“We have no time for this!” Myrina tore around the altar to seize the High Priestess by the sleeve. “Come! We must position ourselves—”
“Go! Away with you!” The High Priestess brushed off Myrina’s hands and reached out for the sacrificial crown sitting on the altar—a massive diadem adorned with a halo of bronze serpents. “I shall stay here. It is my holy duty to protect the Goddess—”
Myrina gritted her teeth. “The Goddess can protect herself. You taught us so, remember?” She took the crown with impatient hands and put it back on the altar. “Now come! You were the one who told me to train everyone and prepare for the worst.”
Her bold manner brought nothing but defiance. Without another word, the High Priestess reclaimed the crown and placed it firmly upon her own head, swaying briefly under its weight.
Ducking to avoid the protruding serpents, Myrina seized the High Priestess by the hands. “Why are you so determined to slow us down?” she demanded. “Our hope is dying with every thud on that door. Do you not see that?”
There was a brief silence, in which Myrina could almost convince herself the High Priestess had begun to realize her own tragic mistake, but the sound of splintering wood rendered all such speculation meaningless.
Within the blink of an eye the temple was taken over by hordes of howling demons. Pale, apelike creatures with mangy beards and wild faces hurdled to and fro with their shields and swords, searching for bodies to pierce and treasures to steal. Their presence was so terrifying Myrina made no other attempt at arming her sisters, nor did she even dare to search for her own weapons in the pile on the floor. Trapped as she was in the inner sanctum, faint with fear, there was nothing to do but wait and pray.
For a while the invaders were preoccupied with the riches of the main temple. One by one the votives were pulled from the walls and tossed into a growing pile on the stone floor. Next, the leader turned his eye on the open door to the shrine and the frightened women assembled there. Barking something in a language too guttural to be understood, he made his way through the tumult, kicked aside Myrina’s pile of bows and spears, and stepped right over the threshold into the holy room.
And there he stood for a breath or two, staring at them all. Then his eyes settled on the High Priestess.
“Come, I beg you!” Myrina tried once more to pull the older woman into the anonymity of the crowd, but again she was met with fierce resistance.
“No!” The High Priestess put her hands against Myrina’s chest and pushed her away with all her might. “Leave me, Myrina, I command you!”
Held back by Animone and Pitana, Myrina could do nothing but stand by miserably as the man crossed the floor, jumped up onto the altar, and—without the slightest show of respect or regret—swung his blade at the High Priestess.
Impervious to the screaming women, he picked up the terrible, dismembered head and held it high in the air, as if it were a prize and he a deserving victor.
Then came his comrades, pouring into the room like vermin, and before she was able to act, a blow to her head made everything go dark for Myrina.
WHEN SHE CAME TO, she found herself sliding across the floor of the main temple, her body convulsing with shock. Someone was pulling her along by the hair as if she were nothing but dead prey, and she cried out with pain when he continued down the stone steps and right through the dregs of the abandoned pilgrim village.
The man left her in a heap of loot on the beach, and Myrina lay moaning for a while, certain she had broken every bone in her body. Around her in the gray mist of dawn lay other priestesses, their clothing ripped and smeared with crimson, and whenever any one of them would come to and attempt to sit up, a hairy arm or a leather boot would immediately strike them down. Seeing this, Myrina did not even try to move; she stayed where she was, struggling against the steady trickle of blood and vomit in her throat, listening to the cries from the temple.
Lilli.
She prayed Lilli was still safe on the roof where she had left her. More than ever, Myrina wished she had her weapons. Her hunting knife … her bow and quiver … but then, what could she possibly have done? What use was a single bow against an army of evil?
AS THE DARKNESS OF a woeful night yielded to the merciless morning sun, the invaders began loading their five ships with the objects they considered most valuable. At one point, an argument broke out between the leader and the rest, clearly to do with the Moon Goddess, whom they had managed to remove from her pedestal in the inner sanctum and lug all the way down to the beach by aid of ropes and lifting poles.
Judging from the men’s grunts and gritted teeth, the Goddess was forbiddingly heavy and would undoubtedly compromise the stability of the ship carrying her. But the leader was determined, and on his bidding the unwieldy deity was laboriously hauled onto his personal vessel together with other sacred objects, including, Myrina feared, a bloody sack containing the head of the High Priestess.
Afterward came the division and loading on the ships of other spoils. When all five crews seemed satisfied with their stash, they began filling the remaining space with women. Some priestesses—the beautiful Klito among them—were carried on board immediately; others were stripped naked and inspected, only to be discarded with a sneer.
Myrina was one of the discarded. The sailors took one look at her robust frame and small breasts, and laughed. One of them did seem to make a case for her youthful strength, but he was quickly overruled.
Just as she dared to crawl away, thinking they had finished with her, Myrina felt a searing pain in her back. Twisting to see what had happened, she caught sight of one of the raiders yanking his spear out of her body. Instead of panic, however, all she felt was a strange sensation of relief as she collapsed in the sand.
THE GODS OF THE underworld received her in their dark halls, cut out her heart, and put it on their scales … but found it wanting. Something was missing. Only when they sent her to the chamber of truth, where jackal-headed demons tore at her flesh, did she finally remember.
Lilli.
Clawing her way out of the caverns of death, Myrina returned to the light above and was sprawled once again on the bank of the lake, beneath the ever-hungry sun. When she finally opened her eyes, the world was veiled in a golden mist, and she felt weightless. Standing up, she walked about in wonder, feeling no pain at all. The sky spun around her once or twice, and the beach tried to swallow her as if she were in the sandy funnel of a draining hourglass … but she was unafraid.
Seeing that she was completely alone on the bank of the lake, Myrina walked back up the stairs to the temple, wondering if the raid had been nothing but a fantastic dream brought about by sunstroke. But as soon as she entered the building and saw the destruction inside, she understood that it had all been real, and that, for some reason she might never grasp, the gods had held a protective hand over her.
Everywhere around her lay broken pottery and torn garments, and now, at last, Myrina felt the golden mist clearing and her senses returning as she realized that some of those bloody garments were still draped around bodies. Anxious to see who had been so brutally slaughtered, yet fearful of recognizing anyone, she felt a groundswell of despair and kept walking.
The survivors were gathered in the women’s dormitory, crouching on the floor in small, cowed clusters. As far as Myrina could see, Lilli was not among them. “Dearest!” Kyme came rushing forward, her graying hair hanging loose and her kind face torn with grief. “We thought you were dead! Oh, what a horrible wound!”
Suddenly, there were hands everywhere, trying to make her lie down, but Myrina pushed them away. “Where is Lilli?” she demanded, feeling the sandy funnel sucking her in deeper and deeper.
“Be calm,” urged Kyme, holding an icy hand to her forehead. “Rest.”
As she lay down on a cot, Myrina felt herself sliding into darkness, but just as she thought she could hold on no longer, Animone came. Myrina did not recognize her friend right away, for the oval form that appeared in
the haze beside her was so broken and discolored it resembled, not a face, but a melon that had fallen off a cart and been left to rot by the roadside. “Look at us,” muttered the form, leaning over to press a trembling kiss to Myrina’s cheek, “we are the lucky ones.”
Myrina tried to speak, but her tongue was too heavy.
“You will die a holy death,” Animone went on, “and I”—her voice broke, but she forced herself to continue—”I would rather be raped once by a nameless thug than every day for the rest of my life by someone who calls himself my master. And the Moon Goddess—”
With whatever strength she had left, Myrina grabbed Animone by the arm, just above the jackal bracelet. “Where is she?”
Her friend made a sound of disgust. “The Goddess? Let them have her! What did she do to protect us? We have served her all our lives—been chaste for her. And how did she reward us? By running off with a band of rapists!”
Myrina yanked at Animone’s arm and stared at her with feverish impatience. “I speak of Lilli! Where is she? I left her on the roof—”
“Hush now.” Pitana appeared, her tall form hunched with anxiety. “You should rest.” She stroked Myrina’s burning face with trembling fingers. “In truth, you are very ill—”
“Tell me!” Myrina demanded, staring at her two friends. “Where is she?”
Animone closed her eyes and bent her broken head. “She is gone, too. And so is Kara. For all her conniving, I do pity her—”
“They took her?” Myrina tried to sit up, but could not. “Where? Where did they take her? Who were those beasts? Animone, your grandfather was a sailor … you must have an idea. Come, help me up. Where is my bow?”
“Bows are for hunters,” muttered someone.
“And what are we?” countered Myrina. “Prey?” She managed to sit up at last. “Prey is afraid. Prey squirms. Prey is eaten.” She stared at them all in turn, those broken, bewildered faces. “Why such frightened looks? Did not the full moon ever favor the hunter?”
Myrina intended to say more, much more, but her strength had long since burned to the socket. With a groan of exhaustion, she collapsed once more on the cot, and there she lay, still as death, for two days, leaving her sisters wondering what unnatural power kept her alive, and why.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I thence arrived to where the Gorgon dwelt. Along the way, infields and by the roads, I saw on all sides men and animals—like statues—turned to flinty stone at sight of dread Medusa’s visage.
—OVID, Metamorphoses
ALGERIA
IT TOOK ME FOUR DAYS TO WORK THROUGH THE INSCRIPTION IN THE inner sanctum. Even with my knowledge of the asterisk dividers, and despite spending several yawning hours every night alphabetizing Granny’s dictionary, it was still an enormous challenge making sense of the narrative on the wall.
My work was not helped by the fact that the plaster had innumerable cracks and chips, probably brought on by changes in humidity or shifts in the surrounding structure. In some places, large patches had crumbled off the wall entirely, in jagged, irregular patterns, and as a result about a third of the inscription was missing.
What remained was a broken record of apocalyptic events and nauseating violence. Destruction, rape, and murder had marked the end of this ancient, unknown civilization, and even though Granny’s list did not contain every single word used by the narrator—far from it—I understood enough to connect the dots.
When I finally reached the bottom of the last wall I lay back on my straw mat for a while, contemplating where this all fit into the ancient world I thought I knew so well. There was no doubt in my mind the temple was at least three thousand years old, and that I was looking at the legacy of a Bronze Age civilization that had left no trace except within the realm of myths. The question was: which myths?
Mr. Ludwig had explicitly told me the Skolsky Foundation had found Amazon remains, and yet the inscription made no mention of female warriors; quite the contrary. Seeing the Skolsky Foundation had turned out to be complete bollocks, should I assume the Amazon connection was, too? Had it all merely been a cunning way of ensnaring me?
If so, why had someone in the higher echelons of the Aqrab Foundation decided to send me to Algeria rather than the archaeologist Nick has asked for? Because I didn’t have my phone, I hadn’t been able to look Mr. al-Aqrab up on the Internet yet. But I remembered James telling me he was one of those typical nouveau riche bastards who had a golf course on the roof and who would happily rent an entire cruise ship for his wife’s birthday party. Why would such a man, I had to wonder, give a jot about this patchy wall narrative, let alone undertake such a gargantuan excavation?
And again, my mind returned to Granny. Had she known of this forgotten civilization? It seemed impossible. And yet here I was, holding her notebook in my hand….
My speculations ended when Craig entered the inner sanctum with a smile and a headshake. “I thought I’d find you here. Come on, Doc! It’s Friday night and we’re killing the fatted calf.”
As it turned out, the fatted calf came in the form of yet another mystery stew from the cantina, but it helped that Craig invited me to join him and his mates around a bonfire in the tent village. Above and around us, a myriad of twinkling stars made the infinite blackness of the universe a tad less daunting, and after hours upon hours spent either underground or within the claustrophobic box of my trailer, I was more than ready to savor the desert night, not to mention a bit of human company.
“Now, Doc,” said Craig, draping his company fleece around my shoulders, “tell us what you are finding down there. Who’s the headless charmer in the coffin?”
Judging by the bemused grunts around me, only a few of the men had known about the skeleton until this moment.
“It’s not a man,” I told them. “It’s a woman. She was beheaded. There was an attack. A small fleet of foreign ships—” Looking around, I saw the men staring back at me with unabashed fascination. “It is always the same, isn’t it?” I went on. “Marauding and pillaging. Men bent on destruction, and women—” Even as I spoke, it occurred to me that there I was, a single woman in a camp full of men, unharmed and sharing their dinner. My great-great-grandmothers would have thought it impossible. Truly, in the long history of women stretching between the miserable events described on the wall and the here and now, I was the anomaly.
“Most of the priestesses were killed,” I continued, drawing the fleece tightly around me. “Some were taken as slaves—the pretty ones, I assume. I’m not entirely sure what happened to the other people living here, but the inscription seems to suggest the raiders set fire to the town before they left.” Seeing the expression on the faces around me, I shook my head. “I’m sorry. That was not a very happy tale, was it?”
“And the lass in the coffin?” Craig insisted. “Why was she special?”
“As far as I can tell, she was the High Priestess.” I pulled the laptop out of my bag and scrolled through my photos from the inner sanctum. “The earthly representative of the Moon Goddess. Whom they also stole, by the way. The statue, I mean. Apparently, the High Priestess had a headpiece with poisonous snakes.” I paused to zoom in on a wall painting depicting an intimidating female figure with coiling serpents sprouting from her hair. “Here.” I held up the laptop for everyone to see. “Rather striking, isn’t she?”
The men stretched to see the figure on the screen, and I let them pass the laptop around. When it arrived at Craig, he let out a yelp. “She looks like my mother-in-law!”
I waited for the laughter to die down, then said, “In Greek myth, Perseus travels to faraway lands to kill the snaky-haired monster, Medusa. But he doesn’t just kill her; he cuts off her head and takes it with him, to use as a weapon. Apparently, Medusa was so terrifyingly ugly, the mere sight of her face would turn a man into stone.”
“It is my mother-in-law!” exclaimed Craig.
Ignoring the ensuing chuckle, I went on, “Medusa was supposed to have lived right here in N
orth Africa. According to Greek literature, these regions were home to many different … well, monsters mostly.”
“So, where did Perseus take it?” Craig wanted to know. “The head?”
“He carried it around for a bit,” I said. “Quite a useful thing, actually. Who wouldn’t like to be able to occasionally turn other people into stone? But what is really interesting is that this snaky-haired head ended up as a scary decoration on Athena’s shield. You know, the Olympian goddess Athena? She helped Odysseus on his long journey back from Troy.”
To this, Craig and a few others nodded in recognition.
“Furthermore,” I continued, emboldened by their apparent interest, “the Greek philosopher Plato claimed that the goddess Athena was, in fact, a North African import. Suppose”—I clasped my forehead, trying to hang on to this thread of sudden, euphoric clarity—”this is what happened to the stolen Moon Goddess? What if she was taken to ancient Greece and renamed Athena? That would explain why she carries Medusa’s head around on her shield, and why Homer and Hesiod called her ‘Tritogeneia.’ Don’t you see? They arrived in Greece at the same time: the goddess Athena and her secret monster weapon—the only two survivors of a magnificent lost civilization around Lake Tritonis. It makes perfect sense!”
“Were there no other survivors?”
I jolted at the sound of Nick’s voice. He hadn’t been around for a few days, and I had assumed he was out hunting for an archaeologist to replace me. Yet here he stood, looking at me through the shimmering firelight.
“Well,” I said, “those who were taken as slaves were as good as dead. Black women forced into a white world—” I shook my head.
“How do you know they were black?”
I hesitated, taken aback by his combative tone. “As you know, the women depicted on the temple walls are tinted brown, and the inscription refers to the invaders as having pale skin—”