Chapter 11
Aethiopia
I want to meet her alone, but Ceto will not allow it.
‘I know my sister.’
‘But you cannot see what she gives me, you cannot know the full truth. If your master questions, you must be able to say that you are unsure of why I have not bled, that you have not seen me take or drink anything.’
‘He will not ask me so specifically; I have told you, he is not so careful with me. He trusts me.’
‘It is a risk.’
‘It is a risk to let you go alone.’
We are each stubborn in our way. ‘You may accompany me to meet your sister and perform introductions. Then you must leave us.’
She wraps her hair round and round her wrist, thinking about it. Then she relents. ‘All right.’
I give her a slow smile and she registers the shift immediately.
‘What a good girl,’ I murmur. I use the voice I learned from her, low and devastating. Her breath quickens and her face heats. I reach for her wrist, strong with muscle but small, finely boned, like the rest of her. I untangle her hair.
‘Gently,’ I chastise. She nods. I smile again.
I wait for them early the next morning. We had decided it was best that my grandmother does not join us; Amphitrite is mistrustful of naiads.
I am anxious and it does not help the fist that remains vice-like on my abdomen.
I imagine this invisible hand wringing out my insides until I leak the long-awaited blood.
I turn my face towards the sun and try to distract myself.
The shadows gather and stretch about my home, which rouses and arches like an apricating cat.
The wind steals droplets of water from my skin, blowing west from the Erythraean Sea, as though its journey across the barren stretch between the Nile and coast has left it parched, missing the moisture it has left behind. It pants, dry and heavy in my ear.
They emerge from the river, downstream of where Ceto usually arrives.
Amphitrite’s hair is even brighter than I remember, lit from behind by the early morning sun, casting a halo around her.
She is ablaze and I curse. I had been preoccupied by her beauty when we first met, I had forgotten how ferocious she is.
She is draped in seaweed, thin and translucent, somehow making her appear even more naked than wearing nothing.
But I know the ways of Nereids now to see it for the challenge it is.
Desire is a weapon, I have always known this. I am learning that I too can wield it.
I am not dressed in white today. I am not playing the sweet betrothed of the Lord of the Sea, so I will wear my hubris this morning.
My kalasiris is dark brown, almost the colour of my skin, cut loose but with panels missing, baring my skin but allowing me room to move.
The edges are trimmed lightly in gold. I had it made secretly, without my mother’s knowledge, and it is the best thing I have ever worn.
I walk towards them. Ceto greets me in her usual way.
She is cool and close. I fight the urge to lean into her, her scent is heady and distracts me.
Ceto’s gaze does not leave her sister’s face.
Amphitrite raises her eyebrows in a silent question, examining the sliver of space between us.
I stand straight, breathe deep, the salt and earth smell of Ceto’s hair whispering to me of the lake, and inhale the memory of the assuredness that filled me that day.
‘Amphitrite,’ I say.
‘Andromeda,’ she replies.
The scrape of her voice chills me. I am back in the throne room, cowering behind my grandmother, and she is there, glaring at me.
Ceto is still standing at my back. Now she rests her chin on my shoulder. It is casual but proprietary. She is here for me.
‘Meda,’ her voice is low, soft in my ear, though I am sure Amphitrite can hear, ‘I will be out of earshot. But your voice – I will hear if you need me. But you won’t.’
I believe her. I breathe her in again, reach for the river and feel it reach back. It holds its breath, the birds go quiet, they are listening to me. Rallying behind me.
‘No. I won’t.’
Amphitrite glances around, unnerved. Ceto addresses her. ‘I will be back shortly. And sister,’ she smiles, her features sharp as spears, ‘do not forget what happened the last time someone touched what is mine.’
Amphitrite rolls her eyes, but Ceto has turned to walk away. We wait in silence until she is out of sight.
‘So Ceto has found another attention whore to bring her woes to. That’s good.’
My eyes narrow. ‘Not all of us want the gifts we are given, nymph. It is not our fault that you fail at holding the attention you crave.’
‘How terrible it must be for you both,’ she huffs. ‘At least you have each other to play with.’
‘I am not playing.’
‘There’s a surprise. Pretty mortals are always boring.’
I am abruptly grateful that I am my parents’ only child.
‘You practise pharmaka.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Did your sister tell you why I wanted to speak to you?’
‘No, she was irritatingly mysterious about the whole thing, as usual.’
Her affectation reminds me a little of Ceto. Up close, eyes rolling and lips pouting, she is not as fierce as I had thought. Or maybe I too am fierce.
‘I do not want to marry the Lord Poseidon,’ I say bluntly and her nostrils flare.
‘Oh?’
‘No.’
‘It doesn’t really matter what you want.’ She is inscrutable. ‘Your parents want it. My lord wants it. The oath was sworn.’
‘The oath is contingent upon my bleeding.’
‘Yes. When will that happen, out of interest? My sisters are getting impatient.’
‘Why do your sisters care?’
‘They have had to be far nicer to me than they are comfortable with these past years. They grow weary of it but will not risk losing the favour of their future queen. They have made poor Ceto’s life quite miserable.’
The sun hits the river at a strange angle, turning it to lightning in the corner of my eye.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Gods,’ Amphitrite’s laughs cracks with glee, ‘she does not speak of us then?’
‘No.’
She laughs again. ‘A case of blaming the messenger, I suppose. Each night poor little Ceto returns without declaring judgement, and each night our sisters punish her for it. Sometimes violently, always cruelly. Most nights she doesn’t come home at all.’
I am aware that the river is rushing again, I can feel it as though it rushes through my bones. She must notice because she adds, ‘Not me, of course. I am quite happy with the delay.’
‘What if the delay was indefinite? What if I never bled and was declared sick, unable to produce sons?’
My idea unfurls before her, I watch her take it. ‘You would rather die with an empty womb than become Queen of the Sea?’
She is looking at me in the way that people have often looked at me. I am too lovely to be so peculiar. It is uncanny.
‘Motherhood has never appealed to me.’
This is not wholly true. I have vague memories of a detached sort of fantasy, pieces of my mother and grandmother’s most tender moments tied together somewhere far away from the kinds of pressure that flay at that tenderness until it is weeping.
But then, on those nights that I am not disciplined, I imagine what it would be to lie beneath the sea, to be so crushed and squeezed that, in birthing, I myself become sediment.
I sit up sweating and gasping, staring out at my reliable river.
Smaller than the sea but ceaseless, without the pause of tides.
I imagine Ceto, sitting on its banks, out of sight but watching my window.
I imagine calling out her name into the night and what it would be to feel her against me, to press her into the soft layers of my blankets.
And now I know that she does not go home to rest and comfort, or even the peace of solitude. I cannot bear it. I will not stand it.
‘So? Can you do it?’
‘You will be ruined.’ She turns me this way and that in her mind, trying to find sense. ‘You will never marry, never bear children, never live up to your great name.’
‘It matters, how life is breathed into a word. Names are still made by the mouths of men.’
She rolls her eyes again. ‘I knew river folk spoke in riddles.’
‘I am offering you your crown, nymph. What more is there to discuss?’
She winds the long coil of red around her wrist as she ruminates.
‘Fine. Wait here.’
She slips into the river. I wait as instructed. It is nearing the time that I would break my fast, but restlessness distracts me from my hunger. I slip into the river and swim its width, the familiar routine loosening my anxiety and easing the consistent tightness in my abdomen.
Amphitrite emerges after I have made the return three times. I join her once more on the banks. She holds a jar out to me.
‘Take this every full moon. One sip will do. It will be enough to last a year.’
‘And then?’
‘The golden spindles from which it is made flourish in winter. I will make you more.’
I take it. The jar is solid, made from a smooth green stone. I remove the stopper. The liquid inside is pungent and bilious. I recoil.
‘How do I know it is not poison?’
She snatches it from me, growling with impatience, and takes a deliberate swig. She swallows it, raises her eyebrows. Satisfied?
I nod. Even immortals are weakened by pharmaka – it is why such witchcraft is so feared by the gods. It is seen as dirty, unjust and unsanctioned, a greedy clawing at unnatural power. I pocket the jar.
‘Good. Now, I would speak with my sister.’ She looks at me expectantly. She thinks Ceto more likely to answer my call than hers.
‘Ceto?’
She is at my side in moments, slipping out of the water, droplets clinging to her more than to Amphitrite, who is already dry and white as bone.
‘So? Are you … well acquainted?’
‘Yes, yes, we’re bosom friends.’ Amphitrite glances between us. ‘You should not come home.’
She does not take care with the pronouncement, dumps it mercilessly at Ceto’s feet and is unmoved by the way her sister blinks rapidly, her mask fluttering with her lashes like a fan.
‘Why?’