’s face softened into the smallest of smiles. “It is done. Serve me well, Medusa.” She did not wait for my promises.

I blinked hard, different to the very skin. Reaching up to finger-comb my hair, I found scales. A quiet hiss met my ears, and I caught my new profile in the water’s reflection. My Lady had crowned me with living serpents.

“Thank you, great goddess,” I whispered, rising from the water, suddenly sinuous-strong  and following a newborn instinct to walk hour by hour. No one saw me, and I reveled in knowing few would want to see me as I was now.

And I was strong, my scales green as certain precious stones. I no longer fitted my priestess robe, and I needed it no longer, walking bare to the wind in the body that was a gift from my goddess.

Finding a comfortable cave, I began devotions. I was safe, and the snakes bound to me were company. By listening, I would learn their tongue and they mine: it was enough.

*

End

*

© 2019 Sam Crain. The content of this article, except for quoted or linked source materials, is protected by copyright. Please contact the author for usage.

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