Chapter 7
Aethiopia
Time passes, I do not bleed, and Ceto remains. The moon waxes and wanes along with my relief and anxiety; the protracted judgement lingering over my head. Each night I say a silent thanks to Artemis, watching me from my wall, for her hesitation in bringing the transition.
My body, though, continues to change. I feel it ripening, detaching, becoming something else.
My buzzing, striving self is still in there, somewhere.
At sixteen, womanhood grows like a fig around me – soft, fleshy, sweet.
The men who serve my father eye me hungrily.
They do not touch me, but I see their imaginings on their faces.
The dry heat of summer dampens, absorbing the river’s moisture, alleviated only by the slightly cooler nights of autumn.
We do not grow closer, Ceto and I; she is a snarling spectre still.
My fear of her wanes as my temper rises.
I resent the honesty of her scorn, the piercing clarity as she sneers at my life.
I have regressed to growing pains; the palace is my skin, the sandstone columns and granite pillars my obdurate bones.
My muscles are made of my mother still, stretching to her will and anything left of me, anything living between body and self, is stifled to silence by lessons and decorum and eyes, always the eyes, weighing and judging and expecting.
When I visit my grandmother, Ceto slips beneath the water and vanishes, lurking, no doubt watching, but mercifully out of sight.
I sink into the cool river beside Achiroe, grateful for the reprieve from the Nereid’s scowling face, and swim as if I might hope to outpace her.
I feel her follow at a distance, the kissing currents about me aware of her, but she is easier to ignore here.
My grandmother and I share songs with the water birds.
They land and drift idly, a chorus of tales, new arrivals fleeing climes that will begin to grow colder.
It is only here that I feel something shift in the shadow at my back, a brightness like curiosity, as though the Nereid has seen something new.
I ignore her still; no doubt she has just found something more to pick and pull at.
Ceto does not like the amount of time we spend inside, pacing the corners like a caged animal.
She continues to scoff and snort at my lessons but does not speak until we are out of earshot of my tutors.
Her resentment is outweighed only by her deference for her master; she has been ordered not to disrupt my development.
I ignore the constricting of my chest when her taunting materializes my future husband before me, the breathless terror as I remember the threat that gleamed in the silver of his limbs and the stories I have heard.
The sea god must have the best. And if he must have me then I will serve Aethiopia still, bringing them prosperity and powerful allies.
I will be the best. The best singer, the best dancer, the best weaver.
‘The best wife,’ murmurs Ceto in that low, devastating voice, the one she uses to injure. It is careful with the kind of nonchalance that incenses me.
‘Yes,’ I snap back. ‘The best. I am the best.’
‘Of course.’ She says it so smoothly, so controlled. She is playing with me before she eats me, cooking me slowly, turning me on a spit. I am aflame.
‘Yes. And? And so? You are not the best at anything, you taunt because you are jealous.’ I repeat the refrain my mother has whispered to me almost every night since Ceto’s arrival, brushing and soothing my hair while ignoring the Nereid’s sneers and pretending that her ambition has not welcomed an intruder into the privacy of our hearth room.
Ceto raises a dark eyebrow, quirks her lip as if she is perpetually amused by me. ‘If I am not the best, why am I here?’
We stand opposed, my harp master having gratefully departed our fraught presence for the day.
‘Oh yes, you’re the best guard worm! Why don’t you slither back between your master’s legs where you belong?’
‘Are you suggesting your future husband would be impotent without me, princess?’ She tuts as though she is scolding a child. ‘I’m flattered, but those are hardly words of uxorial devotion.’
‘I didn’t realize you were such an expert in marital duties, worm. Do tell me of all your suitors and proposals.’
‘You are right. I can change my shape and travel the worlds, but oh, how I would love to be kept prisoner by endless courting and a pretty face.’
‘I am no fucking prisoner! I am not bound to serve as you are!’
She grins, delighted by my profanity, dragging me into the dirt with her. ‘Aren’t you?’
‘I would rather have my face than your shape,’ I fling out. ‘You can’t be the best if you’re the only one.’
‘You just live and die by comparison, don’t you, my little queen? You cannot imagine yourself without less fortunate others stood beside you. At least I am honest about how I serve. When my master does not require me, I am my own.’
‘I am my own.’ I stamp my foot in temper.
Her grin widens. ‘Oh, are you?’
‘Yes! I am a princess, and I will serve my people, my kingdom, but I am also my own!’ I am shouting now, drowning out the doubt, the part of me that hears truth in her words and hates it.
She never shouts, which only makes me want to shout more.
I swing from the room, stalking out of the palace to the gardens. She follows, of course.
‘A princess who’s seen but a corner of her kingdom.
A princess of jewels and dresses but nothing more.
Everything from the way you dance, to the harp that you play – how pretty you are, my little queen.
How sweet. Your mother is allowed to stand tall and challenge gods but not her little Andromeda—’
That thrill of our first meeting, that antipathy, spikes in me once more. ‘Don’t you dare speak about my mother!’ I round on her as we pass the orange trees. I want to rip the smug smile from her face.
‘And gods, imagine being descended from divinity with barely a fraction of your godhood—’
‘My grandmother—’
‘Is much the same as the rest of them. She strokes and pets you and weaves flowers in your hair as your mother does with jewels and politics. Oh, she would spare you from my untamable master but only because she fears what cannot be tamed. She could not tame her first sons’ ambition and so she keeps her mortal kin small and—’
‘You do not know what you are talking about! You do not know what it is to be cared for! For that is what you describe! Your mother and father sold you to the sea god and—’
‘And we shall soon have that in common, will we not, my little queen? You say you are no prisoner, but gods, I hope you are. I hope who you are is not your choice. Because if you are your own – if this is your own – then my! How embarrassing for you.’
I launch myself at her then, all royal sense of decorum abandoned.
I think this surprises her. Perhaps I am faster than she expects or perhaps it is the fact that I retaliate at all, but I am upon her and we roll in the dust. It clouds around us, clinging, wanting more of our skin.
I smell the jasmine above us, the sea in her hair, the heat of storms. I should be afraid, but I am not.
She is cool to the touch, and I claw at her smooth green-gold skin.
I want to see her bleed, but I do not leave a mark.
Ceto holds me off easily but does not strike me back.
She cannot, I suppose, it’s not a fair fight.
Or maybe it is. She is laughing again, her hair falling forward, curtaining us so that the world is our two faces alone.
I flip her, pinning her, and she allows it.
Dust clouds again. My white kalasiris is stained with red and brown earth.
Ceto has never been so close and, disdainful distance no longer maintained, I cannot help but notice her eyes once more.
I have not looked into them since that first day and I am struck again by the force of her.
Their colour is unnatural – there is nothing in this world as dark as her eyes, not the space that surrounds the stars, not the deepest parts of the river.
My chest heaves and I want to tear my throat.
Loathing rises as she laughs softly into my face.
My heart beats the fierce tattoo of my favourite drums. I show my teeth and she grins, showing hers back.
I am so frustrated, so wild with fury, that I scream, animal and raw, in her face.
It is fear of what I cannot prevent, it is rage at what I have been twisted into, it is weeks of this new, building pressure spilling forth in a torrent of heat.
She blinks, the first time I have seen her mask of bored, amused contempt slip, and the heavens open.
Our heads snap skywards. I feel our shared thought, did we do that?
It almost never rains in Aethiopia. Years and years can pass without so much as a drop, making rain fortuitous in these lands.
Our people dance and celebrate, catch water in bowls and drink it for prosperity, kill cattle as thanks to the gods.
But I cannot forget the last time rain lashed my face, the storm that brewed unnaturally inside my home, where I have always been safest. Ceto seems to be thinking the same thing because she pushes me off gently, preparing to depart. I seize my opportunity.
‘Your own, are you?’ She hears me above the increasingly heavy thrumming, turns back. ‘Off you run, like a good little guard worm.’
She laughs wildly and widens her arms, embracing the rain as it falls and slides off her in reddish rivulets, turning the sand to silt and taking it home. ‘And off you go to Mama and Papa! Off you go to get cleaned up, my little queen! What a mess you look.’
I scrabble to my feet. ‘You may have had me in the mud today,’ I throw a finger at her, ‘but I will marry your master. And then I will have you on your knees.’
I hear her laugh again, then she is gone.