*
By the time their middle sister Demo came to retrieve them, half the afternoon had passed. Callithoe's back and behind ached from perching beside Iambe on the stone table, soothing her with reminders to breathe slow and steady, and encouraging her to keep heart. Demo assessed Callithoe in the dim torchlight.
"Go and rest," she said. "I will see to our sister."
Callithoe did not argue.
She did not rest, either. She headed for the well to soothe her parched throat.
Outside, dust lay over top of the withered world like newly fallen brown snow, fine and untouched. The Maiden Well lay only a few steps away. On the lip of the well, quiet and motionless, sat the robe-swathed figure of a woman.
Callithoe stopped in her tracks. Dust painted the woman from head to toe in a monotone brown. Only the slow blinking of her gaze distinguished her from a statue.
"Oh!" Callithoe exclaimed, when she found her voice.
She hurried to kneel like a child next to the woman. "Please, honored mother. Are you well?"
The olive tree that in former years had shaded the well and provided dark, delicious fruit for their table now held only one leafy branch, the rest spindly and dried. In the shade of that branch, Callithoe made out details she had not seen before: the woman's slumped shoulders, the tangles of wiry, gray-streaked hair, the dirt blackening her feet but leaving her slender ankles clean and white.
The woman observed her with strange pale eyes that reminded Callithoe of past years, of the great amber jewel her mother Metaneira had worn during the harvest festival.
Back when there was a harvest.
The woman looked at her, and unease struck Callithoe low in the belly. They seemed to be the eyes of some alien, unknowable creature, like a fearsome lion, or a hawk full-grown in its glory.
"Daughter?" she rasped.
Ah, thought Callithoe. So it was not something alien in her eyes, just something lost.
She put a hand gently on the woman's arm. "I am Callithoe, daughter of Celeus, king of Eleusis. You rest now at his well."
The woman gave a slight nod, her face seeming to awaken by degrees. Her eyes did not leave Callithoe's face.
"Young Callithoe, know you of a place where I might labor in exchange for a bed and meals? I have come so far, and escaped so much."
A rustle sounded beside Callithoe. Her third sister Cleisidice of the slender fingers knelt beside her. Callithoe had not even heard her approach.
"Pray tell us what you escaped, honored mother," beseeched Cleisidice.
Cleisidice. Always in the thick of things.
"Pirates who rode the wide back of the sea from Crete, where the bull-god reigns supreme. Then, after I escaped from them, I hid from slavers near the coast."
The sisters exchanged a glance. Lately, all manner of thieves and brigands had swept across the barren earth. Many had once been honest men. Want had made them lean and desperate.
"Worry not, dear mother," Cleisidice said. "You are far from such villains here at Eleusis."
She drew a cup of water from the well and handed it to the woman. Particles of dust sprinkled the water like some sort of fine seasoning. She drank.
"Come," Callithoe said, decisive in her role as eldest daughter. She stood and offered the woman her arm. "Share of our table, and sleep safe from your trials."
The woman complied, rising to stand taller than both sisters. The scent of many long miles clung to her, and dust caked the lines about her mouth.
"Doso," she said. "You may call me Doso."
Cleisidice offered her a tentative smile, then extended her arm. Doso accepted it.
"Pirates, you say?" Cleisidice asked with shameless curiosity. "We must know. However did you escape them?"