“Good.” The woman grinned, slapped her shoulder, then darted off into the bushes.
“Danae!” Her mother came battling through the crowd. “Thank the gods, I thought I’d lost you.” She pulled her daughter into a tight embrace. “Where’s your sister?”
“I thought she was with you?”
Her mother paled. She clenched a vice-like hand around Danae’s wrist then turned back to the crowd.
“Alea!”
Danae’s heart raced at a sickening pace. She too called for her sister, scouring every face that rushed past, but there was no sign of Alea.
They searched the garden until their throats were raw and everyone had disappeared, save the temple hands who were left to clear up the wreckage.
“Have you seen my daughter? White dress, green headband, looks like me,” Eleni croaked for the hundredth time.
The man shook his head and returned to sweeping a heap of broken pottery.
Danae turned to her mother. “What do we do now?”
Eleni, who always had an answer, said, “I don’t know.”
2
Two Daughters
When Danae and her mother returned home and told her father that Alea had disappeared, Odell immediately ran to gather her brothers and search the island.
News of what happened at the Thesmophoria spread swiftly through the villages. Doors were barricaded and the all-seeing eye of the Twelve was daubed across the lintels. There was little the islanders could do to exact punishment on the Maenads. In the past, attempts had been made to discover their encampment, but the men who hunted them always returned bloody and battered, muttering that Dionysus protected his flock. The people of Naxos would have to leave their punishment to the gods.
By noon the following day, the news of Alea vanishing had reached her betrothed.
Philemon was a thin man of twenty with milky skin, sandy hair and forlorn eyes. He reminded Danae of an ear of wheat. She and her mother were fixing the awning of the goats’ lean-to when he and his father came striding up the path. Thaddeus couldn’t have been more different to his son. He was thickset and bullish, dressed in a maroon tunic which did nothing for his ruddy cheeks. He shoved open the yard gate, Philemon scurrying behind him.
“Odell!” he bellowed, wiping beads of sweat from his brow with a meaty hand.
Her mother hurried over to greet them.
“Thaddeus,” Eleni inclined her head, muttering the sacred greeting.
He responded then barged past her to stick his head through the hut door.
“Is it true? Has my son’s intended run off with the Maenads?”
“How dare—” Danae began, but her mother interrupted.
“My daughter was terrified when those women attacked the festival. She would never run with them. Alea was lost in the mayhem, but Odell’s taking care of it. There’s no need to worry, she will be home soon.”
Thaddeus did not look convinced. “Well, if she hasn’t gone with those whores, she must have joined the Missing.” He turned to his son and shook his head. “She was your choice.”
Philemon looked down at his feet.
Danae dug her nails into her palms. “Alea hasn’t joined the Maenads or the Missing. Pa and my brothers are out there searching now. They’ll find her.”
Thaddeus turned to Eleni as though she had been the one to speak.
“If by some miracle they do find her...” He paused. “She’d better be intact.”
Danae felt like he’d punched her. The shame of it. She imagined taking her father’s fishing spear and ramming it into Thaddeus’s ham-like face.
