Chapter 14 #3
Unlike the temple of Athena, the entrance led not into an open hall, but into a low stone passage.
She flinched as the doors slammed shut behind her.
After the clamor of the sacred way, the corridor was eerily quiet.
All she could hear was the beat of her own pulse and the clinking of the priestesses’ jewelry.
Scented braziers smoked at intervals along the walls.
As they walked, the priestesses seemed to flicker in the dancing light, as though they were visions and not really there at all.
She felt like she’d been walking for hours when they finally descended a narrow staircase.
At its base, a door loomed out of the shadows.
It was fashioned from oak and surprisingly plain.
One of the priestesses twisted the iron latch, and it creaked open.
The other placed a hand on Danae’s back and pushed.
She stumbled into the chamber of the oracle and heard the door bolt shut behind her.
The room was suffocating.
Danae coughed as smoky vapors burned the back of her throat.
Four bronze dishes filled with smoldering incense nestled in each corner of the chamber.
Their light licked up the cavernous walls, casting wavering shadows across the domed ceiling.
A crevasse ran the length of the room, splitting the floor in two, sulfurous smoke curling from its depths.
The oracle.
Her thoughts melted together as though someone had poured hot oil over her brain. She blinked. She had to hold on to why she was there. She needed the oracle to explain what had happened to her and, if she was cursed, give her a cure.
A figure emerged through the vapor. It was hard to tell where the Pythia began and the haze ended.
Tendrils of smoke wove through her long, lank hair.
She was dressed in a plain white robe, and, unlike the other priestesses, no jewels adorned her body.
She was painfully thin. Pallid skin hung from her cheekbones and red-rimmed eyes stared out from shadowy sockets.
In the dizzying smoke, Danae fumbled to unclasp the owl brooch from the underside of her tunic, then proffered it to the Pythia.
“This is for you. I know it’s not much...” Her voice sounded muffled and distant. “But I need your help. There’s something wrong with me... I think I might be cursed.”
The Pythia’s hand closed around hers. Danae glanced down. The woman’s knuckles looked like pearls nestled in a bed of crumpled silk. Her grip was surprisingly firm.
“I made a tree grow out of my sister’s chest.” It felt important to explain. “She was already dead, but...it had golden apples...” she trailed off, her tongue thick and clumsy.
The Pythia placed a skeletal finger over Danae’s mouth. Paper-thin lips stretched into a smile over wizened gums.
“Come, novice,” said the Pythia. Her voice crackled like dry leaves underfoot.
She led Danae forward, until they were standing at the very edge of the fissure. She pushed Danae to the floor, then moved to stand behind her. The Pythia gripped her scalp and shoved her head down over the oracle.
“Breathe.”
There was something inside the crevice. Something smooth and shining, like a great black eye, covered in a web of cracks. And there, at its heart, was a chip, as though one piece was missing.
“Touch it,” whispered the Pythia, “and tell me what you see.”
Danae felt the urge to explain that she wasn’t really a novice, but instead found herself reaching forward until her fingers connected with something smooth and hard.
For a moment, she felt nothing but the vapors pounding against her skull and the acrid taste of sulfur in her mouth. Then, there was an intense tugging sensation down her arm. She couldn’t move. She tried to cry out, but her muscles seemed locked. Then the ground beneath her disappeared.
Darkness pressed against her eyes. Then she realized she had no eyes at all.
She was immaterial, suspended outside her body in a vast emptiness.
For a terrible moment it felt like she was the only living thing in existence.
Then a single thread of light danced across the void.
She watched it scamper away, then somehow without hands, caught it before it could disappear.
Her consciousness was absorbed into the thread, and soon more strands appeared, swimming through the darkness toward her.
They wove together and found other clutches of threads, until she was part of one great, interconnected web of glowing strands.
She saw shapes she recognized: a blade of grass, an ear of wheat, a beetle, a seagull, a galloping horse.
She could feel the pulse of all their lives flowing through the tapestry, ever changing, ever weaving as energy traveled from a dying body to a new life at the moment of its conception.
As she darted through them, she realized the threads were life itself.
And she a spark, racing along the network of creation.
Then she stopped.
Before her was an apple tree, sketched by the ever-moving life-threads that cycled through it. She couldn’t see its bark, or the color of its fruit, but she knew, with absolute certainty, that this was the same golden apple tree that had grown from her sister’s heart.
There were figures moving around it. Twelve specters in hooded cloaks.
Eleven stepped back as one moved closer, raising their arms to touch the trunk.
The figure’s threads began to flow into its bark, and slowly the cloaked phantom dissolved into the tree.
Suddenly, the tapestry around Danae bubbled.
The life-threads bulged, then became hands, reaching, grabbing, tearing at the fruit.
The remaining figures were dragged down and consumed until nothing stood between the tree and the gluttonous fingers.
A scream swelled inside her, but she had no mouth to release it. They were going to destroy the tree. She could not let that happen.
The pressure became so intense she thought she would explode.
Then the tree ignited. Its threads burst into flames and blazed so brightly it was blinding.
But she couldn’t look away, she had no head to turn or eyes to close.
The hands cringed from the burning fruit, but they couldn’t escape the inferno. Nothing could.
She watched, while everything burned.