The Illyrian Women

a novella

Six naked women; naked but for plain white goatskin sandals which they must put on only for this sacred day.

Six naked women, carefully quickly walking single file along a sacred path down toward a sacred hollow in the hills, half conscious, deep in meditation, deep in reverie, priestesses carefully walking here through the civilized tame forest of this township where they and their forebears have been farming and raising families, doing every kind of business for many many generations, where they and their mothers and their mothers' mothers have walked this sacred way on this sacred day for countless generations.

Six naked women whose skin prickles with the cool breeze, all reaching inward toward a single mind but clothed in every kind of physical body; an old bent one first, with a tall walking stick from which there hangs a lighted lamp despite the morning light of summer's end, and then one who is greatly pregnant, hands clasped under her great belly for a little ease, then a young one, almost a virgin, frightened, here for the first time, then a tall one, then a burly one with a basket full of things slung on her back, then another old one at the end.

Six naked women quickly stepping a sacred path down toward a sacred hollow in the hills. There should have been nine, you know, last year there had been nine and normally always there had been nine but since the last time when they walked this mile the Goddess whom they went to worship on this day had taken four and only one, that frightened young one, had yet appeared, had yet been trained.

Six naked women. Naked, as you must surely see, of life's trappings, of the various regalia, all the clothing and ornaments that life assigns to each of us for insignia of our class and station. Oh, you might know a lot from the broken nails and calluses on some hands and the fine manicures of others; most of these six and their mothers and their mothers' mothers had been women of reaping and threshing and milking while others had been bakers or millers, others had been genteel ladies or enslaved whores but this morning was the solemn harvest sacrifice and for this morning they wore no ragged patches nor any jewels but only the flesh upon their bones.

And the greatly pregnant one, her callused hands with broken nails clasping under her belly, she was their chief in this generation. She was their best, most expert Priestess of Demeter that this township had brought forth for a long time, for the generations of living memory at least, a large-hearted deeply feeling woman who could often on an instant turn her ear toward the divine lips and hear and repeat to them the Goddess' words, just on an instant.

Six naked women. Truly none of them felt the grass and herbs that brushed their legs nor even felt the scratch of bushes on this path that knew the goats and deer but seldom knew a human tread. Even the young frightened one was not concerned at all with such as that but rather she was frightened of the Goddess, as she might well be, and frightened too of being frightened and unable to perform whatever duties were required. Even she, yes all of them, were fully concentrated on the place that lay ahead, on the little deep stony cave that lay in the hollow of the hills, the dark cave cold and deep within the earth, and before it there the spring-fed pool and the foot-worn path across the portal stones, the portal stones where humans had been known to faint and die.

Yes, all their thoughts flew there before them so that when they reached the portal place itself the cave's cold breath seemed nothing but an echo of their thoughts. Yes, as they made the final circle round the little pond as they must do, the deep gleams and echoes and reflections of the water that struck their eyes were reflected magnified infinitely all through their clear open souls. Over the portal stones at last, into the darkness of the cave they diligently trod, without from anyone a moment's hesitation, into the darkness and deep within.

Her husband did not know she was Chief Priestess of their local district. That was not the kind of thing a man was told; in fact, it was a serious crime for any man to intrude on their secrecy. Of course, I guess, he knew that other women had begun to treat his wife with particular respect in recent years but actually, I have to say that in these last few years he was becoming less and less aware of anything in the world, anything real. This was a terrible worry and sorrow to her but her husband was mentally obsessed, by this time in his life, almost to the point of madness; obsessed with envy. As misfortunes and calamities beset their little realm his spiritual condition grew worse and worse. It was a terrible drag on her, a huge extra load for her piled up on top of all the rest. So now by the harvest at summer's end she knew that he was far past human aid.

Let me tell you about this husband's situation. The person whom he chiefly envied, as you must see, was the landlord in the fine manor house. If truth be told, misfortunes and calamities befell the landlord too. The epidemic took some of his loved ones, the flood washed out some of his own best land, the price controls and taxes emptied his purse. But of course the rich man's troubles were nothing to the poor man who struggled life long on a sharecrop patch. This rich fellow had made a fortune in the army, before he came and married onto the district's big estate. People said behind his back that he had bought their local heiress like a slave.

Well, this past winter, when the bloody coughing fever took so many folk and the sharecropper's little son had gone, at the very moment when his wife brought the ruddy little corpse out to him, standing alone together in their empty windswept garden, and she laid their motionless unbreathing baby in his arms, what do you think the poor man said? He rounded on his wife. He berated her. He would have raised his hand to strike too if he could. You will not believe this. He berated her because, he said, it was her fault he had not gone into the army and come back wealthy too. With their dead child in his arms.

Let me tell you one more thing about this, even earlier, the year before. Remember on that day when the women walked their holy mile, that old bent woman with the staff and lamp who led the way; in mundane life she was the landlord's widowed mother-in-law. She was mother to the heiress whom the fellow came and bought. The Chief Priestess, you can see, regarded this woman as an elder of their secret order more than anything else, a fellow-priestess regardless of the social difference. But, as I say, the husband had no inkling of this and so one time, the year before his young child's bloody death, a strange and troubling incident occurred, foreboding of his worsening state.

It was spring, very humid, unseasonably warm. The priestess and her husband were in the village marketplace, he at the smithy entertaining sweaty fellows there with acid humor while she was over eyeing woven stuffs at a fabric stall. Their little toddler, the babe with a single year to live, he played in her skirts while their older boy stayed by his father at the forge. It was getting on toward evening.

Just then the rich old lady in her litter happened by. She stopped to talk with her good friend. A few minutes on, the lady took pity on her litter bearers, for the two tall slaves had carried the ornate chair and the frail old passenger on their shoulders all about the place all day and they were dripping sweat and breathing hard. She commanded them to set the litter down and sit. So therefore, as you might expect, the priestess knelt beside her on the Earth and still they talked; in fact they held each other's hands. Now, any normal person viewing this tableau would see nothing in the least unusual. If you were a woman from that district, naturally then you would know the two of them were friends who shared in secret rituals. On the other hand, a man or a stranger to the place you would see a wealthy woman deigning to be civil to a ragged laboring wife. But not so her husband.

The sturdy stocky fellow in the old stained clothes was standing with some other men and boys about the blacksmith's shed. Just then he was making the gesture of donkey's ears, his hands waggling beside his head, heaping ridicule upon some person to everyone's delight. But then he looked out to the marketplace and spied his wife across the way kneeling by the wealthy woman and the two of them holding hands. Somehow, though I cannot tell you how, this tableau took a horrible dimension in his mind. The fact is, somehow, he thought the landlord's mother-in-law was going to have him killed. I cannot explain this fantasy. He thought his wife was either plotting in his death or begging for some mercy.

Suddenly the poor man rushed out to the street, sobbing uncontrollably, and threw himself face down upon the paving stones, breaking one of his rotten teeth down to a stub so that his brain was stabbed with livid pain. He crawled closer, mumbling incoherent supplications with the blood and spittle dribbling from his lips, and reached up to finger the litter's blue gauzy curtains.

Everyone was stunned. The two slaves started, stood up, yanking their old frail passenger unevenly and painfully up, for which she immediately struck them with her rod.

The priestess was thrown backward, twisting her ankle, landing on top of her child who screamed, but they were both simply astonished far more than hurt.

Bystanders hurried over. His buddies from the forge rushed out. They picked him up and managed to make out his mumbles and repeated his jumbled words to the crowd. So then his buddies desperately tried to minimize the thing, for a penniless madman in those days was far worse off than dead, and two or three of his friends hurriedly strung together a hobbling kind of explanation. They blamed it on a trick of light and shadow somehow, or the noisy forge, or on the slaves somehow. After all, if you suddenly got a vision of your life at risk, his buddies said, wouldn't you do something strange? But surely no one was actually hurt, were they? Surely not. There wasn't any danger from him really, was there? Surely not.

This occurrence was more troubling to everyone than I can say. From then on everyone, especially his wife, and secretly his elder son, watched him with suspicion.

Madness came from the gods, you know. So did floods and epidemics, naturally. In a way the price controls and taxes too, for by these years the Emperors were claiming to be gods. But seriously, you must see all things in this world spring from the divine realm like from the soil. You must see that. What do the Mysteries of Demeter prove if not that? Surely it is so. And so, of course, impelled by desperation, when those six naked women had stepped across those portal stones into the womb of Earth they hurled themselves with all their might into another world.

Their rite inside that cave was strange even to themselves, and so they'd plotted it all beforehand with scrupulous care; and yet it was very plain. The mistress of the single lamp reached up to set the tiny flame into a stony glimmering black niche; all else but the tiny point of light and glimmering rock was darkness. Half in, half out of consciousness they stood close in a ring, so when they swayed and danced in place, skin would find itself caressed by skin, breast pressed by shoulder and buttock by thigh.

The tambourines had come out of the basket first. One of the women stayed there in the cave on this side of infinity and sang a song so they would not be lost and then the rest flew off or swam or ran or climbed (I cannot tell) far off beyond our human realm onto a certain distant mountain peak or craggy island. There they set a camp and sang and danced and struck their little jangling drums and launched away their one Chief Priestess higher, deeper, farther still. (All this was something that their mothers' mothers did here in a different time of desperation.) So then they sang and danced and played their tambourines and prayed as hard as they had ever prayed. And then at length, at weary length, just as they hoped, the divine voice of their Great Goddess came blowing through them like a hurricane.

Their Chief Priestess shot back by them like a bird before a gale, or like an arrow from the bow of Heaven, and they were seized up too and flung back to the cave from which they all had come. The burly one who stayed and sang, she was still there clutching at the rocky floor and screaming her one single note to guide them home.

So then the bread and wine came from the hamper. They forced themselves to eat and drink reluctantly at first, then gulped it down. What had that voice, that terrific voice, been saying to them? What words were in that awful gale of breath? What message could they take out to the waiting world? None of them spoke; none asked aloud; their Chief would tell them soon enough. Their Chief said nothing.

Some of them whispered one thing or another in the dark. The new one asked aloud, "May we sit down?" She did not know that all the others had by then already sat or lain but with a laugh her aunt, the tall one, told her so. They groped about and took each other's hands for strength or embraced each other and rubbed each other's backs for warmth. They all grew cold. Still their Chief was silent.

In fact, their Chief was waiting, listening, hoping for some more, and touching her own soul with delicate fingertips as one would touch a drumhead for vibrations set there by some other drum. Finally she just gave up and sadly told them, "That's all. Let's make the sacrifice and go."

But the other old one wouldn't have it – the old one who swept and fetched and made the beds wherein in earlier days she'd lain for patrons at the inn – she spoke up firmly. "No. You've got to tell us. We didn't hear anything but just the Lady's breath."

"Oh . . ." their Chief replied, "But then, you see, that's all there was. It's like She only said, 'I am with you'. That's all She said."

Well, life is full of mystery, is it not? Here were a band of humans who knew far better than most could know how to commune with gods. And yet they had gained nothing for their trouble. Had they not?

But I must add another burden to the heap of troubles and sorrows carried by them all and by their chief priestess more than most. If you shall understand then I must tell you all of it. Toward the end of this summer, with the fevered dead all buried, with the flood come and gone, real disaster had then struck. Near that summer's end the Emperor had sent forth a new decree. The almighty Emperor, in some distant palace, with one impression of his seal, brought down complete disaster on their heads. You see, these calamities they had been suffering here in this little corner of this minor province of Illyria, in fact these calamities and many more had washed across the whole vast empire for a good long time. The whole vast edifice of the immortal Roman Empire was now crumbling undeniably at last and the current Emperor thought he knew just how to prop it up. He issued a disastrous decree.

All poor farming folk would now be bound to the land with chains. With one impression of that imperial seal in a distant place, they were all enslaved in all but name.

It was announced by the Magistrate in the town hall on the first day of July. New laws were read on the first day of a month; that way they would be simultaneously heard in towns across the Empire. On this particular day their little town hall here in this corner of Illyria was crowded with unemployed loafers, as it generally was in recent years. The loafing men perked up when the Magistrate strode in and strode up to the lectern; in fact a wave of astonishment washed after him through the hall. This Magistrate was a short fat man who always dressed in fancy style, always with a sword, but today he had a sword and dagger and his fancy armor too. And the landlord was with him and four of the landlord's sturdiest slaves as well and all these men were armed as heavily as they could be. They stood around the fat magistrate at the lectern, formed up like bodyguards, and there he opened the fatal scroll.

The new law was titled "Insuring Dutifulness of Rural Labor". It was worded plain enough. First it quoted from an obsolete decree by a dead prior Emperor where he commanded everyone to work hard for the nation and he commanded magistrates to punish loafers such as these. (If it hadn't been for all the weapons in the hall that day, someone surely would have scoffed.) But then the new law added some provisions specially for sharecrop farmers. Understand, poor farmers all across that Empire had been laboring in a sharecrop system then for generations so that their land and crops were not their own. But now suddenly with this new law a magistrate and proofs and witnesses no longer would be needed for the punishment of slackers; your landlord could punish you too. And suddenly the punishments for slacking on your job were greatly magnified. You could be dragged to your place of work in chains and kept there in chains and beaten till your work was satisfactory. And if you proved unruly in these fair corrections, then of course you could be maimed in certain ways or killed.

The Magistrate rolled up the scroll and slapped it hard upon the lectern and shouted at the top of his shrill pompous little voice, "Now you filthy tramps will learn a thing or two!"

Suddenly in fact, in all but name, they were bound slaves.

Her husband was affected badly. The blacksmith had come round on a mule, riding around to tell his friends, and he had found the family out at supper under the broad tree by their small stone cabin. At first her husband truly flew into a fit of madness. As the blacksmith rode away he began to mumble. Then he did some shouting in between the mumbles. Then he picked a hammer up he had been using and began to beat the table very hard.

That was when she grabbed a basket that was handy and grabbed up their surviving son by the scruff of the boy's shirt and took off for the woods. Shouting to the lad, "We need to pick some herbs!" she hauled him bodily with toes barely touching ground and him struggling to look round back at the raving man. She was also burdened now with a seven-month fetus in the womb.

She got well out of earshot of the house and vowed to stay away for half an hour at least. At first the burly half-grown boy argued fiercely with her. He worried her because he tried so hard to duplicate the man. She thought of hitting him in her distraction but spoke to the Lady instead and the lad settled down to sullen quiet. She got busy finding herbs and teaching him a thing or two about them, if he would learn. After a while she edged closer through the forest to their little house, heard nothing and came closer still. The man was still there, quiet now, sitting out in the last light of the evening with a mirror in his hand – a beautiful old silver-mounted mirror that they had, the family's only piece of actual jewelry – staring into the mirror in the failing light and making weird distorted faces at his own reflection.

An hour later then the husband finally came inside the cottage, announced he was off to get employment at the manor house, and dressed himself in rags. He would take the boy along to show him how it's done. He helped the boy at tattering some dirty garments. She was horribly afraid, you may be sure, of what could happen next. She refused to let the boy go, but to no avail; the man was too much in a fever of activity to even notice a woman's pleading and threats. She would not hear the details of that evening at the manor house until next day – until next day when the six women assembled and the landlord's mother-in-law described it all – but I will tell you now just how it fell.

The man walked the two miles to the manor house dressed in his worst rags, endlessly muttering. The half-grown boy beside him in the evening dark walked in rags too, glancing up to his father's agitated face, the boy filled with more and more powerful misgivings. After some futile tries at first, the lad could not find a single word to say because there came no answers.

They arrived. The man knocked loud as he could on the front gate then begged the porter slave to bring them in. It was quite a normal thing for suchlike folk to come like this on begging missions, but the time of day was quite irregular and the porter certainly did recognize this fellow who had thrown a fit of madness in the marketplace. Still, the porter consulted with the butler slave and the butler consulted the master in extremely tentative phrases and the two ragged ones at length were brought within.

Not only the landlord and his mother-in-law were there, lounging after dinner in a pleasant conversation, but also a woman friend the landlord's age from another district who was visiting a while, and also a younger man and woman who were that lady's children. (The landlord's young wife was far away with their little daughter at a spa in Germany, seeking relief for the girl's weak health.) So the poor sharecropper and his boy walked in on five aristocrats who lounged luxuriously on satin couches and he and his boy beside him laid themselves face down on the blue tile floor.

The young lady gestured toward them and spoke up with a sharp joke at their expense but the landlord spoke kindly. What did the good citizen need so badly as to interrupt their social hour on this auspicious day? Was there some new emergency in the neighborhood?

Oh no, the poor man answered, rising carefully enough to kneel before the landlord's couch. He had just come here to wish him well and holy blessings and to offer all congratulations on the new-found powers their wise Emperor had bestowed and to remind him, if he might, how well he was respected by all and to remind him just how well and fully he deserved to wield such power in the neighborhood because of his famous military success and so on and so on and so on. He repeated of all this more times than once and finally trailed off to a stop.

The landlord grinned. But was there, the landlord asked, any particular reason that his fellow-citizen had stopped by? The hour was late. Really, what did he want?

Oh no, the poor man answered again, and though he searched for something new to say he just began repeating it all again.

The landlord interrupted firmly. Praise was fine, he said, but truly, as the poet wrote, we all wear donkey's ears. He ventured to expand upon this common thought. Life is a stage and truly all of us, like the poet wrote, are the gods' buffoons. In truth this old soldier did read the classic poets a bit and he genuinely took some of their lines sometimes as guides to life, but he was not much of a scholar and often did not know for sure what poet he was paraphrasing. He wondered to himself if Livy had written that about buffoons and donkey's ears but doubted it. He wondered to himself whether his lady friend might know, and thought to ask her later in more intimate circumstances.

Oh no, the sharecrop farmer interjected when the landlord barely paused, certainly no one could ever put the donkey ears on such a famous man! Surely the gods must smile whenever he . . .

"Enough!" the landlord cried, "Do you take me for a fool? Why in the gods' names do you come to my own house and talk as if I were an imbecile? What do you want? What's in your crazy head? Tell me or I'll beat it out with my own fists!"

Now that twelve-year-old tenant farmer's son became a man. He saw his father melt in the withering blast. He saw his father's jaw drop open and his face blanch white, his kneeling body sag. The boy rose from the floor and stood, embraced his father and strained to lift him up, urging him now to leave. A big muscular man stepped from the shadowed doorway to really lift the sagging man and, at a gesture from the landlord, easily carried the farmer off. (This was a foreman slave whom the butler had sent the porter to fetch, unbeknownst to all, and who had waited silently.) The boy then heard hilarious laughter fill the hall. In fact, all of the aristocrats except the mother-in-law were laughing hard enough to split their sides to see the ragged gibbering fool carried off limply like a child in the big slave's arms. The farmer's boy was dying now with shame, burning with rage.

The aristocratic youth had come up off a couch at the far side of the room and come up close at hand with a dagger half-drawn from his belt. This fellow was a supple, lithe, smooth athlete of gymnasiums. As the stubby, lumpy, muscular farmer's boy stood seething in their boiling laughter, wondering what to do, this young aristocrat saw fit to punch him hard straight on his head, a hard quick echoing bewildering clout beside the ear. Dizzy now, the boy looked round and stood his ground and blinked and tried to comprehend what might be happening. He had taken part in various little brawls before and with his rage now at its utmost peak he took no notice of the young man's greater height nor of his longer reach nor even of the half-drawn knife. First the boy stared hard up into the young man's eyes, trying to overpower the fellow's will, and then he brought his arm back hard to swing, to smash the fellow's nose, and then he felt the point slice into his back below the lowest rib. It was an amazing feeling and he stood stock still.

"Oh Darius, see what you've done!" the fellow's mother shouted. "What a mess!"

The fellow gripped him by the shirt front, up into the air so they were eye to eye, grinning in his face. "Don't worry, Mother, he's not hurt. Just tickled his liver a little." The stinging blade withdrew. The fellow set him down, commanding, "Stand up steady, you son of a bitch." He stood.

The mother was relieved to see him steady on his legs but she had something else to say. "Darius," she spoke in truly scolding tones, "that was extremely rude. At dinner! Our host could throw us out and no one would call him wrong for it."

The young woman, the fellow's sister, clamped a napkin to her mouth, vainly struggling to hold back unseemly guffaws. Tears rolled down the young woman's cheeks.

"Oh tut, tut, Cybele," the landlord answered, "youthful vigor. Youthful vigor. Give the lad his due. Where I come from it's called a virtue."

The knife was back inside its sheath by then. The fellow spun the boy to face the door and kicked his rump, raising gales of merriment anew, and the poor boy went sprawling in the shadowed anteroom, landing at the foreman's feet like bundled straw.

And so he too was tossed out by his father and the two of them sat in darkness in the roadside dust. The father wrapped his arms about his head and wept in bitter mourning while the boy just sat in stupor, staring into nowhere with his life blood oozing out.

They made it home near midnight. The priestess heard some doings in the yard and rushed out to find her husband throwing a rope with a noose tied crudely at its end over a tree limb, their motionless silent son standing by leaning on the tree's tall trunk. She ran and shoved the man and he fell down, collapsing into helpless weeping. She got the two of them inside and got two cups of sleeping tea inside of them. She had brewed the tea with foresight that it would be needed. In the dimly lighted house she did not find the boy's seeping wound till she had got him into bed and her hand came back with sticky blood, so then she must get him up again to inspect and wash and bandage it then get him back to bed once more at last.

The man stayed inchoate and mad, although nonviolent, all through the weeks of summer's end. He spent much time abed or sitting here or there staring aimlessly in a stony kind of fascination. The landlord came and saw and gave dour looks and sternly commanded the wife to get the crop all in, but left them otherwise in peace for now. The priestess worked up bits of rope into restraints and hid them about the place ready at hand in case of need. She hired a neighbor man to come do her husband's work beside her in the barley, paid the man with meals and half a precious penny every day.

The sturdy stubby muscular boy was better than his father, working hard at harvesting, the knife wound healing by his mother's care, but sometimes he would break into frustrated inconsolable weeping or fits of cursing far beyond his age. At least he could speak what troubled him. He cursed quite clearly at the powers who held a grip so tight upon his life. His mind was now as fixed on vengeance as his father's was on envy.

And now the priestess felt her belly swelling constantly with the new child, stretching near as taut as it could ever be, and her breasts began to show the final marks of pregnancy. Moon forest omens showed her a peculiar picture of who the child would be. The baby had not turned as yet – the child itself did not feel ready yet despite the lengthening time – but omens reassured her all was well. Her Women of Demeter met as often as they could; they hurriedly inducted their new young one and plotted their work at the cave.

So thus did the women come to be there, naked, cold and shivering in the dark, and waiting for their Chief to tell them some powerful and consoling liberating thing which, unfortunately, she did not know. The Chief Priestess only found that phrase repeating in her mind: "I am with you."

They made the usual sacrifice, stalks of the first-cut barley of the township, a certain number of stalks artfully braided into a certain shape that I will not describe. An armful of this grain had been brought from the township's first ripe field by a field hand to a woman of that farm who wrapped the small sheaf carefully in soft cloth and handed it to one of these priestesses who was standing by. The stalks were then braided by the new one of the six, under the moon of her induction rite, instructed by her aunt and watched by all the others while they sang a lovely hymn. This ritual object, made so fearfully and reverently, now wrapped in softest rabbit skin, came out of the basket in the cave at last.

The barley figure's wrapping was most carefully removed. The women all then stood together in a semi-circle, arms around each other's backs, and gazed at the glimmering surface of the rock where the tiny lamp had stood for all this time. Above and behind the tiny light, grown by Nature from the surface of the glistening damp cavern stone, there stood a remarkable likeness of their Holy Lady's shape. The glistening natural image looked as soft as black flesh. The little niche was an altar of incalculable age. In what generation past had someone found this startling lifelike shape? How many generations now had knelt here in this place? The sacred barley doll was left there now as it always was, left for the Lady's mice to eat.

They sang a final hymn of thanks. They clasped each other tight and their Chief spoke an ancient prayer of praise. The old woman who had led them in here with the lamp took up the lamp and also her walking staff and led them out. They paused in a middle chamber to brush the damp cave soil from their bodies with their hands, to adjust their sandals and attempt improvements in the darkness to their hair. They talked a little but not much. The tall one told her niece the young one, "Now, in this next part you're still a holy woman! Don't forget! Stand up straight!" So they processed in single file with a few false steps out through the narrow passage to the outmost chamber of the cave, with sunlight gushing in, and as their procession entered the dazzling light, a cheer arose from the many women who now waited in the world above.

The old priestess in the lead paused before she crossed the threshold stones. She set down the lamp, now flickering nearly empty of its fuel, and raised her arms and cried to the waiting ones, "She is with us! She is with us! She is with us!" There were perhaps three hundred women and girls there waiting, a huge crowd spread out through the forest around the little pool. The further ones were only now scrambling to their feet, women and older girls lifting up the baby girls to see. They had been singing and even now their last abandoned lyrics wafted from the further edges of the crowd into the woods, into the sky. They all took up the cry, "She is with us!" and as the line of priestesses emerged into the daylight world this chant became a shout.

The naked women stepped out over the portal one by one and waiting women bundled them in white linen antique robes and they went to places on a little spit of sand under a great willow tree nearby at the water's edge. Five of them came out so. The Chief Priestess should emerge last, then she would stand before the others on the little beach and address the crowd. But she did not appear. They waited. The chant died down. Quite concerned, the strong burly priestess started back but just when she had reached the dour dark mouth of that haunted cave, the Chief Priestess did emerge at last into the light and stepped across and stood still just outside the gaping gate.

Something in the air surrounded her. Those farther away could see it ripple and shine. The strong woman just beside her, well accustomed to the feel of sacred space, knew that it was sacred space around her. She had not left the holy inmost chamber of the holy cave but instead had brought it with her. The countenance showed focus and determination, clarity. The eyes revealed a state of being that the strong woman also knew; they were deep pools. The stance revealed great power. Her fetus had dropped down low between her thighs. It was utterly plain suddenly to the five who had seen her naked just an hour before that the great swelling of her belly was inches lower and had turned downward. Then while the whole crowd of the township's women watched, a pulse of light shone bright from her for a moment. Those who were close could see a ripple of contraction passing down her body.

Beneath the pool, deep among the strata of fractured rocks and water and sand, as yet unknown to humans, divine forces touched our physical world and a new channel of the spring broke open. (Dear reader, if miraculous doings of this kind exceed your limits of belief, then I am sorry.) This new channel of the spring passed through a bed of certain minerals whose natural action made it warm and a little bubbly. Out from a cleft of rock beneath the sand not far off from the beach this new warm water quickly spread. Had you been there at that time, friend, you might have seen scarce wafts of vapor, smelt a subtle whiff of earthy sweet perfume, and any doubts you have would thus be answered. But really no one there had eyes for naught except the woman come out from the cave.

The pregnant woman walked and yet she seemed to float with every step. She laid one arm across her strong friend's shoulders and they made their way together way down to the beach, shaded by the great over-arching tree, and there walked out near knee-deep in the pool. Her waters broke. The gush of liquid, tinged with green, mixed into the holy pool where it was green and dappled with the blessed willow's shade. She sat herself down. Her strong friend sat behind and embraced tight under her arms. The old priestess who slaved at the inn, she came and knelt before her open knees to catch the child; she dug the sand out too, dug places for the Lady's feet to bring her knees down more correctly, dug a cavity into the sand where this blessed and divine child would fall. The linen garments floated around these two.

Except for some who prayed aloud, the whole stunned crowd waited silent and scarcely breathing but then the one who knelt before her studied her face and said out loud to no one or to everyone, "She is with us." So then the crowd took up that chant again, but quietly and rhythmically, more like a song.

The Chief Priestess was not herself by then, not by half. She was transfigured, infused with the divine, possessed by a great immortal spirit. Basically, of course, this was not new for her; it was a regular part of duty, a normal thing, a thing she had been carefully trained to do and that she often loved to do. But this descent of the Great Goddess here today was far more complete and full and deep and rewarding than any she had ever felt before. She rested in the great embrace.

It had begun, of course, when they shot her from their island camp to Heaven. She did ascend into the very heights. She had been singing praises to the Goddess as she flew and the Good Lady welcomed her with open arms into Her bosom. There had been an exultation there as great as any she had ever known and endless. There had been the utmost sense of love and longing too. Although she tried to speak, there had been no words and this distressed her. As the only answer to her distress she opened her eyes and found herself among her comrades in the darkness of the cave. She found them asking what the message was. She found herself searching, waiting, puzzling, listening and not hearing any words. And yet it was not dark because her mind was full of the most peculiar soft bright light.

She found herself giving up the search for words until that phrase had come to her, "I am with you" She repeated the phrase to them. They found the barley figure and placed it in the niche and stood and sang the ancient song of thanks. The words were medicine to her. She found herself relaxing, melting, sleeping. She realized that in some way she was asleep and dreaming. The words of thanks, the sacred melody that countless souls for countless generations had intoned in this deep place, they had a healing power. She had not known there was such power in human thanks. She felt the many cruel cuts that life had dealt her knitting together now like clean small wounds.

She had a feeling similar to one sometimes in sleep when a person feels their waking self somehow awake and yet no less gives up all to the power of the dreaming soul; but it was her dreaming self awake and some other soul, some great immortal soul, to whom she willingly gave up her power so that she seemed to stand an inch or two behind her body.

She whispered the ancient prayer of praise. She found it rushing from her lips, her lips barely keeping pace, and at that time she felt the baby squirm to turn itself head-downward in her womb. The other soul now in her soul smiled and very gently laughed.

That prayer was long. It listed many names by which the Lady has been known to human folk, listed too Her countless children among the goddesses and gods, described as well Her love for the inhabitants of Earth, Her sorrow at their cruelty and pain, Her longing for their joy, Her love of joy, Her love of love. Somewhere along the way the priestess began to speak of "Mine" and "I" instead of "Hers" and "She". Also, she felt an understanding of certain puzzling passages that never had seemed clear before.

The human woman felt the pangs of labor start and yet it was as though all in a dream. In truth, she was deep asleep and dreaming truth.

They made their way out to the middle chamber where they paused and fiddled with their things, then out into the light. She waited in the final shadows as she must, for she would emerge the last, but there she stood alone awhile, feeling but not feeling some contractions, leaning on a column of stone, dazzled by the flood of brightness. But then at length she saw her big strong friend silhouetted in the light and she came out at last.

She found a most remarkable scene before her. There seemed to be a wind-song in the air that sang a welcome to herself, the Lady. The tree leaves sparkled in the breeze and they too sang, but they were the Lady herself singing in reply a phrase that chimed all through and out of her like a silver bell; "I am with you". Little birds were singing those words with Her voice as well, so too the stones that stood up from the Earth around, so too the soil itself, so too the crystal air and light, and something in the rippling water too intoned a deeper note in harmony. Distant forest creatures of all kinds held up their heads to hear, then sighed and let their eyes fall shut. She beheld the crowd of people there just like the rest, just like the deer and bugs and badgers and the milkweed, and all were singing.

The water drew her then, for it looked so soothing. A person bathing in that pool, it seemed clear, could let go of every ill and fear and anger. Every weariness could be refreshed. The water held a form she saw; it held a great soul. She stared into the liquid expanse and saw a man. The Lady in her laughed and sighed to see Her lover. His face was young and old, bearded and clean. His eyes were bright and warm, framed by a clear countenance and tousled hair. His form was fully sexual. His body glowed with health. He whispered to Her, inviting Her into His holy arms. She found herself leaning on her friend and walking to Him, full of longing for His perfect comfort there.

Her senses, already turned toward strange directions, now became completely overwhelmed. The sparkling water tickled around her feet, laved her ankles, massaged her calves with erotic fingers. The little wavelets licked her knees. A sweet perfume soaked into her. The human woman never had known such physical pleasure. She felt a great release when the waters broke, although she did not know its cause, a great release and union with the lover of the magic spring. Fulfilled and satisfied for that long moment, she sat herself down, relaxed in His embrace, but soon she felt the exquisite tension rise again, recede again, mount again, in undulating waves. Transported by this infinite joy and mercy, she had quite forgotten she was giving birth until the ultimate ecstatic thrill washed through her and washed out of her and she collapsed in utter emptiness of any further effort and some smiling woman before her held up a newborn child.

Hundreds of people around her sang. The water was somehow relaxingly warm and had a soothing feel upon the skin. One friend behind her held her steady, let her lean backward at ease. Another friend before her held the newborn infant, half in and out of water, out toward her, its eyes still squeezing shut, making motions with its little mouth and limbs like a sleeper who just now awoke. She didn't take the baby yet but washed it first, rubbing off the birthing stuff. It was a boy. Of course it was a boy. The forest omens told her it would be and now she fully understood those omens, understood the secret mystery, understood the reason why it was a boy. The pulsing purple natal cord still ran from its little belly down inside herself.

There was a small commotion on the beach behind. A woman had come forward to the priestesses there offering a knife to cut the cord and a length of string. The woman was the heiress, the landlord's wife. With a few hushed halting unsure modest words the woman was giving them a fancy lady's silver dagger, golden braid she'd pulled from off a satin sleeve.

The cord was quickly cut. She put the baby to her breast and felt it enthusiastically begin to suck. Four squirts of milk from her other nipple of their own accord flew forth and mingled with the dappled water. In a final easy squeeze the afterbirth was done; they quickly hid it in a dripping linen wrap. They carried her out then to the shore, to a mossy bed that some had made at the foot the singing tree. They dried her and the newborn boy with soft cloths, very gently dabbing and massaging them like pieces of ripe precious fruit. They covered her with a clean but ragged soft wool cloak donated from the crowd.

It was surely time for her to speak now, to address the crowd. She knew that time had come and knew exactly what to say. In fact, a certain kind of worthy pride was on her, the kind of pride which an invoking priest or priestess will often feel after a great spirit has come and gone, the kind a poet justly feels after inspiration speaks. The Lady and She would speak to them from her same lips.

With a voice remarkably clear and loud she bespoke them this: "All you who are oppressed with illness, fear and anger; all who are sick and weary and overburdened with your load; send home for blankets. Rest here with me tonight; fast with me, bathe and drink in the holy spring. Sleep with me here tonight and dream so we may see what tomorrow brings."

So it was done. That first night at the magic pool, the township's women and girls refreshed themselves. Many remarked with great surprise the miraculous new subtle virtues of the water. Many were the powerful dreams they got that night from the Goddess and the God, dreams of deep comfort and wise counsel. Many awoke with illness banished, weakness vanished and old wounds healed.

The wealthy heiress woke that morning early in the dawn, rose from her blanket on the Earth and searched for her sick daughter whom she found dancing merrily with other girls among the trees.

Next night the township's men and boys refreshed themselves. The Chief Priestess of Demeter decreed it thus, that male and female alike should use the mysterious waters. Her women quickly devised a new ritual of fasting and prayer and song. Her own husband awoke that second morning with new eyes in his head, blinking and looking round, and talking with a different temperate voice such as no one had heard from him in years. He did not understand what happened nor did he have the slightest notion where life would lead him now, but that seemed no matter. Her elder son awoke too with different eyes and voice, a calmer confidence in his look, a kindness in his speech. People awoke and looked around themselves and wondered.

Her new son, her third son, the magic child who was born that wonderful day; life would be a tangled web for him at first, confused by peculiar notions people had of him, wildly confused by his own relentless soul. But he would find his proper strand of life despite all that. He would become a full true Priest of Bacchus. There had never been a true whole Bachic Priest in that corner of the world, not even one, not even since our human race had first placed foot there, for they are very rare. As you would expect, his legacy in that little corner of our world would be very great. He would take up the burden for the people there of all the madnesses that are wrought by injustice. He would heal them with touch and talk, certainly, and with the dreaming waters of his birth. He would run the hill tops with the deer. But best of all, he would gift the people there a deep true form of Saturnalia. To manhood grown, he would decree new laws and rituals for that topsy-turvy festival which they and their children would obey most carefully, which would made of it a real annual communal healing for their folk.

The woman herself was never again quite like before. Everyone hailed her and her women now and brought them gifts. Few there were who dared to stare any one of them in the eyes. They had all the time they wanted now to dance and sing and pray. She herself would use this time to seek the many faces of her Goddess, to know the One she worshipped more and more. But this new life brought with it, as it must, different burdens, different trials and worries.

The township built a temple by the warm spring pool, close by the little strand and lovely willow. Within a month they had it simply built of wood and that stood for thirty years until a proper one of stone could be designed and financed and finally erected. It was a temple to the Goddess and Her lover son the God, with a pilgrim's dormitory. They put a fine-wrought gate with a big lock and a tall fence in front of the terrible holy cave.

The landlord came next spring to bathe and do the ritual, to sleep and dream and wake. In truth, the old soldier washed away a thousand hardened scars. That landlord took the waters and also every other landlord there for seventeen hundred years.

After a few generations came and went, they had to change some things. They found they must change the decorations on the temple and call the deities by different names. They changed the story too, but that seemed no matter; pilgrims still came in a steady stream to take the waters and do the rites and leave their votive gifts, especially in autumn.

In truth, all were refreshed who came with burdened yearning hearts.