1. A Goddess in the Sewer
A Goddess in the Sewer
There were whispers of a goddess that visits the temple.
Not the goddess the temple was built for—that’s why they whisper.
To speak of another, especially one unseen, is to invite wrath.
It mattered not that no one saw our patron goddess for which the temple was built, or that I cannot remember who she was.
A minor deity, but one that demanded piety, nonetheless.
Our goddess watched over us, her serene face belying the ever-watching eyes. They tracked movement without turning, the illusion of constant surveillance. She would know if we stole or ran or erred, even if the priests did not. Our gods were never known for their kindness.
I was a mouse, a common orphan that busied herself at the altar in exchange for a place to sleep.
I think I was an orphan, why else would I be there?
My memory is the worst here, because they are the oldest ones I have.
They are fragmented, disjointed recollections of a useless life.
If not for you I would have died in that temple.
Perhaps I would have come down with phthisis, or the flu, or malaria.
Maybe I would have married and left the temple.
Maybe maybe maybe.
I don’t remember longing for a life outside the temple.
Sometimes I want to dig my fingers into my brain and pull out this chunk of my life, turn it over in my hands.
If only I could string them through those machines in the theatre, playing back memories untouched by your rot.
I want to know what I was thinking when I went with you. I want to remember who I was.
But there is only your face, and my emotions dissolved in you like salt in spring water.
There was a goddess that visited the temple, but only at night. Did I seek you out? Or was it some divine accident? Did you draw me to you, take away my choice before I knew better?
You were in the corner of my eye, and then you were my everything. I felt you move through the temple, examine the offerings, turn them over in your hands. You did not look like the patron goddess, her likeness in busts through the rooms. She was serene, matronly.
And yet there you were, touching her things. A brazen thing for a mortal to do. Another looter, another come to defile the temple. I could not abide it, so I confronted you.
Your eyes were red embers. They stopped my words in my throat. I knew then I was not in the presence of a mortal, but the goddess the others spoke of. I bowed, my forehead pressed to the ground.
“Forgive me,” I whispered. I was a mouse, I was a nothing. I should not have looked upon the face of divinity, and I’d be struck down for it. I waited for my execution, for the blow that would take my life.
There is a goddess that visits the temple, and she will punish me for my slight.
The blow did not come, and I was alone once more, tears drying on my face.
I always knew when you came. I’d wake in the dead of night, my heart racing, the hair on my arms on end. No one stirred as I rose, unaware that the goddess trailed the halls.
Did you know I watched you? Did you know I was there? Was I as quiet as I thought I was?
A mouse, a nameless girl, not worthy enough to be struck down for her brazenness.
(“But I did see you. I did know you.”)
I became too old for the temple, or maybe I did something wrong. Maybe they caught me out at night and thought it was I who raided the altar. There are flashes—yelling, but at who? Was I the one yelling? Was I kicked out?
I was dirty, my arms wrapped around my knees, my face pressed into them.
I rocked on the ground, swallowing my tears, begging my traitorous sobs to quiet.
I ground my bare foot onto a rock behind the altar to keep my mind sharp, to stay awake.
I focused on the pain, on my blood as it coated the rock.
What did I do?
I hummed to myself. The voices of the others in the temple joined me. I sang the hymns to the patron goddess, turned them over in my mouth. The words stuck in my dry throat, but I gave them life anyway. I sang and I rocked my body and I waited until the sun rose.
Why am I waiting?
The hair on my arms stood on end and I stop. The unmistakable thrill of divinity, of the goddess that visits the temple. Of you. There was a current between us, a charged air like before a lightning strike. Even before you bit me, even before you gave me this life, I felt it.
Did you? Is that what made you step behind the altar and look down upon me?
You were a shadow but for your eyes, glowing from beneath your hood. All I could do was stare in awe. You watched me, head tilted, then knelt before me.
Knelt.
I should’ve been kneeling.
I threw myself on the ground, my forehead pressed to the stone. I would pay for my insolence, for my disrespect. You’d let me live once before, you would not suffer such an insult twice.
Later, much later, I would learn that you never knelt unless you were about to feed. Or destroy. That night, I mistook mercy for a miracle.
“Is it you who sang?” you asked, your voice filling my senses like incense.
“Yes,” I replied, to you and to the floor.
“Rise,” you said, and I obeyed. Who questions a goddess? “Can you sing again?”
I did. I sang, unable to tear my gaze from you.
We Greeks have many stories of shapeshifters, of gods and goddesses that visit the mortal realm in disguise.
I thought, perhaps, I was one of the few to stare upon the true face of a deity.
What else could explain how you fully consumed me from that moment on?
How else could I give up a life and never look back?
All because a ghost in the temple asked me to sing.
You stood and extended your hand—a cold, firm thing that drags me into the present. The air was heavy. My lips tasted of copper. My body ached.
Why did I ache?
“Come, dawn approaches,” you say.
I did not ask where we were going. I did not ask what I must leave behind.
I abandoned my life and entered yours.