Chapter 9 #2
‘No, you haven’t. Not properly. You’ve seen it stained brown-red or brown-green, reflected in the river or twisted and shiny in bronze plates. But you haven’t seen it as others have.’
‘And how … how do you propose—’
‘The lake is not like the river. It is still, clear. You would see your face as I do. Would you not look upon yourself?’
I curse her but she has me and she knows it. She sees the relenting in my face before I speak it, and she grins. It is not her grin of wicked delight when she has teased me to temper or the feral sharpening that descended as she slashed at the boy with her coral knife. She is joyful.
‘How long will it take?’
‘That depends on how strong you are. But I would think a few hours.’
I nod. ‘All right. We will go after lessons. I will not be missed.’
As the sun crests and begins to fall we slip into the river.
My grandmother sleeps further downstream, when I am normally taking my lunch.
I ate it swiftly and slipped through my window, Ceto at my back.
Now we move forward through the familiar waters.
Reeds sway around us like fine ladies dancing.
We swim and come upon a little cluster of courtiers, girls I once knew.
We dip beneath the surface in unison and race each other through the murky green world until we are past. When we emerge I ask the question.
‘Why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why did you want to do this? What do you care whether or not I’ve seen my face?’
She does not answer.
‘Ceto?’
‘I am thinking.’
‘About what?’
‘About my answer. It is … difficult … I—’ She pauses.
Our strokes take us against the current.
I match hers easily; her eyes track the shapes my arms make through the water, sometimes even idling at my sides, leaving my legs to work.
‘I am unsure of what I can and cannot say.’ Her tongue taps against her teeth. Suddenly I understand.
‘Is the reason something you might get in trouble for?’
‘It is possible, yes.’ She is careful with her words; her tongue is tied by loyalty and she is testing its boundaries.
I watch her, glad when the current strengthens and I have to use my arms to swim.
I am better able to smother the urge to smooth the crease at her forehead.
Her hair is slicked off her face by the water, silt clings to her in sparkling crystals.
I realize that in all the time we have been together, we have spoken very little of the terms of her own servitude.
‘What happens if you disobey Poseidon?’
‘I would be an oath breaker and punished by Horkos.’
‘So you must do everything he says?’
‘Yes. But … well, if, for example, he ordered me to come to him. He would have to say when. Because I could say “at my leisure” and arrive in a week’s time.’
‘So you have some choice?’
‘Yes.’
‘And if he asked you something, you cannot lie, but you can … you can speak half a truth? There are ways around some oaths, aren’t there?’ I have spent my life at court. I know of politicking and craft.
‘I can.’ She says it slowly, deliberately, flips on to her back so that she can look at me properly.
‘What were your master’s orders? Regarding me?’ I can feel my heart in all my body; hope seizes me so suddenly and tightly it is almost painful.
‘Guard her. When she bleeds, alert me. If her beauty wanes, ensure that she and her family do not seek to find a way out of our bargain. If it does not, do not seek to affect her looks out of loyalty to your sister. If she is more beautiful than your sister, the most beautiful girl you have seen, you must declare it truthfully. If she is not then you will say so and her mother shall suffer for it.’ She recites it easily, as if she has said it to herself many times. The hope dies.
‘I see.’
I hear the resignation in my voice. Ceto makes a sound of frustration, smacks the water with her arms so that it splashes my face.
‘No, you don’t,’ she says heatedly, ‘you don’t see.’ She teeters, on the precipice of an impulse. She grabs me as if she is leaping with me from a cliff. ‘Do you trust me?’
I want to throw my No in the face of her frustrated disappointment. But then I see the hands that tore at my kalasiris falling as bloody stumps on to marble floors, and I remember that I have not had nightmares of pomegranates and eyes for months.
I nod.
Ceto vanishes before me and the Cetus takes her place.
I have never seen its like. The sea serpent rears up beneath me, black and shining.
Each scale is the size of a man’s fist, gleaming with a rainbow sheen in the sunlight, and its body – her body – is three times as thick as my own, one long rippling muscle.
Her head is crowned with a horizontal fan of spikes and her spine is similarly ridged.
I might have felt afraid if it were not for her eyes.
They are huge, orange and glowing like fire, but their centres are familiar. Black and hot and laughing.
‘Show-off,’ I whisper.
She bows her head at me. I run my hands over her.
She is smooth and cool, there is something satisfying about her texture.
I stroke along her neck, feel the beginning of the powerful muscle that makes up her totality.
It is not hard to imagine her crushing ships and splintering masts.
I skim my fingertips up, across her jaw, to her coronet of spikes, stroke along one with my thumb.
She makes a noise in her throat, and I start and jump back.
For a moment we watch each other, and I feel her uncertainty.
This is the most honest she has been with me.
I wonder why now, what I have done to deserve it.
‘You are not such a worm, it seems,’ I say. She chuffs. I hear the whip of her laugh in there, somewhere.
She sinks beneath the surface. There is a beat of wondering and then I am gone.
I cling with my legs and arms as she rises beneath me and we fly through the water. We are moving faster than I have ever moved, maybe faster than anything has ever moved. I feel the steady, swift undulation of her beneath me, I press my cheek to her cool scale and she moves even faster.
She emerges, arcing through the air, an arrow loosed, as we fall with perfect precision.
Membranous wings, thin and veined like a bat, expand behind me and I realize we are gaining height, though the land swoops up to meet us, and we soar over waterfalls.
The sound of the pounding water, hissing in ferocious delight, is gorgeously familiar.
It is the sound of cursing and brawls and delicious impropriety.
Spray hits me as we fly over and I bask in it, laugh at the absurdity of the cascade, falling inevitably, and us, sending birds scattering from trees.
They caw and shriek and I shriek with them, a single syllable bursting from my chest.
The Cetus lands and I am newly drenched.
The water is colder here, I am more awake than I have ever been.
She swims with our heads above the water now, so that I can see, and I do see.
Now I see it all. All the world that I have missed, all of it reaching beyond us.
Our shining river cuts through the landscape, sanded dunes, rolling hills and fresh springs lurking just around a corner.
The sky is an endless field of space. Gods may roam but they cannot be so nearby, not in all that blue.
The world is ours alone. I release my grip on the Cetus and open my arms to embrace it, lean back and feel the cerulean brush against my skin through my wet linen.
My hair, thick and heavy with water, swings in ropey coils.
I have left fear elsewhere, it cannot catch up with me here.
The Cetus sinks once more and I again marvel at this green, wondrous river plain.
We dart by fish that race to keep up but cannot.
We outpace crocodiles, see them twitch intently from where they lurk in reeds, launching to snap at baby hippos paddling behind their mothers.
The Cetus’ enormous body swishes, swatting them away like bothersome gnats, and corrals the small, round paddling creatures towards where their parents thunder along the riverbed.
Their mothers snap at the Cetus, defensive of their young, but then they see me and bow their heads in greeting.
I return the gesture. Their babies bump the Cetus’ head in thanks, her long, forked tongue flicking sweetly over their ears.
They twist and spin in gleeful loops before sinking to the cover of their mothers.
She watches them to safety, her chest vibrating in pleasure.
My stomach flips painfully. No, not such a worm.
The Cetus’ divinity rolls in waves from her, a sparkling stream in her wake.
As she begins to slow, I can only guess at our distance, but I know it must be great.
There are no lakes within walking or even riding reach of my father’s palace.
We emerge, our heads above water. I sense it before we’re there.
It creeps up over me, a restful strength.
I have slept for a long time, but I am refreshed now; I have been dirty, but now I am clean.
I did not know I was starving, but now I am satiated.
The sea serpent is gone and Ceto swims beside me once more.
‘Count yourself highly fortunate,’ she pushes wet hair from her face, ‘no one has ever ridden me before.’
You are magnificent, I want to say, you are beautiful. But I am not yet brave enough.
‘Oh?’ I try for aloof instead. ‘And I thought it was I who knew nothing of men.’
She huffs a laugh of surprise and I am spared.
‘Where are we?’
‘This lake is called Koloe and it is the source of the Nile. It is the home of your kin, where your great-grandfather often comes to rest.’
I know it without her words. I stop at the mouth and stand in the place that the river drinks thirstily from this vast pool of power. I drink too, I sigh, I moan in delight and drink more. Such euphoria!