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and she could see that it was only a statue, chill and unmoving and not at all like the Apollo who had spoken to her. The priestess had come to lead her mother forward to the statue, but Kassandra tugged at her mother’s hand.
    “It’s all right,” she whispered insistently. “The God told me He would give you what you asked for.”
    She had no idea when she had heard this; she simply knew that her mother’s child was a boy, and if she knew when she had not known before, then it must have been the God who told her, and so, though she had not heard the God’s voice, she knew that what she said was true.
    Hecuba looked down at her skeptically, let her hand go and went into the inner room with the priestess. Kassandra went to look around the room.
    Beside the altar was a small reed basket, and inside, as Kassandra peeped in, a suggestion of movement. At first she thought it was kittens, and wondered why, for cats were not sacrificed to the Gods. Looking more closely, she noted that there were two small coiled snakes in the basket. Serpents, she knew, belonged to Apollo of the Underworld. Without stopping to think, she reached out and grasped them in either hand, bringing them toward her face. They felt soft and warm and dry, faintly scaly beneath her fingers, and she could not resist kissing them. She felt strangely elated and just faintly sick, her small body trembling all over.
    She never knew how long she crouched there, holding the serpents, nor could she have said what they told her; she only knew that she was listening attentively to them all that time.
    Then she heard her mother’s voice in a cry of dread and reproof. She looked up, smiling.
    “It’s all right,” she said, looking past her mother to the troubled face of the priestess behind Hecuba. “The God told me I might.”
    “Put them down, quickly,” said the priestess. “You are not used to handling them; they might very well have bitten you.”
    Kassandra gave each of the serpents a final caress and laid it gently back in the reed basket. It seemed to her that they were reluctant to leave her, and she bent close and promised them she would come again and play with them.
    “You wretched, disobedient girl!” Hecuba cried as she rose, grabbing her by the arm and pinching her hard, and Kassandra drew away, troubled; she could not remember that her mother had ever been angry with her before this, and she could not imagine why she should make a fuss about something like this.
    “Don’t you know that snakes are poisonous and dangerous?”
    “But they belong to the God,” Kassandra argued. “He would not let them bite me.”
    “You were very lucky,” said the priestess gravely.
    “ You handle them, and you are not afraid,” Kassandra said.
    “But I am a priestess and I have been taught to handle them.”
    “Apollo said I was to be His priestess, and He told me I might touch them,” she argued, and the priestess looked down at her with a frown.
    “Is this true, child?”
    “Of course it is not true,” Hecuba said sharply. “She is making up a tale! She is always imagining things.”
    This was so unfair and unjustified that Kassandra began to cry. Her mother grabbed her firmly by the arm and pulled her outside, pushing her ahead and down the steep steps so roughly that she stumbled and almost fell. The day seemed to have lost all its golden brilliance. The God was gone; she could no longer feel His presence, and she could have cried for that even more than for the bruising grip of her mother on her upper arm.
    “Why would you say such a thing?” Hecuba scolded again. “Are you such a baby that I cannot leave you alone for twenty minutes without your getting into mischief? Playing with the Temple serpents—don’t you know how badly they could have hurt you?”
    “But the God said He would not let them hurt me,” Kassandra declared stubbornly, and her mother pinched her again, leaving a bruise on her arm.
    “You must not say such a