‘Of what?’
‘A god.’
‘So you’re a little bit of a god.’
‘We’re all a little bit of a god,’ said his mother.
‘This is rubbish. She’s just a silly girl,’ said Karas.
‘She carries an aspect of the goddess within her. That’s what I believe. Hecate faces three ways. Virgin, mother, crone. Your sister is the virgin.’
‘And what good is it to her?’
‘That is what we’re here to find out.’
‘Well, if she’s a goddess, can she magic us up some food and fine clothes? “I’m part of a god.” Where did you learn to talk like that, Elai?’
‘In my dreams. Anyway I never said that, exactly.’
She was so serious he stopped his mockery. She had something else she wanted to say, he was sure.
‘Is there more?’
‘I don’t know. I hope to find out in the well. It will tell me what to do about what’s following me.’
‘And what follows you?’
‘A wolf,’ said Elai.
‘Ha!’ He pointed at her. ‘I dream of a wolf and it’s nothing; she dreams of a wolf and she’s taken to the earth to be given magical insights!’
‘Not given,’ said her mother.
‘Then what?’
‘She is here to earn them, or pay for them. Nothing is given at the well; things are only exchanged. And not everyone wants to give what is asked of them. I didn’t, nor will I.’
‘But you have a power of prophecy.’
‘A weak one, and the one I was born with. I would not answer the bargain that was put to me.’
‘I would answer any bargain,’ said the boy.
‘Good that you won’t be asked then.’
They ate the last of their bread and olives and pushed further down. When they stopped they froze; when they moved they sweated until they were soaked. Down, down into the lower caves. Finally they came to a stream that dropped in steps into blackness.
Careful with the lamp, they sat and bumped their way forward until Karas, peering ahead, saw something that sent a cold chill through him.
Their lamp wasn’t the only light down there. Ahead of them was a chamber and the rock was glowing.
His mother wriggled forward through the stream on her behind. When she reached the chamber, she set the lamp on a rock. Karas and Elai followed her in.
Nearest to the lamp the rocks glowed with an intense red; further away the light shone softer and more diffuse. The glow was like a reflection of the lamplight, thought Karas, not on the surface of the rock but deep within. He was in a sort of crucible, a wide and shallow cave only a man’s height above the water shaped like an open hand. The rocks in the pool stretched up like fingers, the water sitting in the palm as if the earth was offering it. The water glittered in the light of the rocks. Karas thought of the bloody hand of Christ, pierced by the nails of Romans, thought of his mother’s words: ‘Not everyone is prepared to give what is asked.’ What had Christ given on his cross? His life and his agony. And what had he become? A god.
‘Why do the rocks glow, Mother?’ he asked.
‘It’s not magic as I understand it. They only borrow the light of our lamp,’ she said. ‘If we were to put it out, they would die too.’
‘Don’t put out the light,’ said Elai. She had fear in her voice.
‘I have no intention of doing that.’
His mother moved further in, climbing over the huge fingers of rock. Shelves of stone edged the chamber, some bearing the remains of candles. Karas counted. There were eight such level places, two large ones near the water and several smaller ones. He was reminded of when he’d sneaked into the hippodrome to see the chariot racing. It was like that, he thought, a tiny stadium.
His mother found a ledge and gestured for Elai to sit beside her.
‘Come on. The way is easy, and if you fall in, the pool is not deep here. I can fish you out easily.’
‘I thought it was a well,’ said Karas.
‘And so it is, but wells are only deep to reach the water. This is the bottom and it is fed by three good streams.’
Karas only saw one.
Elai made her way around the rocks, climbing carefully, pausing to ask for her mother’s help twice, to be directed to a hold or just encouraged to come on. Finally the girl was beside her.
‘This will take a while, Karas,’ said his mother, ‘but remember it was you who asked to come.’
‘I am in no hurry,’ said Karas. His bravery had left him, though, in the blood-red well, and he had the strong urge to cry.
He waited while his mother prepared Elai for the ritual. She fed her herbs from her pack, then took some herself. She also took out a long ladle and set it beside her. Then she sang:
‘Lady of the moon,
Lady of gateways and leavetakings,
Lady of those who step through and depart,
Lady of the dead and the lands of the dead,
Lady of magic and song,
Here at the meeting of three ways,
Here in the waters where the ways are tied,
Avenging spirit put your eyes upon your daughters.’
The chant went on and on and Karas shivered deeply. He was cold and could not imagine his sister and mother were any warmer. They sat with their feet in the water.
Her mother took the ladle and held it up in both hands. Chanting all the time, she bowed three times in three directions, then dipped the ladle into the water and lifted it to offer to Elai.
Elai drank it down. Karas watched, fascinated. His sister’s eyes had become glazed and she rocked back and forth where she sat.
Still the chant, unceasing. Eventually his mother began to rock on her seat too, her eyes vacant. Both of them mumbled words under their breath.
‘Hecate, goddess, moonblind where the waters meet, lady of the death and the journey of death, she who guards the threshold and the gateway of death, she who admits only the dead, Hecate, goddess, at whose disposal are the starry chambers of the night, the black void of the cold oceans, lady of hidden places, she who guards the threshold and the gateway of death.’
Karas lost focus in the cold. He wanted to go back to the surface for the warmth movement would bring, but the ritual held a fascination for him. It was as if he was an ocean and inside him stirred unseen and depthless tides.
A scream, almost unbearably loud in the tight little cavern. His sister: ‘How will I be free of him? I will not become him, I will not die by those teeth as she died!’ Her eyes were wide and glassy.
‘I will not. That way I cannot go. I will not. No!’
Karas wanted to go to her, to help her, but he did not.
‘I will not give what is asked. It is too much! Too much.’
Karas watched her in the lamplight and the soft glow of the rocks. So she would reject what the waters offered while he would not be even given a chance. Why?
His mother’s chant went on, but Elai cast about her as if blind and searching for the direction of a sound.
Why should she refuse what he would take in a breath? He clambered around the fingers of rock towards where his mother and sister sat. His muscles writhed on his bones with the cold, a deep tremor within him. He squeezed in beside them. Then he ate the herbs. Their taste was bitter and earthy — more than earthy — bits of
