Danae by Laura Gill

Author:Laura Gill [Gill, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-03-13T22:00:00+00:00

*~*~*~*

A woman came in the afternoon. She had wild hair and wore necklaces of shell and teeth over threadbare priestess garb. Her bare breasts gleamed with red ocher, and she smelled strongly of garlic and animal fat. What manner of holy women did the people of Seriphos look to? I gagged and turned away, wishing she had not come.

Unfortunately for me, she marched straight to my bed and, gesticulating wildly, commanded my attention. “Awaken, Dorea, and attend!” Could she not see that my eyes were already open? “I am Leukothea, high priestess of Athena and Diktynna.” What did the Mistress of Battles have to do with a goddess of fishing nets? And unless the islanders set very low standards for the servants of the gods, Leukothea was far from being a high priestess. I might have forgiven her appearance and stench had she possessed a tenth of Phileia’s aura. “I have journeyed this long way to bring you a gift of rebirth!” The woman could not have walked more than a mile. Diktys and Klymene had gone to the expense of summoning a fraud.

“Let Dorea be reborn!” other voices chanted. “Let Dorea receive the gifts of rebirth.” Several neighbor women had crowded into the house to help with the ceremony, and from somewhere close by I heard my son crying.

“Let the shroud of the tomb be stripped away.” With her looming so near, I could not help but notice that Leukothea’s breasts were enormous, jiggling like fat pomegranates with her every movement. Animal sacrifice, that was what she smelled like. I imagined the red ocher to be fresh blood instead, and gagged anew.

The moment she stepped away, the other women swarmed in, hauling me upright, pulling at my clothes. They wanted me to undress, when I was so cold and aching, still shivering. Nonetheless, they relieved me of gown and shift. My breasts were leaking milk. Leukothea noticed, of course, and again swooped in. Her fingers pinched, squeezed, and she slapped them. “Bring a vessel! This mother’s milk comes from the Fields of Asphodel. Let not the child drink of it.” I thought the pronouncement, coming from one such as her, the most outlandish, pompous thing I had ever heard, though there might well have been truth in it. Had Eurymedon been nursing from death’s teats? Where was he? While I heard him, I could not see him.

“Hush, hush! He is safe,” the women assured me. Whatever hands did not support my weight grasped at my breasts, squeezing them like udders. My milk squirted into a painted vessel. I groaned, but then they were pushing and pulling me again, herding me outside and around the house to a terracotta tub filled with water.

At least the water was warm, though not enough to banish the Stygian chill. I continued shivering, even when the women scoured my limbs with bare hands and washcloths to massage life back into me. Leukothea’s infernal chanting assaulted my ears. “Dorea, daughter of Pelargos, child of the

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