The Summer of Minerva

    There are for all of us, seasons of life we come to remember; a point in time that stands out like a beacon, glimmering amidst the fog of insignificance that surrounds us. For the brood of us that followed in Minerva's vast, intoxicating shadow, it was that one summer, wherein all the absolutes of our fragile worlds dissolved and the sudden profusion of possibility swelled our consciousness to frightful and exhilarating proportions. It was a time like no other, and it was all because of her.
    Minerva was our prophet and our leader, she was our collective strengths and ambitions personified. Brilliant and beautiful, she possessed prowess and charm that far exceeded her years. Even now, the filter of an age-honed perspective can not diminish her radiance. Penetrating through the layers of time passed, the memory of her shines. She was an extraordinary creature; a tall thing, long-limbed and lithe. All lightness. When the wind blew, she seemed to flow in its current, like a tuft of dandelion petals torn loose. Her hair, which was the envy of us all, was as long as the rest of her and shone in polished tones, amber and saffron. She was wholly beautiful and next to her, we all looked painfully awkward, gawky and disproportionate. Not grown into our bodies with nearly such grace, we were nothing more than a pitiful collection of minions. But, oh, Minerva! How we relished our time spent with her! Hanging on her every word, hungry for her commands,  she graciously obliged, even giving us the names of goddesses too.
    In the Beginning, Minerva drew a circle with her finger in the dust for us, where we stepped inside and transcended. Here, she told us, our old names didn't matter. Here, she said, we could be something more. She passed around an old shoe box, full of balled paper and each of us, solemn, hands trembling, plucked a crumpled blossom from inside and cradled it between our fingertips delicately, wonderingly, as if beholding a pearl. Then we revealed our new names to one another, flushed and giggling. Venus, Aphrodite, Athena. The words drifted up from our lips with such ease, with such fluidity and joy. And it was then that she told us we were free. We'd been baptized in her waters, imbibed with the powers of the universe. Ceremoniously, we all rose and kissed each other on the cheek and lifted our arms to the sky. Minerva spoke her blessing, which we echoed with awe, and then released us from her circle, empowered and exulted. Now, she said, we were women.

    All through that summer, as the coarse heat of the days spun into the warm silk of night, we gathered. Most often, we met just before dusk, in the meadow that was spread across the rolling acres behind Minerva's. It was in these tall grasses that we danced and chanted and sang, with Minerva presiding over us, our priestess. It was there too, that we shared our most profound desires and pooled our energy, willing them to come true. With the grass fanned about us and a new canopy of stars stretched overhead, we read fortunes in our palms and gazed at the future in glasses of rain water. We beckoned love to us with handfuls of lavender and seed of bergamot, and drew luck with jars of dried mint and shining pennies.
In the darkening fields, we channeled the powers of the moon and the earth with our fingers splayed before us like divining rods, drawing in all the energy of the world around us. With a snap of our fingers, we could bring on the rain or sentence our enemies to eternal silence. The right words would make us invisible, and, if we concentrated really hard, we could even change the color of our eyes.
    For all the consecutive days of that summer, we were unwavering. Until the evening came when Minerva was not there to meet us. Convened beneath the boughs of the old willow we'd come to favor, we waited. It was unusual, her not having arrived first, and there was a tension laced in the stillness that hung between us. We looked to one another silently and wondered; had she forgotten? Above us, a blanched sky murmered threats of rain. A chill passed over us as we sat with our fingers crossed, our eyes fixed on the ground. It was more than the unlikely absence of Minerva. There was something unsettling about the oncoming storm, already an omen to us, who did not believe in coincidence. There was a powerful gust of wind that surged through, and with it came the rain, pattering down softly at first and then drenching the dry earth about us with a steady downpour. A clap of thunder sounded. We met each others' frightened eyes and locked our hands together.
    The rain carried on unbroken as we continued to wait, and just as we began to ponder aloud what it was we should do next, an apparition appeared to us from the other side, through the drooping veil of branches. We all gave such a start, leaping backwards and and screeching before we realized it was her. Then the three of us moved as one, parting the curtain of willow and encircling her in our arms. Our voices rose up at once in a cacaphony of questions; was she alright? where had she been? What happened? But Minerva was silent. She stepped away from us, and the short space between us granted a better vantage. She stood before us barefoot and bleeding. Her dress was torn at the hem and streaked with dirt. Leaves and burdock brambles dotted her hair. Her eyes did not rise to meet ours. No one spoke. The rain began to taper at last, and Minerva stepped out from beneath the shelter of the boughs, with us following behind. Wordlessly, we made our way out of the field, emerging just in time to see the clouds part and the midsummer sun set behind the hills.


There were many things that came to light in the time afterward. She was sent away, and our small town absolutely reverberated with gossip in the wake of her departure. Ugly rumors buzzed about like swarms of locusts, devouring what knowledge existed, until only a few seeds of truth could be sifted from the rotten debris. Terrible certainties emerged, and once the truth had been unearthed, everything morphed in its' range. The absurd need for productivity emerged and was impressed upon us by our elders. Chores and errands arose spontaneously. It was as if, through distraction alone, we could be made to forget her. No one else spoke much of her after the din died down, and eventually, even we stopped talking about it. Though we still loved her, to imagine her as she was in that time after only left us feeling confused and empty; left in the dark as though somewhere, a light had been put out. Time passed slowly for us after that, the years seeming to draw out endlessly as we shifted through the stages of our youth. Then it all changed and we were on the verge of adulthood, about to embark on our separate journeys into life and wondering where all the time had gone. We'd all grown up and fallen in love and forgotten what it felt like to be the goddesses we once were. For in the absence of her, we became nothing but insignificant mortals. Like Cinderella at midnight, all our potentials and possibilities withered away and we were sent back to the ashes from whence we came. We lived our lives much as we would have without her; typically and free of incident.
It would take many years for us to extract a meaning from it all. In time, we learned that the true power we held came not from spells and incantations, not from our hands, but from our hips, our lips, in the batting of an eye; the tilting of a smile. It was raw and inherent, inescapable. Inevitably, we could only gauge our own strength against hers, always coming up short and yet still exercising what belonged to us with a kind of caution she hadn't. Because in the end Minerva had, swiftly and unknowingly, fallen prey to her own power. It was something we would never forget; how feral and suddenly dangerous our womanhood could be, how our simple, innocent invocation had wrought such destruction. We'd summoned a power that was not yet ours to take and rendered a vicious, monstrous honey-trap, set to life in the first moments of that fated summer.