Chapter 12
Aethiopia
We tell my parents that Poseidon has ordered Ceto to guard me throughout the night.
They do not argue, do not dare contradict.
I see they are increasingly tense and worried.
This was not how things were supposed to be.
A mist of uncertainty rises from the ground.
My mother calls for me less often. I am sure that she does not wish to be confronted by my face, a physical manifestation of her failed politicking.
Either this or Ceto’s omnipresence unnerves her.
I pass my twentieth birthday and I am a spinster already, the fine bounty Aphrodite bestowed upon our kingdom is wasted.
I hear mutters of in it corners, the shadows whisper with speculation.
What happens if this continues? They make signs to ward off bad luck as I pass, and I fight to stifle laughter.
Various nobles bribe various servants to inspect my linens, to check my bedding.
They are disappointed. Their suspicion of Ceto grows to outright fear.
They mistrust her oaths and her orders, they say that she has turned my body from its natural course, they say that I am under her spell.
They do not suspect me or that the spell is mine.
Each full moon I send Ceto from the room and sip at the green jar.
It is bitter and scratches my throat but I do not care.
Occasionally Ceto leaves me in the early hours of the morning to return to her master.
I meet her at the banks with a basket full of warm bread, cheese and eggs and fruit. ‘It is all right?’
‘Yes,’ she says. She does not elaborate. Her eyes fade to the solemnity that I have come to connect with her sisters. I tease and kiss until they shine once more, until they again reach that volcanic heat, while quietly swearing that one day I will punish them all for her sudden pallor.
As my twenty-first birthday approaches the mist becomes a fog and it clouds around me, obscuring me from prying eyes.
I recognize it for what it is – resignation.
I am an anti-climax. The tone of the speculation changes, poor girl, she cannot be well, she will not marry, she will become a priestess in some temple by the sea.
They speak of my wandering womb spreading hysteria about my heart and mind.
Without a baby to hold it in place there must be a wrongness to me.
They eye the mud that flecks my feet and exchange knowing looks.
I smile at them placidly, as if I am oblivious to their jokes and rumours.
They are embarrassed for me and it is greater than the draw of my face.
They tug their eyes away, relieved at last to have a reason.
She was always strange, they say, it is not natural, for a woman to be so bad at being beautiful.
I relish all of it. I have more of my own clothes made, kalasiris in brown and black, or dyed dark green.
My beaded overlays are jade and tiger’s eye, loose in separate pieces, draping across my body so that I can run while still enjoying their skimming at my waist and thighs.
I see my mother even less than before. I do not go to the hearth room; I brush my own hair, and I miss her like insects miss the sweet warm honey that gums their wings together, turning their spiracles gooey and suffocating.
I dine with Ceto in my own apartments and the world of the palace is us two alone.
Outside with Achiroe, we swim and catch fish and sing, and she plays her turtle drum while we dance.
I feel younger than I did as a child, as if I have aged backwards.
I am silly and giggling, and I did not know I could be playful.
But I feel the wise grey eyes upon me still, they are the only ones that do not look away. It makes me uneasy. I tell Ceto as much but she is too light, these days, for such talk.
She lounges on her favourite daybed and says, ‘Now, Meda, you are used to eyes, are you not? How could anyone look away from your pretty face?’
I shove her, taking her by surprise. She falls to the floor but brings me with her. We land and roll, linen and limbs entwined. I pin her beneath me, my body flat against hers; she is stronger than me, but she cannot get purchase.
‘You laugh at me entirely too easily, worm.’
‘I laugh with you, it is different.’
‘Is it now?’
‘Yes. I only laugh when you also know that you are being ridiculous.’
‘I am never ridiculous.’
‘The Lady Athena favours your family. She is invested in your wellbeing. Of course you feel her watching you occasionally.’
‘Hmmm.’ She has shaken me loose now; her teasing has brought me back to the best version of myself.
I have forgotten my worry. I am distracted by her cavernous eyes.
I could spend endless days in them, but that would be time away from her mouth.
I take my weight to my knees. ‘And what of you, worm? Do you watch me occasionally?’
She moves beneath me, tipping her head, baring her throat to me, inviting. ‘I watch you always.’
My hand drifts up her body. She is cool to my touch, and I watch, fascinated, as her skin rises in bumps to meet my fingertips.
I rarely get her like this, prone before me in the daylight.
In the initial hush of our first shared twilights, we grew accustomed to the new proximity.
I put aside the voraciousness of my longing in the face of her uncertainty.
Here she is not the fierce guardian of Poseidon’s kingdom – she is a girl far from home.
She had never slept in a bed, never had her hair combed with oils, or her feet rubbed with pumice.
She is a goddess and has no need of such mortal attentions, but I wish to give her a life of pleasure in exchange for the one of freedom she has granted me.
I do all of this and more. It is intoxicating, tending to her.
Gentling and brushing until she is soft, so soft, downy as clouds, rolling out before me, stretching luxuriously, sinking into my blankets.
I crawl up her body and fold her into me, grazing constellations with my teeth across her shoulders, and am gratified by her contented mews.
And so we go on. Lips and tongues sharing secrets, laughter pressed between sighs.
Our hands are careful, as this is all new terrain, uncharted territory for us both.
Above all else, it is so sweet to hold and be held.
I do not wake crying and sweating any more.
I place my hippos at my window, and they watch over us as we sleep.
On the morning of my twenty-first birthday, I am summoned to the throne room.
The palace is empty and peaceful as we walk through; the Nile flooded early this year.
There will be no festivities for me today.
I am increasingly encouraged to remain away from public events and Phineus is thrust forward in my place.
I am being gently washed away, with my father and his advisors readying the court for my absence; I am indifferent.
I catch Ceto’s hand in mine as we cross the antechambers, taking the long way via the kitchens.
I pull figs to pieces and feed them to her as we pass behind columns.
She licks my fingers attentively, before taking them once more.
We separate as we pass the pool in the centre court; the fish whisper a warning behind us.
My father and mother have become more themselves, as I have, in the years that have passed.
My father bumbles more. He is never without a full cup, the same buzzing manner, flashing his poisonous rump in warning but never daring to sting.
The thick pads of my mother’s caracal paws have hardened.
She is more bloodthirsty, more ravenous; she was promised a delicious platter and dinner has been delayed.
‘Andromeda. Happy birthday, my girl,’ she says as she kisses my cheeks.
I kiss my father. ‘Yes, yes, happy birthday, girl.’
They look at each other. I stand and wait. The throne room feels large today, I am in it so rarely now and it is usually so filled with bodies. My own suddenly feels small and vulnerable. My father gestures then and I hear footsteps.
‘It has been decided that you are to be examined,’ he says.
‘Examined?’ I scan the room.
‘It has been five years, girl. This is not normal.’
The two men walking towards me have the easy demeanours of those who have been told that they have easy demeanours.
I do not trust these kinds of men. A cold, plunging horror descends.
I am in the central pool again, my linen stuck to my bare skin, I am a child and I am not protected.
But Ceto stands before me. Her coral knives are a pair today and she points them directly at the advancing strangers.
‘Not a fucking chance.’
They stop abruptly and hold up their hands in instant surrender. This is unanticipated.
‘Gods, nymph!’ my father barks. ‘They will not harm her. They are physicians. Men of medicine and healing.’
I look towards my mother, sat implacably, so far away, so removed.
‘Mama?’
She does not address me, her attention is all on the tips of Ceto’s knives.
‘If your master ever wishes to marry, I am sure he would consent to this.’
But it is not Poseidon’s consent that Ceto cares for. ‘Meda?’
I weigh my options. My heart beats the rhythm to our riverside dance.
I cannot deny that I am tempted by her blades.
But my mother is right; Poseidon would consent and calling the sea god to confirm this is not beyond my mother.
She is determined to give me the world. It does not matter that I do not want it.
I think again of that night, the set of her mouth and shoulders, the volume of her voice.
She sits straight and tall, the image of a ruler.
If my mother were a man, she could wrest Mount Olympus from the hands of Zeus himself.
As a woman, she will never be satisfied.