Chapter 8 #2
And if they are blessed, very blessed, they will marry men who are kind to them, who will love them, even.
Though I have seen so little of this love that I have begun to suspect it is a story, sung as a lullaby by nurses to soothe shrieking girls to sleep.
For the briefest of seconds, I wonder which of these I might marry and then I remember that my days of wondering are over. I will not marry a man at all.
I watch the boys of the court bob and weave between the legs of preparations.
The youngest punch and shield and wrestle, wave wooden swords and small spears they have been given as gifts to mark the feast day.
They have been told of war and conquest, and so they will become conquerors, desperate for a mortal’s immortality.
And how shall I live forever? For a moment I sway with it.
It is easy, too easy, to lose myself in the rhythm of my days.
Lessons and parties and fights with Ceto.
The practised prayer of thanks to Artemis for another day stayed, another week, another month.
The limbo of my almost-engagement has begun to feel comforting, and this is foolish. It will not last.
‘Is it what you would choose for yourself?’ She is by my side once more and her eyes search mine.
Her face is bemused and bored as usual, but I see the teeter, the moment between flint and fathom.
My answer will determine the day; we will wound each other deliciously or she will retreat and refuse to play.
‘Is what?’ I am deflecting, stalling for time; I do not want to get it wrong. She gestures at me. I blink at her guilelessly. ‘Am I what I would choose for myself? Yes, I’d say so.’
It was not what she meant but she pounces on it.
‘Would you? Would you say so? Have you even thought about it?’
‘Thought about what?’
She sighs, as I am being deliberately obtuse. ‘Thought about who you could be if you were not her, the princess, the ruler of men, their little queen, whatever?’
I don’t want to answer that I haven’t. It reveals something about me that I have avoided looking too closely at, an elected passivity, an avoidance – a cowardice, even. I do not wish to inspect it here, in front of her. ‘Have you? Have you thought about who you’d be if—’
‘Of course,’ she interrupts. ‘Though I do not think I would differ much. I would still shift, still take bites out of those who are deserving.’
‘Who could possibly deserve that?’
‘You have not seen much of the ways of men, my little queen.’
I think of those men and that night, and an image comes to my mind.
Their flesh, split and spilling and pulpy around large, sharp fangs.
It exhilarates me and I wish I had not asked.
‘So if you had more options, you would choose your life as it is?’ I prod, hoping to keep her attention away from me.
She knows what I am doing but indulges me momentarily.
‘No,’ she admits, ‘not exactly as it is. But I am honest about what I am – I can own that I would not serve if I had the choice. I would swim and see the world. Taste all its waters.’ She pauses then adds quietly, ‘I would call all the seas my home. I would know no fixed point to return to.’
We have reached the banks now. I step out of my sandals, carefully lifting my dress so the tassels that skim my ankles do not catch in the mud. I sink my feet into it, delicious, cool, wet between my toes.
‘What about your sisters? Your mother and father?’ I still know so little of her home, her life in the Coral Kingdom. She never speaks of it – she is too busy baiting me to temper.
‘My mother and father bother only with each other and very little with us.’
I try to imagine this. It is so anathema to how I understand mothers and fathers to be. The only examples I see are marital unions entirely focused on the potential of their progeny.
‘They … love each other?’ The words are clumsy, awkward in my mouth.
‘Yes,’ she answers simply.
‘And your sisters? You would not miss them if you did not share their home?’
‘Certainly I would miss them.’
‘Then—’
‘You do not have sisters. You would not understand.’
I watch the activity up and down the river, boats and barges preparing for the afternoon.
It will all begin soon. Dancing and music and wrestling.
Men riding elephants and performing clever tricks on their backs, vendors selling trinkets.
My people are skilled, the food will be delicious, the day shall be an entertaining one.
But I cannot wholly deny the heaviness and so I try a small morsel of truth for the one that she offered me.
‘Perhaps it is easier for you to imagine another life. Your body is one thing one moment and another thing the next. I am only what I am.’
‘And I am only the sea god’s guard worm, remember? Do not play at passive when you have spent so long insisting that I am the slave and you are free to do as you wish.’
I recoil as if I have been rebuffed. I had been offering her something, a piece of myself conceded, but now I am damned once more and seen entirely too clearly.
‘I don’t play at passive! You just can’t believe that I might actually like all this!
Did it ever occur to you that perhaps I enjoy my nice dresses and jewellery and fuss?
That I want to be Queen of the Sea?’ I swallow against the crushing vice conjured by those words, the weighty breathlessness that promises suffocation, and plough on defensively.
‘I do not resent my mother’s oath as you resent your father’s.
Of course you are unsatisfied. You gain nothing from your servitude.
I will gain everything – all the oceans, my family’s prosperity, the fulfilment of my duty.
There can be no greater honour! So do not assume I am so discontented. ’
‘You are good at many things, my Meda. Lying is one of them. But I see you.’ Her twisting of my name enrages me more.
Andromeda is queen, is ruler of men in the language of my father and his gods.
Meda is shrewd, a deceiver. Cunning, she names me.
It courses through me in a heady rush; I love it. I hate her for it.
‘I do not lie!’ I stamp my foot. ‘And do not call me that! It is you that lies! You say I am as much the servant as you but you do not really think that. If you did, you would treat me with the sympathy of a fellow slave. But you do not! You are jealous of what I have and are angry that I do not do with it as you would. But I am not you! And I am glad for it! You don’t even want to be you – who would rather be monstrous than beautiful?
’ I say it and again feel that tearing, that division.
Things of which I have been so sure dissolve to ash at her touch; I would rather be the person I play at than admit how close she roves to the truth.
‘You are right,’ she sneers, ‘I do not treat you with sympathy. Why should I? You will not admit that your mother’s oath imprisons you as my father’s oath imprisons me.
You do not strive for what freedom you can find, you do not seek to understand your godhood, you do not even leave the palace grounds.
It is pathetic. You will not even tell your mother that you do not like it when she dresses you in white. ’
‘I do—’
‘No, you don’t. You are happiest here, in the mud and water.’
‘And? And so? We do not each get to live our perfect lives. I am beautiful. I will be Queen of the Sea and my mother will live. I am fortunate. Do not expect me to wallow as you do just because I do not get my way.’
‘I do not wallow!’ And now she is not laughing. She is coiling tightly; I sense a looming nadir that I should not reach beyond, but I am not used to being so bared. I wish to snatch at her skin and cover myself with it. I wish to see her also exposed.
‘You do. I see it. And Achiroe sees it too.’ My voice is low, I am almost breathless, as if I have been running.
‘You are always worse the nights that you stay away the shortest. You dare to call me pathetic, worm? When you are such a sulk that you have no friends in the Coral Kingdom? You have nothing better to do than return when the moon is still high and sit on the banks and look up at my window. You are pathetic.’
She did not know I knew this. I had not known what to make of it myself. But, after two years, I have succeeded. I have peeled back her many layers and found something soft and pliant. I can see the ripple of it across her face as my words dig in like nails.
‘Go fuck yourself.’ She attempts that low, devastating, wounding tone but it falls short, her words catch and whisper. I do not feel victorious and perhaps this is a sign that I should stop but I don’t, I can’t.
‘Oaths cannot be broken. You know that better than anyone. One would think you would have become accustomed to your position, but apparently you prefer to dwell in the misery of your existence. But you and I are not the same. My existence is not a misery. I am adored.’
‘Are you? Or are you just valued? You are so desperate to be loved that you will sell yourself eternally.’
‘What do you understand of love? Everyone who is supposed to love you does not.’ Stop, Andromeda, stop.
‘Fuck you.’
‘You prove my words truer still. Clearly, they give profanity and insults instead of gifts on birthdays. Perhaps no one’s ever bothered to give you anything but neglect and cruelty. I cannot say that I blame them for it.’ Stop, stop, stop!