Chapter 7 #2
The rain lasts no more than an afternoon, and is not, according to Achiroe, the work of Poseidon, who has little dominion over the land and affects it only in special circumstances.
Her father informs her that the blessing and the promise of an auspicious winter comes from Zeus himself.
He is pleased by his brother’s match, Nilus informs her, and my father wastes little time in making this known.
Our winter is plentiful, our feasts abundant, the land swells ripe with growing things as befits the season.
The famed prosperity of the Aethiopians does not waver.
I had expected, once word had spread of my conditional betrothal to the sea god, that men would stop visiting, that we might enjoy some quiet.
I had been wrong. Poseidon did not appear again and those who had pissed themselves in his presence swore that they had shared cups of wine with him and had the ear of an Olympian.
The palace becomes flooded with envoys seeking trade agreements and negotiating new alliances, from the Kings of Kerma, murmuring of bolstering the line against Pharaonic rule, to ambassadors of the Pharaohs themselves, eyebrows raised at our notable lack of slaves and strange Hellenic customs. My father hears them all and promises nothing, accepting and exchanging gifts – silver from Egypt, spices from the far-flung Persians, cleverly spun Kerman pots – and naught else.
This enrages my mother, who combs my hair with increasing ferocity each night, weaving braids so tight that the skin around my eyes is pulled back uncomfortably.
‘His mother and brother murmur in his ear, he rejects opportunity after opportunity out of craven-heartedness, ah!’ She stands abruptly, the tight hold she has on my head jerking free, and paces the room, ignoring Ceto at her post in the corner. I massage the back of my neck as I watch her tirade.
‘Would that I were in his position! Kings and Pharaohs at his feet after my manoeuvring, my sacrifice, and he accepts paltry pieces of silver, feeds them our food and wine, and bids them farewell! He won’t even accept slaves! Gods!’ She presses her fingers to her temples, to her closed eyelids.
‘Well,’ I try to reason, ‘we do not need slaves, Mama. We have plenty of attendants.’
She is by my side in an instant, a hand back in my hair, another on my face, nails biting the skin of my chin.
‘Need?’ She speaks the word as if it is profane, hisses, ‘What do you know, princess-girl, of need? Are you a pauper, begging for food and water? The poorest citizens of this kingdom do not even know such a word. You sound like your father, we are not at war, we do not need their armies, why should we trade? We have everything we need. I have raised you better than need. You are a Lady of the most prosperous. You will be the Wife of the Sea. You do not take what you need. Rulers of men, my little queen, have no understanding of necessity. You take what is yours. And what is yours is the world. Do you understand?’ She shakes my chin slightly so that I nod. Only then does she let go.
She continues braiding my hair in silence.
I pretend to scratch my chin, feeling the indentations left by the semicircles of her nails, so that I can wipe away the tears that well and fall silently.
I determinedly avoid Ceto’s gaze and the nymph, motionless by the door, says nothing.
Humiliation burns my throat. Later, when I am at last alone, I run my hands over my carved hippo, soothed by the polished wood beneath the pads of my fingertips.
I do this over and over, until I fall asleep.
Spring brings the harvest and the departure of my favourite birds.
Our ever-arid land, once their sanctuary from the cold, becomes too hot for them and they flee, taking with them my sanity and my patience.
Further north and downstream, spears stalk their path, plucking them from the sky for feast days.
After my harp lesson, in the afternoon, we take a turn about the gardens.
Ceto’s mood is worse today. I have noticed that on the mornings I arrive before she does, she slinks out of the river towards me, shoulders set with mischief, time to play, little queen.
On the mornings that she waits for me, she is rigid and stern, and I can take no pleasure in our shared resentment.
I recognize the set of her chin today as she presses close and sniffs, like she does every morning, checking for pharmaka, for deceptions carried out in the dead of night.
Her breath tickles my collarbones and my neck.
She is shorter than I am and when she angles her head up, moving to scent my hair, her nose skims my jaw.
I feel how close her mouth is to my ear and imagine her taking bites out of my lobe as she surely has in her Cetus form.
Normally, we will build a rapport of stones thrown and caught but today is not the day for it.
She will not fire back something vicious and scathing that sucks my breath.
Her consonants will be clipped, each syllable flat and dull.
Perhaps she does not like waiting. There are times, when we shriek across the central court at each other, that I can imagine that she feels the same thrill I do, that she too has never felt such delicious dislike.
But then she looks at me, as she does today, and I am reminded of it all.
I am an inconvenience. To ask her what is wrong would be absurd.
I know what is wrong. She is still here.
I am late. I limit her with my small walls and mundane routine, and one day soon I will be her queen. I will have you on your knees.
‘Must we walk this route again? I tire of these perfect rows. Will we not visit your grandmother in the river?’
‘We saw her this morning. I did not know that you so favoured her company.’
She does not take my bait to say something caustic about Achiroe. She just shrugs and says, ‘Everything is so tidy here.’
‘I knew you lived in squalor. I shall have to change things when I am queen.’
‘I am sure that when your highness deigns to bleed—’
‘I have no control over when my time comes.’
‘No. You do not.’
I want to say more, to push her more, but my response is stolen by my reason for dawdling so long picking fruit and flowers: Phineus crossing the gardens.
I had heard that he would be walking this way from a noble’s daughter who boasted that he had come to drink tea with her and her father every day this week.
The girls had giggled and whispered and looked sideways down the table at me and Ceto, and I had regretted not eating in my apartments.
I longed to be like them, to giggle and whisper and look.
I can never look. My eyes must slide past demanding faces and find blank spaces on walls or else linger on details in tapestries.
My parents and grandmother are exceptions, of course.
And Ceto, I suppose. And Phineus. He walks towards me as though this is why he is in the gardens, to meet me, and my throat fills with bile and longing.
I choke it down. He does not look at Ceto and it is only in the totality of his attention that I realize it has been months since someone did not glance nervously over my shoulder before speaking to me.
‘It has been some time,’ I say.
‘I saw you last night, at dinner.’
‘We didn’t speak. We haven’t spoken properly in months.’
He just looks at me. I had thought, at first, that I was avoiding him. But he does not seek me out any more, does not leave me little gifts or bribe the musicians to play my favourite dances.
‘Do you … do you not want to speak to me?’
He sighs and it tightens my throat. I feel winded by that small gust – it blows a quiet out of me and a knowledge takes its place.
‘Andromeda,’ he begins, sighs again, ‘I could never deny the pleasure of your conversation, my lady niece. I have simply been busy these months.’
I feel old then. It is the first time, with seventeen looming before me, that I really see it is time to grow up.
Phineus, much as everyone else in our court, does not believe that, when the time comes, Ceto will deny her master.
He knows it is treasonous to hope that she might; I see it clearly, the meaning and the reason, and it wounds me.
The giggling girl from breakfast flashes through my mind, the sweet, puckered dimples of her smile hid behind similarly sweetly dimpled hands.
He must find himself someone else. We must adjust. We cannot be to each other what we were, what we might have been.
And so I nod. ‘Of course, Uncle.’ I reach my hand from my basket, drop the round fat ruby into his. A pomegranate. He looks at it, then at me.
‘For your sweetheart,’ I say. ‘I hear she is very excited to see you.’ I keep my voice steady, adopt a cool mask of amusement. I know I have perfected it; I see the newness of it reflected on Phineus’ face. Spending so much time with Ceto has its advantages.
There is a cutting; fate lines are taut and suspended inches from the knife. When it happens, I feel it acutely, a frayed, limp, internal slumping.
‘Princess,’ he says with a nod and walks away.
I do not collapse into tears as I once might have, running crying for my grandmother or mother.
There is nothing they can do – there was nothing they could ever do but soothe and murmur.
All weight is lifted by the ocean, and I try to cling to this while I walk, even as I think of all that sinks and is flattened.
Ceto keeps pace, a step behind. After some time she says, ‘You don’t have friends.’
I am raw and ready, primed for attack. ‘Neither do you.’
‘I have sisters.’
‘So? That is not the same as friends. They did not choose you.’ I do not know what she is getting at.
‘Those girls at breakfast. Most of them are younger than you. It would be of benefit to them to be favoured by you.’
‘I do not see how.’
‘You are their princess.’
‘So?’
She just looks at me. She does not understand and I am loath to clarify. ‘The favour of a princess does not mean very much. Their fathers are already favoured by the king.’
‘You might have been their queen.’
‘Yes, but I will not be. They know it.’
‘Before the bargain, before last summer, did they seek your favour then?’
Ceto reads my answer in the twist of my lip. She smiles but it is not playful, she is not toying with me. I sense the flat dullness of her earlier mood sharpening; she will turn outwards and tear me apart.
‘How interesting. Women flock and fawn around your mother. I wonder what’s wrong with you.’
I grit my teeth, turn and walk on.
She persists. ‘Perhaps you have more of her hubris than your downward looks would have everyone believe. You think yourself far loftier. You do not even bother to learn their names.’
I say nothing still. I cannot bear her to know the truth of how I tried, desperately, in my girlhood, to get the others to like me.
I wanted to be like them, but I, of course, am not.
I was too eager, too willing, and it made them uncomfortable.
It was unseemly; I am a princess, I should have ordered them around, let them seek and follow, but I did not.
Any jealous coveting could have turned to awe, but I did not cut such an impressive figure up close.
I was too strange, running back from the river tangled in reeds.
They would find ways to give me the slip, would leave for picnics and walks without me.
I remember standing in the entrance hall, scanning the avenue, a basket full of the kitchen’s best, keen to share.
I remember the steady glow of hope and excitement growing cold and leaden in my stomach as I realized the trick.
But Ceto is unrelenting. ‘Small, so small, little queen. Behind your walls and friendlessness, walking the same paths through the same gardens. There is so much at your fingertips, but you squander it all. Such a waste.’
My hands clench and unclench at my sides.
‘Girls come and go quickly here. They are married off or sent away. You think I believe myself superior? Fine, then. I will be Queen of the Sea. I am superior and I need not learn all their names. But what of you, Ceto? You have forty-nine sisters? Which of them do you call friend?’
I am not looking at her as I say it, but I feel the twitch beside me and press my advantage.
‘You think we do not speak of you? You think we river folk do not know your names and stories? I know how the others shun you. What must it be, to become so monstrous that ninety-eight sisterly eyes look upon you in disgust?’
‘Do not speak one more word of my sisters.’ The order is tight and lacks its usual command. I sense I have crossed some line, but when have there ever been lines between us?
‘You do not give me orders, worm!’ I snap back. ‘You think yourself so high and mighty under your master’s protection, but I will be his wife, and there will be no protecting you from me.’
Her teeth are bared in my face, her eyes are sparking flint.
‘You know nothing of the Coral Kingdom. You are small and spoiled and cannot fathom the power that dwells there. You will not last all of eternity – you will be lucky to last a year. You are not equal to a sea god – and my sisters will rip you apart.’
Our chests heave. We have been here before, I am sure we will be here again, but that flatness remains. She means what she says. The threat is not for sport or amusement.
‘They will not. I will be their queen. No one will be able to touch me.’
My shoulders rise and fall, giving my words more breath than voice.
It is unconvincing and she laughs cruelly, the earlier tightness remaining.
The sound quivers like my rage as I stalk away.
I wish to tangle with her in the dust again, but my Mother will never forgive me if I ruin another kalasiris.
The neat hedgerows become labyrinthine and I move quickly, wishing to become lost in them, fighting the dawning awareness of how little I know of my future.
I cannot be lost, of course. She is behind me.