Free Goddess by Laura Powell

lock. I stiffened all over. Opis, come to see the effects of her punishment.
    But it was Cally. She had a bottle of water for me.
    I was so surprised I didn’t say anything. Neither did she, at first. Her face was very pale. She was holding the floral garland from her initiation ceremony and plucked at it nervously.
    ‘How are you?’ she asked at last.
    ‘I’m . . . OK. Opis is angry with me.’
    ‘She says you’ve been pretending to be the one who had the oracle.’ Cally sounded almost offhand about it.
    ‘That’s not true.’
    ‘Of course it can’t be you,’ she said calmly. ‘That would be ridiculous. You are unworthy.’
    ‘Did Opis send you to talk to me?’
    ‘No. I shouldn’t be here. So now that I am I don’t want to hear any more of your blasphemy.’
    ‘It was me who had the oracle, Cally. I swear it. I saw –’
    She put her hands over her ears. ‘Stop it. You’re delusional. Anyway, that’s not what I came to talk about. I –’ She gave a pinched sort of smile. ‘Are you looking forward to your initiation?’
    ‘I suppose so.’ I waited, but she didn’t respond. ‘Did you, er, enjoy yours? Was it what you expected?’
    ‘Yes. I don’t know. I think . . .’ Cally sat down on the bed, wilted garland in her lap. Dead purple petals fell on to the floor. Amaranths – or love-lies-bleeding, as it’s more commonly known. She bit her lip. ‘I think the goddess might be angry with me.’
    ‘The goddess? Why?’
    She spoke in a rush that became a gabble, so that I strained to hear the words. ‘It was my choice. I told myself it was what they all wanted. Opis, the Lord Herne, the council . . . and therefore the goddess must want it too. But now I think I was fooling myself. Because it was me who wanted it, really, deep down, and I let the others persuade me to make myself feel better. And now I think that it was wrong, after all, and the goddess will punish me.’
    ‘Why? What have you done?’
    And why was she confessing to me, of all people? But, though she coloured all over, she didn’t answer.
    I tried again. ‘What are you worried about? Arrows and thunderbolts and transformations? That doesn’t happen any more. It’s like most religious stories. They’re . . . metaphors.’
    I knew how hypocritical I was being. The woman in my vision was capable of thunderbolts, all right. But Cally was frightened, and I’d never seen that before.
    During the sacred rituals, she was always aquiver with attentiveness. She’d give an occasional nod, as if to reassure the goddess that her instructions were coming through loud and clear. When she stood before the altar, you could practically smell the holiness rolling off her in incense-scented waves. I’d always thought it was for show. Was it possible, in spite of all her theatrics and posturing, that Cally really did believe?
    ‘The gods are vengeful,’ she whispered. ‘People are vengeful. Do you remember that trip we had, when we were eleven, to the old punishment place?’
    I nodded. We’d been taken to see the underground chamber where priestesses who broke their vows or betrayed the cult used to be buried alive. It’s a small stone room, sunk deep into the ground of the cult cemetery in Southwark.
    ‘It was so dark in there. It felt like even the air above it was stained.’ Cally shivered and rubbed her arms. ‘I used to have nightmares of being left there as they shovelled the earth in.’
    ‘It scared me too. But that place hasn’t been used for over a hundred years. We live in more civilised times. People don’t get tortured or executed any more.’
    ‘Yes, and look what a mess the country’s in.’ Her face hardened; suddenly, she was back to her righteously superior self. ‘Maybe people need to be frightened. Maybe you can’t have true faith without fear.’ She grasped my hand with chilly fingers. ‘And there are still all sorts of punishments, even now.’
    Was she threatening me or warning me? I couldn’t