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The summer continued. A good year, unlike the one before. The rain fell, the sun drew the stems of grain up from the earth. There were even whispers that now the Butterfly had come to protect the King, her spell covered the whole kingdom, for wasn’t the Lion King the heart and head of the land itself?

A new fashion appeared among the lords and ladies: jewelled butterflies to hold their hair, and shawls separated in the middle to look like wings.

It was hotter here in Mycenae than it had been in their old mountain home. The air within the stone walls sweated, as though the walls were the King’s flesh.

It was midsummer, a day of blue sky and golden heat, when one of the priestesses appeared at their apartment.

Nikko opened the door to her. He had been practising a new song in the main room, and had sent the servants away. It would not do for a servant to hum a song before it had been heard by the High King.

Like all the priestesses, this one wore the Mother’s apron. Hers was embroidered with ears of wheat, and tightly belted at the waist. The apron was too small to cover her breasts, for one peeped out, gilded, as was the fashion for the rich in Mycenae. She was young, Nikko’s
age perhaps, but she looked at him without interest. ‘My mistress would see your sister.’

‘Your mistress?’

The girl looked at him as though he was still an ignorant goat boy. ‘The Lady Xurtis, high servant of the Mother.’

Nikko nodded. ‘Dora is fitting her new costume. I’ll tell her. I’ll get my cloak.’

It was not seemly for unmarried girls to go unescorted around Mycenae unless they were slaves or servants. Not that Thetis took much notice—Nikkos suspected she still vanished more than Orkestres or Dora ever guessed.

‘Just your sister, master acrobat.’ The priestess’s voice was firm. ‘It is the day of the harvest sacrifice. My mistress ordered me to bring the Butterfly.’

Sacrifice? It was as though a spear plunged into his heart. Back home the headman slaughtered the finest of the year’s young goats for the first of the earth’s harvest. What would be the sacrifice in a place as rich as this?

An ox. A royal horse?

The King’s most favoured dancer?

Again his mind showed him the bodies hanging from the trees. This was a peaceful land, until you remembered it rested on blood.

He tried to think more clearly.
The King’s soul will be safe while the Butterfly dances.
Xurtis herself had said that…surely it meant Thetis was safe? Unless sacrificing her now would mean she danced for the King forever, down in the underworld. Nikko had heard that when kings died their horses and favourite slaves were killed to serve their master in the next life.

Religion had been simple, back in the village. You sacrificed, and hoped your sacrifice had been enough to please the Mother earth. Here things were complicated: strange whispers behind doors.

He met the priestess’s eyes. They were painted the way he now painted his, edged with black soot to make them look bigger, and her lips were rouged like his. A strange scent came from her, not flowers, nor like the scented oils Dora used to rub their tired muscles, but a spice, neither pleasant nor unpleasant, simply strange.

‘Is it forbidden for men to be there?’

The priestess looked confused, as though no man had ever asked this question before. ‘I don’t know. No one has ever said it is forbidden. My mistress simply said to bring the Butterfly—’

‘Then I am coming too.’

He dressed in his best tunic, with gold worked at the sleeves and hem, and a gilt belt, before he went to tell Thetis.

She was with Dora, mixing one of the salves their adoptive mother rubbed into Orkestres’s muscles before he slept. Although Orkestres’s pain was less now that he slept on a heated bed, his joints were still swollen in the morning.

Thetis listened to his story, glanced at Dora, then put her hand on his arm. Her hand looked different now, he realised, strong as well as small and slim. Her fingers were smoother, losing the calluses and tan of the village.

She smiled up at him, shook her head, then reached up to touch his lips, raising them to make him smile.

Was she telling him not to worry? Had she somehow already learned what this sacrifice would be?

Dora had heard the concern in his voice. ‘Don’t worry, my lamb. It’s an honour. She won’t come to any harm.’

‘I’m going with her.’

Dora raised her eyebrows. They were thin and plucked, in the fashion of the palace, and now gilded at the tips. Her hair was even more golden than ever, and bound with a silver circlet. ‘I doubt they’ll let you see the sacrifice. That’s a thing for women—for priestesses, not women like me.’

She handed Thetis the hair brush. ‘Now tidy yourself—your hair up with a gold band, I think, not loose or in plaits. This is a serious business and you must look your best. Your yellow tunic, the red leather belt, and the silk shawl with butterflies.’

At last she was ready. Nikko followed her out into the main chamber.

The priestess didn’t speak again, just led them out of their section of the palace. Nikko expected them to go in by one of the other great doors, or even follow the smooth white road to wherever the sacrifice would take place. But instead the priestess walked along a narrow lane between the palace and the city walls, then slipped into a crevice that could almost have been left to ventilate the room above.

The hair rose on the back of Nikko’s neck. Where were they going? Why the secrecy? In the village the sacrifice was by the great altar, where everyone could pass it. What were they doing here, under the palace, here in the darkness almost underground?

He looked around. Now his eyes were getting used to the dimness he could see small oil lamps, their glow showing a pathway between great stone grain pots, giant chests, long strings of dried figs, onions, garlic, and other things Nikko didn’t recognise. The rooms smelled of mould and spice and earth—and death.

The next lamp was beside a pillar. At first Nikko thought the base was painted rusty brown; then he saw the red was blood, dried in lumps as though it had been poured thickly from an urn. Suddenly he saw bones, dark with dried blood too, piled as though the victim had been torn apart.

‘Why?’ He pointed to the bones of dead by the pillar, embarrassed that his voice had come out as a whisper.

The priestess shrugged, as though she was so used to passing skeletons she no longer really saw them, as though they’d had no name or any purpose except to serve the King. ‘It is a sacrifice, so that the earthshaker won’t bring the pillars down, and let the palace fall. A man’s body underneath each pillar; a man’s body above ground to guard them. A sacrifice of a rooster’s blood every new moon, to keep the deaths strong so they can guard the house.’

‘Is…is that the sacrifice we are going to see now?’

She shook her head.

The path wound on through the dimness. Nikko glanced down at Thetis. The child look composed, not shocked or horrified…not even curious about the dim objects on either side. She’s been here before, thought Nikko. Thetis sees everything.

And suddenly they were back in daylight. It was a courtyard with the blank stone walls of the palace on
three sides. The fourth was the grey shape of a cliff, too steep to clamber up, though Nikko could see grey-green junipers clinging up above them, and the white streaks below a bird’s nest wedged into a crevice.

Most of the courtyard was paved with stone. But in the middle was a patch of green, growing as high as Nikko’s waist. Wheat, he guessed; the heads were hanging ripe and heavy. He had never seen wheat before Mycenae—his village had been too high and rocky for it to grow. But wheat made better bread and cakes than barley. Wheat for the palace, thought Nikko, barley for the peasants.

Apart from the patch of wheat, the courtyard was empty.

‘What—?’ began Nikko. The priestess lifted her hand for silence.

Someone was coming. Many someones…a line of priestesses, all wearing the apron of the Mother, with thinly woven veils covering their heads; young, old, all looking at the ground, all silent. And then the High Priestess, Xurtis, the King’s sister.

She too wore the apron, but hers was made from beaten gold. Her skirt was red, with a gold border, and her veil was trimmed with gold too.

Gold like wheat, thought Nikko, suddenly making the connection.

The High Priestess’s feet were bare and her heels rouged. In one hand she held a sickle, like the village women used to cut the barley. But this sickle was made of bronze and gold, not wood and flints. He felt the moment when she saw him through her veil.

Nikko waited for her to order him away. But instead she smiled. ‘Brave boy.’ The cliff echoed back her voice.

‘Why?’

She laughed, showing strong white teeth. ‘Do you know what this is, boy?’ She gestured to the wheat. ‘This is the sacred grain, fertilised each midwinter with the King’s blood.’

‘But…’

She smiled again. ‘No, not my brother’s blood. We kill a slave who is dressed as the King.’

Nikko shuddered. Suddenly he could smell the blood in the soil, feel the cold shadows of the dead even in the heat trapped here by walls and cliff. Was everything in Mycenae built on blood?

Xurtis raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you want to run? Or will you stay?’

Nikko took Thetis’s hand. ‘I stay.’

She nodded approvingly. ‘I like you, boy. You have strength, just like your sister. And together you are even stronger…’ Her eyes shut for moment. ‘You will need that strength. We will all need it…’ Her eyes opened again. She blinked, as though surprised at what she’d said. The other women stared at her too, as though this wasn’t part of the ritual.

‘What is today’s sacrifice?’ Nikko found he was almost whispering.

‘I think,’ she said lightly, ‘I have answered enough. You may stay, boy. But no more questions. Stand over by the entrance. This is for women now.’

Nikko hesitated. Thetis smiled at him, and waved her hand.

So he retreated.

His back against the warm wall of the palace, he watched. Xurtis lifted the gold sickle. She made a small clean swipe. The stems of wheat fell into her arms.

Suddenly all the women, and the girls too, were smiling, as though this was the best omen of all. Perhaps this is more like the village than I realised, thought Nikko. It was a bad omen there for the wheat or grain to fall on the ground. And this must be the first wheat harvested in the whole kingdom, ripening here early in the courtyard’s heat.

Slowly Xurtis peeled back one of the heads of wheat. She chewed a grain, then offered one to all the women there—Thetis too.

But not to me, thought Nikko. He didn’t mind. Seeds and grain and growing plants were women’s things. And now there seemed to be no danger to Thetis he was fascinated.

Xurtis scattered the wheat stems onto the green stubble. They too will return to the soil, thought Nikko, this year’s dead stems feeding the living plants next spring.

He stood straighter, expecting the ceremony to be over. Indeed the priestesses were filing out now, except for Xurtis and Thetis.

Xurtis turned to him. ‘You want to watch this too, boy?’

‘Yes.’

Xurtis laughed. ‘Stilll protecting your sister? Don’t think you can overpower me. I belong to the Mother. Strike me, and she will strike you back.’

‘How?’

‘Like this, perhaps.’

She bent down, and beckoned to Thetis. Thetis crouched beside her.

Thetis still doesn’t look afraid, thought Nikko. Or even curious. She’s seen this before too…

Suddenly he noticed a small cleft in the cliff. Something moved: a narrow head, peering from the darkness, a forked tongue.

Snake!

He almost lunged to drag Thetis away. But the look on her face stopped him. She put her hand out. The snake touched her fingers with its tongue, then began to slither out into the daylight.

It was big—massive—its body as thick as his arm, and strangely patterned too. He had never seen a snake as big, or with a skin like that.

The snake reared up, just as Thetis reached out her arms. Before Nikko could move, the big reptile was twining across her arms, and she held its tail, as though to control it.

Xurtis stared too, unbelieving.

‘I have never seen—’ she began. She stopped, gazing at the familiar way Thetis handled the snake.

‘That is the house snake, the guardian of us all. If the house snake comes out it is a good omen, if it eats it is an even better omen. If it fails to come out at all…’ She shook her head. Nikko was startled to see she trembled.

‘How can the snake come to you, child? I am the priestess of this house: it knows only me. What magic did you learn up on your mountain?’

Thetis looked up her, a small smile on her face. A too-innocent smile, thought Nikko.

Thetis had been here before. She had watched the priestess with the snake; had come again, by herself, at those times when Orkestres and Dora thought she was practising in her room, or sleeping before a dance.

Not magic. Just a curious girl, a fearless girl, who wanted to watch how the world worked…and who never spoke, so no one ever knew what she had learned.

Except, sometimes, her brother.

Thetis held out her open palm to Xurtis.

The High Priestess looked even more astonished. She reached into a pouch at her side, the same colour as her skirts, and pulled out something small and wriggling.

A mouse. As Nikko watched she handed it to Thetis.

The snake pounced. The mouse was gone.

She was his sister…but still he shivered. A few seconds ago that mouse had been warm and breathing. Now it was inside the snake.

But snakes must eat…and he ate meat. He’d hunted, killed animals much larger than a mouse.

Xurtis was exclaiming with approval. This was the very best of omens. His shivering stopped. But still he looked at his sister with new eyes.

Autumn came: the tribute time. This time, when the teams of tribute gatherers went out, Nikko and Thetis went with them, accompanied by Orkestres and Dora as well as their own servants—not on ponies this time, but on a ship for Athens.

The High King smiled as he gave the orders after their dance. ‘Athens’s tributes are high, you see. It is a rich city on a rich plain. It is only just that I send her my best, my Butterfly, as she gives me her best in oil and wheat as well.’

Sometimes, after their dance, as the afternoon shadows grew, Thetis and Nikko would be invited to sit at the King’s table. It was almost unknown for a woman—much less a girl—to sit at the men’s table—much less the High King’s.

But Thetis was the Butterfly. Somehow even the fact she did not talk added to her mystery. Sometimes Nikko would look at his sister’s face and wonder what she was thinking. The watching child had said uncomfortable things back in their small village. Now the two of them listened to lords discussing the hunt, and kings discussing alliances, troubles on the borders, and a possible attack on the rival trading nation across the seas at Troy.

Thetis’s eyes watched; you could almost feel the intensity of her thinking. Thetis’s words could kill them.

She had been dangerous enough as a child in the village. What things could Thetis say if she spoke now?

But she stayed silent. And she was happy, Nikko thought, far happier than either of them had ever dreamed was possible back in the village. Loved by Dora and Orkestres; adored by those who watched her dance; praised by the High King; given all the comfort and glory of the greatest kingdom in the world.

And now they would see Athens as honoured guests, and emissaries of the High King.

And he would see the sea close up.