Page 120 of The Hymn to Dionysus

“Already,” She said, and She sounded like She might laugh. She; they. It was lots of voices, many women, young and old, some half singing, but really there was only one, in the same way that there are many bees but one swarm. “Other things to do, have you?”

“No, lady,” he whispered.

“You’re shaking. Are you frightened?”

He set his teeth and shook his head. “No, lady, it’s just—cold.”

A heavy fur cloak settled over his shoulders. It was better than anything he’d even heard of before. He couldn’t tell what the fur was. Maybe a bear. He had seen bears, but no one in the clan had ever killed one.

“What courtesy.” She was laughing now. “It was interesting, to see your dreams just now. You can see far. Plains of corn and tame herds. A land of milk and honey.”

“I know it’s stupid,” he mumbled. “I know it’s heresy. Forgive me.”

But She didn’t sound angry when She spoke next. Those voices, that great choir, just sounded . . . speculative. “Do you understand how the world would change, if that dream came to pass? Do you understand how quickly they would forget the Hunt and the earth, and the honour of their mothers, and the necessity of the witches? Crops need rain, not witches and trackers and readers of trees. They would worship the sky, not the earth. It would be a turning of gods, as well as minds.”

“They wouldn’t dare.”

“It is good to be courteous with each other, I agree with you. But not to lie. They would dare and you know it. Their memories are small. They would forget. You want them to leave behind the Hunt, and perhaps it is time, and enough children have died; perhaps I am old and there should be new gods, but tell me true, husband: do you not think the price is too high?”

He had to clench his hands under the cloak. She could see what he thought anyway, but She was seeing if he was brave enough to say it. And—She was right. Lying would be a bad way to start. “I was raised by witches. I bring children into the world and I bury most of them on the same day. If the price for changing that is that they forget the earth and turn to the sky—it’s worth it. But they need not forget. Not if you remind them sometimes. We don’t last long, but our stories do. I know stories from my grandmother’s grandmother. We remember what’s important. Or—we can.”

She put both hands around his neck, and he thought She was going to strangle him, but She didn’t squeeze. “I won’t remind them, husband. You will.”

“What?” he whispered.

All the voices rose, and sighed, and sang.

“You are the forest and the earth. Yours are the hives, and the honey, and the great bulls; the things that mean living without killing. You will die and rise, and die and rise, as evergreen as the ivy. Yours will be the border between the new world, and mine. Down the ages they will try to stray too far, and forget their nature, and their limits. Wherever they transgress, there you will be. You are the watchman, and the memory, and the madness. In the times that are to come, humans will need a god to make them remember what human is.”

She took Her hands away.

“Open your eyes.”

35

We set out early, while it was still cool—or almost—and the sun hadn’t broiled everything yet. It would have been cooler to walk under the shade of the trees, but neither of us even discussed it. Helios had told me the story of Actaeon, who had tried to go into the sacred woods to hunt, and ended up turned into a stag himself. The stag’s head was still on the wall at the Palace.

It was the strangest thing, but as we walked uphill, I could feel things that didn’t belong to me. I kept wanting to rearrange my feathers, or get a burr out of a tail I didn’t have, and every so often, the sun was blinding through eyes that were meant for moonlight. Once, I tried to reach up to pick an orange, and it was Dionysus’s hand that moved. He winced.

“Sorry.”

Something in my head vanished, and I was just me again. Which felt small and uncomfortable and trapped. I’d been—bigger, a second ago.

He was looking at me like he expected to be shouted at.

“But that was nice,” I said.

He hesitated, then took my hand, and it came back; not so strong. I wasn’t seeing through anyone else’s eyes any more, or feeling confused about wings. But I could feel that we were surrounded by lots of star-points of tiny minds that didn’t even notice we were alive, just funny moving hills, and great, slow, strange minds I didn’t recognise, for whom we were strange flashes, babies one minute and then dust. Those were dark, under the earth somewhere, but they could feel us walking above. Off to our right was a disturbed-hive thrum that I realized after a little while was Thebes. It was eerie, but only in the way that floating underwater above a reef is eerie, knowing you’re seeing things humans can’t normally see, and that you could drown, but you won’t.

“That’s lovely,” I said, and for a split second, I heard how my voice sounded to him, which was dizzying but not horrible.

He smiled as if I’d said something immensely graceful, not just the truth.

The sun was creeping up higher, the air already warmer. The way was getting steep, and rocky, and dry. Whatever that great presence was that lived under the ground, it died away here, and the world seemed too quiet. No water; even the trees, though they delved deep, were gradually dying.

“Might take longer than we’d hoped,” I observed, not feeling very optimistic about the springs. If they were still there, the water would be hard to get to.

“There are lots of animals up there,” he said, pointing more or less north. “That usually means water.”