By Val Waldron
‘I could see the change. Their eyes weren’t smiling anymore.’
‘You didn’t say.’
‘Where they had been moved to tears by your words, they wiped away mock tears and laughed into their wine’
‘You didn’t say.’
‘I felt the change in you too. Your touch seemed tentative, almost forbidden. My heart was breaking with my love for you.’
‘You didn’t say.’
‘They approach now,’ she said, grasping my hand for the last time. I turned abruptly to face the two sentries who rushed towards me with an urgency that I would not reflect in my reaction. I was escorted to my rooms through the moonless courtyard and silently bidden to wrap some of my clothing in sackcloth, then taken to the harbour.
If you must land me on an island in shackles, cast me right away to a dungeon. Let me be that island, alone in darkness to contemplate my end, and indeed, my sin. Let me not tread the soil of this enchanted place, from where there is no earthly escape.
The boat was soon to disappear, tiny sails glinting pink from grey, the fresh morning sun already yellowing my darkest day. I dropped to the fine diamond sand and retched until purged of the opulent fayre that had followed my recital at the Symposium. I remembered laying down my lyre to eat and found myself weeping a little for its loss. I buried my face in the sand, praying for my quick release and saw that a tiny silver key glinted there.
No sentry would dare to admit that he had lost the key to my ankle chains. They would never return for me and I chose to believe that it was an act of compassion. The shackles dropped as the morning mist pulled away from the highest mountain. Etchings of the smoking volcano Etna were plentiful, and I saw at once that I was in Sicily.
The wisp of smoke that snaked up from a near hillside was no eruption. I had no idea which tribal overlord ruled Sicily at this point. It was a community ever in flux, its people at the mercy of constant warfare. The wisp quickly became a pall then a sheet of jagged flames that tore across the hillside. A village was disgorging itself towards the sea, moving as rapidly as the spreading flames. A woman was running towards me.
‘Follow us, sister, come! Did they burn your village too? Are you alone?’ ‘Yes’ was my only response as I quickly caught up with the refugees. I thanked my Goddess that our common language had likely spared my life.
I found my place in that small community over time. It grew from my physical strength and quick wit. I was able to forage for food, carry water, build shelter, nurse the sick and bury the dead. I assumed the mantle of one bereaved to the core of my being. It protected me until the questions that I had been dreading drifted through the clearing one evening when peace had begun to settle.
‘Who are you sister? What’s your name? What was your place in this world?’ Unprepared, I almost forgot myself, ‘I was a …’ I swallowed the words that would reveal my true identity. ‘I have many skills as you know, but I was a tutor to the maidens of my village and prepared them for the ways of the world.’ A satisfied murmur passed around the campfire and I continued serving supper.
Over time, it seemed that the previous order would restore itself. Village elders reasserted their position, but they had been weakened. I quietly slipped into the role I’d carved for myself that evening and the young girls were entrusted to me for their education. I tutored by omission. I failed to prepare them for a future as servant to man, and instead showed them that they had already used and encountered some of the skills and qualities of woman while rebuilding their community.
Many harvest moons had signalled the renewal of life and peace before I stopped glancing over my shoulder for the hand that would punish me for nourishing a matriarchal community from the ashes of disaster. In time, with the annual festival that brought the first tasting of our new wine, I took my place around the same campfire and gently unveiled myself as a lyrical poet of love, compassion and passion for my sex. The chorus was repeated as if they’d always known it.
It won’t be long now until I merge with the fertile soil of this heavenly garden. My words will become part of the landscape until man tries to destroy and distort them. They will say that I died of love for a man, or that I could not live with my unnatural love for women, but they will never destroy the essence of woman. She will be cast up like a tornado with every storm they create.