Pythia

It was on a bright morning when the Pythia was found dead in her chambers. Her eyes were closed and she seemed to be sleeping peacefully, but in fact the breath had left her body at some point in the night. It was bad timing, though the priestesses didn't hold much stock in timing as something that could be bad or good. In three days time, visitors would arrive at Delphi in search of truth and guidance.

The new Pythia's selection from among the priestess cadre was something of a surprise. She was young, relatively speaking, and had a family. But unlike the older women who played in temple politics, she maintained a purity of affection from all in attendance. It was decided.

She kissed her husband and her three boys, on the forehead and once on each eye. They looked at her, round-faced and unsmiling.

"Do good," she told them.

"Will you visit us?" her youngest said.

"You can see me in the temple," she said, smoothing his hair. One more kiss from her husband, for luck, and she had to turn away. It wouldn't do for her family or the priestesses to see her weep. The god had given her a true role now.

Flanked by the priestesses, she returned to the river and the cave. She washed herself, burned the laurel leaves, and drank the blessed water; she sacrificed the ram. Then the Pythia sat on her three-legged cauldron and waited for the god.

Beneath her, a crevasse reached unfathomably deep into the sweet secrets of the earth. The earth's breath exuded from the ground in a constant flow, and the Pythia felt her breath travel upward and join. They two women breathed together.

And then the god entered in, and the breath was words, and the words were strange and infinite. Kings and priests and warriors came to the temple in three days time, and she advised them. The shape of the world was handed up to her by the god, and in turn she handed it to the people.

It was a position of terrible certainty. No living person could see the map of life, but she was given glimpses. As the words passed from her to them, she knew the future was set like clay in a kiln.

---

The world had breathed for many years and now her hands were old. From her three-legged cauldron, she could see her thick veins and withered feet and legs. The year before, an emperor had come to her and asked about a conflict he intended. Through the Pythia, the god had said an empire would fall.

Cocky and foolish, he didn't stop to think. The conflict went forward, and his empire fell. It was world-shaping news. As soon as she had spoken, she saw that page unfold from the great map. And in the rout, her youngest son had been killed.

This local news was not the purview of the god. He dealt in empires, kings and their families, the half-gods, human heroes, and ships lost for many years. In the fall of this emperor's kingdom, this one death was a letter on the page. It was a nameless detail in the great event, a grain of sand in the avalanche.

A buried thought was straining at the edges of her mind. She was the Pythia, and knew that the map remained uncharted until the word were spoken -- from the god to her, from her to the people. The future had its shapes and lines, and these were set like clay when she exuded them. This truth underlaid the office of her oracle. She was the hand that sketched the shapes and lines. She carved the certainty of that empire's fall, the grains of sand, and her son's death.

Her withered legs still held her weight as she descended from the three-legged cauldron. She stood for a moment at the entrance. It was a bright morning, and distant dots of people moved on the hills. Nearby, there was no one.

The world was open.

She left the cave and its vents. The later visitors seeking the future found only her footsteps.

The doors of fate had come unlatched and rattled in the wind.