The Rome Prophecy

17

Mother picks me out.

She takes me to one side, away from the others, and talks only to me.

I am special.

She tells me so.

I am Her favourite and I am to be called Melissa. I will be one of Her Melissae – Her little bees.

She speaks to me about Lagash, Anatolia, Phrygia, Crete and Malta. She talks of Hellenic and Roman civilisations, of the kings and emperors She’s known.

Of rulers who’ve worshipped Her.

Of fools who have ignored Her.

Of Her love for Attis, and how She killed him and then raised him from the dead.

‘Death and Life,’ She whispers in my ear, then speaks for a long time of creation and destruction and Her glorious part in it all.

The part I will play in the future.

Mother holds me to Her bosom and strokes my hair while teaching me how to change sea to sand and sand to grass. She tells me how together we will turn the grass to stone and the stone to marble and the marble to towers of glass and steel that will stretch beyond the sun.

There is nothing Mother cannot achieve. Nothing she cannot create .

Around us there are women of every race, every colour and every age. Mother could have picked any one of them, but She has chosen me.

I am special.

She tells me so.

Outside of the warm womb that is our temple, a pale moon rises and paints its whiteness on the naked flesh of my gathering sisters. The first sparks of a fire crackle close by. A large, flat stone is brought in, laden with bread and wine.

The Galli come.

They beat their drums, fine instruments made from skins of fish and goat, let loose a primal rhythm.

Mother catches it and shares it with us. She seals the rhythm inside us. It becomes our pulse. It flows through our genitals and rests in our wombs.

Mother tells me to close my eyes.

She tells me that She loves me. Loves me from the cool brow of Her stone-figured image on the heights of Mount Sipylus to the bloodstained soil of Rome where She now lies down with me.

I am not to be frightened of what She will do to me.

I am special.

She tells me so.