Chapter OneThe Morning StarAnd there appeared a great wonder in Heaven, A woman clothed with the sun, And the moon under her feet. -- Revelation 12:1, KJVOn the day I was given to the Goddess I awakened before daylight, a strange fluttering inside me. The excitement that had wakened me combined with the cold, and I shivered, pulling my cloak around me. I went outdoors with the milking bowl and breathed in the sweet air. Hanging the bowl on Nadja's tether post, I faced into the dawn breeze and climbed the little rise behind our house. The sparse grass showed weak new growth at the crown of the hill where it lay open to the dew and fight frost of the winter just past. There had been little rain this year or the one before, and though my parents worried about it in their talk, I thought little of it. I saw only that sunny days were better than rainy ones.She was there -- the Morning Star -- just as Grandmother Lili had promised, brilliant in the brightening sky above the far roofs of Jerusalem, and beneath her, just rising over the dark shape of the Temple, the slimmest crescent moon. The cold wind flapped my cloak about me, but I did not feel it, overcome as I was by that heavenly sign. The Goddess was smiling her blessing on my special day, and the moon was under her feet.Presently, chilled, I trudged down the hill and got the bowl. Nadja already stood expectantly on her milking bench watching me with soft eyes. I put two handfuls of oats in her box, and she chewed happily, moving her little jaws and flicking her long ears rapidly.I told you I would milk for you this morning, Mari, because your hair is just washed for the festival Now you will smell like a goat mymother scolded, holding the dark cloud of her hair away from her face while the dawn wind billowed it about her. I pressed my forehead against Nadja's round belly, stripping out the last drops of milk.Nadja smells good. A flash of unaccustomed anger eased the strange fluttering in my belly. Mother took the milk, and I untied Nadja, led her up the slope to the middle of the grassy mound, and pounded her peg securely into the earth with a heavy rock. I put my arms around her neck and dragged my clean hair over her brown back. She bleated sympathetically. There were tears in my throat.The dawn had bleached the pale sliver of the moon to a bloodless white, but the Queen of Heaven still gleamed like a tiny candle in the blue morning. My sign. She would stay even when the sun rose and hid her light.