Laboratory Hill
1
The three young women, two young men – the
loveliest the island of Greece could provide –
were briefly joined by a sixth, a young woman
who managed to burst through the cordon of
priests. Then a young man nearly made it
through. But order was restored and the
five – each with their attendants/guards, high
priest, and the whole led by Giorgos, high
priest to Zeus – taken the final distance to
the crater. Here Giorgos stepped to one side,
maintaining precedence by holding aloft
his falcon-headed staff, while the youngsters
were marched to the tip of the platform which
had been built out over the hellish drop.
2
Making the drop indeterminate,
even while contributing to its
hellishness, steam hissed up from the depths,
still thick enough and whispering enough at
the crater lip to suggest spirits come
to witness this augmenting of their
ranks. The depths were also producing
rumbling, and tremors, some so severe as
to hold out the prospect there would be bonus
recruits. Giorgos himself, petitioning
Zeus to show favour to the Greeks, though
his resonant tones were unimpaired, was
standing noticeably further back from
the brink than strict ceremony required.
3
Proof against any scrutiny was the
pious fervour with which, breaking off his
supplications, Giorgos jabbed at the heavens
with his staff, enjoining as he did so
the faithful to behold evidence of
the divine will (and indeed, wheeling high
above could be seen – Giorgos was claiming
five though this was debatable – white
falcons, Zeus’s sacred bird and nesting
only on the mountain, inside the very
crater many believed) – Giorgos still seeming
to want to put his own white (silver)
falcon aloft as his exhortations turned
to the need to enact the divine will.
David Beach