Chapter 2
Aethiopia
The afternoon heat rushes towards the earth, but this close to the water, everything is muddy.
It cakes my arms, my legs, and I relish its mess with a heady kind of desperation.
I am nearly a woman, just past sixteen, and can feel such idle folly being pulled from my grasp, or perhaps I am being pulled from it, out into unknown depths.
I sit on the banks in my regular seat and taste change in the water; the world has become membranous, full of so many vast moles and freckles and inconsistencies.
Today is a strange day. The currents whisper louder than usual.
Many unknowable things are journeying along them and out to sea.
I feel the more bodily of them pass me, eels and rays and other creatures that call both rivers and seas their home, and I find this duality more incomprehensible than the alien creatures of the deep whose images I struggle to conjure.
I flinch and remove my legs from where they paddle as something brushes my skin, some touch of the divine, and I see shimmering flickers beneath the surface.
There are nymphs on the move. They do not stop to speak with my grandmother or me, likely knowing they will not be met with friendly conversation.
Xenia and kinship, however distant, grant them passage through these waters, but my grandmother will extend nothing more.
They are those who eschew the binary rules of territory and belonging, and today travel as divine guests of Poseidon himself.
My grandmother’s contempt is so great it is almost tangible.
Eventually, having watched them a while longer, I can no longer hold back the question I am chewing.
‘Did you discover who it is?’
My grandmother’s answering hum is non-committal but I press on anyway, a touch impatient. ‘That the sea god marries?’
‘Some Nereid or other.’ Even with her eyes closed, my grandmother’s lip curls in distaste. ‘Sea nymphs. So haughty.’
Nereids, daughters of Doris and Nereus. I frown.
There is a story my grandmother once told me, some old family scandal, that I try not to think of because it horrifies me.
But as I have come to fixate on Athena, so too am I preoccupied by the sea, by its awful, inevitable might and I cannot turn my mind away from thoughts of what happened to Doris.
She is a nymph, an Oceanid, a daughter of Oceanus, the Titan that rules over all river gods, and, a long time ago, she married Nereus, the Old Man of the Sea.
It did not strike me as terrible initially, certainly not the worst of the tales my grandmother has shared with me, for what horror is there in a nymph marrying a god?
But later I would think of my grandmother describing her aunt Doris, her father’s sister, giggly and small, favouring the thin streams of mountain sources, where the water is its most clear and light.
Of how most Oceanids and other Naiads – all freshwater nymphs – now scorn Doris, believing her to have betrayed her very nature.
A prodigious fear had seized me. Is this what it is to love, to desire?
To be cast aside by family? To be so turned from yourself?
Her sparkling beauty had been so at odds with her new husband’s straggling grey-green beard and his slow walk as he leaned on his old, weathered trident, thickly pocked by barnacles.
No one could understand her choice. On their wedding day, so said my grandmother, the laughter of the gods rang from Olympus to Elysium.
But whenever I think about Doris in her depthless home, giving love and receiving an eternity away from the sun, I do not find it amusing.
‘You always say they are as good as slaves.’
‘And so they are.’ My grandmother glares downstream. ‘But they think they’re so superior with the ocean as their playground. They never visit their mother’s domain.’
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. Nereids could be as much a part of our world, of bouncing pebbles and muddy banks, as their father’s depths.
Their mother’s freshwater Oceanid blood would grant them welcome to all rivers and lakes, but they never come inland.
The Naiads, the second generation of freshwater nymphs and granddaughters of Oceanus, make their hostility known.
It is not hard to imagine my grandmother’s ire should they dare encroach: they’re so entitled, the whole ocean is not enough for them, they must salt our pools and rockeries until all is yellow and wilting.
‘This marriage will further unite Poseidon and Nereus.’
‘The sea is powerful indeed,’ is all my grandmother concedes.
‘Are you not worried, Grandmama?’
‘No.’
‘And Great-grandfather Nilus? He is not worried either?’
‘No. We have what is ours and Poseidon has what is his. Even the sea god respects the balance.’ She says it loudly, as though she wishes those of the rivers who journey to the ocean today to hear and be shamed.
I think of the Nereid, betrothed to all the crushing violence of the seas and feel a surge of pity. ‘I wonder if she is scared?’ I say.
But my grandmother snorts. ‘That is naive of you, my little queen. Nereus may be a spineless amphineura who sold his family to the Olympians, but those nymphs are vengeful and tempestuous and loyal to no one.’
‘No one but Poseidon,’ I amend but my grandmother sniffs again.
‘Perhaps.’ She pulls me down towards her so that we exchange places, she sitting on the banks while I bob against her legs in the water.
She plucks blue lilies from their pads and begins to weave them into my hair, intricately twisting and fluffing the dark cloud into an even fuller halo; it’s a style she knows my mother hates.
‘But they have their own agendas. They’re dangerous too, in their way. ’
I consider this. Nymphs are lesser goddesses. Their power is limited, constrained by masters and fathers. Curiosity flares again. It is rare for my grandmother to speak so freely of those she so fears and detests.
‘Dangerous how?’
She shrugs. ‘Strange effects of mingled divinity. Some have repulsive sea creatures in their thrall. Others have sweet voices that they use to lure sailors into rocks for sport. And then there’s Poseidon’s guard worm, the Cetus, waiting to swallow anyone that so much as glances at her master in the wrong way. ’
I shudder. ‘But the Cetus is a sea monster, not a Nereid.’
My grandmother shakes her head. ‘She is both.’
‘Both?’
‘The Cetus is not just a sea monster. Such a thing would be honest, directly understood. She appears as a Nereid, one of almost ordinary countenance. She is not beautiful like Amphitrite or wily Thetis. But she can shift into something deadly and hideous, monstrous.’
My eyes are wide. I had known of the great sea serpent, been scared sleepless by stories of its snapping jaws and strong thrashing body, sinking sailors who angered its master, but I’d had no idea that it was also she.
‘She can change her face?’ My tone is eager and frustrated, and my grandmother looks at me sternly.
‘Yes. And is seldom trusted as a result. Why, even her own sisters keep their distance. When Poseidon deposed Nereus as King of the Sea, Nereus swore an oath of fealty. It is the only reason he kept his life at all. As a result, the Cetus’ powers must be closely guarded.
She is two faced – and so she is blood-bound never to lie to her master. ’
‘It seems a small price to pay for all that freedom.’ I sigh, thinking of the limit of my limbs, the walls of eyes, the heavy gold necklaces and bangles that fetter me every evening. I imagine what it would mean to be dangerous.
But my grandmother smooths the frown from my face. ‘She is not free. She answers to the Sea.’
‘I am not free. I answer to my father.’
‘Well, none of us are truly free. All our power is checked and balanced.’
‘I am mortal. I have no power.’
She scoffs. It is the closest to being irritated by me that she has ever sounded.
‘You are the princess of a kingdom and a descendant of gods. And you are beautiful.’
I glare at my reflection. I cannot say that my face wholly displeases me.
Wide, angled eyes, high cheekbones and full lips.
My skin is lambent, holding the light, but is darker than the earth that quilts the riverbed, darker even than my mother’s and she was considered the most beautiful woman in the world, until me.
I raise an eyebrow at myself, at the undulating refracted imitation.
A blurred abacus of features lined up and organized, a tally of suitors and their offerings, each grander than the last. I am not so expensive, I think, but I was made generously, and I am learning that men are creatures who crave.
Fish swim and bob at the surface; most that dwell in these waters are used to me by now, but there are many still who get caught out.
I whisper them an apology as I reach and snatch.
They flop in my basket. My mother will bemoan the state of me, the mud drying slowly on my skin, the flowers in my hair, but at least I have a peace offering.
‘Andromeda!’ I hear the call, note the tone, have thought her scolding into being.
‘Coming, Mama.’
I slip from the water, wishing I could stay and dry a while. My grandmother has peeled away and is dozing where she floats. I drop a kiss on her hairless head and she says, not opening her eyes, ‘If you want me to wash her away, I will. Not far. Just a half-day’s walk downstream.’
I laugh but decline.