White Stone
In a cypress grove uphill from the labyrinth lies the statue I’ve been told to look for. From underneath it looks like a sarcophagus, little more than a white box.
Only as I crest the hill does the sculpture’s namesake become apparent. The Sacrifice lies atop a long rectangular plinth, wrists and ankles bound. He looks young to my eyes, certainly muscular, but his flesh is draped over a bone structure almost too delicate to support his bulk. Of course, a man of antiquity might be far smaller and slighter for his whole life.
Most scholars—Griffith and Hidalgo, naturally, but even Benoit’s more recent monograph—interpret the sculpture as a bawdy satire of the prevailing religious monoculture. I cannot see why anyone would put rare, expensive white marble to such use. Far more controversially, I date the work nearly one thousand years earlier. The sculptor’s relatively unrefined technique (it must be said) has been present all along, but the cultural context, of course, differs.
This is dusty country at the end of summer, enough so that I’ve taken to wearing a silk scarf over my mouth and nose. The Sacrifice, however, remains pristine. Perhaps someone has come along to clean it for me, but who could possibly know I am coming tonight? I retrieve my flashlight from my satchel to look for evidence of some disturbance. In the yellow beam I see none, but I notice something far stranger. Each particle of dust that sinks to the statue’s surface bounces off, faster than it fell toward the milky stone.
I switch the torch off. My eyes reacclimate to the moonlight. I undress.
I place the usual offerings at the Sacrifice’s feet: a bottle of the hotel’s house red wine, three bread rolls filched from the kitchen, and one gold coin. Naia has kindly supplied me with a bottle of jasmine-scented oil. I don’t know how much to use. I anoint the Sacrifice first, generously, then myself.
What I’m doing still feels ridiculous when I climb atop the plinth. Stone should feel cold, of course, but it’s much colder than I expect. I straddle the statue’s hips and run a finger down its deep iliac crest. I had wished the Sacrifice were more priapic, seeing it by daylight, but I have come to appreciate the artist’s restraint.
I push up from my knees and slowly lower myself down onto the Sacrifice’s marble erection. The chill shocks me. For a moment I feel faint. When I come to I’m several inches down already. I lift myself up to relieve the pressure on my cervix and rock back and forth, unable to hit the right places. There’s little satisfaction in squeezing something with no give at all.
The inscription does not specify whether the Sacrifice is supposed to benefit from our copulation, or I am, or both. I alternate between rubbing my clitoris and making a good-faith attempt to stimulate the statue. I only become aroused when I remember how exposed I am out here. If anyone else from the expedition took a night walk through the grounds, my archaeological career would end immediately. If one of the stewards were working late, he could find me already warmed up and wide open, pull me to the ground, and take the sacrifice’s place. He wouldn’t know he’s polluting my body, making me wait another month for a second try, or maybe, in a way, he would.
With no change in physical circumstances I am, before long, flushed and quivering. My body realigns itself. The statue’s phallus, seems, in crazed imagination, to yield to my muscles ever so slightly. I reach the edge of orgasm too quickly, hardly having the chance to savor the experience. I wonder if I’ve made a mistake, though I cannot think in words. I delay, delay, delay, but I’m flying. I could squeeze ejaculate from the Sacrifice like some pornographic Niobe, awaken him with my touch, rasp and grind him down to nothing—
Where sweet relief should expand outward through me numbness takes its place. My face feels searing hot, then freezing cold. Each contraction of my cunt seems to meet resistance from grains of sand or blasts of static. I retch from the pain, but I’ve been fasting long enough that only yellow water comes up. Some great process moves within me in jagged bursts, drawn out far longer than any orgasm I’ve had. I get the sense the rearrangement of my tissue is permanent.
It’s another small eternity before I dismount and dress. My pelvis feels hollow, somehow, missing something. For the first time in my adult life, I am not only not aroused, but quite certain it would be impossible to seduce me out of my current state.
As my vomit pools around the statue’s body, it floats a few millimeters above him. I mop it up with the towel I’d thought to carry, spray him with hand sanitizer, and re-anoint him. I feel at once sorry for the old forgotten thing and disgusted by the gaudy excess of his purity.
The world around me really is different, in ways I can’t fully explain by a decrease in projection of fantasy. In any case, I suspect the old lusts have not been eradicated, but merely replaced with new ones I do not know how to satisfy. There is, as my advisor often said, no such thing as a free lunch. For now I’m awash in wonder, and little else pierces through it. I can see all the way down to the labyrinth, and yet farther to the village beyond, in soft dark greens and ochres my eyes could not previously distinguish. New constellations bloom between the old. Birdsong and insect-buzz are riotously loud, and other voices whose acquaintance I haven’t yet made churn beneath them.
You wanted my opinion on the statue’s ritual function. I can offer no more than speculation, but I will offer it all the same. The Sacrifice itself is not ensouled: it’s a neat bit of machinery, of course, but primarily a stage for human performance. The success of my experiment indicates that someone else is watching. I would not be surprised if, now that I’ve taken the bait, they are watching more closely.