Delilah: A Novel (10 page)

The other girls quickly looked at their feet, or smoothed their expressions until they were appropriately grave. Priestess of the Dance Sharissit beckoned me forward.

“Begin, Delilah,” she said, and I stepped onto the yellow path.

The moment my bare feet touched the smooth tiles of the labyrinth, I knew this was why I had been born, why I had been claimed by Lady Atargatis as Her own. My body swayed to the Lady’s music as if I been summoned by that tune since the day my mother had conceived me in the Grove.

Almost unheeding the music, I danced the spiral path set in time-worn yellow tiles upon the ancient stone floor, stopping only when the musicians stopped. Silence seemed to echo against the walls. The magic drained from my body, and I looked back to see everyone—the Dance Priestess, the flute-players and the drummers, the other Rising Moons who also would learn to dance—staring at me.

I did not know what to say, and so I stood silent too, waiting.

At last, the Dance Priestess spoke. “I see you will learn nothing from me.” Sharissit had taught Temple girls to dance since before I was conceived; to hear myself so easily dismissed hurt as if her words were stones against my flesh.

I stared down at the yellow tiles beneath my feet, vowing I would not weep. Tears would leave dark tracings of kohl down my cheeks, reveal my pain and shame to all who watched. As I fought to keep my face smooth, I heard Sharissit say, “Come and stand before me, Delilah.”

As I walked towards her, the priestess ordered the flute-players and the drummers to begin again. I tried to ignore the sound, but my body could not resist the seductive patterns their music wove. My body swayed, my feet matched the music’s rhythm.

I stopped before Sharissit. She made me stand as she walked slowly around me, studying me as if she were judging the worth of a slave at the market—or as if I were a rare gem she had not thought to lay her eyes upon.

When Sharissit stood facing me once more, she smiled. “Sweet Atargatis has granted you a rare gift, Delilah. Have you always danced so?”

“I have danced only to amuse myself, and my sister-moons,” I said. As New Moons, we had been encouraged to attempt any skill we wished. I had loved to let my body flow with music, let my feet choose their own path in time to timbrel or drum. But I knew better than to claim great skill.

“Now you will dance to amuse the goddess, and to honor Her and reveal Her grace to Her worshippers,” Sharissit said. “You will be a jewel in Her crown, Delilah—if you will be taught. Now you dance as Our Lady Atargatis wills it, but you must also learn to dance when only you will it. The goddess’s grace is given at her pleasure. What happens if you must dance and She does not choose to share Her blessing with you that day?”

I did not know, so I merely shook my head.

“I will tell you a secret, Delilah. Long-practiced skills will serve you well during those times you call upon the goddess and She does not choose to answer. Will you learn?”

I lifted my head and looked into Sharissit’s eyes. “I will learn, Priestess of the Dance. But you said you could not teach me.”

She smiled. “I cannot teach you what you possess already—to entwine your body with the music, to give yourself utterly to the Dance. But the proper steps, the correct forms, those I can convey to you. And there are others, finer dancers and teachers than I, who also will instruct you when you have learned all I can teach.”

After that, she sent me back to the beginning of the spiral path, and had me dance its curves and turns again. This time I was so nervous I fell over my own feet; Sharissit laughed and waved me aside, and pointed at the next girl, ordering her to try.

Breathing hard, my hands shaking, I went to stand beside Aylah. “I do not know why I could not do it the second time,” I whispered. “I tried, I did.”

“You tried too hard.” Aylah laced her warm fingers through my trembling ones. “You are not a dancer, Delilah, you are the Dance. When Sharissit sent you back to dance a second time, she knew you could not do it. Not from here.”

Aylah touched my forehead with her fingers. “Here is where you keep steps you have learned, practiced. Here”—she lifted our entwined hands and pressed them against my heart—“here is where you keep Dance itself. When you can join the two, you will become the greatest dancer the Temple has ever possessed—just as you have always said you would. And the most costly.”

“Do you really think so?” I asked, and Aylah nodded solemnly.

“Yes. And—”

“If you cannot stand quiet for even one turn of the sands, perhaps you need more work to do.” Sharissit spoke quietly, but her trained voice carried clear and strong across the dancing-floor. Silence, sudden and almost tangible, filled the courtyard. Aylah and I were not the only girls who had whispered or giggled as they waited for the Dance Priestess to take notice of them.

“You, Aylah—stop whispering to Delilah when you two think I do not notice and go stand over there.” Sharissit pointed at the time-smoothed
yellow tiles that formed a seven-pointed star at the beginning of the spiral path.

I let Aylah’s hand slip from mine, and she walked meek enough to the edge of the dancing-floor—but not before she glanced at me. A swift slant of her pale eyes, a lift of her brow, and Aylah conveyed the message
You see, Delilah? You were chosen and so shall I be. I told you so before we started
. I bit my lip to keep from laughing. For all her solemn ways, sometimes it seemed to me that only Aylah could draw true laughter from me.

Once again the flutes and drums began. Upon Sharissit’s signal, Aylah began the dance, and before she had turned even once to the changing music, unease slid beneath my skin, chilled my joy.

For Aylah danced exactly as Sharissit had shown us. And that was all.

When Aylah reached the end of the pattern, she stopped, and bowed to the Priestess of the Dance. My heart seemed to knot painfully in my chest as Sharissit looked upon Aylah. If the priestess rejected my heart-sister, I must dance alone . . .

But all the Priestess of the Dance said was “Very good, Aylah.”

And later, when I told Aylah how I had feared I would be forced to choose between her and the Dance, how cold my skin had turned, and how fast my heart had beat with fear, she smiled and put her arms around me. “Poor Delilah,” she said, and laid her cheek against mine. “You worry too much. I told you the Temple knows how to value us.”

I do not know if Dance Priestess Sharissit truly wished to teach Aylah; I do know that she treated all her students fairly. Aylah claimed that the Priestess of the Dance had been commanded to accept her as one of the Temple’s dancers, and only shook her head ruefully when I swore she danced as well as I. We both knew better. I always surrendered myself to the passion of the Lady’s Dance, while Aylah merely knew the steps perfectly. To watch her dance was to see precisely how
each movement should be done—yet although she danced flawlessly, she danced without joy.

But that did not matter, for when the two of us danced together, only the most critical noticed anything amiss.

The Temple wasted nothing, and twice never wasted such an asset as Aylah and I together created. As we studied, we were watched, and judged, and molded into a prize that would garner much profit for the Great House of Atargatis. My darkness and Aylah’s dawn-pale looks, our ability to dance beautifully together, my passion enhanced by Aylah’s precision, were praised, and we were given extra attention by the Priestess of the Dance.

New dances were created to take advantage of our talents. Special garb was fashioned for us to wear when we danced before Atargatis, or at a feast or festival. I was clad in black and silver, Aylah in crimson and gold; I Night to Aylah’s Day.

The first time we wore full dancer’s garb, its burden surprised us. The spangle-sewn tiered skirts and the wide bands of bells about our ankles weighed heavier than we had expected.

“Night and Day,” Sharissit said, when we stood before her adorned and laden with the new clothing we would wear when we danced. “Well, Little Sun and Little Moon—now you shall begin again.”

And we did, for dancing in full ritual costume required of us more strength and care, that we might perform the steps with grace and reverence. I worked hard to perfect the turns, to move lightly, to ring the silver bells about my ankles to the rhythm of the dance. I encouraged Aylah to work as hard as I, for I knew, from the attention we received, that the Temple had the highest hopes for us.

“Both of us,” I told Aylah, as we sat upon stools in the baths after one of the grueling lessons. It was pleasant, after such hard work, to do nothing, to let others pour rose-scented water over us to wash away our effort, and to knead soothing oils into our sore muscles.

Aylah slanted a glance at me. “High hopes. Yes, I suppose they do. They believe we shall earn great offerings for the Temple.”

“Of course we will.” Confidence filled me now; I would have to be a fool not to see how highly Sharissit valued my skill—and I had heard the Temple servants gossip when they did not know I overheard them.

“Yes, the Temple will use us as they wish, and we can do nothing save bow and act as the High Priestess commands.” Aylah’s words seemed to hang flat and heavy in the bath’s moist, heated air.

I stared at her as the bath slave unpinned my hair and started to comb sandalwood oil through its heavy length. “Aylah,” I began, and she shook her head.

“There is no need to speak now,” she said, and I closed my lips over the words I had wished to say.

But I was troubled in my heart, for it seemed to me that sadness burdened Aylah’s days. I remembered the prophecy she had told me, all those years ago, when we still were only New Moons:
“I will be sacrificed to the Sun. I will burn, Delilah.”

Now I thought I knew what those fearful words really meant. Later, when we lay under the pomegranate tree in the garden belonging to the Court of the Rising Moons, I told Aylah, thinking to reassure her, to make her happy. “You remember the words you said to me long ago, that you were to be given to the Sun? Well, now you have been—you dance as the Sun, Aylah. That is what the Seer’s words meant.” I smiled, and squeezed her hand.

She regarded me intently for the space of a long indrawn breath. Then she smiled. “Perhaps it is, heart-sister. Perhaps it is.”

That was all she would say, but she seemed more content, and I prided myself upon easing the burden she had carried. Aylah laughed more, after that day, and I believed she had forgotten the Seer’s prophecy. Soon I, too, forgot again. Between the hours we spent under Priestess Sharissit’s instruction and those spent learning to perform the many Temple rituals, there was little time to brood upon possible futures.

The House of Atargatis was all our world, a world in which nothing changed. But beyond the Temple walls, beyond the high walls of Ascalon,
time-honored ways of life had begun to shatter. Rather than ruling the heavens and the earth as equals, the Lady was in many places being relegated to tending hearth and home, childbirth and marriage.

The Temples of the Five Cities refused to pay heed to this shift, refused to permit such a change within their walls. The upper priests and priestesses sought to keep the knowledge of these impious new ways from both worshippers and the lower-ranked servants of the Lords and Ladies of the Five Cities.

Without success; nothing spreads faster than forbidden tales.

The Hebrews were blamed for much of the conflict between the elegant, time-burnished old ways and the brash, arrogant new. Having settled in the hills, the Hebrews now sought to move down into the fertile plains ruled by the Five Cities. A few battles had been fought, and thus far the Hebrews had been held at bay—they and their strange invisible god who dwelt in a holy, deadly box.

“Their magic box is called ‘Ark,’ Lady Delilah.” The maidservants who tended us priestesses knew all the bazaar tattle; we always listened, although propriety demanded we order such loose tongues to be silent. As she wove the silver ribbon through my hair, Mala went on, “It is formed all of gold, with two winged demons crouched upon it, and these demons slay any who dares touch the box they guard. The Hebrews’ god is imprisoned within this Ark, and they say whoever releases him will become king of all the world.”

“Who says so?” I asked, and Mala said, “Why, everyone! And the Hebrews plan to conquer the Five Cities and raze the Temples and sow the ground upon which they stood with salt.”

That I did not believe; who would be foolish enough to slay the earth itself?

“Now Samson grew strong, stronger than any other man who ever lived. And he grew to be the best of sons, the best of men. Always he used his great strength for good, to help those in need . . .”

Long before Samson was old enough to be considered a man grown, it was clear to any with eyes and wits that whoever had fathered him upon Tsipporah had not been her husband, Manoah. But since young Samson had always been strong enough to knock sense into boys twice his age, it rapidly became ill-judged to say anything against either his mother or the man Samson honored as his father.

And what is never said is forgotten.

By the time Samson was sixteen, the people of Zorah had managed to fold away any knowledge of his birth save that it had been a late blessing to his parents. That Manoah and Tsipporah were short and dark, while their golden son stood a head taller than any other man in the village and could lift a half-grown calf and carry it as a woman carries her infant—why, that meant only that Samson’s parents were indeed favored by Yahweh.

Just as his mother had always claimed.