Commentary -- Her Mercy
bwinter and tricksterquinn both requested a commentary on the Island of the Dead chapter, so here it is!

This was an interesting chapter to do because it's a complicated one. I hope you enjoy this insight into the writing process.



In the end, we were three days on the Island of the Dead.

The Island of the Dead is the island of Thera, known today as Santorini. At some point in the late Bronze Age, the volcano erupted in one of the largest eruptions ever to happen in the Mediterranean, comparable with the later, much more well known eruption of Mt. Vesuvius that buried Pompeii.

At first, most of the men were very reluctant to set foot on the Island. Even when Neas came back to the ships and explained that there was water, I saw the eyes rolling and the motions to avert evil.

It makes sense to me that since the eruption Thera has been a taboo place. In the immediate aftermath of the eruption it was still dangerous, with tremors, landslides, and noxious gases. Then, it was a wasteland. Of course now some years have passed, and it's no longer dangerous, but the taboo remains.

"I spoke to the Lady of the Dead," I said, "And asked Her for water. She sent Her birds to show us where it was, a sacred spring as clear and pure as any in the world. We may fill our casks as long as we disturb no living thing on the island that is Hers."

After this there were some who would come ashore, and they began loading water for Hunter and Seven Sisters first.

By the end of the first day we had just begun loading clean fresh water onto Dolphin and Pearl when a sail was sighted. There was a flurry of movement, oars unshipped, sailors recalled from the island. Seven Sisters and Hunter ran out, preparing to meet and delay the newcomer as long as possible. We heard their cheers coming back over the water. It was Winged Night, and she had all of Menace's people aboard.

As twilight came the three ships returned to the island and we heard their story. Winged Night had ridden out the storm, seeing other ships in the distance, but essentially alone. At dawn on the second day, as the storm was abating she had come upon Menace, near-foundering with her decks awash. She had closed on the sinking ship and lying along side had taken all her people off with ropes, except for one woman who had fallen in the sea and drowned. Menace was lost, but twenty one sailors, five women, and four children were saved. The loss of the ship was hard.

This, presented matter of factly, is no doubt a sea story of incredible courage! A truly heroic enterprise, in these small ships in dangerous seas.

"Ships may be replaced," Neas said, "but the blood of our People is spread thin. We cannot spare even one, even the smallest child, and you have rescued thirty who would otherwise have been lost. Tonight we will honor the crew of Winged Night."

Amid the reunions, he drew me aside. "We will have to be several days here. Is that well with your Lady?"

"It is," I said. "If She had not meant for us to find refuge here, She would not have let Her sister bring us to Her doorstep. I have seen no sign that She is displeased."

"The beaches are broad and the water shallow over a sandy bottom. There is water aplenty. No man comes here. We must stop a day or two, heal our hurts, and find room for Menace's people on the other ships. Also, perhaps Lady's Eyes and Swift will join us." He did not mention the fishing boats. One doesn't speak of ill, as that may invite it, but as time passed it seemed more and more likely they were lost, especially since Menace had been overwhelmed. She had been one of the newer warships, if not the largest.

So we stayed. That night Neas lit a bonfire, and the men paid tribute to the courage of Winged Night's crew with the best wine of Pylos. Drums and flutes were produced, and before long there was singing beneath the almost-full moon, the long line-dances weaving around the fire, singing familiar songs of home. In their rhythm I heard the echo of the flax-slaves. This was where they had come from, the songs they had sung as they worked, sounding of sorrow and loss. I heard them now outpouring relief and release.

People have to have release. There is no way that people can go on and on, months and months, under that kind of pressure without breaking. In this society, one of the ways that people cope is the Dionysian release of the dance, of wild music and bonfire.

Tia did not dance, but she stood near the fire clapping the dancers on, a wine-flush on her face. Kos pirouetted in a circle, and then threw his arm over Xandros' shoulders, shouting out the words at the top of his voice. Bai could not dance. He took a few steps and nearly fell. Tia saw and helped him sit, near enough the fire to sing, but not to be trampled on. He spoke to her. Words of thanks, I thought. Her flush rose higher. He looked up, patted the ground beside him. She hesitated, then sat down on his left, the width of a man still between them. But she smiled.

I turned away. I will go out from the dance, I had said. And none shall call me beloved. It had not seemed hard at the time.

Tia and Bai are interested in each other, but Tia is wary, for reasons she hasn't yet revealed to Gull.

And now what should I dream of? A prince’s courtesy, smiles and trust that were for his oracle, not for me?

Instead I found myself thinking of a lean smooth form darkened by sun, of Xandros’ still, deep eyes.

I really don't like this bit, and I wince whenever I read it. I don't think Gull is actually aware of an attraction to Xandros this early. I think she's more interested in Neas at this point.

I walked away from the crowd on the beach, drawing my mantle about me, walked down toward the inner lagoon with its dark water and secrets. No one followed. I followed the lagoon around until I found a place where a tumble of rocks spilled down into the water, perhaps part of the fallen wall of some great palace that Neas remembered. I sat there on the rocks under the moon, wrestling with my heart.

Great Mistress, I said, it is not that I do not love you more than life. Or that you are not mother and father both to me. But as Cythera said, my body is a young woman's. Is it so odd that I should be moved by a man of my people?

This is supposed to be about Neas, but I think it comes off as about Xandros. I would do this differently now.

There was no answer except the quiet lapping of the waves. The reflections of moonlight on the water rippled across sunken doors and windows. No bones remained, just the skeletons of houses waiting under water, reminders of what had been. The water was shallow. The houses were deceptively close, as though you could simply wade out and walk those streets, step into the Land of the Dead.

I love this image, and it's one of my favorite bits in the whole book. I can see the silent town sleeping beneath the waves, only ten or fifteen feet deep. Of course the ruins were in much better shape in Gull's time than today, when they've been battered by the sea for three thousand years!

What had I forgotten when I crossed the River? Had I lived in those houses, slept behind those windows? I could not help imagining a palace with red columns, a great soft bed where I lay entwined with warm arms, golden stubble against my breast, my hands against his shoulders, doomed lovers on the last day of the world.

Neas. And not so very long ago, in the last days of Thera and the palace culture of Crete. I think the town she and Neas both remember was Akrotiri, which was evacuated before the final eruption. Only one piece of gold has been found in the site, and no human remains. Did Neas succeed in that time in saving his people as well? And where did they go, borne on the tsunami?

But the world is not ended, She whispered in me. </i>The world ends, and begins again. That is the Mystery, if you have courage to follow it.</i>

And this is one of the biggest points of the entire book. The world ends and begins again. We recover from disasters, both personal and national. It's about healing. It's about replanting. And over and over through Black Ships, that healing is illustrated. The Maiden descends to the Underworld and returns.

I belong to Death, not to beginnings, I said.

Ah, She said.

Gull, with the infinite wisdom of someone seventeen, thinks she understands it all. But her Lady is tolerant of youth.

I heard then the scattering of small stones, as though someone else was climbing up the rocks. I waited to see who it would be, not certain which I wished it to be.

It was Tia.

I sighed.

Now for a concrete illustration of the healing theme. We're about to find out the full extent of Tia's trouble.


She startled when she saw me and almost fell. "Lady! I didn't expect you to be here."

"You didn't expect anyone to be here," I said. "You have walked apart, and wanted solitude. I will go."

"No," she said. "Stay." Tia looked away, out over the sea. "There is something I...."

"Sit beside me then," I said.

She folded up next to me, her knees hugged tight to her chest. "I know that there are things.... I mean, if you think...."

I looked at her, waiting for her to go on.

"There are things that can stop a baby, yes?"

"Ah," I said.

We know in an earlier chapter that Gull thinks that Tia has probably been raped, as her own mother was. Now we find out for sure, and that she's pregnant.

"I don't.... I can't.... Kos doesn't know yet, but he'll wish me dead when he does."

"Kos will do no such thing," I said. "You are blameless in this, as are all captives. He loves you dearly. He risked everything to find you and rescue you. Kos will never turn away from you." I had seen enough of the man to know this, the love and relief on his face in Pylos when he saw his sister alive against all hope.

"I dishonor him," Tia said.

In the society they have left, it would dishonor Kos. But Gull knows Kos, and knows that he's hardly going to blame his fourteen year old sister for being raped when she was a captive. She thinks it's more likely he'll go off on a vendetta.

"You do not," I said. "Are you certain it is so?"

"I think. It's been a long time since my courses."

"Let me see," I said. "Lift your tunic. I will only touch your stomach."

She flinched, but did as I asked.

"Lean back a bit." Tia was so thin that her hip bones were sharp, but there was a little pooch of flesh that should not have been there. Under my hand it was firm, hard and solid as muscle, rising four finger widths above the bone of the pelvis. I pressed gently, and it was firm. "Yes," I said, "You are with child. How many moons since your courses?"

"I don't know," Tia said. "Since I was on the boat to Pylos, I think. Three, maybe four moons? Can you stop it? My mother once said that there are herbs?" Her voice was hopeful.

Four months and a bit. Tia has not been counting well, and she spotted the first month.

I shook my head. "There are, but I have none of them. And even if I did, I could not give them to you now. You are too far along. They could kill you." I moved my fingers, pressing a little, and felt it, the faint flicker of movement, almost imperceptible, the movement of a child with many months still to go before breathing air.

This is the same exam you'd have today from a midwife, measuring the rise above the pelvic bone and the size of the uterus.

Tia bit down on her lip. "That might be better."

"It would not," I said. "Tia, look at me."

She did, and I did not see what I feared, the real desire to die. "I can't tell Kos," she said. "But sooner or later even he will know."

"He will know," I said. "And it will be well. Kos would never do you harm."

She bent forward over her knees. "Everyone will know. I want to just be rid of it. And you are telling me I must bear it."

"All these women here know what it is to be prizes of war, even the few who escaped from the City. There are many who have borne the child of their captor. None will blame you or consider you without honor. You remember what Prince Aeneas said earlier?"

Every one of the former slave women has been in Tia's shoes. Gull is right that no one will censure her.

She looked up at me and shook her head.

"Every life of the People is valuable. Is irreplaceable. Including yours."

And this is a new idea, these words of Neas. They have no concept in their society yet of the inherent worth of human life, or that all people possess something called human rights. Neas is ahead of his time here. He's better than his age has taught him to be. He believes that every person is valuable, a rare and strange idea.

"Even the smallest child," she said. "But Sybil, I do not want this child! I will look at it and hate it. I will cast it into the sea. I will wish it never born, or dead. Tell me that when it is born I can leave it in some deserted place."

"No," I said. "You cannot," and it was Her implacable mercy that spoke through me. "Her hand is upon it."

"It will die?" she said.

I reached forward and put my hand on her stomach again. "The child is a daughter," I said. "And if she lives, she belongs to the Lady of the Dead."

I had dreamed on the boat, sitting next to Tia, of a girl in black with long red hair, a place with young olive trees, of Death speaking to me through pomegranate lips. Those, perhaps, were always Hers, but not the freckled hands, thin and fair like Tia's, but spattered with gold. Those belonged to a real girl. "She is the granddaughter of Iaso the boat builder, and when she is weaned you will give her to me to be my acolyte. I will raise her as a daughter to the Shrine, and she will be Sybil when I am gone."

"You will take her?" Tia said. "Really?"

"Yes," I said. I drew her tunic down. "I will take your child. She will have honor and a place. It is so."

Gull cannot bear the idea of abandoning or drowning this child. It's just like her. The parallel is too close. She will take Tia's child, as Pythia took her. What has happened to Tia is a great wrong, and wrongs can only be righted with love.

You are not alone, She had said. I did not carry Her alone. There was also this tiny scrap of life with the capacity to hold Her, She Who Would Be Pythia after me.

"You'll tell Kos this?" Tia asked.

"I will tell Kos," I said. "I will help you tell him if you wish. But he will not be angry at you, no matter how much he curses the Achaians and vows dire vengeance upon them."


In fact, he didn't. Tia and I sat with him on the rocks the next day, while Dolphin, Winged Night and Pearl spread nets behind them and fished offshore as though they were little fishing boats, not warships. Feeding this many people took a lot of food, and if we were forbidden the gulls' eggs on the island, we were not forbidden the fish offshore.

What Kos did was cry and beg Tia's forgiveness that he had not protected her. He had been away at sea. Their parents had been killed, and a younger brother still at home. Tia's baby nephew had been taken from her arms and killed in front of her. She had been watching him while his mother was at the market, a sister older than Kos who was missing and whose fate was unknown.

"I should have been there," Kos sobbed. "I should have died rather than let this happen to you."

She has misunderstood Kos. She thought he would be angry, not guilty.

"If you were dead," I said gently, "who should care for Tia now? Who should support her and the child she carries? She needs her living brother."

"It is my fault," he said. "Tia, dear sister." He cried against her neck while she held him and cried too.

"It's not your fault, Kos," she said. "I know you'd have done anything to keep this from happening. It is my fault. I should have run. I should have done something else. I dream it over and over. And every time I stand there frozen and do nothing."

"There was no place safe," he said. "Where would you run to?"

I let them cry before me, alone on the rocks with the wheeling gulls. "You are together," I said. "There is nothing you can do now for your family, except live. Live as your parents would have wished, and take care of one another."

Gull is very much counselor and psychologist to the People, a pastoral counselor in today's world. And she's very young. But she's doing the best she can. After all, Tia is not quite fifteen, and Kos is all of nineteen.

"That's all any of us can do," Kos said. "Take care of one another."

"We are all one kindred now," I said. "Sea people and horse people, Lower City and Citadel. We must act as one kindred, bound in honor and love."

Kos wiped a tear from his sister's face. "This baby is the last of our line. Promise me you'll take care of yourself and not do anything foolish. Mother wanted a granddaughter so badly. Remember how she was when Kianna was pregnant? Everyone kept wishing her a boy but Mother kept wishing for a girl?"

Tia was laughing and crying at the same time. "She did. That's exactly what she did."

"I promise I'll take good care of both of you," Kos said. "Until it's time to give her to the Lady, as Sybil says."

"She will be my acolyte," I confirmed. "She will be a daughter to me."

Live. Live and heal and eventually love again. Her advice is good. And she comes away from this thinking that Kos will be a rock for Tia and her child, which he will. He'll try so hard.


When I was done with them the sun was high and I was thirsty. My head was aching. I did not go back to the camp. There were too many people who needed something, who wanted a word just now. I went apart, toward the spring, my head hurting so badly that all I wanted was to lie down in the shade of the stones, in the dark.

"Sybil?" Neas said. "Where are you going?"

"I am going to pray," I snapped.

And now Neas wants something. Everyone wants something.

"Oh." He drew up short. "I didn't mean to disturb you."

"I'm sorry," I said, remembering my duty. "How may I help you, Prince Aeneas?"

He came up and stood before me. "That was well done," he said.

I shrugged. "These are not hurts I can heal. Only time, and the favor of the Gods. And some of these breaches will never be mended."

He looked down at me. "What if the child is a boy?"

"We will cross that bridge when we come to it," I said.

Gull thinks it's a girl. She hopes it's a girl. If it's not, she'll work out something, since she can't foster a boy.

Neas raised one eyebrow. "You do not know?"

"I think," I said. "I think that I have read Her signs rightly. But one can never be certain."

"You seemed certain in Pylos."

"That is the kind of holy mystery that comes on one perhaps once in a lifetime, to be the vessel for Her will so completely. I cannot hope for that guidance again." I looked out across the sea. "She Who Was Pythia taught me that we must ask for Her guidance, and use our eyes and our hearts when Her will is not plain. I do as best I can and hope that I do not err, or fall into folly and hubris."

She trusts her Lady. But she doesn't expect her Lady to act literally deus ex machine in every circumstance.

"More or less like being a Prince," he said.

"Perhaps, Prince Aeneas."

"Neas."

"Yes."

"Go apart, then," he said. "I will see that no one disturbs you at the spring."

"They will disturb you instead," I said. "Is there no one in whom you confide? Xandros?"

Neas looked away. "Xandros is my friend," he said. "A good companion, and one whom my heart trusts. But this lies between us now -- that my child lives and his are dead."

They are all so terribly hurt. Everyone is desperately in need of healing. But no one has time to stop and "work through their stuff." Stopping will mean death. And Neas is more aware of this than anyone else. His mistakes will cost human lives. Big burden. And he's only twenty-two himself.

I caught my breath. "I did not know that he had children," I said.

"He had two daughters. A little girl who was three years old, and a baby just learning to walk. They were killed because they were too young to be useful slaves. His wife put up such a fight when they went for the girls that they had to kill her too, even though she would have been a valuable prize."

I turned my head away. "But your son lives," I said, it catching in my throat.

"He was four, not three," Neas said, and his voice only shook a little. "He hid while they raped and killed his mother. My father found him and got him from the house before it burned over his head. I was too late returning to Wilusa with the fleet. If we had been there, it would not have been."

This is one of the most dramatic scenes in the Aeneid, and supposedly the one that inspired Schliemann to begin his search for the site of Troy. I debated whether or not to have this section onscreen, and decided against it because of viewpoint. Gull cannot be there, and it would require a major shift to have it in first person. So instead I show the consequences to Neas and Wilos, and also eventually to Anchises.

"Now you sound like Kos," I said.

"Kos was not in command. I was." His voice was harsh. "The responsibility is mine."

"No," I said tightly. "That rests with Neoptolemos. He is the one who raised a fleet in Pylos, who incited young kings to war. He is the one who was greedy for gold and the women of other peoples. I watched him. I saw him at the feasts, speaking of glory and treasure, kindling ambitions and desires. I stood as close as I am to you, and I watched him. I know precisely where the responsibility lies."

He may blame himself for not winning against Neoptolemos, but no one else does. Certainly not Gull, who saw this beginning in Pylos.

I took the Prince's hands. "He wanted slaves to sell in Millawanda, the Free City. They stopped on the way back to Pylos and sold many slaves. That is where many of our people are. Others were taken to Tiryns, but if you have seen Tiryns of the Mighty Walls towering over the plain of Argos you will know that there is nothing we can do to assail them. But in Millawanda we may yet find some of our lost people and free them somehow."

"We raided Pylos because it was what I could think to do," Neas said. "There were men of Pylos who burned Wilusa, and we knew that it did not have great defenses. I could not think what else we could do, besides try to restore some of our folk, and to give us vengeance for so many things." Neas dropped my hands. "But I am a man of twenty-two, not a boy to run aimlessly from place to place. And my desire for blood is not so great that I would take us all out in a blaze of glory to restore things that cannot be restored."

Neas is a remarkable man. A blaze of glory would be what his culture would expect. And failure would be what any reasonable person would predict. But he is truly a hero, conquering the darkness within to save his people.

"Nothing can restore the dead to you," I said gently, "not this side of the River."

"I know," he said. "Yet I feel like Theseus, running madly through the coils of the labyrinth, with horrors following at my heels, and every twist bringing me a new dreaded sight. I dream, and it pursues me. I am sunk so far in horror heaped upon horror that I cannot taste wine or see the sun above. The world has ended. And I don't know why I yet live."

Neas, quite understandably, has a big case of PTSD himself. But he has to go on.

"You live," I said, "because you are fortunate, because you are clever, because some God favors you. You live because these people need a leader. Because the world ends and then begins."

"If it is the will of the Lady of the Sea," he said, "it is a bitter kind of favor."

"The favor of the Gods is often thus," I said.

"I think we must go to Millawanda," he said. "While we cannot assail the place, we may be able to buy the freedom of some of our people with the plunder of Pylos."

Which in turn was plundered from Wilusa, I thought. A vast chain of piracy across the sea, where honest merchants do not dare to go, as they did when She Who Was Pythia was young. Each year more fields will lie fallow, fewer boats fish the sea, fewer children grow healthy and strong. How am I to raise up dead men to plow fields that are fallow, to strip brush and plant young olive groves? I am a woman of seventeen. I am ten years in Her service, but if She Who Was Pythia had no answers to these questions, how am I to find them?

Gull has no vocabulary to express complete economic collapse and the dark age that is beginning. How do you reverse this trend? Modern social scientists would like to know.

"Also, I had spoken of this to Jamarados and Livo, who is Swift's captain. If they cannot find us on the seas and they aren't foundered, perhaps they will take Lady's Eyes and Swift to Millawanda."

"Then it is to the Free City we must go," I said.

"But after that, I know not," he said. "I can see no further than the next curve of the labyrinth."

I smiled. "Then you must do as Theseus did and follow Ariadne's thread. For there are passages through the dark places which are well known to us who are raised in darkness and have nothing to fear there."

Neas looked at me. "That is what that story is about, isn't it?"

They are a people who understand what we would term psychology through stories. Neas must pass through this personal darkness, and he needs a guide. But it is also a literal passage to test the worthiness of a king, as we will see in subsequent chapters.

"Yes, my Prince, it is," I said. "All kings must make that descent, before they are crowned, all true kings in the old stories. Sometimes it is omitted today, in houses that have offended Her. But I should not speak of that."

The blood of Iphigenia spilled at Aulis did not touch him, and he needed no new horrors today. Of that, at least, his house was clean.

"To Millawanda, then," he said. "But I think we should wait one more day here and rest. We can hope that Swift and Lady's Eyes will come, and even if they don't the men need rest."

"Rest and hope," I said. "We will pour libations to the Lady of the Sea and thank Her for Her grace, and to the Lady of the Dead, who lets us squat on Her doorstep."

Rest and hope, which echoes the end of one of my favorite novels, The Count of Monte Cristo. Wait and hope.

"A day of rest," he said. "We will eat the fish that Xandros is catching and have games on the beach in honor of the Divine Sisters. Footraces at least we can manage. And contests of swimming."

"On the ocean side," I said. "Let us not disturb the Dead City by diving for its treasures."

"No," he said. Then he smiled at me. "Thank you, Lady. My heart is lighter."

"Burdens shared are halved," I said, and smiled at the old saw, still true enough. It was true that my headache was better.

She and Neas understand each other well. They are united in their responsibilities. They can get through this together.

Thank you for reading!