Read Online Island of Fire (The Age of Bronze) by Diana Gainer - Free Book Online Page B

showed, so bright they almost seemed to cast their own light. Diwoméde saw that the irises of those eyes staring into his were the color of the sun-bleached sky overhead. These were pale eyes such as the maináds had, those goddesses whose home was said to be in the trees or streams or sacred wells. The slave opened his mouth to cry out in terror and found he could not. To be seen by a mainád could strike a man dumb, he recalled hearing as a small boy. All power of speech would be blasted away by these daughters of the sky god, these descendants of the great Díwo, and the power of his Evil Eye. Overwhelmed with horror, Diwoméde completely forgot his human pursuer.
    When the second man burst into the parched meadow, the child toppled over. She plopped down onto her bottom, put both hands to her mouth, and let out a high-pitched cry that made the surrounding trees echo. Then she took a breath and held it for what seemed to be a great age to the startled men. For such a long moment did she go without breath, a normal human would surely have turned blue and collapsed into unconsciousness. Ainyáh, who was as taken aback as Diwoméde by the sight of the pale eyes of the small mainád , threw his arms out wide and took several steps backward. The Kanaqániyan gripped his knife more tightly than ever with his right hand, holding it out in front of himself in case the little dáimon approached. With his left hand, he made the gesture that turned back the baleful power of the Evil Eye. Pressing his middle and ring fingers to his palm, he pointed his outstretched index and small fingers at the diminutive goddess.
    The girl’s voice suddenly returned as she finally let out her breath. With a shriek that surely reverberated all the way to ‘Aidé, where Préswa, queen of the dead, reigned for nine months of the year, the little child began to sob and scream alternately. She gulped in more air, off and on, copious tears streaming from her eyes, mucus pouring from her nose and over her rosy lips, dripping from her chin. Saliva pooled and spilled from her down-turned, wide-opened mouth, bubbling around eight perfect teeth that were as white as the milk that maináds love before all other offerings.
    Ainyáh stood with his back against a tree, as if mesmerized by the baby. He dropped his hands to his sides and shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. Diwoméde shuddered from head to toe at the sound of the little girl’s bawling, trying to regain his footing. All that came to his mind was getting away before the rest of the female divinities came down upon him. Voices rang through the surrounding grove. Diwoméde caught a glimpse of bare breasts and a woman’s hands that hurled rocks, twigs, and clumps of earth in his direction. He cowered behind his arms, ducking his head, and tripped a second time. One of his knees struck a rock embedded in the stony earth and he found his voice, uttering an inarticulate, unplanned cry. Suddenly a spear thrust out of the underbrush. It was only a wooden thing, a sharpened stick hardened in a fire, but it was a spear just the same. Diwoméde scrambled backward, rolling in brambles as he instinctively avoided the weapon, his feet kicking at the air.
    Out of the corner of one eye, he barely caught sight of a woman with long, dark hair who scooped the child up in her arms. But he clearly saw the garment that this mainád wore. Oddly, the garment was not the flounced skirt of many colors that divine and human queens of Ak’áiwiya wore. Nor was it the greenery or animal skins that decked the limbs of Artémito’s mountain maináds . It was nothing but an old, faded skirt with a ragged hem, much like the simple garment worn by an ordinary serving woman in a qasiléyu’s fortress. “Wait, wait!” a woman’s voice seemed to call, with an oddly familiar accent. “Look at his foot! Look!”
    The spear stopped moving forward when it was less than a hand’s breadth from Diwoméde’s face. Then it