'Now, children, watch this,' said Demetrius, setting a glass on the windowsill. He stuffed a wadded linen cloth, dampened, into the glass. 'Now hand me a bean.'

Curious, Chryssa produced a broad bean. Demetrius inserted it between the glass and the wet cloth. 'Now you can see the seed be born into a plant,' he explained.

The kids looked expectant.

'Not exactly right now,' laughed Demetrius. 'Come back every afternoon and check on it.' They nodded: this sounded like an interesting experiment.

Demetrius slept.

A giant cathedral, bigger than anything that would be built in the centuries to come. Its interior a cavernous gothic vault surrounded by galleries and crisscrossed at intervals with a maze of arched bridges concealing heaven-knew-what kinds of rooms. He stood on the main floor, gazing at the array of galleries, and surveyed the arcane beauty of the structure. He wondered why he was there.

From somewhere in the mass of stone, an organ began playing. Masked angels began to sing. The song was quite beautiful, and most of the words made sense. 'Child of light, bride of truth,' fine. But what in the world was Pittsburgh doing in this lyric, in this setting? Demetrius began to be annoyed, a common sentiment in these sorts of dreams.

'All right, you people,' he thought. 'Out with it. Make sense, won't you?'

In answer, he felt (rather than saw) another person on his right side. Also typical.

'Come with me,' said the unseen figure. He came (went?).

On one side of the gallery: a door. Which opened onto large freight elevator. The elevator was not empty. It contained an impressive organ console.

'What am I supposed to do with THAT?' asked Demetrius.

'Play it, obviously,' said the voice in his ear.

'Well, duh.' Demetrius was caught between irritation at the bizarre assignment and the attraction of the keyboards, which he was itching to play. 'Besides, this building already has an organ. I heard it.'

'But not one you can play on the move,' was the enigmatic reply. Demetrius was about to do several things: argue, get into the elevator and start pressing stops, speculate further on the symbolism of this nutty dream. . . when he was rudely awakened by two cats on his lap and a hand shaking him by the shoulder. He gave in and woke up.

The cats settled in with purrs. The hand turned out to belong to Cleo. She left off shaking when she saw eyeballs. She smiled with satisfaction.

Domine, Kiki, Ermione, and I have a meeting to attend tonight. We need your 'permission'.' She rolled her eyes at the idea.

Demetrius rubbed sleep out of his eyes. 'Of course you have it. I'll give you a note in case anyone challenges you. But this isn't something that will get me in trouble with the authorities, is it?'

'Oh, no,' replied Cleo, waving her hands in airy dismissal of the notion. 'Just a ladies-only meeting of the Sisterhood. Ermione is being initiated into the Mysteries. And no,' she added as Radu entered the room looking curious. 'You can't go. No men allowed.'

She smiled placatingly. 'I've left supper for you. Telly will finish preparing and serving it. Excuse me, I have things to do.' She bustled away.

Demetrius and Radu stared after her. 'Wait!'

They looked at each other. 'Did she say, Telly?' They both headed toward the kitchen with the goal of saving dinner.

The twilight procession was solemn – well, sort of. There was an undercurrent of frivolity to it. Young women poured out of the servants' quarters and shopkeepers' homes (the Mysteries welcomed all conditions) and joined the train through the cobbled streets. The barefoot acolytes, in simple gowns and with undressed hair, bore blossomed branches. They sang quietly a hymn to a goddess. The tune wafted gently through the streets and filtered in through the closed shutters of the houses as they passed. Menfolk and other non-participants heard the sound and smiled, but did not look outside. They did not feel threatened, and they saw no need to disturb another's moment of worship.

Hardly anybody noticed the two ginger cats that had joined the procession. Nobody minded cats. A couple of the young women paused to pet them. They graciously permitted this familiarity.

The procession – maidens in the lead, followed by matrons, and, finally, pussycats – continued through the city gates and turned down a country lane until it reached a newly-constructed arbour of blooms and greenery. The participants, still singing, filed through the arch and entered a grotto: half-underground, half-building, half-rock. As they entered, they fell silent, the maidens depositing their floral tributes on the centre altar and taking kneeling positions in a circle around it. The matrons stood behind, clasping hands.

The cats sat decorously in a niche halfway up the grotto wall, the better to see and hear. Not a meow came from them. Since the ladies lacked the obsessive paranoia of the (much later) monks of Mount Athos, nobody checked to see if the felines were ladies or tomcats, which was just as well.

The priestesses entered. The leader held a dish containing what looked like small cakes. Passing in front of the circle of maidens, she offered the dish to each girl. One by one, they took the cakes and ate them. The singing of the matrons had subsided to a soft hum. The tune was pleasant. Another priestess swung a censer. Soon the grotto was filled with a sweet, heady scent. To the cats, the scent was particularly strong, almost overpowering: they watched the proceedings through half-closed eyes.

The kneeling girls, too, half-closed their eyes. One by one, they swayed. One by one, they fell forward. Matrons stepped forward to catch them and ease their way to the grotto floor, slipping small pillows under their heads. The girls lay there. Some moaned softly.

It was impossible to tell what they were experiencing, but it did not seem to be unpleasant. The priestesses chanted – nearly-incomprehensible snatches of verse in an older tongue. The kitties caught phrases such as 'Fall to the ground' and 'die to be reborn.' Unnoticed, they slipped outside.

The humming and chanting went on for a couple of hours, as women knelt beside the dreaming girls, stroking their hair, caressing their faces, murmuring gentle encouragement, and generally making sure the initiates were in no distress. Finally, all died away in silence. The grotto was still in the flickering lamplight.

The stillness was broken by the sound of an aulos from the entrance to the cave. A disembodied voice echoed in the chamber. It sang a song about sacred places: how they would remain holy over time: how the end and beginning of all was love, no matter what the names. Like the chanting, the words of the song were in a tongue unknown to the participants of the ritual. But unlike the chanting, these words were from a tongue that had yet to exist.

The company lay, sat, or stood, rapt, taking the unsourced music as a sign of divine intervention and approval. The priestesses looked at one another in surprise: this was something new. Nonetheless, they rejoiced.

As dawn broke over Potentia, women and girls made their way to their homes, tired but fulfilled. A couple of smug cats followed, thinking about seeds and the cycles of years.

A few mornings later, Demetrius was again awakened, too early, by kids and cats.

'Look in the window, Uncle Demetri! Look!'

The experiment was a success. Softened by the water in the cloth, the bean had unrolled the tiny plant from its embryo and had grown upward toward the sun. Partway up the stem, the remains of the bean casing could be seen, still clinging to the plant, feeding it, but ready to fall away as the husk emptied itself. At the top of the stem, tiny leaves could be seen to form.

'It's a miracle!' said Argyros in awe. Demetrius agreed: like the morning sun itself, it was a miracle. Its commonness did not diminish its wonder.

There was something familiar about the pigeon that flew in the window just then. Demetrius took the capsule from around its leg as he absently sent Chryssa and Argyros to fetch water and birdseed 'for our friend.'

He unrolled the message, which said, in an odd kind of English:

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

'Verily,' he thought to himself – and aloud to the bird-feeding children, 'Who's ready for breakfast?'

'Us!' they shouted joyfully.

DG

27.05.24 Front Page

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