A susurrant sound, like a silk train being dragged across the floor. I looked down and saw an enormous sidewinder lazily throwing its coils across the floor. With a smile Angelica turned and gazed down upon it; then slowly she let her fingers slide from the bull’s phallus. She drew her skirts up around her waist, those long slender legs honey-golden, her hips thrusting forward as though she would lower herself upon the bull.
I watched appalled. She would impale herself, she would be crushed and trampled into blood and pulp…
But then I saw that she had slid the lunula from her neck. Her skirts spilled behind her in folds of ocher and saffron and blue, the muscles in her thighs tensed as she held herself completely still. She gripped the necklace in both hands, its razored curve aimed at the bull’s throat. A rumble shook the floor beneath me. I saw Othiym in the sky above us, Her eyes open now—Angelica’s eyes, green as summer but uncomprehending and heavy with sleep, so huge that she would shed entire cities in a tear. Her expression mirrored Angelica’s, rapt with desire but also avid, famished.
For an instant all was frozen in a grotesque tableau. The mute animal with its throat exposed for sacrifice; the priestess poised above it with her shining blade; and hovering above us all the moon, waiting, waiting…
Then with a cry Angelica fell upon the bull. Blood misted the air and spattered her face; there was a smell of dung and offal. With a howl it reared its head, then fell back upon the floor, its legs kicking uselessly. Angelica only smiled. She lifted her face and sang.
The bull stirred convulsively. From the transepts came the echo of triumphant voices. Beside me Annie crouched and refused to look up. But I could do nothing but look, though my whole body ached from the horror of it, as Angelica’s hands tightened upon the lunula. With a single quick motion she moved to slash its throat.
Through the sanctuary a shout rang out. A woman’s voice, commanding, so loud that the stones trembled. As though a wind had risen from the night country, the hungering face above us shivered. With a cry Angelica stumbled backward.
“Who would profane this place?”
The other voice cried, “Ne Othiym anahta, Ne Othiym—praetorne!”
Annie looked up at me, her eyes wild.
“That’s Oliver!”
I drew my hands to my breast. “Oliver’s dead—”
“Angelica!” the voice commanded. Angelica froze. “Listen to me: You will not slay him!”
It was Oliver’s voice. I whirled, trying to find him in the darkness, but there was only a woman there, tall and raven-haired. She wore a loose purple robe and her feet were bare. About her butterflies flew lazily, lighting upon her shoulders as though to feed.
“Go from here!” Angelica hissed.
The other woman shook her head. “Not yet. You have something of mine, Angelica.” She stepped from the shadows and stretched out her hand.
For an instant I thought she was going to tear the lunula from Angelica. Instead she gestured at the bull. It snorted and gave a weird high-pitched wail; then it was as though it melted into the broken lattice of flowers upon the floor. I shouted in dismay and wonder.
Where the bull had been, Dylan sprawled on his back, naked, his arms flung protectively in front of him. From a gash on his collarbone blood welled and spilled down his chest. His hands clenched as his head moved blindly back and forth. There were streaks of black and red along his flanks and chest, and his hair fell in thick oiled curls about his shoulders.
“Dylan!”
He shook his head numbly.
“Dylan!” I shouted, and ran toward him. “Dylan—”
“Get back.”
I screamed: it was as though I had been set aflame. My face and limbs burned, my bones blazed with the most acute pain I have ever felt. I stumbled to my knees and looked up helplessly.
“He is my son!” Angelica shrieked. She looked like a madwoman—her hair flung across her bloodstained face, bodice torn and skirts tangled behind her. “Mine!”
As though her voice were a match set to paper, rage leapt from Angelica to the Titan’s head above us. The huge eyes narrowed, the mouth gaped open. Upon Othiym’s brow the moon began to burn with a fierce black flame.
“And mine,” the dark-haired woman said evenly. As though she were skirting a muddy curb she stepped across the mounded fruit and flowers, to where Dylan lay. “Mine,” she repeated.
It was Oliver—the same lustrous hair, the same fine cheekbones and strong chin, the same strong long-fingered hands. But it—she, he—was a woman, too, with rounded flesh and mouth, breasts and skin smooth and white as an eggshell.
A woman. My head roared. I could hear Baby Joe’s voice, very faint as though recorded on faulty equipment, saying Your goddess-worshipers… the priests would go into some kind of ecstatic frenzy and castrate themselves, then live like women, like priestesses…
“Oliver?” I whispered.
But Oliver did not hear me. Oliver wasn’t there. The dark woman was, and she was gazing upon her son for the first time, with the most intense yearning I had ever seen; with such raw love and pride and sorrow as to make my eyes grow hot with tears.
“Dylan,” the woman said. She stooped and touched the place where the lunula had cut him. “Dylan, son of the wave. Here, get up.”
My heart burst inside me. Because the gesture she made was Oliver’s, pushing the long black hair from her face and smiling that crooked canine grin as Dylan stumbled to his feet. They stood and stared at each other, the dark woman with a sort of greed, Dylan with stoned incomprehension.
“What’s—what’s going on?” he asked, slurring his words. He looked around at the heaps of dead flowers and fruit with their heavy smells, the rows of silent icons. He held his hands out imploringly. “Where am I?”
“Dylan!” I lunged for him; but before I could grab his hand Angelica was there.
“No! He is mine—you are nothing to him, nothing!” Her voice rose to a shriek. “I will destroy you all—”
She raised the lunula above her. Her eyes closed as she let her head fall back, her mouth contorted as she opened herself to the waiting goddess and cried,
From the emptiness above us came a roar, the sound of the last wave as it overtakes the shore. The sound grew louder and louder still, until I was deafened; until all about us I could hear the great stone idols shattering, an avalanche of ivory and granite and marble and bronze; and the sound of their destruction was that of a thousand prisons exploding into dust. Overhead the face of Othiym burgeoned until there was nothing in all the world but Her. She was the world, She was the Moon, Her eyes huge, no longer green but iridescent, all the colors of the spectrum streaming from them, lips curved into a vast and secret smile, Her hair a river of light coursing across the sky, the stars like silver dust upon Her cheeks. Her arms were upraised, only they were no longer arms but immense columns holding back the night. Her legs reared to either side of us, vaster than anything imaginable. When She moved the ground shook. On Her brow was a silver crescent, the hungry curve of the new moon like a mouth opening to feed. Beneath Her all the Earth was in shadow. But it was a moving darkness, a darkness that thrashed and flailed, a shadow that threw up first one leg like a continent and then another.