Throwback Thursday: The Golden Feather

Each week we are taking a look back at the authors, stories, and poems that captivated us in 2019. Today we offer you an excerpt from ‘The Golden Feather’ by Jenny Blackford, from Issue 21, Winter 2019. 

The Golden Feather

The locals were not surprised when young Ari ran down to Delphi, gibbering that he had found Leptika dead up on the mountain. It had only been a matter of time.

Ari discovered the broken body in a ravine while he was walking his herd of goats to a secret patch of tender greens high on the rocky slope of Mount Parnassos. Leptika’s bloodied corpse lay among sharp rocks new-fallen from one of Parnassos’s many steep cliffs; the track that led from her father’s farm to the main path down to Delphi ran along the top of the cliff. Most of the locals couldn’t understand why she’d waited so long to take refuge in Persephone’s quiet realm deep below our feet, and many would have put it more bluntly than that — including me, for all the dignity that I’m supposed to show as a Pythia of Apollo. 

It was a bright, windless day in late autumn. I and my two fellow prophetic priestesses of Apollo sat quietly in the sun of the courtyard. Our minds drifted across the world as our hands spun and wove the local wool into cloth. The serious, sacred task entrusted to us was to channel Apollo’s answers to those who questioned him about the future. But before we were chosen, we were ordinary wives, widows, and daughters of local farmers and artisans. Spinning and weaving were as natural to us as breathing.

All that sad day, a griffin flew in circles and spirals high, high in the blue sky, her wide eagle’s wings flashing golden in the sun, her heavy lioness’s paws treading the air, her long ears pricked up, her beak open. I was the only one of us who could see her, unless my fellow priestesses were better actors than me. Or else I was going mad. As the most junior Pythia, I dared not mention the mythical beast soaring above us unless one of the other priestesses spoke of it first. If the priests of Apollo heard of such peculiar behaviour, I would be stripped of my position and packed off back to my family in disgrace. Instead, I stole glances at the griffin whenever Perialla and Diodora were too absorbed to notice.

In the early afternoon, our cook Eunous marched briskly into the courtyard and interrupted our meditative work with the news about Leptika. I wasn’t sad to see her. Spinning and weaving were natural enough to me, after all these years, but I had always been a reluctant housewife. 

Eunous was a big woman, sturdily built rather than fat. She’d spent hours in the marketplace, ostensibly shopping for our dinner but, more importantly, acting as our eyes and ears in town. It wouldn’t do for Apollo’s sacred Pythiai to wander the streets gossiping and eavesdropping, much as we would have enjoyed it. We had to maintain our proper dignity. But our cook was free from such petty constraints. As Eunous meandered slowly from stall to stall each day, she talked to everyone, heard everything, and forgot nothing. She also made the best goat stew in town.

Her news that day filled me with absurd lightness. The woman who’d pretended to be my friend while she spread vicious lies about me, my old enemy Leptika, was finally dead. 

But the senior Pythia of our little group of three, Perialla, looked serious. She stopped weaving at her loom and made the sign against the evil eye.

“May the gods be kinder to her in the afterlife than they were in this one,” she said. “Her life wasn’t easy with that useless arm. If only her father had called a midwife, not a doctor, when she was stuck feet-first in her mother’s womb. A good midwife could have eased her out undamaged.”

Eunous nodded. “They say her fool of a father was determined that his firstborn would be delivered by a man. What can a man know of the workings of women’s bodies?” 

Perialla sighed. “But no one can change the past, not even our Lord Apollo. Bring us some wine, Eunous, and you can tell us all about what happened. Here, I think, in the courtyard. The afternoon is still warm enough for us to be comfortable. Winter will come soon, and we’ll all be stuck indoors. And ask one of the slaves to fetch comfortable chairs so we can sit and talk this out.” 

As Eunous hurried back to her kitchen, my stomach clenched. I held my face as impassive as I could and tried to keep my body language neutral. The less said about Leptika, the better. There was no need for my fellow priestesses to know the hell that woman had put me through, or the specifics of the lies she had told about me. I had spent years in fear of people dredging them up. 

Diodora looked up from her spindle, her hands full of soft green wool. She was the second Pythia in seniority after Perialla. 

Diadora’s eyes were as cold as frozen mud, her lips hard. “Do we really need to know the details? I’m glad she is dead, and so, I’m sure, are many others.” 

I felt her looking sideways at me, but still I tried my hardest to conceal my emotions. 

“Surely,” Diodora went on, “we should simply rejoice. That woman always pretended that she was trying to help, but she was such a troublemaker, always gossiping. And the withered arm made her practically useless. She should have jumped off that cliff years ago.”

Eunous was in the doorway now, holding a tray of cups full of our region’s good red wine. “People in town today said that she was worse than useless. She must surely have realized what a burden she was to her family. No man would ever have married her, no matter how rich a dowry her father was prepared to pay. Her father talked to every family for many miles, even as far away as Thebes, but all the families with marriageable sons refused with various excuses. I heard that most of them were afraid that the problem with Leptika’s arm might be passed down to her children. It’s no wonder she turned so bitter.”

Perialla raised her eyes to the heavens, as if imploring the gods to strike at the stupidity of mortals. “People are such fools. It was a simple birth injury caused by that clumsy doctor.”

One of the young slaves followed the cook, carrying two of our handsome new chairs with their bronze griffin finials. My heart thumped twice, three times, and I looked up. Could this be a coincidence?

To find out what happens next, pick up your copy of Issue 21, Winter  2019 here!

Jenny Blackford has an Honours degree with a University Medal and a never-finished PhD in Classics (Greek and Latin). Pamela Sargent called her subversively feminist historical novella set in ancient Greece, The Priestess and the Slave, “elegant.” She won two prizes in the 2016 Sisters in Crime Australia Scarlet Stiletto awards for a murder mystery set in classical Delphi, with water nymphs. Her website is www.jennyblackford.com and she tweets as @dutiesofacat.