The Council of the Goddesses

Note: In 1981, a set of female-shaped clay statuettes was discovered in the village of Poduri, Bacău county, Romania, dating from around 4900 B.C. It is often referred to as The Council of the Goddesses from Poduri. Although the artefacts are real, the circumstances of their creation and their discovery written in this short story are entirely fictional.

The Council of the Goddesses from Poduri, source: site Primaria Poduri

On the night of the storm, Batar dreamed of the goddesses.

The tribe was wary of Batar – the strange child who spoke to the wind; the youngster who hunted with reluctance, but whose hands could mold the soft clay into any shape he pleased; the man who breathed life into everything he made.

There had been whispers once that Batar was not really one of them. That he was something else. A changeling. A child of the forest spirits who had crept into the settlement one night, drawn by the warmth of their fire and the strong aromas of cooked meat.

“Nonsense,” Alba the midwife spat whenever someone brought up Batar in front of her. “I was there at his birth. He was a strange one from the start. Wouldn’t cry. He’d only look at you with those big dark eyes of his. He’d look at you as if he wanted to crawl inside your soul.”

“Then his mother must have done something,” people would say. “She must have gone to seek out the River-god.”

Alba chuckled.

“No mortal woman seeks out the River-god. It is the River-god who chooses his lovers, not the other way round. If Batar really is the son of the River-god, then all the more reason to keep him. The children of the gods bring good fortune to their tribes, do they not?”

So far, Batar had not brought any good fortune, although he had not brought bad luck either, not as far as the tribe knew. Any talk of exiling or even sacrificing him to the River-god was quickly quelled. Batar worked the clay like no one before him. Why would the tribe deprive themselves of him?

Batar had always been aware of the whispers about him. He did his best to keep his head down. Certainly, he had never told anyone about his dreams of the goddesses. Not even the old shaman, who often looked at Batar as if he could discern all his secrets. Especially the ones Batar did not know himself.

***

She and her sisters lived in the moments between the lightning and the clap of thunder. They were born of air and clay and drops of rain. They whispered to the seeds, and the seeds became plants. They turned barren deserts into green oases. They watched over the mothers of the village and rocked the newborn children to sleep.

The people by the river called her and her sisters goddesses. This amused her. They were much more than that. They were wind and life and fire. They were the dance of gossamer and the shadows beneath the trees. And they were old – much older than the purely human concepts of gods or spirits or demons.

She stood upon the hill, arms outstretched, welcoming the storm. Lightning struck her, and she grew taller, until she could reach the sky, until she could pluck out the lightning and use it as a sword to hold back the night. Around her, the sisters danced, shrill cries mingling with the howling of the wind.

They danced for what felt like centuries, then sat down in the clearing by the river, facing each other. They did not speak. Words were not always necessary for them. She and her sisters were one. They were each a separate entity when they chose to be, but they shared the same thoughts. The same will. The same soul.

In that perfect union, the Eldest suddenly stiffened. Another mind was fluttering around them. Someone was trying to enter their circle. Unexpected. Unwelcome. Unneeded.

Her sisters felt it too. As one, their thoughts died. As one, they called forth thunder and lightning and hail. The wind rose up in answer to their curses, slamming against the mind of the intruder.

“Send him away,” she whispered.

“Do worse,” another part of her said. “Make sure he never looks upon us again. Make sure he will never be able to see again anything that we have touched.”

She thought she could see him: a young man with red hair and wide eyes. Eyes that had admired them, that had seen them in all their glory as the storm raged around them.

“May this be the last thing you ever see.”

***

Batar woke up still smelling smoke and wet grass and mud. His throat was tight, his body shaking so violently, it felt as if his spirit wanted to escape its cage. Putting a hand to his face, he discovered it wet with sweat and tears and raindrops that should have existed only in a dream. His other hand clenched around the woolen blanket, the coarse fabric tickling his palm.

“A dream,” he said, voice hoarse, as if he had spent the entire night screaming. “Nothing more than a dream.”

Yet the sense of unease did not leave him. The darkness of his hut smothered him, crawling inside him and laughing at his terror. So much darkness. His entire being felt infected by it.

Batar’s eyes were wide open, and yet he could not escape the darkness. He waved a hand in front of his face. He felt the air shift at the motion, but nothing appeared in front of his eyes, not even a shadow.

“I can’t see,” he realized. “I cannot see anything.”

He blinked several times, pressing his palms against his closed eyelids to the point of pain. He opened his eyes again only to be greeted by the same black smoke that would not let him go.

The dream came back to him. The goddesses in council, all seated on the hill, their glowing eyes like ice. His discovery. The lightning. The curse.

Make sure he will never be able to see again anything that we have touched.

Yet the Goddesses were life. They touched everything, rivers and forests and people. They touched the very light of the sun.

May this be the last thing you will ever see.

The curse had struck home. Batar buried his face in his hands.

“I can’t see,” he moaned. “They’ve struck me blind.”

***

News of Batar’s blindness spread through the village the next day. Batar had tried to hide it, but it was hard to do so when he walked into walls or stumbled over objects that were plain to see. Alma came to visit him. Although mainly a midwife, she often offered her services as a healer as well.

“What have you done to yourself?” she asked, shaking her head.

She could spot the displeasure in Batar’s tense features. Alma barely refrained from scoffing. Young men were all the same, thinking the world was theirs, and none of their actions could come accompanied by consequences.

“What makes you think I did anything? Perhaps it is something that just happened. Some illness brought by the river…”

Alma laughed.

“Oh, not you. You are supposed to be the son of the River-god, remember? Surely, he would not maim his own offspring.”

Batar bowed his head.

“I am not the offspring of the River-god. My father was a man like any others, who went deep in the forest to hunt a boar and failed to return. Or maybe he did not want to come back. It is all the same to me. It was all the same to my mother. At least she did not live to see her only child sightless and useless to the tribe.”

Alma swatted Batar over the back of his head. The blow was not hard, but Batar still flinched, unable to see it coming.

“Alma…” he began hoarsely.

Her coarse hands clutched his shoulders.

“You are still of use to us, Batar. Your gift is in your hands, not your eyes. Do not doom yourself to darkness in such a manner. It is beneath you.”

“Others have doomed me, Mother Alma. Do you want to know what happened? I had a dream. I saw more than I should, but one cannot look away in dreams.”

Alma peered into Batar’s face. Beyond the fear and confusion, she spotted an awareness so keen that it frightened her – a knowledge of the things flitting from shadow to shadow. The world of gods and spirits had opened itself to Batar. In spite of the young man’s condition, Alma was stabbed by a pang of envy.

“My child,” she sighed, “I would have gladly paid the price in your stead.”

Batar gasped. She stilled his protests, clutching his shoulders to the point of pain.

“No. I was not being kind. I would have paid any price to see what you have seen.”

She could not ignore the tears in Batar’s voice.

“It is the last thing I will ever see, Mother Alma.”

She pulled his head to her chest and held him close, wishing she had the power to offer hope with more than just clumsy words.

“Then show it to us. Show it to the entire world.”

“I do not know what you want of me, Alma.”

She released him and wiped his tears.

“You have the power to make the clay come to life, Batar. Maybe the dream was no accident.”

“And the curse?”

Alma hesitated.

“A curse can become a blessing. You have the power to make the clay come alive, Batar. Perhaps, with this power, you will outlive us all. Even the goddesses.”

Batar tensed.

“Don’t say that. I do not wish them to take your tongue next.”

Alma waved that aside.

“No one would bother with an old crone like me, so close to dotage. If you are angry at them, Batar, defy them. Show us what you saw.”

The shaman would have had her stoned for sacrilege if he had heard her. The rest of the villagers would have demanded she be driven out before her impertinent tongue doomed them all. Batar was of a different sort. He grinned.

“I like the way you think, Mother Alma.”

***

For days, Batar thought about Alma’s words. For days, as he got used to this new world of darkness he now inhabited, they were his only comfort, a balm against his fears. Still, he did nothing. He did not try to sculpt, afraid to discover they had taken that gift from him as well. And, without that gift, who was he?

One night, the storm returned.

Batar felt it in his bones. Thunder seemed to seek him out, shaking him. The wind roared, demanding to be allowed inside. Beyond it, he heard them: the rain daughters, the goddesses, the givers of life. The takers of what should have never been theirs to take.

Batar pushed back the blanket that covered the entrance to his hut. The rain whipped his face. The wind took him by the hand, beckoning him forward into the downpour. Batar remained motionless.

“Have you come to finish the job?” he challenged. “Are you here to take anything else from me?”

No one answered him. He waited, holding his breath, for another curse, for lightning to strike him, for the earth to open up and swallow him.

The end of the storm found him standing there like a statue, face wet with rain and tears.

“I have seen your true forms,” he whispered. “What makes you think I will not show them to others? What then? Will you blind the entire village? Will you send the River-god to drown us?”

The next day, Batar asked for his tools and for clay.

“What will you make?” his neighbor asked. “A pot? A bowl? My woman broke hers, you know. She’s in need of a new one. If you make me one, I promise deer’s meat the next time I go hunting.”

Since you can no longer hunt now. Batar understood what was unsaid but decided to ignore it.

“You will have your bowl when I finish my work.”

“What work?”

Batar smiled. For the first time since the blinding, it came easily to him.

“My most important work yet. I will show you the true face of the world, my friend. I will show you what is hidden beyond the veil of shadows.”

The neighbor fled Batar’s hut in haste. He would probably think twice before visiting again.

Batar got his clay. He got deer meat, too, without having to waste his time making a bowl in exchange for it.

***

Batar began his work with hesitant, trembling hands. During the first few days, he was certain he would fail. He felt that his body did not obey him like before. Without his sight, he was not certain he could be one with the clay he molded. For days, he would begin his work in the morning and destroy it at nightfall, when he would fall asleep, face buried in the pelts that served as his bed, weeping for his failures.

Every night, he dreamed of that moment on the hill. He could see again, yet the only thing he saw was the council of the goddesses – their splendor and their greatness that no mortal except himself had seen. He memorized their features. He could not understand them, but he could trap them – if only he regained his confidence to work the clay once more.

One day, Batar awoke with his hands trembling, as if an unseen force had lodged itself inside him. With the image of the goddesses fresh in his mind, he set to work. Day after day, figure after figure, he shaped them according to the only image he could still remember. He did not sleep. He barely ate.

When he was done, he collapsed, exhausted. The goddesses appeared to him. Their faces were cautious, neutral. Batar dared to look them in the eye in his dreams. They would not give them back his sight – he knew that. It did not matter, since he had enhanced the vision of the rest of the world.

“I’ve won in the end.”

***

The year was 1981. The woman stood by the river, watching the excavations with great interest. No one paid any attention to her. Perhaps they could not see her. Perhaps they saw her as one of the other archeologists, or a tree, or a thread of gossamer. The world had changed since the days of Batar’s people. Now, no one called her and her sisters goddesses. Yet they were still there, beneath the veils of shadows, still whispering to the grain and making it grow. No one saw them in their dreams anymore.

An exclamation from the archeologists drew her attention back to the dig. She saw the clay statuettes drawn out into the sunlight once more – she and her sisters, frozen and given life in a mad, splendid act of creation that only mortals were capable of.

She wanted to touch the statuette, to feel one with it, to discover her own self in the hardened clay.

“Now, all the world will see you,” she repeated Batar’s words.

Batar had gotten his revenge – and had saved her and her sisters from falling in the mires of oblivion.

Turning her back to the dig, she walked away and disappeared into the morning mists. She was smiling.

END

Copyright, Simina Lungu, 2024

Portuguese version can be found in the Arkhe anthology, available here: https://heyzine.com/flip-book/1970d6e5b4.html