Authors: Elizabeth Hand
Her uncle fell silent, staring at the windows. The panes shuddered as water cascaded from a gutter overhead. After a moment he turned to her once more.
“She came to him in the night. He woke and she was there—not with him on the island, but in the water. Swimming. He wondered how she could swim, the bottom was so sharp with rocks, but she swam well. It was still dark but he could see her quite clearly from the beach, and he told me that he knew immediately she was a woman and not a dolphin or other fish—or a man.
“He watched her for some time, and then she came onto the shore. She was naked—no bathing costume, no bathing shoes, nothing to protect her from the wind or the stones. Only in her hand she carried a very old mirror made of polished metal. He thought she must have stolen it from some ancient tomb or grave, because he knew by looking at it that it was very old, not a thing a young girl swimming alone off the coast of Rhodes would have!
“She knew he was there watching her—and when she came ashore she walked directly toward him. The water behind her like blue snow and the full moon in the sky. She was beautiful—of
course
she was beautiful! An hallucination, they are always lovely! Young, and very slender, and though she had long legs she was not tall. So
that
you inherited from Luciano. And she had wide hips and high breasts and long hair that was very dark and curled, and huge golden eyes, though how he could see the color of her eyes I do not know because it was dark. Even in the moonlight it is dark. He said she was not like any woman he had ever seen before—not because of her beauty, but because of how she was put together. Such small bones, and so delicate but very very strong.
“And so he lay with her, and in the morning she was gone. He never saw her again.”
Angelica stared at him. “But what about me! He
must
have seen her again, if she was—if she was really my
mother
!”
“Luciano says he did not.” Her uncle gave her a piercing look. “Perhaps he never saw her in the first place, eh? But some months later he was in London, staying with friends, and in the middle of the afternoon there came a knock at the door and when they opened it—pfff! There was a very nice basket from Harrods, and a blanket, and inside the blanket was a baby—and with the baby there was
that—
”
He pointed to the tarnished-looking mirror on the table before her: a round mirror the size of her two hands, carefully wrapped in chamois leather, and decorated with an octopus’s elegant dark coils. “A fairy story, eh? I do not believe all of it, but you are here, so—” With a heavy sigh he settled back upon the divan beside her, and raised his glass in a toast.
“Cede Deo.”
“But who
was
she? What was her name?”
Her uncle smiled sadly. “I do not know, my darling. We none of us know. Not even your father—”
“But he must—you said—”
“Perhaps he
does
know. But he has never told
me.
He said only what I have told you already—that she was beautiful, and also that she sang, and he found her songs very interesting. They were old songs, he told me, very old songs. I am only a financier and so I do not know about these romantic things! But he said they were in a language we no longer remember.”
“But isn’t there a picture? Or a birth certificate? Somebody has to have
something
—”
Her uncle’s eyes widened. “My dear! You must not be so distressed—here, I will have Giuletta bring you some warm milk and
biscòtti
—”
Angelica looked stricken. “No—I mean, isn’t there anything else? A photo,
something
—”
Her uncle pursed his lips, frowning. “I can show you what your father showed me,” he said at last, and went over to the tiers of bookshelves that covered one wall. “Here—”
He pulled a heavy volume from the wall. Angelica craned her neck to read the title.
Kietisch-mykenische Siegelbilder.
Lavender-smelling dust rose when her uncle blew upon the cracked binding. “One of his books. See?”
She glimpsed a brightly colored plate of a vase, the pink clay fragments carefully repaired and painted with a wide-eyed octopus.
“Like yours, eh?” Her uncle cocked his head at the mirror on the table.
“Scungilli.
But
this
is what I want to show you—”
Beckoning Angelica closer he held up the book to display another illustrated plate. “He showed me this, afterward. Many years later. He said it reminded him of his woman from the seashore.”
It was part of a fresco showing the profile of a woman’s face. A woman in a blue-and-white-striped dress bedecked with scarlet ribbons, her long hair elaborately arranged; her huge eyes accented with kohl, bee-stung lips brightly rouged. In her hand was a sort of axe, double-bladed, the heads crescent-shaped. At the bottom of the plate were words printed in German. Beneath them Angelica recognized her father’s casually elegant script—
MINOAN PRIESTESS CA 1650 B.C. PALACE AT KNOSSOS
“She is lovely, eh?” her uncle murmured.
“Y—yes.”
The image had none of the inhuman coldness of Egyptian paintings. Angelica could easily imagine this girl laughing, eating bread, dancing; smoking too much and drinking too much wine and falling into bed and—
“Yes, she’s very lovely,” whispered Angelica—
Very lovely, and she looks just like me.
“So you have seen her,” her uncle said after a long silence. Angelica could feel him staring at her, but she refused to look up. What remained of her energy she was saving to keep tears of outrage and fear and disbelief from spilling down her cheeks. With a sigh her uncle closed the book and set it back upon the shelf. “But in your studies, Angelica, your archaeology—such a famous image, you would have seen her someday and noticed the resemblance, even without me.”
Downstairs in the main kitchen she could hear footsteps, Giulleta giving orders to one of the maids to bring
mostaccioli
and a glass of marsala to Signorina. Her uncle finished his
aquavit.
He wiped his mouth with a napkin and carefully folded the metal mirror back into its chamois. “But perhaps I should not have spoken of this now. Forgive me, Angelica—”
He kissed her cheek, his breath smelling of
Sen-sen
and spirits, and pressed the soft packet holding the mirror into her hands. “But you do have this, and your mother’s necklace—” He inclined his head delicately toward her throat.
“What do you mean?” One of her hands closed tightly about the mirror in its chamois wrapping; the other touched the lunula beneath her scarf.
“Your necklace.” Her uncle leaned back against the divan and closed his eyes. “Eh! This rain is exhausting.”
“My necklace?”
He opened his eyes and nodded. “Yes—the other thing she had, besides the mirror. Your father said she wore a silver necklace, like the new moon—like the labrys the priestess carries—”
He glanced at the bookshelf. “—the double axe. I am glad he gave the necklace to you; I cannot stand these family secrets. Ah! Your aunt has sent us some wine and
biscòtti di cioccolata
! She knows we must make you fat!”
“But he didn’t—I didn’t—” Angelica stammered, then grew silent as a maid entered the dim room. She had not told her father of the lunula. She had worn it casually here in her uncle’s house, because she had been certain no one would recognize it; but now …
“Thank you,” her uncle said to the maid. “Here, Angelica—”
And he had handed her a crisp dark crescent on a tiny silver plate, a little smiling mouth like the new moon. “Now, my darling—eat.”
Now, nearly twenty years later at Huitaca, Angelica gazed into the same mirror. When she turned her head, the metal’s blurred surface showed her the same profile she had glimpsed so many times since then: on postcards at Knossos and Iraklion; in art histories and volumes of mythology; in the publicity photographs that adorned her books. The bull-priestess, the moon-priestess, the author at home. Angelica Furiano.
“Haïyo Othiym,”
she murmured, and brushed her fingertips against the mirror’s pitted surface. Then she took the lunula from where it lay in a carved sandalwood box. For an instant the lunula’s reflection gleamed in the window, like a glimpse of the moon rising above the chaparral. She slid it over her head, being careful not to snag her hair, and fingered its cool edge as though she were testing a blade. She gazed another moment at her image in the bronze mirror, then left.
She went back out into the main house. Sunday waited there as she always did, standing by the window and staring out at the chaparral—she had seen a puma there once, and Angelica knew she was hoping to see it again. She gave her housekeeper a little white envelope—Sunday liked to be paid in cash, and she liked to be paid every day—thanked her and walked her to the front door. Angelica watched her housekeeper climb into her new red Chevy pickup and take off down the rutted drive. She waited half an hour later, until she saw the Porsche disappear in a haze of dust. Angelica was alone at Huitaca.
Well, almost alone.
It was the hour after sunset, when you could feel the desert heat seep back into the earth. She went to the back of the room and drew open the sliding doors, opening the entire rear of the house to the night.
“Well now,” she murmured, and breathed in luxuriously.
Overhead the sky was violet. The horizon paled to green where the buttes reared: immense pillars of sandstone, so huge and strange and silent they were like living things, vast watchful manticores or sphinxes waiting to descend upon the sleeping plain. Heat lightning stabbed fiercely at the tallest crags, and though Angelica knew there would be no rain, the scent of water filled the air, sweet as incense. Angelica smiled to see what awaited her outside.
At the pool’s edge, myriad small things had gathered to drink. Desert crickets, kangaroo rats, fat golden-eyed toads, and tiny sleepy-looking owls. Nighthawks and shrikes swooped above the water, and crimson bees like strings of beads spilled across the tiles. And rattlesnakes that paid no attention at all to the furtive kangaroo rats and nervous mice, but drank and then slithered back across the patio with a sound like the rustle of a wooden rosary.
Angelica watched them all, her smile a benediction. Then she slipped outside.
Beneath her bare feet the tiles felt warm, but the air touching her arms was cool enough to raise goose bumps and make her nipples harden beneath the thin fabric of her chiton. A few of the animals looked up, but none fled. A kit fox froze, water dripping from its jaws, then lowered its head once more. As Angelica watched it, she felt something tickle her foot. She looked down to see a tarantula, three of its legs extended so they brushed against her instep, a fourth raised to tap tentatively at her little toe. She stooped and opened her hand. The tarantula stiffened, then relaxed, its legs unfolding like miniature landing gear, and crept onto her hand. The hairs on its legs and abdomen were soft as those on a mullein leaf. It crawled onto her wrist and crouched there, its eyes bright and intelligent as a magpie’s.
“Ah, little sister.” Angelica walked toward the pool, stooped, and rested her hand against the warm tiles. The tarantula jumped from her palm to the ground. Angelica laughed, then stood and stretched her arms toward the sky.
Bats swept down to skim the surface of the pool and ricocheted back into the night. A few stars pricked the darkness. Angelica lowered her hands and pulled her dress over her head. She untied the suede ribbon that bound her hair, so that the thick curls fell in a damp mass down her back. She was naked, save for the glint of the lunula above her breasts. As she moved, the animals moved as well. Not fearfully but with care, as they would move to accommodate some great beast, bull or elk or antelope.
But someone else froze at the sight of the woman in the dark. Staring at Angelica from the shadows, Cloud felt her breath catch in her throat. She’d been hanging furtively around the edges of the patio, trying to come up with some kind of MO for the evening, when without warning Angelica appeared at the bank of sliding doors. With a muffled cry Cloud darted into a thick stand of underbrush.
Immediately she wished she’d worn something other than her usual uniform of tank top and hiking shorts and Doc Martens. Thorns tore at her bare legs and arms. Cloud muttered a curse, crouching among snaky wands of ocotillo and agave blades. She felt giddy from the rush of adrenaline. A stupid overreaction. She shouldn’t be this stoked about hiding in the bushes and peeking at Angelica, but here she was.
And there
she
was—
Cloud held her breath. This was, like, definitely Out There. She had always thought her employer was beautiful—
everyone
thought Angelica was beautiful—but seeing her like this Cloud finally understood the fanatical, almost worshipful reaction of Angelica’s fans.
Cloud had read a few of Angelica’s books, but it was hard for her to take them seriously. All that crap about the Goddess, about atavistic beauty and power. A power that would fill
any
woman, if only she would open herself up to it. Angelica had designed an entire ritual for this: Waking the Moon, she called it. Cloud had watched the ritual plenty of times. To tell the truth, it was not very impressive, at least to Cloud. A lot of incense and chiming bells and chanting, a certain amount of Camp Fire girl rowdiness and restrained nudity. Cloud usually dozed through most of it, leaving Kendra to watch in case any crazies showed up.
So maybe Cloud was missing out on something. Certainly afterward the women appeared to be ecstatic enough. Chattering about the Goddess, and how empowering it was to know Her true names. About what it was like to
feel that
power and to see Her beauty, a terrible beauty that She held within Her very bones, a beauty that would burn like flame and consume anyone foolish enough to come too near.
In Angelica’s workshops—and these were very special workshops, participants were carefully screened, and to further ensure that only the very serious-minded took part, the experience would set you back two grand and change—in her workshops, Angelica even hinted that she, Angelica di Rienzi Furiano, was the final and supreme incarnation of the Goddess. Cloud had always thought this was a little presumptuous of Angelica, to say the least.