Cassandra. Kerry Greenwood

any new stories out of Nyssa.

      `Artemis.'

      `Well, what does she do?'

      `She's a virgin and she hunts things. Her priestesses are virgins, too.'

      This struck me as odd. `Why? What special virtue lies in virginity? Are they barren?'

      I was working with the healers, and they were all women, as it was well known that women keep the secrets of birth and death. Are not the sisters Clotho, Lachesis and Athropos the spinners of fate? Clotho spins the thread of life, Lachesis measures it, and Athropos cuts it. Maiden, mother and crone; no state is good in itself. They all have their season and their power.

      `I don't know, twin. That was all Nyssa said.'

      I rolled over and idly examined our room. The sky blue paint was peeling away from the plaster where the ceiling joined the painted fresco of tritons and sea-creatures. Poseidon Earth-Shaker had originally been painted in one corner, blowing a conch, but he had been painted over when Laomedon the king had banished the god from the city of Tros. You could still see the outline of a broad-chested man with blue hair under the later fishes.

      `Do you want to be a virgin all your life?' asked Eleni, and I pulled a handful of his corn-coloured hair.

      `You know I don't. I want to marry you.'

      He laughed and said, `Even to follow a goddess?' I thought about this. `I don't know,' I said. Eleni turned to me and I saw his blue green eyes glint in the cool light. `I would not be a virgin to follow any lady,' he said. He kissed me lovingly. His mouth tasted of green herbs, fresh and unripe.

      `It will be six years before we can marry,' I said wistfully. `When we are fourteen.'

      `We shall go up to the temple,' said Eleni, his arm around me.

      I sighed on his breath, `And tell the Lady Gaia and the Lord Dionysius. I will have a purple chiton and a himation of gold.'

      `I will have a purple tunic and a mantle of gold,' he kissed me again,

      `Because we are the royal twins,'

      `And the snakes gave us the gift of prophecy,'

      `And they will bless us,' I stroked Eleni's neck, where the hair sprung rough from the nape.

      `They will marry us to each other,' he whispered into my ear, making me shiver pleasantly.

      `As Pharoah marries his sister,'

      `As Pharoah marries her brother,'

      `And we will be together for ever and ever,'

      `And death shall not sever us.'

      Strophe and antistrophe, this was litany. We loved each other with a pure love which was all encompassing. If Eleni loved something, then I loved it also. We kissed with eight-year-old passion which had nothing of the flesh in it, and fell asleep, as we always did, with our arms around each other, Eleni's head and mine on the one pillow, each mimicking (Nyssa said) the attitude of the other.

      We dreamed, and this is what we dreamed: the coming of a new god, a flesh-eating demon, who ate up Troy and belched fire. We woke screaming.

      `Demon! I saw a demon!' Eleni grabbed wildly for comfort and I seized him tightly, witless with shock. We clutched each other close and found a little comfort in our embrace. `Dreadful,' I panted. `He's coming to eat us!'

      `And there were shades, grey ghosts - did you see them?'

      We shuddered strongly. We had been taught that the dead, after remaining for three days until they are properly burned, go on to join the gods in the meadow playground where it never snows and wind never blows, to lie down with their loved ones in sweet grass and sleep or wake as they like, with the proud horses of the City of Horses beside them. Never to return, impossible to summon, no longer concerned with us, to be properly mourned and with all suitable ritual to be dismissed to their deserved rest in the fields of heaven. But Eleni and I, with one mind and sight had seen grey shadows like men and women, draped in shadowy cloth, wandering mindless through grey streets, lost to their earth and their former selves, with no memory.

      `Their lovers,' he choked, and began to cry, and our tears mingled and rolled down into our hair, `they passed each other and never knew that they loved.'

      `The children,' I said, crying freely, `the children and the mothers not touching, not knowing...'

      We cried together, speaking the vision for the first time. Previously they had been playful, funny, charming things, scenes of places far away, and sharing them in our minds had been enough. Now we were seriously disturbed and words gave us structure and took away some of the horror.

      `A demon god, on a throne, lord of demons, an eater of people,' my twin sobbed into my breast.

      `Blood on his jowl and on his hands, dripping,' I shook with terror and disgust.

      `Smoke from the burning of dead animals and men all around him; he snuffed it as though it smelt sweet as incense,' whispered Eleni.

      `Horrible,' I agreed. `He's coming to eat Troy.'

      `Yes. We are his sacrifice - that's what it means - the soldiers are coming to make a burned offering of Troy to their demon.'

      `The soldiers. I saw them. Bronze men. They shone in the sun.'

      `Glittering. Their helmets are made in the shapes of beasts.'

      `Beast men, with a beast god.'

      Open-mouthed, Eleni and I kissed. Salt with tears, the kiss was harsh, bitter as the embrace of the shipwrecked we sometimes found on the shore, arms around each other, dying mouth locked to mouth.

      We slept again after a little while. We did not dream again, and we did not tell anyone about the vision, not at the time. It seemed too strange, too horrible. We should have gone to the temple and told the priest of Apollo about it. He sent the dream, straight and wounding as an arrow, poisoning our sleep and stirring our passion.

      We were woken by Hector, calling us to come down to the harbour with him. We dragged on our tunics and found our sandals and ran past Nyssa, who was telling us to wash our faces, and scaled Hector like a wall.

      He laughed - we could feel his bass laugh through his embrace - and perched us one on each shoulder. We were high up and perfectly safe - Hector would never let us fall - and we grabbed a handful of his coarse, pale hair as we jolted down the steep street which led to the Scamander Gate. We crossed the Place of Strangers' Gods and Hector set us down while he mounted his horse, then we scrambled up and clung to him, one each side, like the monkeys that Theones the shipmaster had brought back from the coasts of the strange land where the men were black and the forests yielded gold. Hector's eyes were grey and they twinkled. He never teased and he always let us come with him.

      `What was wrong with you, twins?' he asked, hugging Eleni closer as he seemed likely to fall off. `I heard you crying.'

      `Eleni looked at me round the bulk of our brother's torso. I shook my head. I did not want to tell. `Just a bad dream,' said Eleni. `We had a bad dream. Where are we going?'

      `Down to the harbour - two ships have come in from Kriti. Wine for the king, finest olive oil for the perfumers, and...' he paused, smiling.

      `Honey for the twins!' we chorused, greedily.

      Our brother Hector was as tall as a tree, as strong as a bull, massive and gentle. He could throw a spear further than anyone else, tame the wildest horse with words and touch, leap like a deer and fight like a lion. What foe, what demon, could overcome Hector our brother?

      He was our best source of stories. Hector knew everything.

      The first story I remember he told us, we must have been four or five years old. We were lying on the flat roof of the palace. The palace is a rambling, three-storeyed building, the finest in Troy. It occupies the highest point. The Achaeans would call it an acropolis. When we came here from the Island, we built flat roofs, and although the newer houses have sloping roofs which drain better, the palace is the oldest building in