LITMIR.BIZ

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of blind terror, then she twined herself around me.

      Sweet, sweet! The touch of scale on scale thrilled through my nerves. The clasp was strong but not crushing, her touch was delicate and soft as water. She slid and I twined myself around her, and I burned too, as bright as the great serpent. I would have cried for joy but I had no tears. The inexorable embrace melted us together, one body, serpent and priestess.

      This was the mystery of the grove, which Trioda had brought me to experience, and it was cruelly sweet. I wanted to lie with Ophis forever, on flesh, all skin, but then I was blinded by a starburst, and became Medea again, lying on the dead leaves, slick with sweat and weeping because the joy had departed, leaving me shaking and vomiting into the thorns.

      Ophis withdrew from me. I heard her overturn the empty milk-pot and slither away to the other side of the grove, deeper into darkness.

      Trioda lifted me to my feet and wrapped my priestess' gown around me. It was dark. She led me into the marsh again, and gave me water in which menthe had been steeped. I immediately threw it up again. Trioda let me lean on her shoulder, something she seldom did, as I coughed.

      'That was the mystery, Medea,' she said.

      'Oh, lost,' I mourned, shuddering through all my body.

      'Not lost forever,' she said calmly. 'You will join with her again, at the festival of the grove, at this time every year. For you are the guardian's chosen one. She has accepted you. Be happy, Princess! You are fortunate.'

      I followed Trioda along the winding paths through the marsh. As my nausea retreated, a thought occurred to me.

      'Mistress, if She Who Is A Serpent had not accepted me, what would have happened?'

      'You would have died,' said Trioda. 'She would have killed you.'

      I bathed in warm water, as I had been instructed. The scales had made razor-thin cuts along my belly, back, breast and thighs and the outsides of my arms. They made the water pink and I sluiced until I was bleeding freely, lest any contamination from the floor of the grove had entered my blood. I was still cold, though the memory of the embrace of Ophis tingled along my nerves.

      My body, to which I paid little attention, was changing. I had grown taller. There was a scribble of hair under my arms and between my thighs. My chest, which had been flat, was curving with breasts and the nipples rose under my touch.

      I shuddered anew and extinguished my new body under a wide linen towel. I was approaching the first bleeding. Now I must watch the moon and, in her cycles, my blood would spring. I would become penetrable, able to conceive, and would need to be ever more vigilant. No more could Medea play innocent games with Melanion the son of Phrixos. I was the dedicated maiden of the Dark Mother, and no man must possess me.

      I dried myself, lay down in my bed, and hugged Kore and Scylla, who lay either side of me. No rapist would get to Medea over my guardians. The serpent of the grove had accepted me, and no man would ever lie with me.

      I knew I had wept in my sleep, because I woke with Scylla licking my face.

      Two weeks later I was tending the sacred fire with slivers of fungus. The temple was cold. I wore two black tunics and a black gown and cloak and my feet were clad in leather boots, and I was still cold. I could not seem to get warm. Scylla lay across the threshold - she could never believe that humans could not see as well in the dark as she - and I heard Trioda stumble over her as she came in.

      'Daughter, make a light. The old women were right. This will be a winter to freeze the heart.'

      I lit the big oil lamp and the flame flared then settled, casting a pleasant orange light. My mistress cast off her own cloak, speckled with snow, and shut the door.

      Trioda rubbed her elbows and commented, 'You look pale, daughter. Build up the hearth fire. Medea? Are you ill?'

      'I'm cold,' I muttered, laying logs on the ever-burning hearth, then kneeling and spreading my cloak to catch the heat as it flowed out from the burning wood. Trioda sat down in her chair and I leaned on her knee.

      'Where does it hurt, daughter?' It was so unlike her to show concern for me that I felt tears prick my eyelids.

      'All over, Mistress.'

      'Hmm. Sit by the fire, Princess.' She lifted me into her chair and inspected my eyes, tested my forehead for fever, felt down over my body, and then pushed a hand into the hollow of my stomach. Something cramped and I winced. Trioda smiled.

      'Maiden, you are maiden indeed, and about to sacrifice to Selene. A very fortunate time indeed, past the dead of winter and the central mystery of Ammon. For the bull ploughing will coincide with your third bleeding, Medea, and that ties you to power.

      'Come, maiden. I will make you an infusion and prepare cloths to absorb your blood. You share the fate of all women, Princess, do not weep.'

      I could not explain why I was crying, except that I felt suddenly ordinary, not a princess or a priestess, just a common girl with a pain in her belly.

      Trioda said sharply, 'A common fate is to be gloried in, daughter. All women share the body of the goddess, who is Hekate, the Dark Mother, She Who Meets. No woman is apart. That is the sin of men, who consider that they are superior to their own mortality. Kings in the glory of their pride fall prey to gripes, to fevers, to wounds. No woman could ever think that she was apart from her own body and cycle, disconnected from the earth and the moon.' She busied herself with making an infusion of the heat-inducing root which comes from Libya, and I sat by the fire and stared into the flames, feeling the pain gather in my back and belly and blood trickle warm between my thighs.

      While I bled, I lay in the temple, on a pallet before the fire, and Trioda tended me. The dogs, grateful for the warmth of the fire, lay sleeping on either side of me, warm bodies sure of their integrity, which had deserted mine. Trioda instructed me while I lay slightly drugged and forbidden to touch anything.

      'You are in a sacred state for the first three bleedings, Princess. The goddess' touch is tentative, at first, testing your strength. Therefore, as you will have noticed, daughter, you are weak, clumsy, pained and a little lost. But that will pass. In future, Medea, if you have dark spells to cast or poisons to compound, the week before your bleeding is the time to make them. Then women are full of black energy; ideally, a little of the blood should be mingled with the poison. In the five days before the moon possesses us, we are moon-powerful, crackling with power. Then, however, healing spells will be weak and may even be harmful.

      'Compound your healing brews after the blood has gone. For you are cyclical now, daughter, not steadfast like a child. Your moods will flow with the moon.'

      'What if I need to make a healing potion, and I am in the wrong cycle?' I asked drearily from my nest of sheepskins by the fire.

      'Then you must concentrate, daughter, and if you need to change your state for some very urgent reason, and not just a desire to be relieved of the goddess' blessing, then you may take this.'

      'What is it?' I asked, eyeing the flask marked with the triple seal.

      'It is made of certain berries, which I will show you, and the urine of pregnant women. It mimics in its action the moon's cycle, and can alter your state; but it is very venomous. Use it only at great need. It will stop the flow of blood, dry up the fountains of the goddess. It can prevent conception.'

      'This is the potion used by the queen?'

      'It is. We would use it, perhaps, if a great plague struck Colchis - do you remember the plague at Poti, when the priestesses went down the river to treat the stricken? You were five, I think.'

      I remembered seeing the river barges loaded with black-clad women, and hearing the wailing which followed them. Each temple of Hekate is tended by two or three women; there are many in the city of Colchis. The women in their sable garments, I remembered them, like a flock of crows. I nodded.

      'It was haemorrhagic fever, Medea, which came from the sea, like all evil things. We went, all of us, to tend the fallen, bury the dead, comfort the dying. We carried with us all the herbs that we

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