I looked at her. With her bare shoulders and black hair which emphasized their whiteness she was more beautiful than ever. She had strung a necklace for herself out of red berries, and the moonstone gleamed between her breasts. My heart swelled at the sight of her.
“Arsinoe, you are fairer than ever before. There is no one like you. Each time I take you in my arms you are like a new woman. I love you.”
After that Arsinoe conformed to Siccanian life and ornamented herself with colored stones, coral, feathers and soft pelts. From the women she learned how to color her brows slantingly and to widen her mouth. The Siccani valued circles on their cheeks and serpentine streaks on their bodies, but such marks were irremovable and Arsinoe did not wish to have her skin slashed. I realized then that she had no intention. of spending her entire life among the Siccani.
2.
Mikon remained with us for a year, and the Siccanians brought their sick from near and far to be healed. But he practiced his profession carelessly and declared that the Siccanian priests were fully as capable as he of healing wounds, putting broken bones in splints and submerging the sick into a curative sleep with the sound of a small drum.
“I have nothing to learn from them,” he said, “nor they from me. Nothing makes any difference. Perhaps it is proper to relieve the pains of the body, but who will heal the suffering spirit, when not even one who is consecrated can find peace in his heart?”
I could not cheer him in his depression. One morning, having awakened late, Mikon looked at the blue mountains and radiant sunshine, touched the grass, breathed the warm fragrance of the forest and took my hand in his own trembling hands.
“This is my moment of clarity,” he said. “I am enough of a physician to know that I am either ill or slowly being poisoned by the Siccanian potion. I am living in a haze and can no longer distinguish the real from the unreal. But perhaps the worlds are passing one another or are within one another so that at times I can live in two worlds simultaneously.”
He gave me one of his rare smiles. “My moment of clarity must have little significance since I see you supernaturally tall, and your body glows like fire through your clothes. But ever since I first began to think, I have pondered the meaning of everything. For that reason I became consecrated and learned much that was beyond this reality. But even such secret knowledge is limited. Only the Siccanians’ poisonous potion has provided me with the answer to why I was born and what the purpose of life is.”
He released my hand, again touched the grass and looked at the blue mountains and said, “I should rejoice at my knowledge, but nothing gladdens me. It is as though I had run too long a distance. I am not consoled by the thought that some day I will awaken again, that the earth will be green and beautiful and that it will be a joy to live.”
I looked at him pityingly, but as I looked I saw death behind his swollen face. I wanted to be kind to him because he was my friend, but he was angered by my look.
“You don’t have to pity me,” he said sharply. “You don’t have to pity anyone, because you are what you are. Showing me pity is an affront, for I have served as a herald for you if nothing more. I ask only that you recognize me again when next we meet. That will suffice.”
At that moment his swollen face was ugly in my eyes, and the envy that shone from it darkened the radiant dawn. Realizing it himself, he covered his eyes, rose, and walked away with uncertain steps.
When I tried to restrain him he said, “My throat is dry. I am going to the stream to drink.”
I wanted to lead him there but he repulsed me angrily and did not look back. Nor did he return from the stream. We sought him in vain and the Siccanians looked for him in the thickets and gorges until I realized that he had meant another stream.
I did not condemn his action but as a friend granted him the choice of continuing this life or of ending it like a task that has grown too heavy. After we had mourned him we made a sacrifice to his memory, and thereafter I felt greatly unburdened, for his melancholy had long thrown a shadow over our lives. But Hiuls missed him greatly, for he had taught the boy to walk, listened to his first words, and whittled playthings with his sharp physician’s knife.
When she realized what had happened, Arsinoe became indignant and blamed me for not keeping an eye on Mikon.
“I don’t care about his death,” she said, “but at least he could have waited until I had given birth to the child and could have helped me. He knew well that I am pregnant again and I would have wanted to give birth in a civilized manner without depending on these Siccanian hags.”
I did not reproach Arsinoe for her unkind words, for pregnancy made her capricious, and Mikon could in truth have waited yet a few months for the sake of our friendship. In due time Arsinoe gave birth effortlessly to a daughter without the aid of the experienced Siccanian women, although she succeeded in disrupting the entire tribe for the period of the birth. She refused to use a chair with a hole, as the Siccanian women urged her to do, but like a civilized person insisted on giving birth to her child in bed.
3.
I laud the endless forests of the Siccani, the eternal oaks, the blue mountains, the swift-flowing streams. But throughout the time I lived with the Siccani I knew that their land was not mine. It remained strange to me, just as the Siccani themselves remained strangers.
For five years I lived among the Siccani, learning their language and their strange and often amazing customs, and Arsinoe was content to share the life because of our love, although she often threatened to leave with some merchant who had ventured into the forest. Most of the merchants who came there with their wares were from Eryx, but some were from the Greek cities of Sicily, even from as far as Selinus and Agrigentum. Occasionally an Etruscan would bring a few sacks of salt for the Siccani, concealing iron knives and axe blades in them in expectation of great gains. The Siccani for their part displayed pelts, bright feathers, the bark of dyewood, wild honey and wax. They themselves remained hidden, but after I joined them I often talked for them with the merchants who frequently did not see a single Siccanian during their entire journey.
In this manner I heard news of the world and realized that times were restless and that the Greeks were spreading inland with increasing tenacity into the Siculian region. The Segestans too were beginning to thrust ever more deeply into the forests with their dogs and horses. On several occasions we were compelled to flee to the mountaintop to escape from the path of such an expedition. But the Siccani laid traps for their pursuers and frightened them with their terrifying drums. I did not reveal my identity, and the merchants believed me to be a Siccanian who somehow had learned languages. Although they were uncivilized men whose tales one did not have to believe, they nevertheless related that the Persians had conquered the Greek islands, even sacred Delos, through their foothold in lonia. They had imprisoned the islanders, sent the most beautiful maidens to the Great King, and castrated the finest youths as servants. They had even robbed and burned the temples to avenge the burning of the temple of Cybele at Sardis.
My deed haunted me in the depths of the Sicilian forests and made me uneasy. Holding Arsinoe’s moonstone in my hand, I called to Artemis.
“You fleet virgin, holy and eternal, for you the Amazons sacrificed their right breast, for you I burned the temple of Cybele at Sardis. Remember me if the other gods begin to persecute me because of the destruction of their temples.”
My uneasiness compelled me to propitiate the gods. The Siccani worshiped the underworld gods and thus also Demeter, for she is much more than the goddess of wheat sheaves. And since our daughter was born among the Siccani, I thought it best to name her Misme after the woman who had given water to Demeter as the goddess was searching for her lost daughter.