Chapter 13 #2
‘Meda.’ Her voice is calm. She is used to this. ‘I am long-lived, not invulnerable. I will be with you always. I will want you always.’
I should tell her that I am mortal and she is not and she should live for us both. But I am selfish and spoiled and feel only contempt for the future.
I kiss her. Trail my hand across her belly. ‘And now? Do you want me now?’
‘Yes. Again. Please.’
When the storm arrives, the people do not know to be wary.
Lightning cleaves its path through the skies, thunder rumbles in its wake.
Preparation flurries, rain rituals and feasting.
The Nile has not yet flooded, but we are readying for the harvest and though the yield is strong already, moisture is always welcome.
My father’s advisors gather to discuss crop distribution and early-year planting.
My mother’s women stand at the windows of her apartments to watch.
They are all excited, entertained by this rare show – but Ceto and I notice what they do not.
There are no clouds.
The warm daffodil brightness of the day is eerily at odds with the purple streaking across the sky, which is still blue, as blue as my grandmother’s lilies.
The rain does not come. The thunder rages, its crashes splintering my bones.
My heart beats loudly, louder than it has done in a long time, as if replying to the choler in the air. The wrongness of it swells.
Achiroe departs to seek her father, her demeanour uneasy, her eyes sliding over where Ceto and I sit, hands tightly entwined, as though each flash and crack seeks to split us apart.
We do not speak. We do not leave the banks.
We are both, somehow, waiting for something.
Achiroe’s return perhaps, or something more.
We watch the sky, praying for one droplet, the tiniest wet bead of normality.
But the day is dry still. Apollo’s chariot streaks by; I read it as augurs read birds.
Fire rages behind it as if the sky itself has been struck by lightning, expending one final, coruscating flare, burning white into my eyes.
Night rushes in as though hasty to be on with its business and Achiroe does not return.
The bite of the chill is sharper than usual as Ceto and I huddle close on the banks.
We do not worry for my grandmother, but her absence signifies an emptiness, a vulnerability.
The guardian of this stretch of river has left her post and we feel it.
Ceto becomes rigid beside me. She points. At first, absurdly, I think it is coral, rising from the Nile. But Amphitrite grows like a poppy through the flood, pale stems luminous though there is no moon tonight. Selene too has taken leave of her task.
‘Sister?’
‘There is trouble.’
As ever, Amphitrite is not careful with her words.
‘Trouble?’ I ask. Ceto and I rise as one. She positions me behind her, ever so slightly.
‘You must return the jar.’
‘What?’ I look between the sisters in alarm. Ceto should not hear this. She has evaded her master’s questions for nearly two years. We have been doing so well. Amphitrite, though, appears to be done with caution.
‘It does not matter if Ceto hears. It is over now. Give me the jar.’
‘Why?’
She looks as if she does not want to answer. Out of a rankling at having to explain herself to a mortal or a reluctance born of the curious affection that lingers between her and her sister, I do not know. But then she says, her voice muted and tense, ‘The gods are angry.’
Those words are too big for me.
‘Which gods? Why?’ Dread like ribs, fencing in my breath, and Ceto, my spine, anchoring my fleshy places, preventing me from puddling in terror.
‘They believe the gifts they gave you have been squandered. The natural course of things altered.’ I am small, I am just a girl, I am mortal, I am standing in transparent linen being laughed at by men …
‘You have attempted to defy the Fates and even they cannot do that,’ she continues, pressing her lips together. ‘There will be a course correction. There will be a punishment.’
It has been so long since I felt truly afraid that I have forgotten the horror of it.
It is not just the thought of such magnitudes set against me, a pantheon of Poseidons, it is the nightmare that is fear itself.
I might run from the gods, I would not get very far but I might.
But I cannot run from fear. Ceto is stood fully in front of me now; I had not noticed her move but she reaches back and takes my hand.
‘Surely … surely they must understand. I meant no malice but I am … I could not withstand what was laid out before me. Surely they will be merciful.’
‘They have yet been merciful. They have allowed you this time.’ Another thing I have forgotten, at the centre of my small world: there can be no care when forever is asked to consider for now.
‘And now they will have their vengeance? Is that it?’ Ceto spits the words. The Cetus shimmers just beyond our reach but Amphitrite is unimpressed.
‘They feel her mother’s hubris must not go unchecked.’
‘But it is not Meda’s hubris! It is not hers! They punish unjustly!’
This last word pricks my ears and I cling to a strand of hope.
‘What of Athena? Our kin? What says she?’
Is it pity that clouds Amphitrite’s face? Or am I too generous, and it is contempt for my pleading?
‘An oath was sworn. What is just is that it is not reneged upon.’
I stare downstream, my future rolling out before me, and I see myself drifting downstream too, pulled inevitably towards the mouth that wishes to drink and drink. I cannot quench it.
‘And what of you?’ I ask Amphitrite wearily.
Fatigue has seized me suddenly and it will not let me go.
Ceto is a perfect statue of rage and denial, no no, never never, not a fucking chance.
It is carved all over her bronzed and polished form.
She will beg me to fight, I know she will.
She will beg me to lie, cheat, steal us more time.
And I would, I would, but I do not know how. The gods are angry.
‘I?’
‘You helped me. Gave me the potion. Will Lord Poseidon punish you?’
‘The Lord Poseidon does not know.’
‘What?’
She raises her chin defensively. ‘You should be grateful that it is so. He would have rained down holy terror had he discovered the truth.’
‘How? How does he not know?’
‘Artemis. Zeus called upon her to answer for your delay in transition and she said the fault was hers.’
‘Why would she do that?’
‘I helped birth her. And her brother too. She honours such acts.’ Artemis, protector of childbirth, who found her own birth so traumatic that, after helping her mother – and Amphitrite, apparently – deliver her twin, vowed never to suffer labour. And so she sends the rest of us to her fate instead.
‘Well,’ I say bitterly, ‘that is something.’
Amphitrite returns to the palace with us and waits outside while I fetch the jar from where it is hidden behind my tapestry.
I think of all my prayers of thanks, knelt at its base, head pressed to Artemis’ swift feet.
I pass the jar containing my salvation out of the window.
The Nereid takes it and is gone without a word.
‘Meda, we will find a way.’
I do not say anything.
She shakes me. ‘Meda!’
‘We were foolish to think this would work.’
‘We were not! There will be another way, another trick!’
‘Ceto—’
‘No, do not! Do not do this! Do not give up! Do not call me Ceto in that way! Call me worm and demand that I do not doubt you!’
I can only look at her. She sinks to the floor. Her hands clutch at my kalasiris, her face is set. ‘I will go to my master, I will convince him that he does not want you.’
‘I will not endanger you. There is no point in it.’
She shakes me harder. ‘There is! There is! You are not their little queen, you will not be their Andromeda, you cannot be, you are mine, you are my Meda!’
I stroke her face, bring it to me and kiss it, lick at the salty wet of her cheeks.
‘I will always be yours. I will be your queen and your Meda still.’ We lie together.
Her chest heaves with sobs. Never before have I seen her cry.
I shush her, rock her. Caring for her distracts me and brings me back to myself, my best self, where I am strong and assured and it will all be fine.
‘At least this way we will be together. At least this way you can protect me.’
I try to believe my own reassurance and keep my mind away from the image of crushing sediment, the heavy weight of oceans, the brutish pressure of the god whose silver-grey mass robbed me of breath and may, one day, dash me to pieces.
Ceto drifts off eventually. Hiccups herself into a deep sleep and I am grateful for whatever peace she is able to find.
I linger somewhere between dreaming and wakefulness, in that place where my body is burdensome against the quivering wispiness of my mind.
I see my father, staring wordlessly at my almost naked form, never moving to shield me.
I see the writhing Gorgon as she petrifies all men who dare to touch what is not theirs.
Her hands become mine, her wild, dangerous laugh crackles out of my mouth, I feel the weight of the god who took what he wanted, the weight of the snakes that guard her.
I see my mother declaring, demanding. I see flashing grey eyes, looming before me.
They blink. I blink back. They beckon. I follow.
My body moves without my command, it is not my own.
My soul and heart stay where they belong, warm in bed beside the woman who loves me.