Chapter 13 #3
I walk out of my apartments and through the empty palace.
I am unused to seeing my home by night. I have become afraid of what lurks here, in the shadows, but there is nothing, no one.
I cross the hearth room. The fire has not been lit in many moons and the air is stale with memory and artifice.
The south court is vaster than ever, the monolith of my parents’ thrones looms larger than my reality has allowed.
They tower over me as I pass them, walking through my father’s apartments.
I never do this but the grey gaze blinks its summons.
I tread the familiar path between flowers, chrysanthemum, mandrake, poppy, rose.
My body remembers them, knows the corners of the hedges and steps and turns without my instruction.
It is so dark I cannot see and, though they try, the stars do little to help me.
I step by the jasmine where Ceto and I brawled that first autumn.
I am reaching the centre of the labyrinthine rows.
Phineus is here. I register it dimly as he turns towards me.
He too looks as though he sleepwalks, unsurprised in his recognition.
‘Andromeda.’
‘Phineus.’
‘Why are we here?’ he asks and his voice comes as if from a distance or underwater.
‘There will be a course correction.’
I say the words and they are not my own – they open something in the air around us.
There was no moon but suddenly there is light and in the light are two figures.
They appear to be women, but I know they are gods.
I know them and I know they have come for me.
The taller of the two is so radiant in her loveliness that my life being so dictated by my face seems foolish.
I cannot hold her image in my mind because she is beyond an image.
She is beauty. Her presence explains its meaning.
Beauty did not exist before her and it cannot exist after, only pale, sad imitations.
To look upon her, I am hit by this bolt of truth, is to look upon no one thing.
It is to see stars densely populating a clear sky and the winding, sparkling Nile bordered by rolling green, becoming brilliant gold.
It is to see the face of my mother, whispering to me as I sleep in her arms. It is Ceto, flushed and twisted beneath me, it is the Cetus, sleek and black and crowned as a queen, it is Ceto’s light smile, it is Ceto’s depthless eyes, it is Ceto, now, lying peacefully asleep.
I feel Aphrodite’s cool interest more than I see it, as though the intensity of her light is focused on me.
I am distantly horrified, the loathsome mix of fear and shame that accompanies the realizing of an inevitability.
I sought to avoid her notice but of course I could not. I have been foolish and complacent.
Her sister is small and cold at her side, but I have made this mistake before.
Artemis says, ‘I have done all I can.’
If I was wholly myself, I would thank her for it. I would lie and pretend and survive.
But my womanish tricks will not work here on those who invented them.
‘It is not enough.’
‘You have been given plenty,’ Aphrodite intones, coldly disdainful.
‘I did not ask for it.’
‘You have been given beauty and beauty is power.’
‘You do not understand.’ I want to make her listen; she will not but I will not get this chance again. ‘You do not experience as we do. The power is not mine to wield. Women do not wield in this world of men.’
‘You have disrespected me. You have attempted to cast my gift aside. You are ungrateful.’
‘It was not to me you gave it!’ I am caught between desperation and rage and yet able to fully embody neither. ‘I cannot look upon my own face. I take no pleasure in it. All it ever did was make me visible and to be visible as a mortal woman is to be always in danger.’
I feel Aphrodite’s scorn as a torrid, wilting heat.
‘You are wanted as a ruler.’ Artemis speaks as though she is used to soothing, to being the smiling face that delivers agonies.
‘I did not ask for it.’
Aphrodite says, ‘It was your parents’ wish, your mother’s.
And what are children but the prayers of their parents?
’ Her ire has abated as swiftly as it appeared, fickle and easily tired, and now she observes me with a detached curiosity, the way I have found shapes in clouds.
‘Your life is short, your legacy is longer. Your sons will be kings and their sons will be kings.’
‘Am I to be enslaved by my descendants? Forever indebted to those who will come after me, who will live in a world I do not see?’
‘The debt will be theirs, not yours. They will thank you and praise your name.’
‘What will I care for thanks and praise when I am gone?’
‘You will be immortal.’
Not even the temptation of an eternity with Ceto can eclipse the intemperate, eroding crash of the sea.
‘There are ways one can die and still live.’
Their silence is confirmation.
‘You know what you condemn me to. You know even better than I do.’ I meet Artemis’ gaze unflinchingly. Her divinity does not flay me as Aphrodite’s does and I wonder if this is a mercy on her part.
‘I am not inevitable,’ she murmurs. ‘I live in the forests with bears and wild things. I have loved you as a wild thing. But you are not mine to keep.’ Because I am Poseidon’s. And she has been outrunning men on her quick feet since the beginning of the beginning. She cannot slow for me.
A movement at my side reminds me that Phineus is here. He has been watching our exchange, alert but quiet, attentive. ‘Why is he here?’
‘There must be balance in all things. You have created an asymmetry and now there are too many options. We must remove one.’ Aphrodite speaks so I do not notice the bow in Artemis’ hands.
When I do my brain is slow and my body is slower.
The arrow is gold, not silver. I dimly wonder, as she draws and fires, why she borrowed one of her brother’s arrows, when she has so many of her own. Phineus crumples. I do not cry out.
Frozen and staring, I simply look at him.
I do not move when she draws for a second time, one of her own now, bright silver in the night, aimed at my stomach.
I do not move as it flies towards me, I do not duck or try to avoid its flight.
She is not inevitable but this does not foreclose the existence of inevitable things; I have learned this the hard way.
The arrow does not hurt when it buries itself in my lower abdomen, but it winds me and I slump beside Phineus in the dry, dry earth.
They stand above me.
Aphrodite says, ‘It is as it must be.’
Artemis whispers, ‘I am sorry.’