Black Ships by Jo Graham Read Free Book Online Page A

broke; the rain never fell.
    Four nights later I lay on my pallet beside the hearth. The coals were raked so that there would be little heat. I dreamed.
    In my dream I slept beside the river, in the hut I had shared with my mother and Aren when he was a baby. Everything was cool and quiet. I could hear the sound of the river flowing over stones.
    My mother came to me and she was lovely, her black hair combed on her shoulders. “Wake up, Gull,” she said gently. “It’s time for you to get up.”
    “But why?” my child self asked.
    “I have work for you to do,” she said. “Come, little one.”
    “It’s not morning,” I said.
    “I know,” my mother said. “But you must be at the bend of the road when morning comes. Get up, Gull. Come with me.” She smiled, and I reached out my hand to her. When she took it I awoke.
    I was lying on my pallet in the cave. It was hours yet until dawn. The sky had just begun to lighten. Sothis was riding high in the blackness, as sharp and as bright as a blade, the star that had shone on my birth.
    The air was cool.
    I stood up.
    Dolcis was snoring softly.
    Suddenly I was seized with energy. I must be at the bend in the road when the sun rose.
    I put on my black chiton and pinned up my hair. I had intended to just tie it at the back of my neck, but the copper pins were in my hand. So I put it up, the high knots and pins intended for feast days. I reached for the alabaster pots. It was dark in the cave, but I knew which was which by scent, and I had no difficulty moving in the dark. I had moved in darkness for years. I painted my face to the whiteness of bone, outlining eyes and lips with kohl. And all the while I felt the urgency pulling at me.
Hurry. Hurry. I must be at the turn of the road when the sun rises.
    I took the black bag and wound it around my waist, as I had no handmaiden. I put in the alabaster pots, the brushes, the little silver mirror. The clay jars that held the herbs for the brazier. As though I were going to Pylos. As though I were going on a journey with Pythia and must carry her things.
    Hurry. Hurry.
    I took the best and lightest of the mantles and settled it about my shoulders, the veil that I wore only at the Feast of the Descent.
    Hurry. Hurry.
    The sky was graying when I left the Shrine, hurried across the thick mat of cypress needles and down the mountain. Everything was quiet and still.
    I reached the turn in the road before the sun did. The sky had turned to silver. Another scorching day waited.
    I sat down at the turn of the road and drank a little from my water skin. The sky lightened to pink behind me, behind the mountains. I watched the dawn come.
    Long before it touched the rocks where I sat it cast the mountains as long shadows across the plain, across the shape of the river. Beyond, it kindled the sea like a mirror, silver in the morning.
    Making toward Pylos in the bright sun were nine black ships.

IN HER HAND
    A s I watched the ships making for Pylos in the morning, I did not curse that I could not run. I cursed that I could not fly. It would take me half the morning to get to Pylos, down the mountain and around the road, following the sweeping bend of the river, to the city gates.
    My feet were swift upon the track. I had been this way many times, and if my twisted foot did not let me run, it hindered me less than it used to.
    The road was dust. The flowers beside the road were gone to seed, yellow and brittle.
    Hurry. Hurry.
    My mind was flying ahead, as though I had launched myself, swift as a black-winged gull, from the mountain road, soaring over valley and stream. They would see the ships now, less soon than I did, without the height and the sun at my back. Such men as were left in town would rally. Idenes was not there. How should he be? He and his warriors were up the Illyrian coasts, harrying people who had never harmed us.
    The shade was welcome where the road passed beneath the trees along the river. I was hardly conscious of my