Goddess of Yesterday Read Free Page A

she said, kissing each side of the print. “Your goddess who was with you yesterday will be with you tomorrow and every tomorrow to come.”
    And so I feasted with the people of Siphnos, and danced among them, while the blood print crusted and dried. I wondered just how blessed I was, marked by a woman from whom the gods had taken five babies.

T HE KING AND QUEEN had buried the babies in the wall between his bedroom and hers. We did not do that on our island, preferring graves far removed from houses. I never quite got used to having their little sets of bones inside the wall, just beneath the plaster. For a whole year, I slept in a ball to keep my feet safe.
    Every morning when I rose, I smoothed away the impression of my body from my mattress. Otherwise evil might lie down in my shape and wait for me. I opened the bedroom door carefully to allow Night and Day to trade places without tripping over me. It made Callisto laugh. “Nobody does that anymore,” she would tell me. “Not even the peasants in the hills.”
    In this place called a palace, they took a knife to their bread, slicing their loaves instead of tearing hunks off. A knife is a weapon. A blade should never attack bread, the most important gift of the gods.
    The king himself would wade through a creek without first washing his hands. What could the water think, knowing that even the king did not care if he was pure? I thought a family whose only daughter was crippled and whose five sons had died in infancy should take more care.
    My hostage father the king loved feasting and celebration. Every time a ship of his came back safe and rich, he roasted a ram for the gods. Every time we had guests, I stayed up late to listen, hoping to hear news of my parents, Chrysaor and Iris, but I never did.
    Sometimes I cried myself to sleep, and although I buried the sounds in my fleece, Queen Petra knew and came to rock me. More than one night she slept beside me because I would not let go of her hand. Petra said that my fate had come from the gods and could not have been avoided. “When you are born,” she said, “Zeus takes his two jars and shakes them, the joyful and the sorrowful. Your fate is poured out. No one escapes.”
    Yet not a day went by that I didn't escape in my heart. When I was under the sky instead of the roof, I was closer to home. I explored hollows and hills. I ran along slender beaches and brought back just the right sea stone for Callisto. I followed the sheep and the goats up hillsides too steep for crops.
    I was drawn to an empty silent meadow with a single olive tree, old as time.
    It was a hideous tree. In some distant decade, farmers had cut the trunk almost to the ground, and out of the great flat stump had grown massive side trunks, now rotting and split around the table of the stump. In each decaying knot and elbow were staring eyes and open mouths that screamed silently, like Medusa.
    The shepherds, who were teaching me to use a slingshot, warned me away from this tree. “Beneath that olive, take no rest, Anaxandra. Pan, god of chaos, visits there.”
    But I thought myself braver than any shepherd orwarrior, for I swam underwater into caves. I poked my bare fingers into a rotted mouth and left my mother's jewels in the olive tree for my goddess.
    I explored every tiny lane in Siphnos town, with its alleys as tangled as fishermen's knots. The town huddled nervously inside its high white walls, and the doors of houses looked around, worrying, as if knowing that their king did not properly honor the sacred places.
    I played with all the animals, especially the dogs, but I never had one of my own again. On our island, people slept on raised platforms in the same room as their sheep, so they were always warm, although a bit smelly. But in Siphnos town, the doors on the ground floor led to separate rooms for animals, while families entered their homes from the porches in the air.
    Whenever I could, I went to the stable to admire the king's