Chapter 15
Aethiopia
We call them crimson naiads, though they are neither crimson nor our kin.
We claimed them, with their long limbs and plumage like coral and quartz.
When they are born their feathers are like camomile petals, soft and small and light.
They hatch in the spring, their parents harvesting the fruit of their diligent efforts, and leave on straggly wings before the Nile floods.
When they return, they are unrecognizable and dazzling.
They tell us of their journey, of oceans that stretch wide, of mysterious snow – fine as natron but colder than I can comprehend and reaching from crystal mountains to the horizon – and of water dyed pink, rosy like the welcoming dawn.
I am with them as they land there, here, this pool of Eos, where they dine and duck and become strong.
I fly on downy wings and submerge with them.
It is a place between things, a lake of saltwater, and so belongs to neither naiad nor Nereid.
It is a while before I am aware that my eyes have opened.
My view is so pretty I am sure I am dreaming it.
Everywhere is soft berry and it settles me as ancient comfort; this pigment is old as Gaia herself.
I am floating easily. The pain is gone and though I am tender still, I am strong.
The water is heavy and supports me and I am awash with comfort once more.
There is a hand at my back to keep me in place and I ask for her because I know she will answer.
‘Ceto?’
‘Meda.’ She is lined and crumpled with worry and exhaustion. The ends of her hair fan in the water around us.
‘What happened?’
‘You were not well.’ Tears have tracked through dust on her face but her mouth is a resolved line. ‘Your time came – and it was very bad. I did not know what to do. You – there was – I did not know you could be so pale. I did not know what to do.’
‘Where are we?’
‘It is the pink lagoon. It is separate enough from the sea that your naiad blood does not reject it, but there is enough salt to heal you.’
Salt. I understand. ‘You spoke with your sister?’
‘Yes.’
‘You brought me to her?’
‘Yes.’
‘She told you to take me here.’
‘Yes.’
‘I would have thought she would have wrested me from you and left me to die.’
‘She definitely considered it.’
‘And yet she did not act? Knowing it will cost her crown?’
‘She is my sister.’
‘Sisters betray each other, sometimes.’ I think of Phineus and my father, his ugly, deathbed resentment.
She blinks at me. ‘Amphitrite and I would not.’
‘Does your master know? Does he know what has happened?’
She is silent. She cannot speak it. She nods. I see the apology, the regret in her face; I too am literate in her lines.
‘You had to tell him. The attendants would have seen the bed linen. Word would have spread and you would be in trouble for not going to him first.’ I straighten and tread the water, revelling in what is left of this day, this life, this glorious life so close to the sun.
‘When will he come?’
‘We will go to him, at the Erythraean coast. It will take five days to travel. Then he will come.’
‘Hmmm.’
‘Meda. I will say no.’
I laugh drily. The salt stings my skin but it is soothing. The water is neither warm nor cold but the exact temperature of my blood, and it is easy to forget that I am in it and not rippling through air.
‘Oh? Are you so fickle, worm? You see me bleeding and sick and find me not so beautiful after all?’ I turn my head to face her, expecting to find her similarly wry and angled.
It is not what we wanted, but it will be as it is.
I will choke down my fear because we will, at least, be together.
But I notice the firm, resolved line of her lips.
‘Ceto?’
‘I will lie.’
I am grateful for my buoyant naiad blood and the sturdy base of the water. I might have drowned at her words.
‘No.’
‘Yes.’
‘You will not!’
‘You will not convince me. I am decided.’
‘I said, no!’
‘I will not watch you marry him!’
‘I will not see you punished for breaking your oath! Not on my account.’
Her eyes are wild, she drags her shaking hand through her hair.
The Cetus shadows around her. ‘I can crush any others that harm you and I will, but he is too much. I will not allow you to condemn yourself to an eternity as his pet! His subject! You will not be allowed to say no, ever, you will belong to him even more than I do!’
‘You do not allow me to do anything. You will not take from me what choice I have and damn yourself in the process.’
‘Do not start this again! Not this old lie, Meda, not to me! It has never been your choice—’
‘It is now!’ I grip her wrists to prevent her ripping chunks of hair.
‘I did not want it, I did not ask for it, but it is mine and I must face it. Phineus died because I would not, should I lose you too?’ I am in her face, I show her my teeth and she growls back at me and we are both crying because we are tangled and there is no untying us.
‘I do not want my mother to die. If you lie, if you say no, her life will be forfeit also.’
‘I do not give a fuck about your mother. Should I betray you for her sake?’
‘You do not betray me. You made me no oaths.’
‘I did not make them out loud but I made them.’
I kiss her before she can say more things that break my heart. Her lips meet mine in desperation, and my mouth opens wider as she seeks a solution along my tongue.
‘I will survive him,’ I whisper into her mouth. ‘If you would maim and kill for me then I will survive for you.’
She does not respond. Only crushes her mouth to mine until my lips are bruised and swollen.
I scoop her close and her legs wrap around my waist. My palms spread across her thighs and higher, are secure on the lean muscle and I dig my fingers in marking her skin.
They will remain tomorrow when she fulfils her oath, she will feel them and know that we are still to each other what we have been.
She will see me scraping and kneeling in years to come, she will see me smothered and so I would have her know me now, solid and upright, breathing in deep breaths of her.
I dig my nails again and she whimpers, pressing her heat to my damp abdomen, so at odds with her cool skin and the tepid water.
She nips at my teeth, wild and frenzied, and I half swim, half wade to the sandy ring that encircles the lagoon.
She pales the golden sand with her luminescence and I forcibly remember how she looked that first day, all those years ago, when she had spent so long among cold and trenches.
Now she is rich and dark, a copper and bronze platter where I wait to dine.
These are not the days of the previous summer, our early, careful exploration, a gentle dance of listening and responding.
We are learned in each other now and our hands claw at each other.
Ceto makes a sound that is ripe and syrupy as a fig, part desire, part beseeching; I have never eaten the lotus fruit but I believe it tastes like that sound.
I undress her. My nose and lips follow her hem, skimming up her calves, knees, thighs and then beginning again at her ribs, my tongue reaching out to taste the salt between the swell of her breasts.
I nip at her, roll the hard, swelling buds between my lips and nip again.
The gentler I am, barely scraping, the wilder her hips twist and buck.
I move between her mouth and nipples, lavishing them both with attention.
Her keening voice is sweet as honey, thick as milk and I experience a thousand little deaths, there above her.
Nothing can be so absolute as the suspension of her pleasure.
She scrabbles at my kalasiris, dragging it over my head, it catches on the voluminous cloud of my hair and our tears become laughter, breathless, at our madness.
Her eyes are dusk as they stroke my body like a physical touch.
It turns the blaze of my hunger to furnace and forge; I will make and unmake her.
My tongue keeps contact with her skin, moves through her dark brush and does not pause before her glistening core.
I draw ecstasy from her body and my name from her mouth.
I lap at her like a serpent tasting the air and scenting the day, teasing her open wider and wider.
I suckle at her, my lips puckered loose, the seal and release light enough to feel like kissing.
Her legs fall apart and I know by the flush beneath the pigment of her flesh that she is close.
I cannot be so far away for this moment.
What is it, if I am not there to witness?
I rise up and her moan is hoarse when I stop.
‘Please, Meda, please let me, please let me.’ The rhythm of her chant matches the thrumming of my blood.
I watch her face as I begin to stroke her, featherlight fingers gliding easily over her wetness.
‘Meda, my Meda.’ She is desperate. I increase the pace but not the pressure.
I lean in and claim her mouth once more.
As my tongue slides across hers I imitate the action below, and stroke inside her.
She releases a fractured cry against my mouth.
She is cresting and the break will be immense.
She reaches for me, for more. I usually seek to dominate her here; there is no greater joy for me than seeing her, my soft, sweet worm, my Ceto, rapturous at the mercy of my ministrations.
But there is too much want between us now.
When her nails score desire down my body and find their way between my legs, I do not pin her arms above her head as I might have.
Our gazes lock. She is nearer to her apex, but watching her, with her deft fingers pressing and pinching, I am not far behind.