The creature before her was naked, seeming taller than a man. Round calves and thighs ran delicate, scrolling lineworks of tattoo; above the thighs the manhood swung, a great, thrusting, forward-jutting column. More tattoos marked the breasts; while in one hand the figure gripped a Staff of Power, topped by the Sign of the Corn Lord. Its head alone was invisible, covered by a great fantastic mask; black in this light but green she knew, green as the sprouting grain. She did scream then, high and shrill; and the creature growled impatiently. ‘Be quiet, little fool,’ it said.’ The God is here.’
The form was Godlike; but the voice, though muffled by the mask, she knew too well. It was the voice of Cha’Acta.
Her limbs, that had been stiff with fear, were loosened. She scuttled for the doorway, ducking, fending off the clutching arms; but the High Priest caught her by the hair, flung her heavily back to the couch. She lay panting, tried to roll aside. He stooped above her; the mask caught her a bruising blow on the cheek. She scrabbled, biting and scratching; and the thing fell clear, showed her Cha’Acta’s contorted face. She flung herself at him then, beating and pummelling with her fists; but her wrists were caught, blows rained on her body. She curled whimpering, wrapped round a bright ball of pain; she was lifted, thrown down and lifted again. Lights spun before her eyes, like the magic lights of the seed-smoke. When the beating was over she could no longer see; and her mouth felt loose and stinging. She lay dully, unable to resist, feeling the great weight of Cha’Acta press across her. After that the dream or nightmare was repeated many times, till the middle of her body felt one great burning pain; but toward dawn, the High Priest let her be.
II
She moved slowly, in the cold grey light, hanging her draggled hair. Rolled over, groped with her heels for the hard earth floor.
The movement caused giddiness, and a vast sickness; she hung her head again and tried to vomit, but nothing came.
In time the sickness passed a little. She opened her eyes blearily, stared down. Her body, that had been smoothly white, was ugly now with bruises, marked with dried blood. She panted, holding her hands out in front of her face. They were dark-striped too.
She set her teeth, edged to her knees beside the pitcher. The water, splashed over shoulders and head, brought a little more awareness. She worked clumsily, rubbing herself clean. Lastly she drank, swilling the metallic taste from her mouth.
Lying across the bed was a tunic of fine bleached linen, decorated on the breast with the motif of the God. She stared at it for a while then stood, worked it painfully over her head. She peered out between the wattle screens. The dawn light showed her a huddled shape by the outer door. She began to creep toward it, an inch at a time, setting her feet down noiselessly.
Some sixth sense roused Cha’Acta. He sat up, holding out an arm; and the great mask of the God crashed against his skull. He groaned, gripping his hands round the ankles of the Bride.: Mata struck again, frenzied, bringing the mask down from a height. The eyes of Cha’Acta rolled upward, disclosing the whites. The High Priest arched his body, breath whistling through his nose; but his fingers still held firm. The third blow opened the skin of his scalp in a white half moon that flooded instantly with red. He fell back, head against the pale rough wall; and Mata ran.
Fear lent her speed. Only at the bottom of the Mound she paused, doubled up, hands gripping beneath her kilt. The spasm ebbed; she stared up fearfully, certain she had been seen. But the village and the high rough slope of grass lay deserted.
She set off again, walking and running by turns, rubbing to ease the stitched cramps in her side. For a time she followed, more or less blindly, the path of the Great Procession. Once out of sight of the pass and the Sacred Mound, instinct made her turn aside. In the low ground between hills and sea, an arm of forest thrust black and ragged in the early light. Here her people never ventured; for the forest was the haunt of wolves and bears, wildcats and savage ghosts, and shunned by all right-minded dwellers on the chalk. By mid-morning she was deep among the trees, safe for the time from observation.
Her fasting, and the terror of the night, were rapidly taking their toll. She fell often, stumbling over creepers and unseen snags. Each time it was longer before she rose. She stopped at last, staring round her fearfully. About her the trees had grown higher; their vast shapes, black and looming, cut back all but a glimmer of light. Between the gnarled trunks the ground was rough and broken, carpeted with old briars; branches and twigs hung motionless, and there were no sounds of birds.
She rubbed a hand across her wet face, staggered on again. Her blindness led her finally to the head of a little bluff. She saw it too late; the rank grass slope, sheen of water and mud ten feet below. She landed heavily, with a thudding splash. The soft ground saved her at least from broken bones; she crawled a yard, then two, lay thinking she would never rise again.
The wind blew then, stirring at last the tops of the trees, whispering in the tangled undergrowth.
She lifted her head, frowning, trying to force her mind to work. The breeze came again; and she seemed to see, with great clearness, the yellow slopes of the hills she had left forever.
She raised herself, moaning. Here, between the trees where nothing came but Devils, no God would ever search to find her bones. Her limbs jerked puppet-fashion, outside her control; tears squeezed from her eyes; but her mouth moved, whispering a prayer. To the Corn Lord, the Green One, the Waker of the Grain.
The way lay across a shallow marsh, its surface streaked with bands of brownish scum. She crossed it, floundering. The sun was higher now; her mind recorded, dully, the impact of heat on back and arms. On the far bank she rested again, thrust half from sight beneath a tangle of lapping briars. Beyond, the ground sloped smoothly upward; and it seemed her Lord called from ahead, ever more strong and clear. She toiled forward, sensing the thinning of the trees. She broke at last from a fringe of bracken, stumbled and dropped dazedly to her knees.
Ahead of her, bright in sunlight, stretched a long, smooth ridge of chalk. Across it, curving close to the forest edge before swinging to climb to the crest, ran a rutted track; and crowning the ridge at its farthest end was a village, fenced about by watchtowers and a stockade. In such a place she had been born, and reared; but this was not her home. She had never seen it before.
She lay a while where she had fallen, face against the soft, short turf. She was roused by a jangling of harness, the trundle of wheels. She sat up, thankfully. Along the track, jogging gravely, moved a bulky two-wheeled cart, loaded high with faggots. Its driver reined at sight of her; and she forced her bruised lips to make words. ‘Bring me to your headman,’ she said. ‘And my God will reward you, granting you great happiness.’
The driver stepped forward cautiously, bent over her. She twisted her face up, trying to smile; and for the first time, saw his eyes.
Gohm, the woodman, had never been too strong in the head; he bit at a broken nail, frowning, puzzling his sluggish wits. ‘Who are you?’ he said slowly, in his thick voice. ‘Some forest spirit, fallen from a tree?’ He turned her over, roughly; then snatched at the top of the filthy tunic. The fabric gave; he stared at what he saw, and began to giggle. ‘No spirit,’ he said. ‘Or if you are, you have no power here.’ He drove two calloused fingers beneath her kilt; then, because she screamed so, kicked her in the mouth. After this he did several more things before tossing her into the cart, covering her roughly with bundles from the load. ‘Now certainly,’ he said, ‘the Gods have smiled on Gohm.’ He shook the reins; the cart lurched, trundling on up the steep rise toward the village.
At the far end of the muddy street the woodman reined. ‘Woman,’ he bellowed, ‘see what the Gods have sent. A slave to scour your pots and blow the fire; and better still for me.’
The woman who peered from the low doorway of the hut was as grey and lined, as thin and lizard-quick as he was bear-like and slow. ‘What are you babbling about, you old fool?’ she grumbled, scrambling on to the rear step of the cart. She pushed the faggots aside; then stayed stock still, eyes widening, hand pressed across her mouth. Gohm too was arrested, his wandering attention riveted for once; for the bag of bones and blood with which he had cumbered his life still owned two white and blazing eyes, fixed on him now in a stare terrible in its intensity. ‘This is your evil day, Gohm Woodchopper,’ it whispered. ‘Those fingers, first to defile, hew no more sticks; no water will they draw for you, not if you lie dying.’
With that the shape collapsed abruptly, lying still as death; and the woman reached thin fingers to the mud-stained cloth of the tunic, traced there beneath the dirt the Mark of the Lord.
To Mata existence was a dull and speechless void, shot through with flashes that were greater pains. She was lodged in a fresh-swept hut, and women were appointed to wash and heal her body, minister to her needs; but of this she was unaware, and remained unaware for many days to come. Meanwhile the Fate called down on Gohm worked itself out swiftly enough. A bare week later, while cutting wood at the forest edge, he gashed two fingers deeply with his hook. The wounds, instead of closing, widened, yellowed and began to stink; while the pain from them grew so great it drove him wild. One day he took an axe and, going behind the hut, struck the agonized members from him; but the wild surgery did little to improve his condition. He took to wandering by himself, grey-faced and mumbling, and it was no surprise when his body was brought in from the trees. The corpse was much disfigured, torn as if by bears, and the face quite eaten away. This happened within a month of Mata leaving the wood; and the village that sheltered her grew silent and fearful. Men crept to the hut where she lay, avoiding its shadow, to leave rich gifts; so that when she finally woke it was to considerable estate.
The news at first meant little to her. She lay in the hut, surrounded by her women, eating little, watching the sailing clouds in the sky, the rich waving green of trees. Summer had come once more; the Corn Lord, though thwarted of his Bride, had yet fulfilled his promise. She frowned at the thought, revolving many things; then rose and sought an audience with the headman.
He received her in the Council Hut; very similar it was to the Lodge in which her father had once sat. Beside him stood his Chief Priest; and at him Mata stared comfortlessly a great while. Finally she turned, tossing her head. ‘Chief,’ she said, ‘what do you wish of me?’
The headman spread his hands, looking alarmed. The tale of Gohm had not been lost on him; this pale-faced, brilliant-eyed child made him uneasy in his chair of office. ‘Our wish,’ he said humbly enough, ‘the wish of all my people, is that you stay here with us and let us honour you. Also if you will speak well for us to your Lord, our crops will grow straight and tall.’
The Chief Priest had begun to fidget; Mata turned back to him her disquieting stare. ‘This is good to hear,’ she said carefully, ‘and pleasing to the God. But I have heard of other towns where though fine words are spoken they are not supported by deeds.’
The headman burst into voluble protests, and Mata was pleased to see that sweat had formed on his forehead. ‘Look, then, that it be so,’ she said. ‘For my Lord loves me well, and invests much strength in me. My touch brings death and worse; or pleasure, and great joy to men.’ She stretched her hand out, and was secretly amused to see the other draw back. ‘Now this is the wish of the God,’ she said. ‘You shall build, on the hill beside the town, a great house. Its length shall be thirty paces, measured by a tall, strong man, its breadth five and a span ...’ She went on, as well as her memory served, to give a description of the God House of Cha’Acta. ‘Here I shall live with my Lord,’ she said, ‘and such women as I choose to gather and instruct.’ She glanced sidelong at the growing darkness of the Chief Priest’s face, and spoke again rapidly. ‘Here also,’ she said, ‘your holy Priest shall come, and many good things will happen to him. Also he must bless the work, and oversee each stage of building; for he is loved by the God, and a great man in your land.’ She dropped to one knee before the priest, and saw his expression change from hatred to wondering suspicion.
So a new God House was built; and there Mata lived, in some luxury. She took as bedmate a slim brown child, Alissa; her she taught carefully, instructing her in Mysteries and the pleasuring of Gods and others. There also, when the mood was on her, she summoned Cha’Ilgo, the Chief Priest; and made herself, with time, most pleasing to him.
They were good days, in the Long House on the crest of the hill; but all summers reach their end. The leaves of the forest were changing to red and gold when Mata once more called the priest and the headman to her. ‘Now I must leave you,’ she said without preamble. ‘For last night my God came to me in the dark, while all the village slept. His hair was yellow as the sun, brushing the rafters where he stood beside my bed; his flesh was green as rushes or the sprouting corn, his member greater than a bull’s and wonderful to see. He told me many Mysteries, not least this: that out of love for you I must leave Alissa, who is dear to me as life, to be your new Corn Queen. In this way you will be happy, when I am gone; the barley will spring and you will have your fill of beer, cheese and all good things,’
They heard her words with mixed emotions. Cha’Ilgo at least had come to regard her presence highly; yet it was not without relief he saw her litter pass, for the last time, the armed gates of the town. She had come friendless and alone; she left in mighty state, Hornmen and fluters before her and a company of spears. Her kilt was white as snow; necklaces of pebbles and amber adorned her throat, round her slim ankles were rings of bright black stone. Behind her swayed other litters with her treasures and going-gifts; seed grain and weapons, jars of honey and beer, money-sticks of fine grey iron. Behind again came trudging sheep and oxen, and a great concourse of villagers.