Black Ships by Jo Graham Read Free Book Online

watching the waves lapping against the shore, and felt nothing.
    “Great Lady,” I said. “Why will You not guide me? Why are You not with me? Am I not truly Pythia yet?”
    Wait,
the silence said.
You must wait.
    “What am I waiting for?” I asked.
    The waves beat against the shore and receded. A ship moored against the dock creaked with the rise and fall of each wave. The stars shone in the blackness. And absolutely nothing happened.
    I RETURNED to the Shrine. The days lengthened; the harvest was all gathered in. The poppies withered and went to seed.
    When the grain was all safely belowground, Idenes sailed. He took six ships and all the men of his house, all the warriors and their arms. He sailed with Neoptolemos and the other ships he had raised. They sailed for Millawanda, where they would meet the men of Tiryns that Neoptolemos had likewise recruited. And then they would sail for Ilios.
    Triotes went with his king. Aren, I imagined, wept bitterly at being left behind. He was thirteen, and doubtless thought more of the adventure than the battle at the end.
    All was quiet at the Shrine.
    Shepherds came with ewes that were ailing—there was some disease that ran among the sheep this year. I recalled something that Pythia said once, about a similar thing in her grandmother’s day.
    “Take the sheep that are ailing away from the others,” I said. “Dedicate them and sacrifice them properly. Share out the flesh among your household, even among your slaves. But do not think you can cheat the gods by keeping them among the others, for if you do this surely all your sheep will be stricken.”
    And it was so. Those farmers who obeyed lost some valuable animals. Those who tried to cheat the gods lost almost all.
    When it was done, and half the land feasted on mutton, I went into the deep caves. I had no part of the slaughter or preparation— I could not shed blood nor see it shed. So I went into the darkness.
    The chamber with the wolf skins was silent. The air did not move except at my passing. “Lady,” I said, “will You not speak to Your servant? What am I waiting for?”
    The caves were silent and gave me no answer.
    Wait.
    A T THE HEIGHT of summer Idenes returned with five ships laden with loot and slaves. One ship was lost on the return, the one that Triotes captained. He was lost at sea with all his men.
    Dolcis told me this. I had no desire to go to Pylos and see the captives, to see the men of Pylos celebrating with the wealth of Wilusa.
    “Forty slaves,” Dolcis said, wiping the sweat from her brow from the long trek up the mountain. “And more that they sold on the way home at Millawanda for gold and silver from Egypt. Idenes is a wealthy man now, a king of some consequence.”
    She remembered who I was only when I got up without a sound and left the room. I went into the caves where she didn’t dare follow me.
    I sat on the wolf skins in the dark.
    “Lady,” I said. “I am Pythia, Your servant. But I was once a girl named Gull.”
    And I cried there in the dark as I had not since Pythia died. For the captives, perhaps. For my kinswomen I had never known who toiled by the river or in the kitchens of the palace. For my mother. For Aren, now twice orphaned. For myself. I do not know. But I cried until I slept.
    T HE HEAT SHIMMERED on the land, the air thick and heavy. It was hot, more so than summer expected. Usually there were breaks in the heat, but this lay oppressive on the land day after day.
    Even the honeybees were still and the afternoons free of their buzzing.
    Three weeks after Idenes came home he sailed again. Neoptolemos had the idea to raid up the Illyrian coast north of Ithaca before the sailing season ended. Pylos had no quarrel with those people, but drunk on victory nobody cared.
    I remembered what Cythera said about being like a cow in a field. I felt gravid, sleepy. The heat lay unrelenting. At night, lightning played in the north, but the storms never came here. The heat never