Polyhommes nodded without speaking.

"Wonderful! Sir, Holiness, you've been very, very kind. We'll go and get the sacrificial animal now. Meanwhile, perhaps a small gift for yourself…?"

"Would be most gratefully accepted." Polyhommes glanced at his palm and smiled. "Return at noon with your sacrifice, my son. I will be present to assist you with the liturgy."

When we were outside, Pindaros said, "I'm going to follow a hunch. Have you heard of the Lady of Cymbals?"

I shook my head; so did Hilaeira.

"That's the name under which the Great Mother's worshiped in the Tall Cap Country. Not by the sons of Perseus or Medea, but by their slaves-Lydia's people, and so on. They use the lion and the wolf as the Great Mother's badges more than we do. I know you don't remember that the oracle mentioned a wolf, Latro, unless you read that this morning too. But it did, and it said you had to cross the sea, which probably meant to the Tall Cap Country. After one's manhood, the sacrifice most acceptable to the Lady of Cymbals is a bullock."

Hilaeira asked, "Do you have enough money?"

"If we can find a cheap one. Kalleos advanced me a bit, and I won a bit more betting with Hypereides."

Most of the animal sellers had only the smaller ones. Shoats were the creatures most often sacrificed, as Polyhommes had told us, and fowls the cheapest; but there were sheep too, and eventually we came upon a yearling bull for sale.

Io said, "His horns have only just sprouted," and patted his muzzle.

"Very tender indeed, young lady," the farmer promised her. "You won't find better meat anyplace."

"That's right," Io said to Hilaeira. "We get to keep the meat, don't we? Will they cook it for us at the inn?"

Hilaeira nodded. "For a share of it. And they'll keep everything and give us something worse unless somebody watches them."

"I think he'd let me ride on his back, like Kalleos on the sail."

Pindaros bargained with the farmer and, after starting to walk away twice, bought the bullock for what he said was far too much money. "The people here laugh at us because we named our country after our cattle," he told me. "But we have some good stock, and I wouldn't trade them for all the ships on the Long Coast. You can't eat a ship, or plow anything but the sea."

There was a cord through the bullock's nose, and it followed us docilely enough while we bought a garland for its neck and chaplets of flowers for ourselves, though Pindaros refused to let Io mount.

Perhaps I should write here that the temple of the Grain Goddess is called the Royal House and that Pindaros said it was different from any other he had seen. Certainly it seems strange enough to me. It is large and square, and its interior is filled with pillars, so that one walks in it as in a forest of stone. They say the fire before the statue has been kept burning since the goddess wished to bathe the infant Demophon in its flames.

I will not give the words we spoke to the goddess before we sacrificed; I do not think it lawful. When all had been said, I put my hand on the bullock's head and begged the goddess to join my friends and me in our meal. Polyhommes poured milk in the bullock's ear, asking whether it wished to go to the goddess. It nodded, and Polyhommes cut its throat with the holy knife, which is of bronze, not iron. We cast certain parts of the carcass into the flames, and everyone relaxed.

"A good sacrifice, wouldn't you say, Holiness?" Pindaros smiled and straightened his chaplet of blossoms.

"A most excellent sacrifice," Polyhommes assured him.

Hilaeira's eyes were bright with tears. "I feel I'm a friend of the goddess's already," she said. "Once I thought she smiled at me. I really did."

"She does have a kind face," Polyhommes said, smiling up at his goddess. "Severe, but-"

Io asked, "What's the matter?"

He did not answer. He had been ruddy, but his cheeks were as white as tallow now, and the hand that held the sacred blade shook so that I feared he would drop it. Pindaros took his arm. "Are you ill?" "Let me sit," Polyhommes gasped, and Pindaros and I led him to the nearest bench. His forehead was beaded with sweat; when he was seated, he wiped it with a corner of his robe. "You wouldn't know," he said. "You're not familiar with her, as I am."

"What is it?" Pindaros asked. "My family always supplies the priests… "

"You told us that."

"So we're always in and out of the Royal House, even when we're just children. I've seen the goddess… I've seen her statue I suppose ten thousand times." We nodded.

"Now I want one of you-you, little girl-to describe it to me. I must know whether you see what I do."

Io asked, "Just talk about her? She's real big, bigger than any real woman. She wears her hair off her shoulders, I think probably in a knot at the back of her head. Should I go around and see?"

"No. Go on."

"And she's got a crown of poppies, and wheat-a sheaf of wheat, is that what they call it?-in her hand. Her other hand is pointing at the floor."

The fat priest let out his breath in a great whoosh. "I must see my uncle-get him to rule on this. All four of you remain here. Right here. It might be better if you didn't speak."

He hurried off, and we sat in silence. It seemed to me there should have been a feeling of peace then in the quiet temple, peace engendered by its sullen fire, its bars of sunshine and deep shadows; but there was none. Rather it seemed filled with soft yet heavy noises, as if some massive beast stirred and stamped where it could not be seen.

Polyhommes soon returned. "Our high priest has gone to the city; I'll have to decide this myself." He seemed calmer, and the heavy odor of wine was on his breath. "Very well. You must accept my statement that I have observed this statue many times, and that until today its left hand has always rested upon the head of the stone boar standing beside it."

Hilaeira's mouth opened, and even Pindaros gave a low whistle.

"A miracle-a major miracle-has taken place here today. A great sign. Did any of you see it? See the hand actually move?"

Pindaros, Hilaeira, and I all shook our heads. Io had trotted around the sacred hearth to look more closely at the statue.

"A pity, and yet move it surely did, doubtless at the very moment of sacrifice, when our eyes were on the victim." Polyhommes paused, drew a deep breath, and let it out again. "I suppose you've heard about the dead woman in the city? She's said to have walked until cockcrow and spoken to many persons, and the whole town's abuzz over it. No one knows what it may mean, and now this! Wait until word of this gets out! Can you imagine it?"

"I can," Pindaros said. "I hope I'm far away by then."

Polyhommes continued as though he had not heard him. "This is something you can see for yourself and go home and tell your children about. This is-"

Io called. "There's a clean place on the pig's head where the hand used to be. Come look!"

No doubt it was a measure of our amazement that all of us did, obedient as children to a child's command. She was right. Smoke from the sacred fire had grimed the boar's head, but the broken marble where the goddess's hand had left it was white and new.

"Think what this will mean for our Royal House." Polyhommes rubbed his hands. "For the mysteries!"

"And I was here," Hilaeira whispered.

"Indeed you were, my daughter. Indeed you were! And when you've fathomed the mysteries-well, priests are always chosen from the men of our family, as I've said. But there is a place-the highest of all-for a woman in the ceremonies."

Hilaeira stared at him, a dawning wonder in her eyes. "She too is customarily of the Eumolpides, but that is no insupportable obstacle. There is adoption, after all. There is even marriage. Such arrangements might be made by the high priest, and there can surely be no question now about who the next high priest will be."