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"You do not remember, yet you have looked often at the moon and seen me, as I have seen you. Once when I heard a certain one called the God in the Tree, I came while you stood in water. I sought him but found he was not He whom I sought. Do you recall me as I was then?"
I could not speak; I shook my head.
As the darkness vanishes when the moon steps from behind a cloud, so she vanished. In her place stood the lovely virgin I had seen beside the lake after I had slept with Hilaeira.
"You remember now," the virgin said, and smiled. "Earth's power is great, but I am here and she is not." She held a bow, just as I remembered, and there were seven arrows in the cestus at her waist. The Dark Mother's hounds fawned on her.
"Yes," I said. "I remember. Oh, thank you!" and I knelt and would have kissed her feet but that the hounds bared their teeth at me.
"I am no friend of yours, save as you are the enemy of my enemy; and when I am gone, you will forget me once more."
"Then never go!" I begged her. "Or take me with you."
"I ca
"Yes, Huntress."
"Once it was Gaea's. I sent my people, and they took it for me, breaking her altars."
"Yes, Huntress."
"You must not seek to loose their grasp, and because you will forget, I desire to send a slave with you who will remind you. Happily, there is someone with you who has sworn to serve me without reservation, and thus is mine wholly to do with as I choose."
"And I, Huntress."
"Hardly, though I know you mean well. Look at this." She held out her hand; in it writhed a little snake no longer than my finger. "Take her, and keep her safe."
I took it, but I had nowhere to put it. I held it in my hand, and in a moment it seemed to vanish; I held nothing.
"Good. Down that road is a farmhouse." The Huntress pointed with her bow. "It is not far, and you need not fear that the shieldman set to watch you will wake. You must go to that farm and make its people give you a wineskin and a cup. When you meet the one who has dedicated himself to me, you must make him drink, and you must put my serpent into the cup. Do you understand?"
"Huntress," I said, "I have lost your serpent."
"You will find her again when the time comes. Now go. I send my dogs before you to rouse the house."
As she spoke, they flashed from her side. For an instant I saw them streaking down the road she had indicated; then they were gone.
I turned and followed them, knowing that was what the virgin wished me to do. When I had taken fifty steps or so, the urge to see her once more overwhelmed me, and I looked over my shoulder.
I wish I had not, because she was gone. The Dark Mother stood where she had stood, holding her torches; wisps of fog and dark, shapeless things had left the trees to be with her. Someone screamed and I began to run, though I could not have said whether I ran to give aid or to fly the Dark Mother. The farmhouse was like a hundred others, of rough brick with a thatched roof, its farmyard surrounded by a low wall of mud and sticks. The gate had been broken; I entered easily. Inside, the wooden figure of the three women had been thrown down, though the altars to either side of the door had not been touched. The door was whole, but as I approached it a man with staring eyes flung it open and ran out. He would have collided with me as one horseman rides down another, had I not caught him as he came. I asked, "Are you the father of this hearth?"
"Yes," he said.
"Then I can take away the curse, I think; but you must give me freely a skin of wine and a cup."
His mouth worked. I think it would have foamed had there been any moisture there. The screaming inside had stopped, though a child wept.
"Give me the wine," I told him.
Without another word he turned and went in again, and I followed him.
His wife came to him, naked and weeping, her face twisted with fear and grief. She tried to speak, but only the noises of grief and fear could pass her lips. He pushed her to one side; when she saw me she clasped me for protection, and I put my arm about her.
The man returned with a wineskin and a cup of unglazed clay. "This has waited two seasons," he said. I saw that he himself was no older than I, and perhaps younger.
Telling him to comfort his wife, I went back outside. There I set up the image in its place again, poured a little wine into the cup, and sprinkled a few drops before each of the three figures, calling them Dark Mother, Huntress, and Moon. Before I had finished, silence settled on the house, and an owl hooted from the wood.
The farmer and his wife came out to me, she now wearing a gown and leading a girl younger than Io by the hand. I told them I did not think they would be troubled again. They thanked me many times; and he brought a lamp, another skin of wine, and cups like the one he had given me. We all drank the unmixed wine, the child sipping from her mother's cup that she might sleep soundly, as her mother said. I asked them what they had seen.
The child would say only that it had been a bad thing; I did not question her further, seeing that it made her afraid. The woman said that a hag with staring eyes had sat upon her and held her motionless by a spell; she had been unable to breathe. The man spoke of a winged creature, not a bird nor a bat, that had flapped after him from room to room.
I asked whether any of them had seen a dog. They told me they owned a dog and had heard him bark. We went to look for him in his ke
When I left the farmhouse, a figure moved at the crossroad, and I saw many tiny lights, though the Dark Mother and her torches were gone. It was the Milesian; he started up as though frightened when I approached him, though he relaxed when he saw my face. "Latro!" he exclaimed. "There's someone else awake, at least. Do you know the Rope Makers didn't even post a guard? There's confidence for you."
I asked what he was doing.
"Just a little sacrifice to the Triple Goddess. Road crossings like this are sacred to her, provided there's no house in sight, and the dark of the moon is the best time. I hadn't thanked her properly yet for the great boon she gave me in the city-you were there and saw it, what a pity you don't remember! Anyway, this seemed a good chance to do it. Then this fellow"-he pointed to the sacrifice, a black puppy-"wandered up to me, and I knew it had to be propitious."
I said, "If you haven't finished… "
"Oh, no. I completed the last invocation just as I heard your step." He bent and picked up the glowing things that formed a circle around the puppy, then looked significantly at the wineskin. "You've been buying from the peasants, I see."
I nodded and asked whether he was dedicated to the Triple Goddess.
"Yes indeed. Ever since I was a lad. She gives her worshipers all they ask-even old Hesiod says so in his verses, though none of his countrymen seemed to heed him. I admit she has some strange ways of doing it."
I knew then that he was the one of whom the Huntress had spoken, and I loosened the thongs of the wineskin and poured wine into the cup. "What is it you have asked of her?"
"Power, of course. Gold is only a kind of power, and not the best kind. As for women, I've had a good many, and I find I prefer boys."
To fill the time, I said, "Power will get you all you wish of those. Kings have no difficulty."
"Of course not. But real power is not of this world, but of the higher one-the ability to call back the dead and summon spirits; the knowledge of unseen things."